Trump Lives Matter
You have a Trump bumper sticker on your truck. You leave church on Sunday to go home and change. Then you head out again to have lunch at your sister’s house. On the way, you are listening to Luke Bryan and enjoying the sunshine coming through the windows. You don’t notice the sheriff’s car behind you at first, but after about two miles, you realize he’s tailing you. You’ve heard from other friends who have Trump stickers that they’ve been getting more tickets lately. You think about that Trump supporter in Georgia who was beaten within an inch of his life for asking why he had been pulled over.
You get nervous, and you want to get away. You turn right onto a side street without signaling. The lights come on and you pull over. You take a deep breath. Your heart is racing. You try to appear calm. The sheriff walks up, his hand resting on his holster. You roll down your window.
“What can I do for you, officer?” you ask.
“License and registration,” he says, deadpan. He leans down and looks you in the eye. Then he looks past you, into the cab, like he is looking for something. You wish his shoulders would relax. You wish you could tell him nothing is wrong with you.
“Yessir,” you say, as respectfully as you can. Your wallet is in your back pocket, so you lean forward and reach behind you to get it.
The sheriff suddenly jumps back, his gun out of his holster and in his hands. You freeze.
“No sudden moves!” he says.
Your heart is pounding. You look over and you realize his gun is pointed at the window, at you. You think of your sister. You wish you hadn’t been listening to music. You wish you’d been paying more attention. You wish you’d signaled.
“Just getting my wallet, sir,” you say. You laugh nervously. You want to lighten the mood. Nothing is working. You remove your wallet slowly from your pocket.
And then you remember your car registration is in the glove compartment. It’s in the glove compartment with the gun that you’ve had for three years. The gun is registered. You have a permit. Sometimes on the weekends you go to the shooting range and practice on dummies and targets.
“For protection,” you told your mother when she didn’t approve.
You look at the officer. His gun is still raised. He looks scared.
“I have a licensed gun in my glove compartment,” you say. “My car registration is also in there.” You speak slowly. You want to convince him that you are harmless. You want to convince him to lower his gun.
The sheriff gestures with the barrel of his gun for you to go ahead. You lean over to open the glove compartment. You know the registration is wedged somewhere inside, between the gun and some Wet Ones and a bunch of napkins and ketchup packets from Wendy’s. You pull the latch and the compartment falls open with a thunk. You both startle.
He fires four rounds before your hand even touches the paper.
On the news they say that you had a history of traffic violations and parking tickets. They say that you were speeding in a residential area. They show a picture of you in a t-shirt from a party when you were younger and had drunk eyes and a mustard stain on your shirt. They remind everyone that you had a gun. They interview the sheriff, and he says he felt threatened. He says you laughed at his orders and were disrespectful.
Two weeks later they report that the ambulance wasn’t called until fifteen minutes after you were shot. The sheriff is put on paid administrative leave but not fired. In Virginia, another Trump supporter is shot during a routine traffic stop outside Lynchburg. Then another in Oregon. How could this be happening? Why are Trump supporters being targeted by law enforcement?
Pundits on the news say that Trump supporters are prone to criminality. They cite incarceration rates, and argue that if Trump supporters were such good citizens, why were so many of them in prison? Others say that Trump supporters are being systematically targeted by police, but their arguments are dismissed as speculation. The deaths continue.
Within a year, you are forgotten by the news. Your sister still visits your grave on Sundays. Your mother still wishes you never bought that gun. They both wake at night, wondering if something could have been done. They try to imagine what happened, as it happened. They obsess over the sheriff’s report. Sometimes, they feel like it was somehow their fault. Your sister wishes she had never invited you to lunch. Your mother wishes she could have taught you how to protect yourself. Then they wonder, really, if anything could have protected you. They have no answers. They have only grief, and your grave.
