I was up, reading the funny papers in the kitchen around 6:15 this morning, still dark out. The doorbell rang. I flipped on the front light, and saw a sheriff’s deputy in full gear, standing where he could see both the door and the kitchen window.

I opened the door a crack. He looked on edge, the muscles of his face strained, his voice tense and serious, but not harsh. He told me they had received a 911 call from our house, and got only a busy signal when they tried to return the call. I knew the phone was on the blink, so I told him that, and let him in to confirm it himself.

I left the door wide open in case something weird was going on and we’d want to escape. My son wandered out of his room in his shorts, yawned, walked past the deputy as though we have the law drop in the front door every day, got a box of oatmeal squares out of the pantry, the milk from the fridge.

The deputy took a good look around as he approached the phone. I tried to see what he was seeing: the huge black cases near the front door that might have looked threatening except for the sheet music giving it away that they contained the two halves of a tuba. The stacks of mail on the counter, the Christmas tree, the red plastic pieces on a board game on the coffee table, the open bottle of syrah near the sink with an inch of wine still in it from last night. Would he think I was drinking at 6 AM? The button with son’s band photo on it. The sheet of paper on the wall by the phone with emergency numbers, 911, friends’ numbers on display.

The deputy picked up the phone with his back to the wall. I could hear the crackle of the static from where I stood. His shoulders visibly lost some of their tautness, and he said that happens sometimes. Have a cold spell or something, wires get crossed.

His neck was twisted toward his right shoulder, his face perhaps a hopeful one by nature, disappointed by experience. His chest was big, out of proportion to his limbs, and I guess he had a kevlar vest on under there. Trying to keep safe against the worst.

He didn’t have much to say then, and returned toward the door, again his back always to the wall. I extended my hand and he shook it.

I felt a little stunned after he left. Wished irrelevantly the house had been less disorderly. I looked down at my mismatched pajamas. I imagined if I’d offered him some coffee, or how one might get him to the masseuse in Dripping to help relieve some of the serious tension in that right shoulder. I imagined what it would be like to hold a job where you open a door, and perhaps find blood and mayhem or perhaps find a Christmas tree and spread out funny papers. A raging 6 ft drunk or a 5 ft 3 mom with a 6 ft son rubbing sleep from his eyes. I could feel my right shoulder tense, too.

I try to remember if it was a flashlight or a gun he held in his hand at first. I really don’t know.