It was a fine spring morning in El Paso. My cameraman Raul and I had been dispatched to some inconsequential and long-forgotten weekend assignment. In another van that morning were Pat, a young but prim substitute high school teacher who moonilighted as a pale imitation of a reporter on weekends, and her cameraman, John Nicholls.
John was, like so many of our crew, starting out as an intern while still attending the University of Texas at El Paso. A boyish redhead with a skewed sense of humor, he and a fellow student were producing a satirical revue called Pirate Television on the public-access cable station.
Pat and John had been assigned to cover a cat that had been stuck atop a utility pole in its owner's back yard for three days. We'd had a rash of Such stories lately. David Trevino had covered just such a story recently, where the little old lady who was the kitty's owner called the local fire department to get her cat down from a telephone pole, then watched in horror as the fire fire fighters hooked up their high-pressure hose and blasted kitty from its roost. Dave ran the feline's descent in loving slow-motion accompanied by a narration in verse, an unfortunate fad among us reporters for a few months.
As Raul and I were driving back to the station, we got a call from Priscilla, our weekend assignments editor. She had just picked up on the police scanner that a man had been electrocuted at such-and-such an address. We changed our course to get to the story.
A couple of minutes later, Priscilla called us again.
"It's John," she said.
We pulled up at the address we'd been given. An ambulance, its back doors wide open, was parked in front. Pat and John's news van was parked in the driveway. Pat stood near it, looking even paler than usual.
I glanced into the back of the ambulance as I walked towards Pat. Looked like John was in there, all right, lying on a gurney with an IV drip plugged into him.
As Pat explained it to me, she and John showed up, inteviewed the pet's distraught owner, and shut down their gear. Then John turned to her and said, "I'm gonna get that cat."
John had climbed up to the top of the utility pole and tried to grab the cat. The cat went wild and started swinging its paws around. One or the other of them touched a high-tension wire, and in a shower of sparks, John and the cat came plummeting to the ground.
I went into the back yard to check out the scene. The utility pole stood in one corner of a rock wall, behind a large azalea bush. I peeked under the bush and saw the cat, a calico, lying on its side. I reached forth a finEer and gingerly prodded it.
With a furious yowl, the cat shot upright on all fours and stood there, quivering.
I went out front and suggested to Raul that he head back to the station on his own; I'd take Pat back in the other van. I figured she was in no condition to drive.
As we headed back up the North-South Freeway, I asked Pat how she was doing.
"Don't hit that car in front of you," she replied with glacial calm.
"Whoa!" I said, and figured maybe I needed to focus on my driving.
The ambulance took John to William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss which, as luck has it, boasts some of the finest microsurgeons in the country. They reconstructed the accident: When John and/or the cat made contact with the high voltage, the current arced through the forearm he had wrapped around the pole and shot out through his thigh, scorching the flesh at each point of contact. To complicate matters, his head clipDed the rock wall on the way down, and his brain was swelling alarmingly.
The odds were thus dicey that he would pull through at all, and if he did, chances were good he's lose either an arm or a leg, if not both. I have trouible thinking of the results as other than miraculous. He pulled through, and the microsurgeons at Beaumont were able to save both limbs. Sure, he wouldn't have full use of either, but he'd be able to get by as a local news cameraman, anyway. In fact, I ran across him months after I'd left the business, shooting weather weather video in the park. We shook hands, although he kept the other tucked in his jacket pocket.
Bill Mitchell, our news director, half-jokingly suggested that as a feature story we reunite John and the cat.
"I'll kill that cat if I see it," John replied with no trace of irony.
Which about puts a finish to the story, except that in a way it probably signaled the beginning of the end of my broadcast career. For, as I was sitting in the van with the radio in my had, hearing Priscilla tell me that John--our John--was the unfortunate electrocution victim that had just been reported, I did not press the transmitter key and reply:
"Priscilla...do you want video?"
The thought did occur to me, though.
First published in Trap Door 19, May 1999. Illustration by Craig Smith reproduced by permission of the artist.