“Well, shall we?”

There was a series of nods from my coworkers as we finished signing our checks and rose to return to the office.  We made for the corner.  As we neared it, we saw a homeless man furiously digging through his backpack.  He was mumbling to a man standing next to him, and seemed to be angrily searching for something.  Bits of crumpled paper, odd and ends, and finally a Walkman scattered on the sidewalk.  The Walkman hit the pavement, popped open, and a tape slid a few feet away.

“Oh wow!” said Hiram, one of my coworkers.  “Is that a Walkman?!”  I was staring at the tape on the ground, trying not to step on it, and didn’t pay much attention to either Hiram or the homeless guy.  I rounded the corner and kept walking.

“He’s got a knife!”

I turned around to look, and yep,  the homeless guy was brandishing a very large knife.  It was a plastic-handled kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade, the sort of thing you’d use to slice bread.  I noticed this with no sense of urgency at all. That car is blue, I had a burger for lunch, there’s a fire hydrant over there, and that guy has a knife.  How nice for him.  I wonder what he needs it for.

Suddenly I noticed all my coworkers were running, and it clicked: RUN, YOU FUCKING MORON! Adrenaline kicked in, and I was sprinting before I realized what I was doing.  There happened to be a cop directing traffic through a construction area a half block away.

“Hey!” Hiram yelled at him, still running, “Hey, that guy has a knife!”

The cop stopped what he was doing and looked up, nearly as surprised as we were.  “What?”

“Over there!  That guy pulled a knife on us!”

The cop started running in the direction we’d come. I had a moment to think, and realized we were down two coworkers.  Until this point I’d been too shocked to be afraid, but now I realized that a coworker recovering from a broken foot was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Chris?!” I asked no one in particular.  “Chris can’t run…”  As the slowest of us, I was afraid that he’d be the one who got hurt.  The two coworkers who had come my direction had turned and were running after the cop.  I followed.

I got back to the corner just in time to see the cop standing a few paces away from Knifey, gun drawn but lowered. Knifey tossed his weapon.  I blinked, and Knifey was on the ground with the cop’s knee in his back.

“You want us to do anything?”  Another coworker asked the cop.

“Call 911.”

Within a few minutes, a squad car had arrived and Knifey was in custody.  In the interim, he slurred out that we had been threatening and teasing him.  No one responded.  We just waited and stared.   I’m certain he thinks that’s what happened.  It was obvious from first sight that he wasn’t well.

I made two phone calls.  The first was to locate my remaining coworkers: they were both fine.  As it turns out, being chased by a lunatic with a knife will do wonders for your ability to run.  After he’d stopped chasing my group, he’d gone after the other while yelling, “Stop making fun of me!”  The next call was to our manager, explaining what had happened and why we would be late coming back from lunch.

We regrouped and each gave a statement. A crowd formed, and a few other homeless guys picked through Knifey’s backpack.  I noticed that the Walkman was already gone, and tried to keep my distance from a tall, gaunt man with crack sores on his face and arms.  The guy Knifey had been talking to told the cops that they both went to the same mental health clinic.  I did a few minutes of searching today, and found that the clinic almost touches the bar we had lunch in.

The cops took off, and we headed back to the office.  The cop who had taken down Knifey was already back directing traffic.  We all stopped, shook his hand, thanked him, and kept walking.  We animatedly discussed what had just happened.  Strangely, no one could remember yelling that he had a knife.  The group consensus, repeated often, was “I can’t believe that just fucking happened.”  Two of my coworkers live within a few blocks, and one is a life-long Seattle resident.   Neither has had anything similar happen to them before yesterday.

I was impressed by the Seattle PD.  They’ve had a bad reputation in town recently, and while it may have been a coincidence that there was an officer a block away when all this went down, there were cops on scene within a few minutes of the 911 call.  They were there when we needed them.  Everyone was professional and pleasant, and the crazy guy with the knife is behind bars right now.  I hope he can get the help he needs.