I studied the pictures, looking for something but not knowing what. A clue into a personality, a reason, an answer.
Pictures showed a 2022 GMC Sierra AT4, lifted, 4-door, white, parked in a red zone. Streets were dry and the outside of the truck was spotless. Inside it looked like a bachelor used it as his junk drawer, that place where contents only make sense to the person who knows exactly what’s in there. Things that don’t belong anywhere else.
One item was a round, back-pocket can of 6 ZYN Swedish nicotine pouches, each containing extracts from tobacco leaves, plus food grade ingredients. Side effects are gum irritation, hiccups or nausea. Convenient effects are a can where you can put more stuff. This can also contained a couple of ibuprofen and some pills prescribed for depression.
A 25 ft., outdoor extension cord was unused, still in the manufacturer’s cardboard wrap. A phone cord was plugged into the USB port on the truck dashboard, but not the phone.
An extra pair of jeans and a jean jacket, a sweater hoodie, several colors of plastic hangers and one wooden hanger, some discarded plastic cups and water bottles, a Sig Sauer gun case with a UPC barcode.
An opened pack of Gum Mentos sugar-free gum with green tea extract. A quarter, a dime and two pennies, a multipack of Aquafina water, and an almost whole filtered cigarette that had been lit and burned out, not stubbed out, was lying in the console. An opened USPS box from Caltric, an aftermarket company for parts, supplies and accessories for gardens and small engines. A brown leather notebook.
The truck was as ordinary as any big truck that carried one person around. It was part closet, part desk.
That picture I saw, taken the night of March 1, is all I know of Christopher VanSchoick.
I know some of his stuff, but not who he was. I went to his burial near the top of a mountain, just below a pond. It was sunny and serene. Birds were acrobats, the wind whistled, people looked lost and alone.
I know from reading official reports from the coroner, the crime lab, the witnesses, the former girlfriends, the parents, local, county and state law enforcement and the circuit court judge that a disturbance led to Chris’s death.
And I know from a video that the cop who approached Chris didn’t bring up the disturbance, he said it looks like you might not be in shape to drive, please step out of the truck.
That didn’t happen.
I also know that no one is to blame. Not an officer, a dispatcher, a bartender, an onlooker, a tourist, a friend, non-friend, or a tormented individual. What happened on Spring Street in Eureka Springs on the night of March 1 shattered and exhausted people, but a way of getting over that is to realize no one gets to claim the blame on this. It’s like hitting a buck during the rutting season when you’re both going full speed and collide. It can happen, we don’t see it coming and we hate it.
The man who was shot and the man who shot him, are ours, our men. Residents. Workers. Taxpayers. The two didn’t know each other. One man was doing his job, the other man was requiring him to do his job. It’s unlikely that either man woke up that morning and thought, “This is the day that will change my life forever.”
Yet it was.
And, really, for our president to say with a straight face that allocating $95.3 billion in weapons to those at war in order to maintain peace, I find shattering and exhausting.