A Migrant Memory

    I was parked alongside the driveway waiting for the child  to get off the schoolbus. In actuality, it wasn't a driveway but a long dirt road that led to her house.The road was formerly a main road, but now led only to a single home, occupied by two families, though there was still access to old farmland, which was occasionally driven to. So I would park near the mailboxes and wait for the child to get off the bus. Of course, I would not drive her down the long road to her home. I would never do that unless her mother had arrived to meet her, as she often did, carrying her baby brother, and then we may all have driven to her house.
   The  outreach agency I worked for then was in part federally funded, so we employees were always swamped with paperwork, as per the government. On this day, I was, as usual, in any downtime, filling out various forms as I waited. It was the early autumn  of eleven years ago, in October to be exact, because I remember the mother was awaiting news of the arrival of a baby, and that baby was Andrew Thompson. The name of the baby brother in that family was also Andrew.
   I sat in my car, pulled over to the side of the wide dirt road, engrossed in the forms I was filling out, and as usual oblivious to any vehicles that might have driven past me down the road. I was startled back to reality by a sharp rapping on the driver-side window of my car. I looked and the first, and only, thing I saw in my window was a gun in a holster worn, I soon learned, by a New York State Police Investigator. His unmarked car had pulled over to the opposite side of the road, and he was not in the usual uniform. He identified himself and asked what I was doing there. I told him, waiting for a child to get off the schoolbus. He asked what time the bus came, and I said about 3:55, which was several minutes away. He waited. A few minutes later, the mother appeared down the road carrying the baby, just as the schoolbus arrived and the child alit. I got out of my car to meet them. The mother, for reasons unsaid, was not intending to approach.
   Emotions were high for several reasons---law enforcement officers in that venue were to be avoided at all costs because who knew who they were looking for, and of course the news of a new baby.  When the officer saw the scenario, he turned his car and sped out onto the main road. I recall that as he abruptly entered the highway, another driver had to brake and leaned on his horn behind the unmarked trooper car.
     At some point, the trooper told me why he was asking me the questions. There had been a series of break-ins and burglaries along the homes in that area. He was looking into whether I might have been involved. Aside from the shock of staring into a gun next to my car window, it was in a way almost flattering to think I had been  considered part of a crime ring.  Abetting, I suppose the charge would have been.