The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  An hour or so later, with one of my eyeballs stealthily peering through a cracked bedroom door, I saw two serious looking cops standing on the porch talking to my father. My father stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips. His powerfully built silhouette swallowed up all but a few streams of afternoon light peeking through the door opening. My heart was already racing, but I could feel it picking up speed. I knew I was in trouble just by the way he called me out of hiding, and he started asking me questions in an angry and raised voice as I approached him.

  He bent down and got right in my face. We were nose to nose and he was demanding I tell the truth before I even had a chance to speak. I could feel his breath and smell the foulness of tobacco from the cigarette he had just smoked, “Don’t you dare lie to me!” he barked. The police standing on the porch said nothing. The three big guys had me in their sight making me the center of attention as I stood there contemplating my fate. There was no escape I was like a trapped animal surrounded by the mighty hunters who were ready to pounce on their prey. My father said to the police, “I’ll get to the truth real fast.” One of the officers pulled a small black book out of his pocket, asking me my name, “What’s your full name, son?” “Frank Henry Barker,” I replied. He wrote my name in his book and slipped it in his shirt pocket, said they would have to do some investigating, and let my father figure out what to do with me.

  After the police had left, I was at Father’s mercy and had to spill my guts about the fire as quick as a snap of the fingers or else I would have to endure the consequences of his belt again. I can’t describe the amount of fear I felt as I envisioned the blow from his powerful swat that I knew would send me flying across the room into a dizzying panic. It was something I had experienced from previous question and answer sessions.

  After he heard my side of the story he immediately ordered me to sit in a corner of the kitchen, pointing to where I was to serve out my sentence. “And don’t hang out with that kid again.” Then he added, “Quit being so damned stupid!” I was relieved after his interrogation because at least I was spared the belt or a slap up along the side of my head. His reprimands were always a mystery and could change from second to second and range from getting yelled at to getting the belt or a swat upside the head. Many times I sat in a corner for all kinds of illusionary screw-ups sometimes for hours, never knowing when I could go and do something else. He seemed to make up the rules as he went along. I never had a real sense of what an actual screw-up was. When the master said I was wrong, I was wrong and it was understood that my mother dare not let me off the hook.

  While I was sitting in the corner that day, I turned my head to see one of our cats had cornered a mouse. The big old tomcat was batting the little mouse around, just playing with it like a toy. I watched for some time as the mouse attempted to get away. There was no escape. It was doomed and in the end, the cat clamped his jaws around the throat of the little creature and squeezed every bit of life right out of it.

  I kept wondering what the little mouse was thinking about while our cat, which was ten times bigger, pawed and batted it around. I imagined sheer terror was on the mind of the mouse because it reminded me of some of the situations I had been in with my father.

  I figured out early, that life wasn’t always fair and it wasn’t always pretty. Big things thumped on little things and sometimes the little things were killed and gobbled up by the hungry brutes that preyed upon them. I noticed all kinds of unfair happenings going on around me during the day. I always wondered how I could survive with so much uncertainty and violence. Fantasy became my means of escape. I watched TV every chance I could and imagined myself as a powerful movie star that always came out on top.

  Strange and vivid dreams visited me most nights. Some nights I woke up screaming scared shitless. There were monsters and gorillas waiting just outside my bedroom ready to tear me apart. Sometimes in my dreams, I met entities that told me they would always be with me. They took the form of ancient Roman soldiers with faces like weathered stone in full battle gear, complete with swords, spears and body armor. At the time I didn’t understand what those soldiers could, or would do for me. They were just with me, as real in my mind and dreams as a full color page out of some magazine. Perhaps they were a memory of a past life that had once been and only remembered, but soon to be long forgotten. I wished many a time those soldiers could have rescued me when I was getting an ass whipping, but they never did.

  Our house on Harrison Street was an old grey shack that stood across the street from a pair of busy railroad tracks, at the north end of town, between two streets on a wedge-shaped block. It was a spooky feeling house attached to an eerie, spider and mouse infested crawlspace built of rough grey stone and held together with a crumbling lime cement mortar. Our two cats did a good job at keeping the mice from taking over. There were no trees on the property. If a train went by, the windows shook, and it felt like the whole vibrating mass of wood, nails and glass would come crashing down on top of our heads which created an anxiety with every passing train.

  On most winter mornings, the inside of the house had the aroma and sounds of burning wood, crackling in a cook stove fire. When Mom removed one of the cast iron hot plates, smoke filled the room as she toasted bread over the open flames. The place was like a wind tunnel during the winter, so while mom made up the toast, my younger brother Jack, my older sister Joanna, and me, stood around the antique wood stove, all bundled up, huddling together trying to stay warm. Some mornings near the end of the month, all we had to eat for breakfast was that flame blackened buttered bread. I remember at times we were a very cold and hungry family. Army blankets hung in the interior doorways to keep the heat from escaping the kitchen.

  The summers were just the opposite, extremely hot and humid. Broken door and window screens allowed unwelcomed mosquitos and flies.

  The thing I remember most about that house was the railroad tracks across the street and the hobos that hopped off the train. They looked like an interesting lot. Most had ragged clothes and carried a satchel over their shoulders made of what looked like an old pillowcase. We were told to never let one of those bums get too close or they may snatch us up and perpetrate all kinds of nasty deeds on us. After hearing adults talking about those hobos, most of us kids in the neighborhood believed they were criminals who had escaped from prison or loony bins.

  I wondered how they survived crossing the country on trains. I noticed after they jumped off the train they crossed the street and walked up and down our block, going door to door. Why were they were bothering everyone? One day I saw a hobo jump off the train, wearing what looked like a tuxedo with tails. His get-up made him look just like the character that played Tennessee Tuxedo in the cartoons. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself and wonder what that old bum was all about and why he was wearing such a silly looking coat.

  A few days after I first saw that bum wearing the tuxedo, he came knocking on our door. I came to the door and looked at him through the screen door with an ear to ear grin and asked him what he wanted. He wanted to talk to my mother. When my mom came to the door, the bum took off his dirty old brown fedora, brushed his tuxedo coat and said, “Hello, Ma’am, could I trouble you for a sandwich?” My mother answered, “Oh, well I suppose.” She made him a baloney sandwich and poured him a glass of cold water. Jack and I sat on a step and watched the old bum as he took a spot on the rickety back porch to gobble up his sandwich. He asked me my name, and when I told him “Frank” he said, “Well, Frankie boy, you know I couldn’t survive if it weren’t for good folks like your mother.” He said he was grateful to be alive and just as grateful to be a free man.

  I noticed he was missing a few teeth and asked him how he could eat. He looked at me a bit puzzled like he didn’t how to respond to the question and answered, “I just do the best I can do.” and continued to chew. When he swallowed his mouth-full of food—looking into the distance—he declared, “Life is about what you have, not what you don’t have.�
�� Then he turned and winked at me and Jack as if we should take to heart what he had said. He added, “You have a very kind mother and a roof over your head—be thankful for that.” He told us a story of how he was raised in an orphanage and beaten day after day until he ran away when he was about my age. He said he never knew his real mother and father. By the age of thirteen he had ridden the rails across the entire U.S. of A. He said a life of danger and adventure was the only way to go, at least for him.

  After talking to the silly looking stranger, I wanted to live the life of a railroad traveler; or maybe I just wanted to be a bum. I could hop on a train and explore the country, live free and never have to worry about getting yelled at, or slapped; just depend on my own talents, the good graces of the Lord, and those like my mother, who were willing to share what little they did have. I wanted to run away from home, but there were too many unknowns. I was willing to take my father’s abuse because at that time I didn’t have the courage to run away.

  Father was a piano tuner at the time and almost blind. He had a small workshop in an unused bedroom on the second floor of our house. He tinkered with all kinds of different things, but mostly he repaired piano parts up there. He had a demolition stock car for a hobby. Two blocks to the west of the house was an oval track where he competed for a few bucks every Tuesday night in the demolition derby. Mostly he won the case of beer for being the first one to get rolled over. He could never see when another car was barreling in for the kill. It was my job to be his go-fer and help with weekly stock car repairs. Because I could see better than him, I hooked up disconnected wires and found dropped nuts and bolts, or tools. There never seemed to be enough money coming in due to his occupation and the stock car never produced any revenues.

  To make ends meet, they relied on government assistance. Once a month, Mom, and all us kids would pile into her old heap of a car and go down to a parking lot on the other side of town where a big army-green school bus would set-up shop for a day or two. At the bus, we stood in line with the rest of the poor folk waiting for a handout. When our turn came someone in the bus passed a boxful of food with peanut butter, beans, peas, and a big block of government cheese out the window.

  Chapter 3

  Load’em up! Seven months after my friend and I accidentally burned the garage down, the piano tuner moved us to another house on the opposite end of town, in a lower income neighborhood, just two blocks from the river. This time, instead of renting, my father had managed to purchase a semi-dilapidated three bedroom house. The property had a two-stall unattached garage that looked like it had been built for horses because there was a hay mow with pieces of straw scattered about the upper floor boards. A two foot by three foot door in the rear gable opened near the peak of the roof. The property had three tall cedar trees and an apple tree half-full of worm infested apples in the backyard. The yard was big enough to play any kind of outdoor game. I thought it was great because the new house was in better condition than the old one and it sat right across the street from a small corner store.

  I could run across the street to buy candy whenever I had some change in my pocket. The store was an old fashioned mom and pop type place; like the kind you see in the movies on TV dating back to the days of the depression. High metal ceilings—shelves piled up to the top with canned goods which might have been there for years. The hardwood floors were worn and faded with a dirty golden patina. They always squeaked when anyone walked across them and there was a strange musty odor that one noticed once inside. The owner seemed nice enough; she was an older lady, small, and thin, with white hair, who offered credit to those in the neighborhood who couldn’t pay on the spot. She lived upstairs, so if the store was closed and someone needed something bad enough, she could saunter on downstairs and open up. The store was also a place where the neighbors gathered to gossip.

  The area was another shitty neighborhood. When we first moved there I frequently noticed people sitting on the falling apart porches of little neighboring shacks and drinking beer in the middle of the day. On the day we moved in, a few kids gathered round outside the store and watched every move we made. And the owner of the store looked out the huge front window as we dragged trailer loads of cheap worn out furniture into our new castle.

  Once we got settled in, I usually hung out by myself in the workshop my father set-up in the garage. I was the oldest boy, so it was my job to make sure all his tools were where they belonged and the shop swept up. He always called me his right hand and expected me to do everything. I inventoried his tools every day and then used my free time to build or fix things. In the summer, on sunny days when I wasn’t tinkering in the garage, I made a seven block walk to the park.

  It was a day I’ll never forget not too long after we had moved in. I was walking to the park, pretending to be superstitious by avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk. Like the old rhyme “Step on a crack and break your mamma’s back,” when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to observe a German Shepard running loose a couple blocks away. The dog looked big and threatening from a distance and it seemed to have me in its sights. Adults were always talking about the possibility of foaming-at-the-mouth rabid dogs running wild so I was scared when I thought about the threat of getting bit. He was getting closer now only a block away, but running at me full bore. I could see his ears standing straight up and there was a determined look in his eye. He didn’t slow down and even seemed to be picking up speed—like I was the breakfast he’d missed earlier. I glanced around and noticed there was nobody else near.

  A sudden feeling in my gut sent an alarm throughout my body to get ready for some action. The kind of feeling one gets when insulted; or the kind of feeling I got when my old man entered the room. I liked dogs, but knew it was going to be curtains for me if I didn’t think fast and do something to save my young behind. For a split second my mind flickered back to the gun Ma always carried in the glove compartment of her car. I looked around for a stick or a rock. There was nothing. So I stood still and waited. I hoped the dog would run in another direction or find something else to start sniffing at in some nearby bushes. I was scared—fearing the worst—when suddenly something came over me; I saw those Roman soldiers in my mind, then had the most amazing feeling of confidence. I don’t know how or why I got that feeling, but it was reassuring. Almost as if those soldiers were there at my side to help me and I wasn’t afraid anymore.

  I knew what I had to do and how to do it in that very moment. When the big dog got within range, I could see his growling teeth coming to take a bite out of me. With one swift kick, I connected a solid blow to his watering chops with my right foot and sent him running off whelping like he’d been pistol-whipped. I was astonished but grateful my plan actually worked. From that day on, I was never afraid of stray dogs. All I had to do was bring out that same state of mind if I was attacked by a neighborhood bully. The event left me feeling a bit more confident of my abilities to fend for myself, but I still walked around with insecurities, knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep my old man off my back.

  By our third year in the house, I was twelve years old and had five brothers: Jack, Tony, Joe, Leland, and Jake, and two sisters, Joanna, and Jenifer and my life seemed to be spiraling downhill. My father had tied a rope from the hay loft in the garage to an apple tree near the back of the yard. Then he fashioned a pulley with handles so we could ride the rope from the hay loft to the apple tree. The makeshift zip-line was like the kind you see military commandos or spies on TV use to escape the enemy or cross rivers. All the neighbor kids came over to see if they had the courage to make the ride down. My father made sure all of his kids weren’t afraid to do it. There was no room in his house for sissies.

  One day my seven year old brother Leland came running into the house crying. When my father questioned him he said, “The neighbor kid hit me.” My father couldn’t go over and belt the kid who’d assaulted his son, so he assigned me the job of protecting the younger ones from any bullies that
roamed the neighborhood. He must have been watching too many Underdog cartoons. I thought to myself, where is my cape and where is my transformation telephone booth? On the other hand, when I came home and said a couple of bigger kids threatened to beat me up, my old man’s response was, “Don’t you dare run from a fight. If I ever catch you running from a fight I’ll take it out on your cowardly ass myself.” Gee. I wondered who was going to be my Underdog. He let me know right then and there I had to fend for myself. He wouldn’t protect me.

  I wished he would have at least taught me some sneaky tricks about how to defend myself against an angry fighter who was more experienced or bigger than me. At the time, the only experience I had had fighting off someone bigger, was him when he decided to thump on me. I was no match for a man of his size and was helpless when he decided to slap me or my brothers alongside the head. Today I find it absolutely amazing how I actually got used to taking a whipping when the natural survival defense mechanism built into every living thing says, “If in danger, fight or run!”

  At the age of twelve, I never thought I was being abused or that I was any different than any other kid. To me it seemed normal to screw up—get yelled at—be called stupid—then get slapped upside the head—kicked in the rear—or be told to sit in a corner just because I said or did something my father didn’t like. I thought every kid had a jerk for a father. I don’t remember every time I got physically punished, but I know it seemed like I was yelled at or put down more than most of my friends. As far back as I can remember, my father was always saying to me and my brothers, “Use your God damned head for something besides a hat rack!” I don’t recall him ever telling me, or any of my brothers and sisters, we did a good job at anything or what good children we were.