The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  It was a huge headline in the paper—“LOCAL BUSINESSMAN DROWNS.” There was a big write-up in all the local newspapers with his picture and a brief history of his rags to riches life. There was also an investigation to determine if there had been any foul play. The cops questioned Seth and his girlfriend and believed their story so the investigation was closed. The cause of death was ruled accidental drowning. My mom arranged for a big Catholic funeral. Hundreds of people attended and everyone offered to help us anyway they could. To me they all sounded like a bunch of hypocrites. I thought the whole crying, sniveling lot would be here today and gone tomorrow. Some of them were like vultures sitting on a branch just waiting for the perfect chance to fly down and start picking the family to pieces. There was plenty to be gained if they used the right words with the right approach. My mother couldn’t run the trucking business and most knew it, especially the employees, so it was a scramble for them to see who my mother thought was best equipped to take over and run things.

  Life changed for me after that day. With the old man dead and gone, I finally felt relieved, like a huge stone had been removed from around my neck. I didn’t have to drown in a sea of adrenaline pumping fear running through my system every day. I felt like I felt the day I kicked that bully’s ass outside school. I didn’t have to worry about hearing his voice calling out my name and have to drop everything and go running to see what he wanted. I could sit at the dinner table and finally eat and enjoy my meals without all the nervous tension from just being around him. He sat at the head of the table with me to his immediate left. I could always feel the aggressive aura that surrounded his being. To be able to actually sit and relax was something I had never experienced while he was alive. Now it was exhilarating! I could make my own decisions, good or bad, they would be mine and mine alone. I wouldn’t have to worry about the consequences of being belittled and called stupid because I made a bad choice or couldn’t do something to his demanding perfection. I could look at myself in the mirror and see that I was my own person and not just a reflection of what he wanted me to be. Even weeks and months after his death, I didn’t feel much sadness or emotion of any kind. But I had this sort of guiltiness attached because of all the times I’d wished he was dead.

  Maybe I seemed cold and uncaring, but I had put up with psychological and physical abuse at his hand for almost sixteen years, or at least as long as I could remember. I was glad to be free from the fear and anxiety I suffered for all those years. I couldn’t shed a tear even though I tried. I was numb. I had virtually no empathy or emotion of sadness to deal with his death. In my mind he got what he deserved. I was never allowed to cry about anything when he was alive, so I couldn’t cry when I learned of his death. The emotion of sorrow and grief just wasn’t there anymore. All I could remember was when he threatened to wrap that 44-40 rifle around my neck when we were deer hunting, or when he threw me in the river to see if I could swim. By the time he’d drowned I was the tough guy he had wanted me to be.

  As the days and weeks pressed on, I got used to more and more freedom. A freedom I had never experienced before. I was able to be a bit assertive, but more than anything I had this sort of uncontrollable anger that lived in me like a caged animal just waiting to escape. The anger in me was tired of being all locked up and held back. Sometimes I envisioned a couple of caged lions ready to break out, hunt down and kill everything in their path. I noticed I had more and more animosity toward authority. I harbored such hatred and anger over being so controlled by the old man, teachers, cops and everyone for so long. I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  To most of the employees, I was the know-it-all kid they had to work with just because I was the owner’s son. Before long they didn’t want to work with me. Even Dusty started showing signs of blowing me off. I couldn’t control the angry thoughts I had or the way I viewed the world. My new freedom kept growing out of control. Like a dam that had a few cracks one day, then a hole, and then the whole damned thing just collapses. Like a drunk who wants one more drink, needing more and more to satisfy his never ending thirst. I guess you could say I was drunk on freedom.

  Chapter 13

  Dusty becomes the new straw boss. His actions showed us he was bound and determined to be the new owner of the trucking business; a premonition my grandmother and grandfather Barker saw coming.

  “What about me?” I thought. The old man always said I would be his partner once I got to be eighteen. Nobody was going to listen to a sixteen year old kid—it didn’t matter how much I knew about the business. I was out of the picture—I had no power—no say in the matter. Besides it was the old man’s business and maybe I didn’t want anything to do with something that reminded me of some of the things I had to do just to make him happy. The trucking company was his baby, not mine. Eventually Dusty bought the business from my mother. I’m sure she didn’t get the better end of the transaction. Dusty could sell ice to Eskimos. I don’t know what kind of a deal she and Dusty made or what the rest of the family thought of the situation. I only knew that things were going to get more and more out of control; somehow I could see the writing on the wall.

  At school that fall Jack got chummy with a guy by the name of Clem Jones. Clem came from a good home; he lived in a newer two story house just a few blocks away. He was a middle-class kid by all standards. His mother was an administrative assistant and his father was a machine operator for a huge manufacturing plant who liked to hunt and fish in his spare time. Clem was a hard guy to figure out at first. We didn’t know how he really operated. He turned on the charm and made others believe he was on their side, then seemed to plan events to see one fail while he sat back and laughed. My first impression of him was that of a guy who slithered around hiding like a snake, striking now and then, with the poisonous venom of a cobra. There was phoniness about him that I sensed.

  .

  Even with the big chip Clem carried on his shoulder, he got to be pretty good buddies with Jack and I because he spent most of his time over at our house. Maybe he saw us as gullible fools to his mischievous schemes or saw opportunities for ripping us off. Or possibly the whole family was a target of his devious mind. I didn’t know much about psychology back then, but something between us seemed to click. It was like we were both desperadoes determined to get some kind of justice for being brought into this hostile world. We loved many of the same things, one of them being taking risks. At the park near our house we challenged whole groups of boys to fight just the two of us. We were like a team that could not be beat. We loved much of the same food—hamburgers and cottage fries dripping in ketchup. My mother was always frying us up a snack. It was almost as if she had acquired another son.

  A few months after my old man had been buried; I built a bar to separate the kitchen from the living room. Dusty gave me some tips about carpentry and showed me how to apply the plastic laminate top. We bought four bar stools to set around the new Formica top. Clem, Jack and I sat around it smoking cigarettes and drinking beer while scheming ways to make some easy money. Ma washed dishes or cooked up burgers and cottage fries, laughing as she listened to our half-baked plans. If we were bored we dreamed something up to break the spell.

  I think she liked the idea of her new found freedom too. She allowed my girlfriend Lydia to sleep over and became chummy with all of our young friends. The new liberty brought a no holds barred sort of lifestyle to the lake house. Dusty filled in as the adult male who Jack, Clem and I listened to as if his word were gospel. Clem had an easy going father who often laughed about some of the trouble Clem and I got into, but Clem sort of gravitated to Dusty too, maybe like a big brother instead of a father figure. Dusty seemed to be a good guy, but like everyone else he had an aggressive nature, especially when he was drinking, then the darker side of his personality came out. During parties, he never failed to start in on the fact that he could beat anyone in the world at arm wrestling. He’d get right in one’s face and get mean at times. He always made it clear to Jack and me th
at his best friend, my old man, was one of the toughest and strongest men he had ever known. Boy, did we have a lot to live up to! I thought Dusty was a tough street fighting kind of a guy and never wanted to tangle with him. Jack, Clem and I all lined up ready to receive his instructions and give-it-a-shot to see if we could beat the champ at his own game.

  I never saw anyone beat Dusty. Big guys—little tough guys—weight lifters—Dusty was unbeatable. By the way Dusty talked I’ll bet the one person he couldn’t beat was my old man. He was the real deal as far as we were concerned. Dusty had a propensity to spend money and act like a big shot. Though that was a game he couldn’t win at either. There was something about him just below the surface that made one feel like a sucker in the palm of his hand. In time he tested us constantly to see if we were gullible fools. It was almost as if he was educating us on how to become good con-men. We never realized those traits in his character until we really got to know him, a few years later.

  Even with his flaws he was still part of our lives and we accepted his shortcomings just like we accepted everyone else’s character flaws. In the following months after my father’s death, Clem and I took over the neighborhood with a vengeance as we terrorized and vandalized. I don’t think I would have done some of the crazy things I had done if Clem hadn’t been around. He was the instigator of a lot of lawlessness at the house. He wasn’t a leader and I wasn’t just a gullible follower. It was the chemistry that brewed between the two of us that made such a dangerous concoction of lawlessness and disrespect for society. Maybe I was glad I had a partner in crime. We both blamed each other for some of trouble we got into and then always laughed about it.

  In the fall after all the leaves turned brown and had fallen off the trees, Clem got busted for breaking and entering and was sentenced to six months at a state reform school. We hated to see him go to that place. On some weekends we made the eighty-mile drive to visit him. During one visit, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was playing in the background from an eight track tape player one of the visitors had brought in. The music, combined with the situation, seemed to reveal a kind of hopelessness to the young men incarcerated. That facility didn’t look so troubling on the outside, but what government institutions didn’t? They were camouflaged to look clean and orderly—not revealing the chaos or despair within their walls. Clean straight lines made up the long horizontal brick structures. There were fences surrounding four or five acres with barbed and razor wire spun in hoops atop a chain link fence to prevent a homesick lad an easy exit over the top. A flag pole in the center of the compound displayed the American flag. Clem said he lived in what they called a cottage with mostly big city blacks.

  It must’ve been hard for Clem to look at that American flag flapping in the fall breeze, knowing that this symbol of freedom so many had fought and died for was also the symbol for rules and regulations. Rules made up by others. Now he was confined for breaking one of those societal rules. What harm had he really done? When we visited, we noticed a higher number of blacks than whites at the school, and we could sense a change in Clem’s speech and mannerisms. He started talking and acting like a black brother back in the hood. Clem vowed, he’d rebel against society for sending him away to that school as soon as he was released.

  Things back home didn’t seem the same without Clem around. I was in my junior year of high school and absolutely hated everything about it. I only liked machine shop and welding. By the time Christmas rolled around, I was skipping just about every one of my required classes, hanging out down at Dairy Queen or K-Mart. I sat in the same booth just like the year before and chain smoked with all the losers who didn’t have a clue about what to do with their lives.

  I was turned into social services for truancy and placed on probation. My probation officer hated my guts and made it known to me just how much he disliked me. A month or so after I was ordered to serve a year on probation, I had gotten ahold of the confidential report he had written about me from my mother. I was shocked to read what this state appointed advocate for the rehabilitation of troubled youth thought of me. He claimed I was a spoiled brat. He wrote, “Frank walks around with a chip on his shoulder—he expresses no respect for authority.” I couldn’t understand where he got his information. Basically all I did was skip school and the powers that be didn’t like it. I was sixteen and they figured I had no right to be able to do what I wanted to do. Since I was made out to be some sort of criminal, I stole a fancy little five speed bicycle just for the thrill parked outside a liquor store. A cop recognized me riding down the street and decided it was his duty to know what kind of a bicycle I should have. He checked the serial number and registration on the bike and found out it wasn’t mine. I’ll bet finding out I stole a kids bike made his day. Good thing it wasn’t a hanging offence or I’d have been strung up right then and there.

  Damned right I didn’t have any respect for authority. I had been thrown around and beaten down by brutes with authority my whole life. I always wondered when it would end. How big or how old did I have to be before all that sort of nonsense would finally end?

  My mother must not have told “Mister Wonderful”, my probation officer, I was abused both emotionally and physically by my father and in some instances her too. Maybe she was in her own little world of denial. Parents never liked to think they were abusing their children; they would say “It was all just discipline.” Perhaps I was out of control, but I’ll tell you what, it was certainly more than just discipline when you drag your son out of the house by the hair over a bicycle license plate, or threaten to wrap a rifle around his neck for tripping on some brush in the woods, or throw him overboard in a swift river current. Not to mention the whippings with a belt or the backside of a powerful hand against the side of my head for petty little instances like lost tools. I couldn’t remember every time he displayed meanness, but there were some life changing experiences that I would never forget.

  After my old man was found floating dead in the water I vowed nobody was ever going to treat me like a piece of shit again. I continued to skip my classes even though I had been warned. As far as I was concerned nobody, but nobody, would be the boss of me again. Then my probation officer ordered me to serve five days in the county jail for truancy and for stealing the bicycle. He was going to show me who was boss. He was going to show me I had to follow rules—his rules. I don’t know why everyone thinks the only way to solve social problems is to lock someone up. With all the so-called geniuses in the world, I would think someone would have come up with a better idea. The only thing those five days in jail did for me was to make me angrier at everyone. And once I got out, I hated everyone that walked on the planet. I wished I held the keys to the future of some of those assholes who always wanted to lock me up.

  All that gun training that had been forced down my throat seemed like a good way to get some pay back. I could take a rifle or a pistol and just start shooting. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I figured if people wanted to push my buttons—go right ahead, but be careful you don’t push the wrong button, because if you do, all hell is going to break loose. As much as a part of me felt like that, another more rational part of me didn’t want to do anything that destructive, because it never was my intention to hurt anyone and ending up in prison for twenty years made absolutely no sense at all. I’d heard too many horror stories about those places.

  My mother was flush with cash from the life insurance money. The lake house became one big party central for years to come. We smoked, drank and used any kind of language we wanted—there were no more bosses—no more rules. My mother became like one of us, as she partied and schemed at ways to rip-off and screw the system. We perpetrated all sorts of scams. We did anything to make a point or make an easy buck.

  The police drove by the property on a regular basis looking for any scrap of evidence a law was being broken. To add more drama to the mix, every once in a while a guy who owned the property next door would see me outside in the ya
rd and signal me with a hand jester that he wanted to talk. His name was Rubin Johnston. He wanted to buy our property so bad he could taste it. To me he was just another vulture swooping down out of nowhere. Three or four times over the course of two or three years he handed me a check through the chain linked fence that separated our two properties. “Give this earnest money check to your mother,” he’d say. I always looked at the check made out for a couple thousand dollars, crumpled it up in my hand and threw it back over the fence. He called me derogatory names as he walked away. I knew what kind of snake he was. He was a slum lord who owned blocks of shabby run-down apartments then charged enormous rents and security deposits to students and senior citizens. He was the type of guy who thought the world was his oyster and he could do whatever he wanted. We heard rumors he had ties to organized crime. Who knows how many down and out widows he cheated out of money or real estate? As long as I was alive, he wasn’t going to get his shit-hooks on our property.

  ****

  Clem finally got out of the juvenile correctional facility and in a few days he was right back in the middle of it all. If he would hoodwink his friends and never think twice about it; just imagine what he had in store for a society destined to lock him up. We soon realized he seemed to like the criminal lifestyle. He was without regard for anyone but himself. I don’t know what Jack saw in him or why he dragged that guy home, but now, after all of his hanging around, we took a liking to him; he was like one of the family and soon became my best friend. Clem went out at night and broke into sports shops to steal guns or anything else of value; then he brought everything back to our house looking for help in hiding or getting rid of the booty. I remember one night we threw a car trunk full of stolen rifles and shotguns into the lake not far from our house just to be rid of them. We surely didn’t want to get caught with any stolen guns at the house. Police department scuba divers searched the surrounding waters of our house hoping to find those guns.