The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  Surprised at the lack of respect for his authority, the assaulted cop called in reinforcements. In a matter of minutes there were city, county cops and even the state patrol parked along the highway ready for a full scale riot. The city police started rounding up a few observable leaders and trouble makers. Michelle was the first one to be cuffed and stuffed in a squad car. Once the trouble makers were weeded out and placed under arrest, the cops made them sit handcuffed in squad cars. When no one was looking, I snuck around and let Michelle and another one of the arrested ringleaders out of the cop car. Later, after the situation settled down and all the cops had left the area, I cut the handcuffs off Leland’s sweetheart and the other dude with a hack saw. When I see or hear from either one of them they still talk about the party when I opened the cop car and saved them a trip to the county jail.

  That summer and in the years to come, the lake house would see many rowdy parties. The address would become well known. Because of the notoriety of the Barker’s reputation as law breakers, every once in a while the cops got a search warrant and came looking for stolen merchandise or criminals on the run who they believed were hiding out at the house. It seemed like every day there was heart pounding, adrenaline pumping excitement. My mother reveled in all the drama.

  To add to the excitement that summer, a train derailed right in back of our house. Overturned boxcars littered the tracks for blocks. Rumors were spread that the cops thought we might have had something to do with it, but nobody ever asked us any questions. We were flattered to know people actually thought we could have done something that newsworthy. The fact is, we didn’t have a clue about how to derail a train, nor did we want to. The only thing we did to show contempt for society as far as trains went, was when Clem used to steal train torpedoes from cabooses. The explosives were the size of a fig Newton cookie with a lead strap attached for securing them on railroad tracks. When a train ran over the torpedo, the explosion could be heard by the engineer. They were used for signaling various track or weather conditions.

  The neighbors just liked to accuse us of the strange goings-on in the neighborhood. They had to have something to gossip about and we were always at the root of their gossip.

  ****

  There were five sometimes six of us guys from the neighborhood who hung out together on a regular basis; we were known as, “The Crew.” A car full, of us trouble makers, out on the town drinking was fun, but sometimes we wanted to have women around. We wanted to boost our egos and walk into places with swanky chicks hanging on our arm. We were looking for women dressed to the tee strutting around like prick teasers. Sometimes when we went out on the town, we made it a contest to see who could get the hottest looking chick. We never knew what we needed to score. If it was looks, the kind of car a guy had, or if it was the job that got the girl. That stuff was a mystery to most young men.

  There was definitely a lot of trial and error, and nobody really knew the magic formula for success. It was worth studying; I had a theory and expressed my theoretical ideas to The Crew. I thought women wanted excitement and uncertainty in a guy, just like men wanted loyalty and attitude in a chick. To be the kind of a guy chicks went for; meant telling all sorts of truths and half-truths. If you didn’t have something interesting going on it meant you’d have to come up with some tall tales. The more bullshit spewed out of the operator’s mouth, the better the results would be. I figured if I could fool my old man with fiction when my punishment hung in the balance between an ass-whipping or just a harsh reprimand, it would be a piece of cake to fabricate stories to score women in a bar.

  They didn't believe me and worried about what would happen if they got caught in the lies. I told them either you got a red face or an invitation. I said it wouldn't matter because by the time you got finished with the pile of crap you had dreamed up, the women would be so deep in shit, they wouldn't be able get out. They would be squirming in their stools looking into your eyes holding on to every word—their lips would be moist with anticipation—they’d be engrossed in erotica. I thought I had the gang half believing me.

  “Bullshit!” they said. So one night we all went out, and I tried the experiment. They sat at the bar and snickered; swilling beer as I operated on a few hot targets. To the surprise of even myself, I was amazed at how easy it was to hook’em from an entire line of bull. They went for it all. Now I know why actors love their jobs. I wish I could have gotten a government grant to study such nonsense.

  I learned from the many instances when I sat next to a woman and started in on the ice breaking small-talk they didn’t want to hear about boring factory jobs or how well you did bowling the other night. Women wanted to know about exotic places you had been to; especially if you said you had lived in Japan or some other foreign country. They wanted to hear stories about what you were going to do to conquer the world. They wanted to know if you had a plan of action for life because they wanted some excitement. Life was just too boring for some chicks which made them easy targets for smooth operators.

  If they jumped in your car to go for a ride and you had a tape or CD of Johnny Cash singing “A Boy Named Sue” when everyone else was listening to hard rock, it scored points because the atmosphere created by that music clearly showed you were different. Another tactic would be to have some classic car like an old two-door Cadillac. In other words, you had to have a unique free spirited style or at least appear that way. If you could spark some interest they were hooked.

  I kept experimenting and met a couple of chicks in a bar, then started telling them all sorts of stories, not even trying to pick them up. I was trying to be more entertaining than anything else. When I asked them if they wanted to go for a ride, they declined because there were two of them and only me. Obviously one of the girls would’ve felt like a third wheel. There was a guy sitting at the bar right next to me listening in. He wanted to get in on the action too, so once I invited him along for the ride, the girls were in. We hopped in my car and went to another bar across town and the girl who I had my eye on started to talk about her ex-boyfriend. Who in their right mind wants to hear about old boyfriends? I said I was going to get another beer and just kept right on walking out the door. With my new story telling game—women in a bar seemed like easy pickings. I sure wasn’t going to waste my time and money listening to stories about exes. It might sound like I’m a jerk, but I can’t count the number of times I got shot down in bars or parties because I said the wrong thing. Through more experimentation I learned sometimes the best thing was to not try so hard and just have a good time—the fun will follow and so will the chicks.

  Clem seemed to have many problems with women. He was running with married woman and at the same time had a cute little girlfriend who claimed to love him, but Clem treated her like shit, as he did most people. She ended up in kind of a poor-me funk. Women seemed to gravitate to him for reasons I didn’t understand. Maybe it was because he treated them with an uncaring aloofness. Nobody knows the real story, but his girlfriend supposedly jumped off the bridge after they had an argument. It was late fall when she jumped into the swift, icy river, committing suicide. Some say that he actually threw her in the river, but that scenario was never proven or investigated. Most figured she had been doing too much thinking and drinking. After a while she was missed, but not forgotten, and we all just moved on to the next thing. And Clem moved on to the next girl. The bar scene was a bottomless pit of lost and desperate people searching for someone to fill a missing void in their lives, something lacking; be it love, companionship, or just someone with an understanding ear. That scene made it easy to zero in on the gullible and lonely.

  Some nights we went out joy riding and drinking, not worrying about picking up girls. One of our buddies named Robby Moranski, who we nicknamed “Ski.”, had just bought a new car. We all packed in and went cruising around drinking beer. We decided to go to a more upbeat town a few miles away to party. On the way, Ski thought up a new game to play while we were traveling from bar to bar.
He picked up speed then tried to see how close he could come to a parked car without crashing into the rear end.

  He managed to come within inches a couple of times gaining more confidence in his abilities to get even closer. I sat in the front seat riding shotgun; Clem, Jack, and Little-T were in the back. I could see we weren’t going to miss the next car. I braced myself for the impact, hanging on to the seat and shifting to the side, when “BAM!” We hit the car. My hip went flying into the dashboard and my neck snapped as it hit the windshield.

  Sure enough we barreled into the rear end of a brand new car. The cops came and hauled Ski off to jail for drunk driving. His car was reduced to nothing but a scrap heap. The front end looked like a steel accordion. Later I had neck pain and a big permanent scar on my hip from the impact. In the end we all sued Ski’s insurance company. The money was a Godsend because I needed it badly to pay rent and tuition for a couple of classes I was taking at the university. Ski lost his license for a year, but we remained friends and talked and laughed about that night for months to come.

  Ski was more of a straight laced type of guy. He was good looking, but quiet and shy around girls, which was odd because he had four or five real fine-looking sisters. We all wondered why one of his sisters didn’t hook him up. He worked for the post office and planned to work there until he retired. Clem liked Ski because he was easily influenced and easily talked into hair-brained schemes. One hot summer afternoon Clem and Ski went out in Robby’s new boat. They were drinking beer and messing around jumping overboard just like we did with our boat. But this time Ski ended up dead. The cause was ruled accidental drowning. It seemed like another coincidence with Clem right in the middle of things. Every time Clem was around, someone either got beat up, busted by the law, ended up in a fight, or dead. I realized I needed to distance myself away from all Clem’s nonsense and develop a new lifestyle.

  Chapter 23

  For some reason I started hanging out in the college library instead of the bars. Actually I was trying to meet up with fancy Nancy. She was a college girl I’d met shooting pool one night at one of the popular student bars. Her ambition was to be a psychologist. Her red hair and striking physical features made her easy to look at. She was as quirky as she was good looking. I usually bumped into her skipping like a school girl past the student union hurrying to her next class, carrying an armful of books, wearing old Army fatigues and Red Ball Jet high top tennis shoes. She had an aura about her that made her look good wearing anything. I ran into her from time to time on campus. If we met up, we went to lunch at the student union or arranged to meet at one of our favorite bars to shoot pool. Clem and I hung around all the college bars and knew many university students. We were invited to dorm room parties and many times even spent the night in the college dormitories. We’d wake up all hung over and have to scurry out before security found out we didn’t belong there.

  At the campus library, I read all sorts of books. I got interested in the martial arts, Chinese Medicine and Buddhism. I studied structural engineering and the Physicians’ Desk Reference, reading about the uses and actions of drugs and herbs—everything seemed to interest me. Even if I had trouble understanding some of the terminology, I managed to get an understanding of the subject matter. I had to feed the new found hunger I had for learning. I found I learned best when it was on my own terms. I actually liked hanging out in libraries. Learning things got to be like an addiction. If I didn’t visit the library or a bookstore a couple times a week it felt like I was missing something. My family was a bit confused at my new found interest in educating myself in so many different disciplines.

  ****

  Surprising things happened when I walked down the street going here, or there, or when I used public transportation. I was always aware of everything, but never expected the focus of invasions from foolish people. Sometimes I felt like a magnet that attracted all sorts of idiots, derelicts, and scum bags. The reason for that attraction is consciously unknown to me. Maybe there is some kind of negative energy in my nature that attracted more negative people. The next couple of short stories will shed some light on some of my urban experiences.

  I think I was about twenty-five when this little incident happened. I was on a city bus heading to the library. At a bus stop a group of four or five senior high school kids got on board and headed to the back of the bus. They took a long empty seat that faced me. I could sense one of the guys was a smart-ass as soon I took one glance at his stupid looking face. He had kind of an attention seeking smirk on his face. A face I’d seen so many times when I was a high school student. It turned out I was right. Not long after he sat down he started whistling and at the same time making eye contact.

  At first I ignored the creep. Just another young punk I thought. When he kept whistling it started bothering my ears, I told him to stop with the loud high pitched irritating whistling. He just giggled at his buddies and kept up with the irritating noises—looking directly at me. This time I said, “Knock it the fuck off”, but he kept it up. I wasn’t going to take shit like that from some high school punk. I jumped up and confronted the kid. He looked up at me with an ear to ear shit eating grin. I smacked him one in the mouth and told him to “Shut the fuck up!” The bus driver noticed the commotion and stopped the bus. The kid wasn’t really hurt; he was more or less just surprised he got smacked. I jumped off the bus at the next stop. That was the end of that, or so I thought. I forgot about the whole thing.

  About two years later I was walking down the street after dark when a car came screeching over to the curb. That kid from the bus jumped out, a few inches taller, with four of his big football playing buddies. They surrounded me in a tight circle and the kid said, “Hey, asshole, do you remember me?” I said, “Oh yea, you’re the dip shit that doesn’t know when to shut his mouth.” He said he and his buddies were going to kick my ass. I looked at him, looked at his hulking buddies and said, “I think you girls had better go get some more help—otherwise I’m going to kick the shit out of all you punks, right here and now!” The kid said, “What?” I said, “I fight in tournaments down in Chicago just about every weekend and I know I can take all you sorry ass mother fuckers on at once.” There wasn’t even a flicker in my voice when I announced the ass whipping they would get if they messed with me. I kept up with the threatening dialog, “You punks don’t know the first thing about street fighting—you’ll only get hurt, and I will land in jail unless they rule it self-defense, which they might because there are five of you and only one of me.” “But,” I said, “If you really want to fight and want to know who the better man is; how about meeting me down at the boys club on Thursday night? We can put on the gloves and have a go of it. What do you say?”

  “Fuck you,” the kid said, and he turned around and jumped in the backseat of the car. His buddies followed along asking him if he was sure. I couldn’t believe it! There I was surrounded by a bunch of dudes ready to punch me out and I had won the fight without ever raising a fist. It was my power of persuasion and instilling fear into the group of young punks that they would get hurt for sure if they messed with me. To me it was a victory because I could actually use some psychology to my advantage on a bunch of aggressive punks.

  I learned stuff like that from reading piles and piles of books about how the mind works. Psychology was my favorite subject to read about and then practice. I took a MENSA test and found out I had an exceptional IQ, far above normal. I was four points shy of a genius score. The test revealed pattern analysis was my strong point. I always knew I was not stupid like my old man and the military claimed. I was never encouraged to take learning seriously. To actually be an expert at something it takes intent, plus time and an enormous amount of effort. My old man expected me to know things in an instant and the military, well; they were just full of their own grandiose training ideals and didn’t care about individualism. In the military, either you got it the first time or you were shit-canned. The military’s favorite expression was that sh
it rolls downhill. That statement was used as a remedy for just about any fuck-up.

  Another unique experience I had happen to me occurred five or six years after I was out of the Marine Corps. On a cold winter day, I was walking down the street window shopping. My mission was to find a Christmas present for my mother.

  I came upon an interesting jewelry store so I thought I would go inside, get warm and take a look around to see if they had something my mother might like. I was wearing an old military field jacket with a beanie like stocking cap on my head. It was cold outside so I had my hands in my pockets. I might have looked like I was up to no good, but I never had any bad intentions in my mind.

  As I walked through the door I saw a middle aged man and an older, but extremely attractive looking woman standing behind the counters of long glassed jewelry cases. I set my course toward the woman. The man was watching me very closely with his hands behind his back. When the door closed behind me, and I approached the counter, the man pulled out a 380 automatic pistol from behind his back. I knew what kind of pistol it was because it looked like the same kind of gun I used to shoot in the basement of our old house.

  From about ten feet away he pointed the pistol at my head and demanded I take my hands out of my pockets. In shock this was even happening to me in such a low crime town, I complied and pulled my hands from my pockets. When the man saw I had nothing in my hands, he relaxed and lowered the gun. He apologized to me for being so paranoid. He said he thought I was going to rob him just by the way I looked. I didn't think I looked like a criminal about to rob someone, but I guess I had spent enough time in jail and Marine Corps corrections to be generally pissed off at the world—maybe it showed in my body language and facial expression. I usually didn’t go around smiling with a shit eating grin on my face. There always seemed to be this aura about me that made some people leery of me. I got into a few altercations just maintaining eye contact with drunks and rednecks looking for a fight in a bar. Maybe it was the dark side of my personality coming out. I was usually in a happy-go-lucky mood until I sensed danger or that someone had an intention to hurt me. Then the dark, more evil side of my personality came out to take control of the situation. That darker side had the ability to do whatever was necessary to save me from pain or humiliation and embarrassment. Psychologists would call that the ego. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything at that jewelry store. The experience also opened my eyes to something else. I could dress and act in a manner that would give people a subliminal message I was nobody to fuck with. It was just what I needed to know. The experience was a very interesting lesson in psychology.