The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  ****

  Back from Texas, I ended up at my mother’s house again. She had rented a place on the northwest side of town where she and my youngest brother, Jake, lived. They didn’t mind if I shacked up with them for a few weeks until I headed back down to Texas.

  One night I went out on the town and got back to my mother’s house close to midnight. Jake and one of his friends from the old neighborhood were drinking up a storm and listening to music. I accepted the beer Jake offered and started talking with the two of them. It wasn’t long before his friend and I were going at it, first arguing, and then actually fighting. Jake jumped in, but I was able to get the better of them both. My brother was bigger than I was, but I still managed to take control of the fight using some of my old Marine Corps hand to hand combat moves on them.

  It was all over as fast as it started and we just went back to laughing and drinking again. I finished my beer and went to bed thinking everything was cool. I slept out in a makeshift bedroom on the screened-in-porch. About three o’clock in the morning my intuition was telling me to wake up. When I opened my eyes, I saw a board about three feet long with nails protruding from the end, coming down fast with my head as the target. I blocked the two by four with my forearm at the same time jumping out of bed. My brother’s friend was wielding the weapon and threatening me. I snatched the board out of the assailant’s hand and at the top of my lungs screamed, “You have three seconds to get the fuck out of here or I’m going shove this board up your ass nails first!” The guy looked like he had just seen a ghost, then he turned and ran out the door. I was bleeding from my defensive hand and arm wounds—pumped up with adrenaline. A few minutes later, after I calmed down, I called the cops.

  The cops came and I showed them the blood on my hands and arms, and told them I had been assaulted while I was in bed sleeping. I told the cops who the guy was that attacked me. The cops treated the assault like it was no big deal because they knew me and the whole Barker family. They were probably the assholes that laughed when our house was burning down.

  They had a cocky attitude, like I had no right to call looking for help. They made the call only because they had to and by the time I was finished telling them what happened they were ready to arrest me just because I said I would get the sucker myself if they weren’t going to arrest him. The cops never did arrest the guy even though I formally pressed charges of assault.

  ****

  A few days later I was sitting in a crowded disco bar minding my own business sipping on a beer. A couple of off duty cops saw me then rolled up next to me at the bar and started making insinuations. Talking shit between them about what a bad mother fucker that Frank Barker thought he was. They made sure I overheard their cocky remarks. I told-um to “Get fucked!” They challenged me to a fight outside the bar to settle things once and for all. They were going to show me who was boss. I was like, “Yea” I’ll show those assholes who the bad mother fucker is. We walked across the street to hash things out once-and-for-all when, out of nowhere, a uniformed patrol cop showed up and told me to get lost or he would arrest me. I couldn’t imagine why it took three cops to prove a point. There was always someone out looking to start some shit with me; now, even off duty cops wanted to show me how brave they were. But they still had the upper hand with guns, badges and their legal beagle, better-than-me bullshit.

  I knew I had to get out of that negative energy breeding town and never come back or something bad was going to happen. I would end up in trouble again for sure.

  Before I had a chance to pack up and leave town Jake and I went to another popular college disco dance bar. We were just minding our own business. Jake was drinking with some girls he knew then came over by me and said there were three guys giving him the evil eye. The three punks were teamed up with another low-life who was looking to see if he could teach me and my brother a lesson. The low-life found out that a little chick he had a hard-on for, had her eyes on me instead of him. The guy was about three fourths my height and claimed to hold a black belt in karate. He said he was going to show me a few things. I knew by the way he acted, he’d never set foot in an oriental dojo or much less even knew how to spell the word karate. Besides he was just a little shit and had no business even trying to mess with me. Jack and I had taken Tae Kwon Do lessons and we had reached red belt status, so I could tell when someone knew martial arts—and he didn’t.

  Jake was a big dude out-weighing me by twenty or thirty pounds so it took all three punks to even worry him, and three more came at me. I broke one punk’s nose with an elbow strike and blood went everywhere. The other two got scared and thought I broke a beer bottle over his face because there was so much blood so they got scared and took off. Two more jumped in thinking my brother and I were the bad guys. The meanness and rage came out of me along with the ease and confidence to handle the situation. I helped Jake get the three pansies off him. The immediate future didn’t look good because now the whole bar wanted to tear us apart so I told him to run for his life. I went outside to deal with the fake black belt karate boy. I took off my cowboy boots and landed a side kick to his stomach. He didn’t run and wanted to keep fighting so I took a brawling swing at his face and managed to get my thumb caught in his mouth. I gave him one chance to release my thumb. When he didn’t I jammed my index and middle finger into both his eyes. A fight was a fight. I always fought to win.

  The shock and reflex of the targeted blow to his eyes opened his mouth immediately. My thumb was loose so I hammered the punk into the street making sure he knew who he was fucking with. I stood over him with my foot holding his head on the concrete while he lay in the street bleeding from his nose. I commanded, “Never ever again threaten me or anyone in my family with bodily harm!” He was whipped and humiliated that night. He swore he was going to get even, but never kept his promise. A year or so later I learned he had hung himself. I guess he didn’t think much of himself. Anyway that’s the way it was for me. Punks, cops, just plain assholes all came out of the woodwork looking to test their mettle on me. I didn’t like the reputation I had. I didn’t care to be thought of in so many negative ways, but it seemed to be that way no matter how I tried to change.

  People who didn’t know me sometimes thought I was soft because I never came on to them like an egomaniac, but when they started pushing my buttons they found themselves in trouble. Fast! My fearless dark side, which was full of rage, came out. Then they didn’t know what to think.

  I finally made it back down to Texas even though I swore once I left I would never go back. Times were tough and I needed a job. I knew I could get hired on at that condo project in Port Aransas. It took me and another guy three days to make the drive. I bought a small dome tent to live in and pitched it at a campground that was practically right on the beach a few hundred yards from the construction site. I had a small black and white TV set, my carpentry tool belt full of tools for the job and just enough clothes to change once every couple of days. I was hired on as a gypsum and drywall hanger. The project was an eight story condo. I worked off scaffolding and applied gypsum sheeting to the exterior walls eight stories up that would eventually get a brick veneer exterior skin.

  The days were long and hot with humidity ranging around ninety percent every day. I worked with a guy from Boston named Ben Mason. We got to be pretty good friends, he said he was an MP when he served in the Air Force. Ben liked to drive around in his car and smoke pot. He was a few years older than me and spoke with a heavy Boston accent, but he looked like a Hispanic. His dark hair, squinty eyes, and ditty-bop walk made him seem menacing in a street smart sort of way. When we cruised around in his car, he was always pointing out ways to hustle an easy buck.

  A crew of about five or six of us worked together for the drywall contractor. Everyone working on the project lived in the campgrounds where I had my tent set up. We spent Friday and Saturday nights eating pizza and drinking beer at a pizza parlor not far from the campgrounds. A few weeks after I started the job, the
hot humid weather caused me to develop a case of the “GI trots” that would not leave me be.

  I could no longer work in that heat and humidity and told the crew I was heading out. Ben was sick of the place too so we loaded up his car and headed up to Colorado to look for work as carpenters in the Denver area. As soon as we got to New Mexico my shits finally dried up and I felt like a new man. On the trip, Ben told me tales of the things he did back in Boston. He said he liked to roll homosexuals. He said he could spot a gay man in an instant. We were gassing up somewhere around Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he spotted a couple of gays and scored some pot. He was trying to school me about the mannerisms of gays and wanted us to be an assault team rolling homosexuals across the country.

  I told him I wasn’t interested in doing that sort of thing. We couldn’t find any work in Colorado, so he decided to head back to Boston, taking me back to Wisconsin on the way. I had my TV, tent, clothes and tools in the trunk of his car. Everything I owned. After learning more about him while we were on the road I started sleeping with one eye open, not fully trusting the guy.

  We arrived at my mother’s place after five days on the road. Ben took a shower, but sat around in a towel for a good half hour before he got into some clean clothes. It seemed weird that a guy would want to sit around in a towel for so long in a strange house. Finally fully clothed he said he was thirsty for a beer. I told him there was a liquor store about a block from the house. Ben said he would be back in a few minutes. I forgot about all my things in the trunk of his car. He drove off with everything I owned and I never saw him again. I thought that that dirty rat was my friend. I was all through making friends.

  Back in my hometown I went looking for a job but found nothing. I couldn’t stay at my mother’s place so I went to city hall looking for some assistance. I was able to get food stamps and a rent voucher to rent a room. I found a rooming house full of others in the same predicament. Three other guys and I lived in a house owned by a former Marine. The owner was a master carpenter and his son, Jim, also did carpentry work. Jim and I got to be buddies because he had also been in the Marines.

  A contractor in town was hiring carpenters so the three of us applied and all got hired. We three former Devil Dogs worked together all summer on houses and garages until the work dried up.

  I was unemployed for the winter but had to work two or three days a week for the city doing various odd jobs to work off the rent vouchers. Jim’s girlfriend had a girlfriend interested in meeting me. When I met Ashley, she was a pretty and confused nineteen year old still living at home with her parents. The four of us partied and hung out together through a harsh winter and late spring. The girls practically lived at the rooming house. Ashley was the first girlfriend I ever had tell me she loved me. As a matter of fact she was the first person to ever say to me “I love you.” Every other day, Jim and I hustled enough money to buy a case of beer just to have the girls over for a party. There was plenty of bickering that went on in the house because Jim didn’t live there and he didn’t pay any rent. He hung out for lack of anything better to do. The other renters were objecting to him spending so much time there. I think they were also afraid of him. Jim was my friend so I informed them that as long as we were on good terms he was welcome anytime.

  One of the renters was a recovering heroin junky. Another sold small amounts of marijuana. Each of them had girlfriends too and at times the entire house was a feuding hotbed of drunk and pissed off screaming women. Everyone was trying to rule the roost.

  PART 6

  Reconciliation

  Chapter 26

  I knew things had to get better. I was twenty-eight years old and unemployed when I responded to an ad in the newspaper for carpenters. I met with the structural engineer and project manager at a hotel to interview for a job. The jobsite was in the mountains of Colorado and the project was building a hotel for a ski resort area. The pay was ten dollars an hour and workers were required to work ten hours a day, five and a half days a week.

  I didn’t have any other options. I wanted out of that rooming house because I couldn’t stand any more drama and I was sick of being broke and on city relief. My girlfriend was playing mind games. She looked older and more mature than her age, but she often acted immature and lied to me. She was also a constant drug user. All she wanted to do was get high. Whenever I got the chance to scrape up a few extra bucks doing odd jobs I bought her expensive dinners and clothes in an effort to keep her interested in me.

  Ashley was as rebellious as I was and had no room in her life for rules and regulations. If she had the chance, she was the type of girl who would fuck anyone for a pinch of cocaine or some marijuana. I never trusted her after I found her drinking in a bar one night with a known drug dealer. Eventually she hooked up with the dealer and dumped me. I was heartbroken, even if she was a coke whore and vowed never to get emotionally attached to a woman again.

  I took the job and agreed to start work as soon as I could drive to Colorado. I borrowed a couple hundred bucks for food and gas, packed my few belongings, jumped in my grandfather’s old four-door Chevrolet and headed out, swearing I would never return. For some reason, which I don’t recall, I didn’t have a driver’s license. I didn’t care; I would have to take it real easy. If I got stopped for anything, I would end up in jail, but it was a risk I was willing to take. My grandfather had died a couple months earlier and I bought his old car from my brother who’d gotten it from Uncle Seth.

  I drove straight thru listening to a new Bruce Springsteen tape “Nebraska” over and over. I was so tired I had to finally stop just west of Denver. For most of the trip all I could think about was Ashley getting all doped up then screwing that loser she had taken up with. With all of that going on in my mind I barely paid any attention to where I was, as if I was on autopilot. The first rest stop I pulled into was just a wide spot on one of Colorado’s mountain roads. It didn’t take long before I was in a deep sleep. After a few hours, I was on the road again. The next time I stopped was just ten miles from the jobsite. I was happy I made it without getting pulled over for any traffic violations. I spent the night camped out next to a stream in the national forest, sleeping in my car until I checked into work the next day.

  I was all alone, in a state I had never been to before, living in my car in the national forest. I didn’t know anyone; it seemed like the ultimate test of self-preservation. I used water purification tablets to treat drinking water pulled from the stream. In the Marines we put those tablets in our canteens when we suspected bacteria in the water. It was one beneficial tidbit from that part of my life I could use now.

  Once I got on the jobsite I met other guys who had been recruited by the same engineer who’d hired me. Most of the workers were from the north, but the bosses were all from Colorado. They wore blue hard hats and we wore white ones.

  I was assigned to the foundation crew where I, along with about five other carpenters, built forms for concrete footings and foundations. It was hard work. I think I burned four or five thousand calories a day. Most construction workers work like slaves all day long. Some drink all night, while others wait for the weekend, and then spend two days nursing a hangover. There was lots of bravado on those high rise construction projects. Everyone wanted to be the boss. My first day was spent basically being a go-fer, running and getting tools for others until I figured out who was the real leader and who was just trying to be. In my opinion most of those guys really didn’t know what the heck they were doing.

  On the second day, when a man on the crew I was working with told me to go and get a tool, I stood up straight and said, “I did all the running I am going to do on this job yesterday!” I hadn’t traveled all the way there to be a go-fer or someone’s apprentice, and I let everyone know it. They found another naive new guy to do the running. My money was all dried up. I didn’t even have a few bucks to eat with and didn’t know how I was going to survive until I got my first paycheck. I wasn’t used to the nine thousand foot alti
tude and working like a dog all day made me dizzy, gasping for more air. I didn’t know how the gig was going to go. It was going to take time to get used to the thin mountain air. I was a gambler, and hoped this little adventure would be worth the gamble.

  There was another hotel near the construction site where a group of workers ate lunch. I found out I could start a tab, and then pay up when I got my first paycheck. The lead man on our crew asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I was camping out in the forest—living in my car. He wouldn’t hear of that, and insisted I bunk in his hotel room on the couch until I could afford to get my own place.

  This was all good news to me, making me think just maybe I would fit in with this bunch. I started getting big paychecks from all the overtime. Because there was nowhere to spend my money, I was building quite a pocketful of cash. The crew I worked with went out for steaks and a few drinks on the weekends. We had a ball during work hours and after work too.

  One night we decided to go out to a college bar in Gunnison. Three of us were sitting at a table swilling beer when this college chick came up to me and asked if I wanted to dance. “Sure, why not.” I responded. We danced a few rounds being the only two on the dance floor. After the dance she told me she wanted to go over to her dorm room and get screwed. I smiled at my buddies sitting at the table then walked out the door with the cute skirt wearing, but strange little chick on my arm. Cars were parked at an angle on the street outside the bar. She found two cars she liked then pulled down her panties and squatted on the street relieving herself, right there on the road between the two parked cars. Her urine drained into a nearby catch basin. “Oh boy, here we go again,” I thought. Once we got up to her room she turned out to be as loony as that Snake character I had met on the bus years ago. Needless to say, I got visions about her going crazy and possibly crying rape or stabbing me with a scissors, so I got the hell out of her dorm room as fast as I could. It was just one of those gut instincts that kept knocking on my noggin telling me, “Get out fast!”