by John Ball
Johnny Get Your Gun
John Ball
Copyright
Johnny Get Your Gun
Copyright © 1969 by John Ball
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795317606
For
Charles and Pauline Bures
Author’s Note
This book was made possible through the invaluable help of the Pasadena Police Department. Thanks are due, and are tendered, to Chief Samuel Addis, Assistant Chief Carl Lindholm, Sergeant Larry Harnois, and to Virgil Tibb’s fellow investigators, James Larsch and Dallas Perkins. All of these gentlemen devoted much of their valuable time to helping with the preparation of the manuscript.
The California Angels baseball club was also more than generous in lending support. Mr. Cedric Tallis, in particular, extended himself in a hundred different ways before he was called to the general managership of the new Kansas City club. Mr. Emmett Ashford, the noted umpire, gave expert advice, as did many of the team’s outstanding stars.
Finally, the author would like to express his special gratitude to the chairman of the board of the Angels, Mr. Gene Autry. This distinguished executive and philanthropist has been, and is, the idol of millions of Western fans. They couldn’t have picked a better man.
John Ball
Contents
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1
It was close to the summer solstice, so that all day long the sun had hung high in what had been a cloudless sky. Throughout Southern California, in spite of approaching evening, the heat was still thick in the air. The morning smog had been long since carried away by the Santa Ana wind so that the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles basin stood out with sharp and brilliant clarity. Because there was still no real rapid transit in any part of the city, the rush hour traffic clogged the freeways almost to a standstill. As they sat and sweltered, the motorists could look up and see the early-rising moon three quarters full in the sky.
In common with uncounted thousands of other housewives in the vast metropolitan area Maggie McGuire was making iced tea to serve with the dinner she had prepared. At one time she had been called Margaret, but in the section of Tennessee where she had grown up very little attention was paid to formalities. As a consequence she had been dubbed Maggie well before she had started in school and Maggie she had remained during the almost forgotten days of her formal education. Now on this hot and oppressive evening, she was far from the home in which she had grown up, not yet adjusted to her new scheme of living, and Maggie still. Mike, her husband, never addressed her in any other way.
She moved about mechanically in the cramped kitchen of the little apartment. They had rented the place when they had arrived here because it had two bedrooms and was still within the price which they had felt they could afford to pay. To Maggie calling the little cubicles which had been provided “bedrooms” was a misuse of the word. They were both so small that each could hold a double bed and little else. The bed in her young son’s room was a single, which allowed him to have a cheap little dresser and a wobbly table which held a confused pile of his boyhood treasures.
Maggie glanced at the clock. Mike would be home shortly and she hoped, as always, that he would be in a good mood. She had no special reason to expect trouble, but she never knew. Their venture in coming out to California, undertaken with such hope and aspirations, was not starting out well. Perhaps they had expected too much too soon, but she had noted that for the past three weeks Mike had seemed to be coming steadily closer to the raw edge of discontent.
Her own life had molded itself into a pattern of preparing food, looking after clothes, accommodating herself to her husband’s sexual wishes, and looking after Johnny. She loved her son almost desperately, despite the fact that lately Mike had seen in her boy a smaller fragment of himself and had all but taken him over.
Through the thin wall she could hear that Johnny, in his room, was listening to the ball game on his little Japanese transistor radio. It had been the only gift they had been able to manage for him on his ninth birthday, three weeks before. Already he seemed old enough to understand that for unstated reasons they had less money to spend, as a family, than did some of the other people who lived around them.
When the single door to the apartment swung open and Mike came in almost quietly, Maggie’s breath tightened, for that was not a good sign. She eased as he kissed her perfunctorily on the forehead, giving proof that he was not displeased with her. She watched as he checked the two dishes she had on the small stove to see what was being prepared for his dinner, then he went into the nine by eleven living room and sat down on the vinyl-covered settee.
Maggie recognized his mood: in some way he had been humiliated and that was one thing which Mike could not stand. As she had many times before, she reminded herself that he was a proud man. “Proud” was a good word, a respected word, far removed from such terms as “ill-tempered,” “abrupt,” or even “mean.” Mike was none of these things; someone had once told her that he was strong-willed. That was it, strong-willed, a man not easily defeated. She preferred to think of him in that way.
She served up the simple dinner and called her men. Mike reappeared and seated himself before the kitchen table, which was one of the supplied furnishings. Johnny slid into his place with caution, aware at once that his father was not in his most congenial mood. For several strained minutes the three of them ate quietly, Maggie and her son waiting for the moment when it would please the head of the family to speak.
When it came, it was without preamble. “I got a traffic ticket today. It’ll probably cost us some money.”
Johnny knew instantly that whatever had occurred, his father had been in the right, nothing else was possible. Maggie kept control over the expression on her face and waited to hear the details this time.
“I was comin’ up the freeway,” Mike said, talking with his mouth half full and making his words deliberately harsh. “A goddamned kid in a hot rod cut in ahead of me, almost knocked my fender off.”
“Mike, Johnny’s here,” Maggie warned cautiously.
“I know, but he’s goin’ to be a man and he might as well learn man’s language now.”
“Did you fix him, Dad?” Johnny asked eagerly.
Mike nodded. “Of course the cops didn’t see him do that, they never do. I caught up with him about a mile after that, then I cut him off just like he done me. To teach him a lesson.”
“Good!” Johnny enthused, his eyes aglow at his father’s triumph.
Mike ignored the comment. “’Course this time there was a cop on a motorbike sitting up on the bridge. He came down and gave me a ticket.”
“You won’t lose your license, will you?” Maggie asked. “They’ve got some law, I think, about how many tickets you can get. Something like that.”
“Hell no, I won’t lose my license!” Mike barked. That settled it and the subject was closed.
The rest of the meal was quiet and edgy. The citation would cost at least thirteen dollars, possibly as much as twenty, which meant that something would have to be give
n up. Johnny badly needed a new jacket, his old one was out at the elbows. Maggie decided that if he could wear it just a little longer, the money she had put aside for a new one might help to take care of the fine.
When the last of the meal was being eaten, and Johnny was industriously scraping his plate with the edge of his fork to capture the last bits of gravy, Mike turned to his son. “Johnny, I know that I promised to take you to the ball game. We’ll still go, but it might have to be a little later on. Is that all right with you?”
Into Johnny’s eyes tears came very quickly; he blinked rapidly several times to make them go away. He had been counting the days, and the hours, until the promised trip to Anaheim to see the Angels—Gene Autry’s team. Postponing that was almost more than he could bear, but he tried, as best he could, to measure up to his father’s strength of character.
“You had to do it, Dad,” he said. “An’ I’m real sorry about the cop.” One small consolation appeared and he seized at it. “I can listen to the games on my new radio.”
Mike gave his son a powerful squeeze. He did not have many moments of softness, but he realized how much it was costing his son to support what he had done. For a second he was almost ashamed of himself, then he remembered that it had not been his fault that the cop had been there.
“Can we go—some other time?” Johnny asked in a small voice.
“You bet we can. There’ll be another double header. Not with the Twins, maybe, but some other good team. Maybe Boston or the Tigers. We’ll go and sit in reserved seats.”
There was a pause during which Mike silently cursed the policeman who had put him in this humiliating position and who was causing his son this hurt. He looked at his boy once more.
“Are you cryin’?” he demanded.
Johnny wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I was just thinkin’ about the guy who tried to hurt you,” he invented to hide his shame. “And the goddamn cop.”
“That’s right,” Mike responded. “The goddamned cop.”
There was a union at that moment, an understanding between father and son. “Kid,” Mike said. “It’s tough sometimes, but if you want to get along in this world, and be respected, remember not to take anythin’ from nobody. You’re a good clean white boy and you don’t have to. You’re as good as anyone, see?”
Johnny absorbed this thoughtfully, noting the silence of his mother. “Dad, how come Willie Mays is a—” He could not say the distasteful word in speaking of one so great. “How come he isn’t white?”
Mike had no real answer to that question. “Because he wasn’t born that way, I guess,” he said a little roughly. “But don’t worry your head about that, just remember what I told you.” He nodded to indicate that he was finished.
Johnny rose and walked into his room, thoughtfully pondering his father’s advice. He shut the door and turned on his radio. In the scant weeks that he and his parents had been here he had made few acquaintances and no friends; in his lonesome little life the radio had opened the door to a magnificent new world. People played music for him to listen to and they told him, play by play, what was happening in the big league baseball games. Seated on the edge of his bed he clutched the little set in both hands and reveled in its magic.
In the morning, when he left for school, he carefully bunched his jacket with his hand to hide the rectangular shape in his pocket.
His mother took no particular notice of him when he was ready to go out the door, instead she was thinking that as soon as he had left she would be able to sit down with a cigarette and a cup of coffee to compose herself.
Her nerves were on edge. During breakfast Mike had rehashed the matter of the traffic ticket and it had only underlined things. She did not like the place where they were living, there was no joy for her in her marriage, and matters never seemed to get any better. When she heard Johnny’s “Good-bye, Mommy,” she said something automatic in reply and then resigned herself to the routine day ahead.
With the tingling sensation of a secret known to himself alone, Johnny got on the school bus and took his usual seat. He hardly seemed to be aware of the familiar ride. It was so seldom that he had something of which to be proud, anything new to wear, or any accomplishment to describe with glowing satisfaction at home.
The usually dull forenoon took on a new keenness as the lunch hour approached. When the bell at last rang, he ran to the cafeteria area to open his little bag of food and enjoy the incomparable luxury of eating in the company of the unseen broadcasters who would be there the moment that he clicked the switch and brought his radio into throbbing life.
As soon as he was seated he pulled out his little set and turned it on. A blast of rock and roll music answered him; he turned the dial until he heard something he liked. The music lifted his thoughts as he ate his sandwich and he thrilled to the joy of possession.
He had almost finished eating when Billy Hotchkiss, from nowhere, snatched the radio away. He took full advantage of the fact that he was two years older and considerably the larger; with the skill of a born prankster he held the set on his hand just out of reach and dared Johnny to try for it.
In that instant Johnny’s world was frozen. With a noise in his throat he stretched out both his hands, trying to reclaim his set and unconsciously imploring its return. Every minute lost was something he was missing, something that was almost the key to life itself.
Billy danced away, a mocking smile on his lips. “Come and get it,” he invited. As Johnny jumped to his feet, his meal forgotten, Billy began to run. Because of his size he could run much faster, and even with the urgency of desperation Johnny could not catch him. Every few moments Billy slowed down, then when Johnny could almost touch him he sprang away again, waving his hand with the radio in it over his head. Then he tossed it into the air and caught it.
The bell rang. That was a blessed relief, the lunchtime game was over and Billy would hand back the radio. He had done a cruel thing and Johnny would not forgive him for a long, long time.
“Hurry up back or you’ll be late,” Billy warned. Then standing on tiptoe he pushed the radio up onto a high window ledge where Johnny could not possibly reach it. “Be good,” Billy said, “and I’ll get it down for you after school. Now run!”
In blind, frustrated rage, Johnny lowered his head and charged his tormentor, his fists flying. Billy sidestepped expertly and slapped Johnny neatly on the side of the face. Johnny attacked again, with desperate intensity, but Billy only blocked his blows. He laughed at the huge success of his joke played on the much smaller boy who wore funny clothes and talked in such a peculiar way. He had meant to give back the radio, but his teasing had borne wonderful fruit and he didn’t want to surrender such rich fun.
The final bell rang, the one which would have to be obeyed. Billy took to his heels and left Johnny alone, it was the easiest way to keep things as they were. Johnny tried once to reach his precious set, saw that it was impossible, and vowed revenge.
During the two hours of the afternoon school session he sat at his desk, his lips together, a hard look in his eyes. When at last he was released for the day, he ran back to where his radio was, determined to ask the first person tall enough to do so to reach it down for him.
Once the radio was safely back in his own hands the crisis would be over, but the agony of it would not cease until that moment. He could see the edge of his precious set protruding over the sill—proof at least that it was still there.
Billy appeared beside him. “So you want your radio, huh?” he mocked. “Well, why don’t you reach up and get it.”
Johnny gritted his teeth together. “Give me my radio!” he demanded.
Billy laughed. “Now you’re not going to get anything asking like that.” He reached up and touched the set, emphasizing his ability to do what Johnny could not.
Johnny looked quickly around him for help, but the playground was almost empty. School was over and the children were rapidly leaving. All of the fury which he had been holding down
during the bitter afternoon seized hold of him; without warning he lashed out. He caught Billy by surprise, his right fist landed on the older boy’s cheek. For a moment Billy was stunned, then he swung his arms out and knocked Johnny down. Stretching up, he pulled down the radio and held it as if to dash it on the ground.
Johnny was on his feet, the knee of his trousers split, ready to fight to the death. Billy sensed that the joke had gone too far; he gulped air, sped a few feet away and when he had enough distance turned and threw the radio. He hadn’t meant to do that, but he had been struck on the face and he was angry. As soon as the set was in the air he saw that Johnny wouldn’t be able to catch it.
With one desperate lunge Johnny hurled himself toward the point where the radio would fall. It brushed the ends of his frantic fingers, dribbled off, and fell to the asphalt surfacing.
Billy came from where he was standing, when Johnny did not move he ventured a step or two nearer to him. From there he could see that the case was cracked.
“Gee, Johnny, I’m sorry,” he offered. His anger was gone in the cold reality of guilt.
Johnny did not hear him. With a sob racking his throat, he bent over and tenderly picked up the little plastic case that only seconds before had been to him a living thing, the best friend he had.
As he held it in his fingers he could sense that something was loose inside. With his lips quivering he very carefully clicked the switch that was supposed to turn it on. He rolled the little wheel as far as it would go towards full volume, but there was no answering sound.
Johnny cried. He did not feel the contrite hand that Billy laid on his shoulder or hear the words. “I’m sorry. My dad’ll get you a new one.” He was in a paroxysm of grief so all-engulfing he was alone on another plane belonging to a different world.
The thing he had loved and that had loved him was dead. The only thing he had had to cherish as his very own had been snatched from him.
