Red Smith had come to work a little early that day because a beer delivery was due around 9:30 a.m. After the delivery man had come and gone, Red cleaned up the bar, straightened the tables, and prepared for the day. When Ken and Trena came in a little after 10, Red served them, then came out from behind the bar and joined the kids playing the video game by the front door.
Minutes later, Del Clement walked in the door and said, “You better get behind the bar. There’s going to be a bunch in here.”
Red flipped on the air conditioner and went behind the bar. A few
seconds later, the door swung open and two or three men came in and walked to the center of the bar. Soon, the place was full of men, most of them standing at the bar ordering pop or beer. Several of them, Red knew, had never been in the tavern before in their lives. Red moved in circles from the cooler to the bar, trying to keep track of the money. Most of the men took their beer to the tables or stood along the wall, talking and joking as if everything were normal. A few men stood near the bar, staring openly at McElroy, making sure that he got the message. Pete Ward, at the far end of the bar, glared unflinchingly at his adversary. McElroy acted as he usually did, staring at someone for a second or two, smoking a cigarette, drinking his beer, turning occasionally to say a few words in a low voice to Trena.
Steve Peter was one of the last ones in the door, and he noticed that many of the men seemed to be looking away from McElroy. When Gary Walker came in, the only empty spot at the bar was the stool right next to McElroy. Gary had half intended to tell McElroy to “get off our ass,” but as he ambled over to the stool, he “ran out of guts.” From the tension in the room, he almost expected some sort of confrontation then and there. He was nervous as hell. He ordered a beer, and McElroy turned to him and said casually, “Boy, this place is really filling up in here.”
“Yeah,” said Gary. “It sure is.”
“Maybe they’re going to have a crap game,” said McElroy.
“Yeah, could be.”
“Say, are you the guy who sells trailers?” asked McElroy.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Do you still have the blue trailer for sale?”
“No, I sold that one.”
A few weeks earlier, McElroy had told Gary that one day he would come into Skidmore and start shooting and see how many people he could take with him when he went down. Now Gary felt that McElroy was marking him, letting him know he would be remembered when the time came.
As brief as the conversation was, the encounter became the main event in the crowded room. The talk died down as people turned to catch a glimpse of Gary and McElroy and perhaps to pick up a word or two. Some people found it strange that Gary was being friendly with McElroy. To Gary, the explanation was simple: he ended up in a conversation with
McElroy because the stool next to him happened to be the only space at the bar.
As Trena looked around the tavern, she saw fifty or sixty men, many of whom she recognized. There were Sumys, Kenneys, Barretts, Browns, and three of the Clement brothers—Royce, Scott, and Del. She watched as Del and Red passed out cups of beer to the men; they seemed to be giving it away free, as if they were celebrating something. Everybody was talking, but only one man talked to Ken. Although no one said anything to her, and she didn’t hear any threats or see any weapons, she was frightened. Ken had drunk about half of his beer when Trena heard the Silverado’s horn honk.
She looked at Ken, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, he said, “Well, we’d better go.”
He ordered a six-pack of beer to go, paid with a $5 bill, put the Rolaids and the Camels in the sack with the beer, and stood up.
Outside, a nine-year-old girl with light brown hair and a pretty smile had escaped the watchful eye of her grandmother and was dawdling in the drive between the tavern and the rear of the grocery store. The girl heard the rear door of the tavern close and looked over to see a young man with a rifle in his hands. When he saw her, he stopped, then told her she better go on home. She went home and told her grandmother about the man with the gun, and her grandmother admonished her not to tell anyone else.
Inside the tavern, McElroy turned and walked toward the front door, holding the paper sack in his right hand. As he and Trena reached the door, a few men began to stir.
“Get out of town and stay out of town.”
“And don’t come back, goddamn it!”
The comments didn’t reach Trena’s ears, and if Ken heard them he didn’t react.
Cheryl had not moved from her window at the B & B, and her heart began to pound when the screen door swung open and the bulky form of Ken McElroy appeared on the sidewalk. She watched intently as he walked to the driver’s side of the Silverado and got in.
When Ken and Trena began moving toward the door, Steve Peter realized that he and the others would have to follow them out. A watch
committee was supposed to watch, and wouldn’t it look stupid if all the watchmen sat in the bar while McElroy roamed the streets. Chairs scraped and men moved toward the door. Steve was the fourth or fifth person out after Trena, and he walked over to the front fender of the vehicle next to the Silverado, on the side closest to Trena’s door. Most of the other men flowed up the hill in the same direction. The men at Sumy’s station stood silently and watched the others collect on the sidewalk to the west of the Silverado.
If you kick and torment a nice dog long enough, if you’re mean enough to him, one day when he’s cornered, he’ll turn and fight. Perhaps that is what happened in Skidmore that morning. The men had acted rationally and logically in adopting a plan that committed them to play by the rules. But in fact, they had turned to fight. They turned, most likely, when word of the continuance came, and they headed for the Legion Hall instead of going home. Or perhaps when they heard McElroy had come to town and was in the tavern. If three men didn’t know in their guts that the town had turned, they would never have gone for their guns.
At some point between the moment Frankie brought word that McElroy was in town and the moment that McElroy left the tavern, the three men moved off by themselves for a brief conversation. After learning the day before that the hearing had been postponed, they had talked about what might be done. They had agreed that with McElroy running around loose for another ten days, nobody would be safe. Sounds of idling pickup engines would be the sounds of fear, and men riding tractors with their rifles beside them would watch the roads for the Silverado and worry about what was happening at home. The time had come to kill or be killed.
Maybe he would pull a gun on them, and they could act in self- defense, but they couldn’t count on that. Each had brought a weapon: One had a shotgun, another a .30-30, and the third a .22. They would wait until he came out of the tavern. Two of them would stand across the street by their trucks, and the third would wait in the drive behind the tavern and the store. The blood rushed to their heads, then spread out to their hands and feet, cooling them down in the late morning heat.
*
McElroy sat calmly in the Silverado, ignoring the group of men on the sidewalk to his right. He reached into the sack, pulled out the pack of Camels, tore it open, and extracted a cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth, but before lighting it, he started the engine. His yellow Bic lighter lay on the seat beside him, and he reached over to pick it up as he glanced at the men on the sidewalk. His motions were slow and deliberate.
When Trena got into the pickup, she noticed that men were still coming out of the tavern. Most of those inside, except Red Smith, came out. Many of them turned west up the hill, and several stood on the edge of the sidewalk and the street, between the Silverado and the car parked next to it. All the men were staring in their direction. She turned to Ken.
“What’re they staring for?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
Steve Peter and a few others moved closer to the rear of the Silverado on Trena’s side. She noticed Peter’s hands moving in the air. She rolled down the wi
ndow to see if he wanted something, but no words were spoken. Then she saw a solitary figure walking toward her from the side or the front of the tavern. She recognized Del Clement in his jeans, cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. Because Del was the only person moving, she turned her head and watched him as he crossed the street behind her. He walked to the cab of a dark red Ford pickup parked up the street a little way. He opened the door, reached inside, and pulled out a .30-30. Then he walked to the back of the Ford, closer to the Silverado. She saw him pull the lever down, snap it back up, raise the rifle to his right shoulder, and sight down the barrel.
“They’ve got gunsl" she cried.
Ken didn’t move.
Trena watched as Del squeezed the trigger, then she heard the crack of the shot and the sound of the rear window blowing apart. She turned to look at Ken and saw a huge hole in his cheek and the shattered rear window. She turned back to look at Del and saw his finger pull the trigger again and heard the explosion of a second shot. She looked at Ken and saw that he had been hit a second time.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” Trena screamed. “Please stop shooting him!”
Someone jerked her door open, and a man yelled, “Get down, or they’ll shoot you, too.” A big man pulled her out of the truck onto the ground, and then another man, whom she knew but didn’t recognize, grabbed her and hustled her up the street to the bank. As she went up the sidewalk, still screaming, she looked up and saw two women watching from a window in the bank. A few men noticed the spreading wetness on the inner thighs of her jeans.
When Steve Peter heard the first shot, his eyes were pulled to the shattering glass in the driver’s door. As Trena began screaming, and her door opened, Steve decided he had better get down and out of the line of fire. He squatted between the trucks, not moving while the shots continued. Looking south, away from the shooting, he saw he was in a direct line with the west edge of the pool hall, and he figured that that would be the quickest way to get somewhere other than where he was, so he took off in a crouching lope down the side of the building. He circled west and north back to his pickup, which was parked across the street from the Sumy station, and drove home to tell his wife.
A twelve-year-old boy, who had gone inside Sumy’s gas station a few minutes earlier to get a bottle of pop, was standing by the water cooler when he heard the shots. He looked out the front window and saw a man standing at the west edge of the post office with a rifle to his shoulder, firing across the street in the direction of the tavern. The boy bolted from the gas station and raced through alleys and across yards to his home. When he told his parents what he had seen, his father told him not to tell anyone.
When Cheryl heard the crack of the rifle she saw the window shatter and McElroy’s head bob down. An instant later, the second shot pushed his head further down, and she saw Trena open the door and jump out screaming. Blood and dirt streaked her arms and blouse. Jack Clement came over to where Trena was lying in the grass, picked her up, and rushed her toward the bank. (One law enforcement official would comment later that only a man with a father’s faith in his son’s marksmanship would walk into the line of fire like that.) Through the screen in the tavern door, Kermit saw Trena—looking like a frightened animal in search of a place to hide.
Most of the men standing around dropped down between the vehicles or took off up the hill in the direction of Sumy’s gas station. The men
there stayed where they were, watching the scene unfold below. At the sound of the gunfire their eyes shifted a fraction to the left of the Silverado, and the shooters and their blazing guns came instantly into focus. The flash of the gray gun-metal, the smell of burned gunpowder, the sounds of splintering glass and a woman’s screams of terror, would be forever seared in their memories.
After the men had followed McElroy and Trena out the front door, Red Smith caught up on collecting for the beer and pop and was chatting with Kermit at the south end of the bar. A few men had begun playing pool, and the talk was picking up a little when Red heard what he first thought were firecrackers going off.
“Get down,” someone yelled. “Those are bullets flying!”
Red dived onto the floor behind the bar. He lay on the cement floor shaking, listening to the gunfire and praying that the bullets wouldn’t start ripping into the tin building.
Kermit heard the first boom!, a pause, and then a second boom! He hit the floor beside Red, thinking that somebody had shot at McElroy and missed, and now McElroy was shooting back. There might be a goddamn war starting and those high powers would blow right through the tin walls, he thought. He heard three more shots: BOOM! . . . BOOM! . . . BOOM! ... In his mind he saw the levers of the rifles being cocked and the rifles being leveled and re-aimed between shots. He figured the shooting lasted fifteen to twenty seconds.
Q was sitting at a table with several of his buddies when he heard the blammy! blaml blam! of the rifles. He dived under the pool table, where several others soon joined him.
When the shooting ended, the people in the bar stayed put for several minutes, unsure of what to do, but not wanting to be part of whatever was happening on the street.
“By God!” someone finally said after looking out the door, “it’s over with now. He won’t be bothering us no more.”
A few men picked themselves up from the floor, wobbled to the bar, and ordered beers. Red, his hands shaking, got up and did his best to oblige.
The big Silverado engine was roaring, and somebody said, “Better shut it off.”
“To hell with it,” came the response. "Let it burn.”
Q stood up, turned to his neighbor, and asked, “How long do you figure it will run like that?”
“Oh, maybe five or six minutes.”
The heavy, dark head, its oily black hair slicked back, slammed down on the massive chest. The shock of the hit flowed down through the thick torso and the lower limbs until a booted foot rocked forward on the accelerator in a heavy thrust. The V-8 leapt into life and roared out in full-throated angry protest. The engine wound up until, at full bore, its howl crashed through the town and ripped the still air like the bellowing of a mortally wounded beast. The howl rose to a terrible shriek, and smoke began pouring forth from the guts of the beast in thick black clouds. The head sat unmoving, like a huge black stone, but the heart continued to pump, and blood spurted from the holes in the neck and face, splattering everything around a bright, shiny crimson. The observers backed away slowly, mesmerized by the violence of the final throes. The heat of the struggle radiated outward in searing waves, turning the street into a huge blast furnace.
Finally, the beast’s vital organs began to pop and snap under the strain, and the observers could hear the sickening sound of guts tearing apart. In the crescendo of the shriek, its insides seized and locked together in a death grip of flesh and metal, and the horrible noise ceased. A final sigh escaped, and fluids gushed into the burning pavement with soft, gurgling sounds. Then silence filled the town.
Inside the tavern, a man at the bar said quietly, “I think I’m going out the back door and heading home.” Others followed him out the back, and then a few wandered out the front door. By now, the streets were clear of pedestrians, and the last few pickups were pulling out. As the men passed the Silverado many looked inside. Kermit got in his car and drove home, then drove back into town a few minutes later and stared at McElroy still sitting in his truck.
Q walked out, glanced at McElroy sitting immobile in the Silverado, and got into his own truck and drove around the block. He ran into a friend, and they pulled their trucks alongside each other and talked quietly for a few minutes before heading home. By the time Q walked in his back door, he was badly shaken and feeling poorly.
Left alone in the tavern, Red began cleaning the tables and the bar, picking up half-empty bottles of beer and washing glasses. Finally, at about 11:15, almost an hour after the shooting, he called the sheriff’s office to ask whether anyone had reported the killing. Someone had.
Red had absolutely no desire to go out the door and look in the Silverado. He was so rattled over the shooting and the fact that McElroy was still outside, only a few feet away, that he started drinking beer himself. He didn’t set foot outside the tavern until 7:00 that evening.
When Ken Hurner returned to the bank after the meeting, he found a young couple in his office with a certificate of deposit. About six months earlier, an elderly man from Graham had come to the bank and said he had $20,000 that he wanted to put in a safe place and avoid probate. Hurner had advised the man to put the money in a joint tenancy account with his niece and nephew, who weren’t close to him but were the only relatives he had left. This morning, the two of them had come to the bank at 9:15, announced that their uncle had died a couple of hours earlier, and said they wanted the $20,000. Irritated with their greed and lack of respect, Hurner had called the hospital and verified the death, then told the pair somewhat gruffly that he would cash the certificate.
In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics) Page 33
