Eleven

Dan

So here’s where the shit hit the fan so hard it damn near snapped the blades right off.

I wasn’t sure why the cops had come. You could take your pick of reasons. Maybe they’d traced the gun. Maybe they’d heard about the hospital. Maybe Chad’s sissy-assed high pitched screams had made one of the neighbors call 911. It didn’t matter. Point was, they’d come for Billy. They’d come to take his gun away again. But if I knew my boy as well as I felt I had come to know him in the last few days, I knew he wasn’t giving it up without a fight.

Sure enough when I walked in, one of the cops was flopping around on the living room rug with a hole in his shoulder. “He’s out back,” he said looking back and up toward me through the cutout in the coffee table. “Clark chased him downstairs and I heard the door. They're in the backyard. I need you to call 911. I can’t get to the radio—” He groaned and clutched at his shoulder as he tried to sit up.

“Relax Chief,” I said, stepping over him to get to the hallway. “Whatever you think you’re feeling right now is just shock. I know at least that much by now, and I’d be willing to bet assholes to soup bowls that if you had the balls to stand up, you’d find that bullet did no more damage to your arm than a tetanus shot.”

“Sir, I assure you this is a serious situation . . . Sir, do not go into that yard. He may be a little boy, but he’s dangerous.”

“You bet he’s dangerous,” I said as I headed toward the steps, “but not in the way you think. That’s my son you’re talking about. That’s Billy Shooter.”

When I got out to the backyard the other cop, Clark I guess his name was, was kneeling at the bottom of our oak tree with one hand cupped to the side of his mouth and the other pointing his gun straight up the tree trunk. “Son,” he called out. “Just throw down your weapon and I’ll climb up and give you a hand out of there.”

Billy didn’t move. Just sat there straddling a thick branch about 20 feet up, aiming my .22 down at the cop through the leaves.

It had cleared up some since the rain earlier, so half the neighbors had spilled out into their backyards to gawk. Even the Woodlakes were out there. They had Chad’s head wrapped up in enough gauze to choke a horse, but sure enough, they hadn’t even gone to the hospital yet. I had half a mind to tell them “I told you so,” but as I looked their way, I saw Pam, stirred up into fizzy tizzy, headed straight toward me.

“What’s going on here!?” she screamed. “Where’s Billy? Dan! What’s going on here?”

The cop turned half an eye toward us, keeping his gun trained on Billy, who I knew was just waiting on him to get sloppy so he could take his shot. “Folks,” the cop said. “I’m going to need you to step back—”

“That’s my son, up there,” Pam blurted, seeing now that Billy was up in the tree. “We’re the parents. Billy! What are you doing up there? You come down this instant!”

“Listen to your mother,” the cop said, all of his attention back on Billy. “Ma’m if you could keep on talking to your boy and explain why it would be a good idea for him to toss down the gun, that would be helpful. Perhaps your husband could say a word as well.”

“Billy . . .” Pam stepped up just behind the cop, leaned to the left, and looked up into the tree. “Mommy needs you to listen to the nice police man and please toss down that gun. It’s not a toy. It’s very dangerous. Do you understand? Not a toy. Danger. Just toss it down and then we’ll go inside and get some ice cream.” She turned back to me. “Dan, for God’s sake say something.”

I looked back at her, then scanned the faces of all the neighbors. They were all looking at me the same way. Like, what’s the matter with you, jackass? Your son is acting like a full-blown menace to society and as parent it’s your job to protect society from your son.

But I’d come to a different conclusion. It was kind of a moment of clarity for me. Seeing the cop and Billy in their little stand off. Like, I’d been going on gut for the past couple of days, but now I could think it out. Even if Billy was a full blown menace, I realized, if had any dog in this hunt, you could be damned sure it was with my son and not with society.

So when the cop cocked his head over his shoulder and told me, “Yes, sir it would be helpful if you could help talk your son down as well,” I told him straight.

“Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck every goddamned one of you.”

“Dan!” Pam yelped. “Billy needs you right now. Tell him to throw down that gun.”

“It’s true sir,” the cop put in, his eyes locked on Billy. “Your boy needs your help. He needs his father.”

“Well you’re right enough about that, my boy needs his father” I said, the air all around me growing a shade darker as the sun slid further down behind neighbors’ houses. “And it’s my job to be there when my boy needs me. But that right there is one job I don’t do for you, your partner, my wife, or the rest of the goddamned world. So you can all tell me boys shouldn’t play with guns—not even toy guns according to my wife, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be your patsy in all this.” I was rolling now, my thoughts coming straight out my mouth before I could even chew them into shape. “This is the day I take a stand. Not for me. But for my boy. For his future. So if you want that gun, you’re going to have to take it from him yourself.”

“What are you talking about?” Pam said. “What’s going on here?”

I glanced from her to the cop, who had again taken his attention off of Billy to look my way. Then I scanned the neighbors’ faces again. “I’ll tell you what’s going on here,” I said. “I’ll tell you all what’s going on here.” I turned to the cop and stepped toward him holding my arms out to the side. “My son is going to shoot you” Then I looked back toward all the neighbors. “It’s what he does. It’s not going to do any real damage, though. And you can all be my witness to that.”

“Sir,” the cop said, his voice climbing toward a shout. “You’re not helping matters out here. I’m going to ask you to return to your house.”

“There’s more to it though,” I went on. “I can’t quite get it down yet—”

Before I could finish my sentence, I was interrupted by the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

Out of cold clear blue, little Chad was singing. And not just singing, mind you, but I’m telling you he was belting out some the most emotionally on the money and pitch perfect vocal work I’d ever heard. It was just an a capella cover of one of those crap air supply songs—“All Out of Love,” or “Lost in Love,” I know the song, but I’m not sure of the title—but it blew the whole damned crowd away. Even his parents cocked their heads at him, their chins damn near bouncing off their toes. In the second line of the song, he put a little warble on a drawn out “love’ that just about ripped your heartstrings right out your throat, and it was like Billy up in that tree didn’t mean a shit-ball to anyone. Pam, the Woodlakes, the rest of the neighbors, and even the cop were all glued to this kid with his voice out of nowhere.

Billy though was somehow untouched by it. He just looked down, saw that the cop was distracted, and—bang—shot him right through the top of his head.

Chad kept on singing, and the crowd was split between watching him and turning to see Billy jump out of the tree. He looked down at the cop for a second.

The cop looked almost dead. Pale as talcum, a thick stream of blood pouring from his melon. But his eyes were still open, and he was still talking. “Son, I’m only going to ask you one more time, before I climb up there after you,” he said. “Now you don’t want that do you?”

“Don’t want to take no nap,” Billy said, and then he skipped over the cop, grabbed my hand, pressed his cheek into my hip, and looked up at me.

Pam stood frozen, staring at the both of us, her face falling apart.

The neighbors were all looking at us now, though Chad kept right on singing.

I looked down at Billy, then up at Pam. “Billy and me, we’re going to be hitting the road for a while,” I said. “We got some father-son stuff to sort out. I think it’s going to take us a little while, and I think right here might not be the best place for us to be.”

I turned, took Billy’s hand, and walked him up the driveway, but right away I could hear them all screaming after us.

“Wait!” someone said. “You just can’t leave.”

“Somebody call 911”

“Don’t let them get away.”

They kept calling out after us, but I didn’t pay it no mind until, when I got to the top, just a few feet from my truck, somebody pulled on my arm.

Of course, it was Pam. “Where do you think you’re going,” she shouted. “What the hell is this all about? What have you been doing with my son?”

Now, let’s notice here that I did try to be reasonable with her. “Pam,” I said. “There ain’t no reason to go get all huffy puffy over this. Billy’s got something – like a talent – we didn’t know he had until the last couple of days starting with when he plugged you in the gut. The rest of the world. These assholes coming up the driveway behind you . . . They ain’t going to understand it. See, this is time for snap decisions, and I’m making one. Billy and me are leaving town tonight. If I find reason over the next couple of weeks to believe that you're with us on this, I’ll be back in touch, if not, then you can consider this goodbye.”

But Pam, she didn’t want to hear reason. “You will do no such thing,” she squawked trying to reach around me to get a hold of Billy.

Now Pam and I had had our share of rows, especially in the early days of our marriage, but I’d never seen her like this. There was a steel to her jaw and a wild light in her eyes that was brand new.

I shrunk back from at first, trying to move Billy away without getting physical with her. But she just kept coming.

“You give me my baby,” she screamed. “Billy, come to your mother. Let him go Dan!”

I just kept backing away from her and the rest of the neighbors. Mind you, Chad had entered the second chorus of his song, and if anything he was sounding even better than when he started.

So I almost didn’t hear the voice coming from my right until it was too late. “Sir,” it called out. “I want you to release the child, and step back against the vehicle.” It was the first cop from inside the house—another “I told you so” I wouldn’t get the chance to say. He was bearing down on me, his arms outstretched, pointing his gun my way, a small dark circle of blood on his shoulder.

Now there’s the singing, there’s the neighbors, there’s Pam, and there’s the cop. And it’s all just coming at me and Billy. I had to do something. I ain’t saying I’m proud of it, but I had to do something.


In one quick move, I spun away from Pam, grabbed Billy by his right-hand wrist, and pulled his arm up so that my .22 was pressed against Pam’s forehead. “What say we all just slow down a minute,” I said, crawling my fingers over Billy’s so that my trigger finger curled right behind his. “Ain’t nobody here really even hurt. But if you all can’t understand that, then you sure as shit better take me serious when I say I will make damn sure this boy shoots his mother in the head if you all don’t cool down and let me and my son be on our way.”

I didn’t know what would happen if I pressed Billy’s finger against the trigger. If it was me doing the pushing, would he be the one shooting? Was this too close a range for him to even make a difference anyway? I hadn’t the foggiest, but I knew it didn’t mean much more than a pretty smile on a heifer. Thing about a gun is when folks see it they don’t do too much thinking. To them this thing was going to blow Pam’s head off no matter who was shooting it. They stopped dead in the tracks.

“Now just hold on a minute sir,” the cop said, his voice calm but firm, probably some tone they teach them up at the academy. “You don’t want to make things worse here. How about we just put down the guns and have a talk.”

With two cops shot, I knew I didn’t have too much time before all sorts of Johnny law would start raining down on my front yard, so I had to act quick.

“Now look here,” I said, “I ain’t never been a violent man, but damn it sometimes you don’t know the dog can bite till you snatch a bone from his teeth. If you do not put you gun down by the time I count to three. My son and I are going to put a bullet in her head.” I looked at Pam, her face twisted in this frozen grimace, the end of the gun pressing wrinkles up into her forehead. She wasn’t looking at me though. She was looking at Billy, her eyes wide, pleading.

The cop didn’t say shit, so I said, “One.”

I couldn’t see all of Billy’s face, but from what I could, I could see that he was looking right back up at his mom. Looking her dead in the eye, but he wasn’t even resisting my finger on his finger on the trigger. He was with me on this one.

“Two . . .” I said.

The cop looked at me. Pam looked at Billy and he looked back at her. Sirens whined out from a few blocks away. Chad kept singing, closing out the bridge, the song kicking up into a higher register for a moment.

“Thr—”

“OK,” the cop shouted as he dropped his gun into a small patch of crab grass.

In an instant, I pulled the gun off of Pam’s forehead, pulled open the door of the truck and loaded Billy in.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way Pam,” I said as I twisted the key in the ignition. She looked back at me blankly, saying nothing. “I really am.”

With that I slammed the truck into reverse, did a half donut onto the lawn and, dropped her into gear and sped off into the street. The cop scooped up his gun and took a few shots at the tires, but we were gone by the time he got to his car. Last thing I remember though wasn’t the gun shots or the truck’s engine racing. It was Chad hitting his big finish. His final break-your-heart, sustained-so-long-you-wonder-how-they-breathe high note fading into silence as Billy and me drove away from the house for good.