A Short Life

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

A SHORT LIFE

 When Bob walked into the gun store, he had no idea what he was doing. He had never owned a gun and only shot a BB gun when he was a kid. But he was now sixty-five years old: he had heard about robberies in the area and had started thinking about protecting himself. Bob never served in the military and never did anything with law enforcement. He had been an actuary before retirement. He and his wife of forty-five years lived one block off the beach in a small cul-de-sac in sunny tropical Florida. The crime rate for his zip code was less than one per thousand on petty crimes and zero per thousand on homicides. Bob went ahead and bought a gun anyway and paid for a month’s worth of lessons.

     "Stop squeezing your wrist! Use your trigger finger! You miss all your targets to the left!" the instructor exclaimed in a firm, but barely polite tone.

      “I’m trying. My finger is not strong enough to pull the trigger. Maybe you can show me another way to fire the gun,” Bob replied.

     The lessons continued, but he was still a lousy shot.

    One day Bob was out walking on his street. He talked to some neighbors, said “hi,” and waved to few, then stopped at a house that was only two lots down from his house. Butch and Jamie, a couple in their late forties, were outside working in the yard, and they chatted. Butch mentioned they had a twenty year old son, and their daughter was in high school. They chatted a little more and Bob went home.

     Later that summer, in the afternoon there was a whole bunch of commotion on the street. Butch and Jamie were setting up for a party. Their son, Doug, was turning twenty-one and they wanted to keep it at the house. Jamie was really concerned if he went out with his friends something would happen. Doug their son was ready for the blast and was resting that afternoon.  Bob got nosy and went to investigate. He chatted with Jamie, and she showed him a picture of their boy. She was smiling from ear to ear as she talked about Doug, being a proud and happy mother.

   “Can I help?” Bob asked.

   “Sure,” replied Jamie.

     So, he set up a few tables in the back yard, then went home.  As he walked home he noticed that Butch and Jamie’s house looked similar to his and had the same landscaping. Maybe the same builder built both houses. He let the thought go and home he went.

     The party started at nine p.m. and neighbors were invited, but it was mostly Doug’s friends. Bob and his wife did not go: they stayed in for the night.

***
Excellent Book On Gun Safety

      For Doug and his friends the party was not really going to start until about eleven p.m., when they were all going to meet on the beach. Per his mom, there was to be no driving, just a walk across the road to the beach and the moon to light their way. Perfect for anything a twenty-one-year-old man could want, friends, girls, and drinking. Lots of drinking. So, from nine p.m. to eleven p.m., the parents talked to some neighbors and their friends who stopped by; they knew that this rite of passage is only for them to observe.  At eleven p.m., they cleaned up and went to bed and Doug and his friends went to the beach. He stuck to his mother’s rule, and none of them got behind the wheel of a car.  The beach party went on till the booze ran out , which was about two a.m. in the morning. They all new there was more to drink at Doug’s house, so they slovenly wandered down the sandy beach path towards the crossing in the road. They watched for headlights, laughed, and carelessly threw some bottles on the road without even thinking about the broken glass. They eventually crossed, and in the way of drunkards; crawled, swayed and staggered their way to Doug’s yard. Then sat on the lush green grass, or passed out, while others waited. One of Doug’s friends was sober enough to try and open the front door, it was unlocked, so they went in and turned on the TV.

     Doug’s friend, Billy, started asking, “Hey, where’s Doug?”

    “I don’t know,” one replied, then added, “I thought he was hanging on your shoulder.”

    “We need to find him”

      So, they staggered outside, and as they were standing in the front yard, they heard gunshots, three to be exact and very close by.

     Doug had fallen behind the group and staggered across the street by himself. He went up to what he thought was his house and began banging on the door. He thought his friends were playing a joke on him. He banged and pounded on the door, making a lot of noise.

    “Come on. Let me in. Let me in” Doug yelled.

     Then suddenly the door opened, and Doug rushed in. He rushed into Bob’s house and Bob shot him dead.

     All of Doug’s friends heard the shots, and they got sobriety real quick. They ran for the neighbor’s house and found Bob standing at the door with his gun. 

    Doug’s friends started shouting. “He killed Doug. He killed Doug.”

    The next door neighbor called the police. They arrived quickly and began the investigation.

    An officer went to Butch and Jamie’s house, woke them up, and asked them to come with him. They were frantic with questions. When they got to the door the officer told them he needed them to ID the victim. Jamie collapsed, and Butch went in alone. He saw his son lying on the floor, dead. Bob was being questioned by the police. The police had to restrain Butch; he would have killed Bob with his own gun, probably emptying the clip into Bob’s chest or head. But the police stopped Butch and saved Bobs life. 

     Bob was not charged at the time with any crime, and he did not go to jail. He was allowed to be a free man, and free to hear the ridicule.

   “Why didn’t you call the police and let them handle it, you old fool.”

     That was the mild stuff! He was harassed, threatened by the neighbors, and families of Doug’s friends. He called the police and made reports, but no one was arrested. It was just hearsay. A few months went by, and Bob sold his house. He and his wife moved away. 

    The police never charged Bob because it was determined to be self-defense. He was scared for his life, locked safely in his house, with a drunken young man banging on his door.

 The End

If you're a graphic artist and you're interested in this story, email me.  I'd like to see it become a graphic novel.  

© Copyright 2014 Artemis J Jones

Revised 07/27/2015 by Artemis J Jones & Edited by Ryan Lanz

Over the Wall 1200 words

Over the Wall

By Artemis J Jones

Work on yourself first, take responsibility for your own progress.     I Ching

I am standing here twenty years later, staring through a chain link fence. Looking up, I notice the fence is about eight feet high, and no barbed wire at the top. My hands are gripping the links of the fence and I am filled with a sense of déjà vu. Pressed by youthful exuberance, I feel a need to climb and go in. No guards around, so up and over I go.

*****

When I started working in the race shop, my goal was to become a genuine member of the team. Being hired by the team, does not make you a true member; you need to prove yourself. Once you go on the road and show that you can do, what the team needs, and discover for yourself if the team can work with you; that is the moment you become an integral part of the team. To prove yourself, you need to go over the wall.

 From the very first day, I had some baggage, a bit of an ego, and the false pretense that I actually had laurels to rest on. The Team Manager, Craig, saw this and immediately began putting me in check.  My first assignment … sweep the floor! After a few months of this mentally tasking duty, I was given a serious assignment; to Dyno test all the engines.

Every engine needed to be tested before it was placed in a race car. While I was doing this, Craig watched me, looking for flaws like impatience, bad judgment, and a negative attitude. Craig toned me down once when a tedious task revealed a little impatience in me, but, other than that, I was doing well. He gave me other assignments and, together with Bob, our metal fabricator, we began working on the American built Porsche 962, next season’s car.

After the current IMSA (International Motor Sports Association) season was half way over, I decided to take my harbored impatience with menial tasks in the shop, and put it to good use. I built a practice wall outside the race shop. It was two and a half feet high and ten inches wide, the same size as most safety walls around the country. I made it with concrete, cinder blocks and reinforced with rebar. After that, I built a stationary, practice, fuel storage tank and assembled a fuel hose exactly like the type of hose used at the track to fuel the cars during a pit stop.  I filled the tank with water, and then I put on a fire suit and began testing my skills. The hose, by itself, weighed thirty pounds and could hold eight gallons of fuel, which weighed seven pounds per gallon. So the combined weight on race day would be eighty-six pounds resting on my shoulder.

Practice, consumed my time every afternoon, when my other assignments were completed.  When the rest of the team was in the shop, they would watch me and, many times ask me, “Why do you want to go on the road?” Call it harmless bi-polar curiosity, because they all knew the answer and, at the same time, slighted life on the road. Yet, they would never give up the bond of the team.

During one practice session, I brought the house down with laughter. I knew sometimes it rained and the cars continued to race, so I decided to practice in the rain. I had the fire suit on and sat on the bench, just as you would while you were waiting for a car to come in the pits. I made a dash for the wall, put my left foot up on it, stood on the top and pulled on the hose, but it did not move and I fell backwards, landing hard on my butt. When I hit the ground, I bumped the valve open on my end and dumped eight gallons of water on myself. Everyone got a good laugh from that! In such a fast paced business calm and focus were the prized attributes so I continued to practice and improved my focus on every task at hand.

As time figuratively chewed itself up and the season neared its end, I knew I would not be going over the wall, but there was hope.  Craig had been watching me for months, and he commented on how he really liked the improvements in my performance, and he saw my attention to details on everything I did. He was very happy with the engine program that I was in charge of and made note of the ones I rejected.

Porsche Racing Millstones. Great book for the racing buff.

“Those bad engines could cost us a race,” he said. “Great work.” He then asked me, “Do you still want to go on the road?”  “Yes,” I replied. He nodded and walked away.

By now it was December and we only worked for two weeks.  Before we closed for the holidays, Craig told me he wanted to use me during the nightshift, for the 24 Hours of Daytona race, at the beginning of the next season. I was ecstatic, but did not show it. Craig also mentioned “Adjust your sleep patterns.”

Race day came; I watched the beginning of the race and headed for the trailer to rest. I fell asleep and began having a dream: I was climbing over a fence.

*****

As my feet hit the ground, I am filled with total recall of that moment in my life. Craig was up on his platform, he told us our car would be coming in. The time was three a.m. As I sat waiting, the glare from the lights of the track and from the cars blinded my eyes. While the sounds of engines screaming in a torrent, penetrated my ear plugs. From that moment on it was a visual world of knowing what to look for and look out for.

No speed limits on pit road in those days, so the cars frequently came in at over 150 mph. Derek was driving and he was known to slam on the brakes and slide the Porsche 956 into the pits. Several other cars were coming in at the same time and Derek raced everyone down pit row. With the fuel line on my left shoulder, I closed my mask. As Derek hit the brakes, the car swerved into our pit, and I moved towards the wall. I put my right foot up on the wall and I looked down at the car, too close for the other team members to change left side tires, I landed in a small crevice of space, latched the hose to the car, signaled the tank operator and opened the valve, dumped fifty gallons of methanol in a few seconds. Signaled to close the tank, closed the valve on my end and leaped up horizontally with my back to the wall and, in one movement, cleared it. The other team members finished replacing right side tires, and Derek took off. It was seven point nine seconds of my life I will never forget. Craig gave me a thumbs up!

At that moment, my first time over the wall, I became a team member.

END

 © Copyright 2014  Artemis J Jones 

(c) Copyright & Revised 1/2015