Calamity in America (6 page)

Next I had her put on the ear muffs and then load the gun.   She got into a good shooting form, aimed, and shot the gun.  I watched the pistol jump in her hand.  She got a determined look on her face and shot the gun two times then carefully laid the gun down on the bench pointing away from both of us.  Then we walked up and looked at her target.  There were three holes with a fair space between them. 

“That is excellent for a first time.”

“But look how far apart they are!”

I marked the three holes by sticking a piece of grass in each one so we could distinguish the first three from the next three.  We walked back and she again shot three shots before ejecting the empty shells and then laying the gun down again.  We looked and this set of three holes was closer together.  Beth smiled.

She shot the remainder of the partial box of ammunition that I had brought out with us.  Before she shot it all she asked me if I had more.  Only when I said yes did she shoot all of what was in that box. 

We went back in the house and I showed Beth how to clean all the guns.  I also briefly showed her the remaining guns and how they functioned.

“Do you have a holster for my pistol?”

“Your pistol?”

“Yes.  Do you have a holster for it?”

“Yes, I think I have a couple that will work for that one.  Let’s take a look.”

I rummaged around in the drawer that contained several holsters.  I pulled out four that I thought might work for the small gun.  One was too big and I put it back in the drawer.  The others would work.  She looked them over and tried the gun in each and finally picked one of them.

“I am going to carry this all the time now.”

“After what we saw today that is likely a very good idea.  Even though we are in the country we are still only a very short distance from the city.  That quarter of a million people in the city might just spread out some and could easily engulf us out here.  I guess I will start packing a gun too.  I felt so totally helpless today.  I will not put myself in that position again.”

I picked up one of the holsters and threaded it on my belt.  Then I took the revolver that the holster was designed for and dropped it in the holster.  We went over to another cabinet and I took out a box of ammunition for each of our revolvers.  We each turned in opposite directions and loaded the guns before putting them back in their respective holsters.  We would both be packing guns from now on.

It turned out that we made that decision to carry a gun just in time.  Just the following day both Beth and I were working in the garden when a man roughly our age drove into the yard.  I guess I was still pretty spooked from the previous day and I slipped the leather thong off the hammer of my revolver that normally held it in the holster before his car even came to a stop.  I started walking over to the man as he shut off the car and got out.

I barely noticed that Beth was walking that direction also.  She was off to one side of me, smart girl.

“What do want?”

“You sure don’t seem very neighborly.  I just wanted to see if I could buy some food.”

He was talking to me but he was staring at Beth.  I didn’t like it.

“We have nothing to sell here.  Get back in your car and leave.”

He had a pistol in a holster on his hip but I could see the strap that held it in place appeared to be snapped down.  He would not be drawing it very fast.

“You are just not neighborly at all.  We could just talk for a bit.  I’m already tired of driving.”

When he said that he stretched and when he brought his arms down his right hand moved around behind his back.  And his eyes were now shifting between Beth and me.  I did not like it at all.

“Get back in the car now or you will be fertilizer.  And I mean now.”

He was pretty fast.  His right arm moved a little farther behind his back and then came whipping back out it was holding a black pistol.  When I was a teenager I had carried this revolver everyday when I was home after my dad gave it to me.  And I had practiced drawing this gun well over a thousand times just like I saw them do on the TV.  Though I had seldom carried it now for several years the old muscle memory was still there.

His pistol had still not swung far enough to point near me when my two shots rang out that almost sounded as one.  The old single action I had was way heavier than the new mostly plastic automatics that were commonly seen now days and was what this low life had hidden behind his back.  He would never draw that gun again.

The two heavy slow bullets threw the man back against the side of his car and he slowly slid down to the ground.  The black pistol slid from his hand and fell to the ground.  I took a quick look at Beth and she had her hand on her pistol but had not drawn it from the holster.  She had a shocked look on her face.  I took another look at the man on the ground and then walked over to Beth.

“Are you OK?”

When I got no response I took her shoulders and turned her away from the man on the ground so she was looking at me.

“Are you OK?”

“I’m OK.  It happened so fast.  You shot him.  So fast.  And he had a hidden gun.”

“He was fixing to shoot me.”

“You were so fast.  You saved us.”

“You should go back in the house.  There is no reason for you to see this.”

She stood up straighter, looked back at the man on the ground and then back at me.

“No, I do need to see this I think.  If this happened once it will likely happen again.  I have to toughen up.  I have to be able to handle things myself.  What are we going to do now?  Should I call the police?”

“I think I will just bury him.  I really doubt the police will come out here but we will call them first before we do anything else.”

I went over and kicked the man like I had seen that policeman do just yesterday.  This one was quite dead.  I took Beth by the hand and led her back in to the house where I tried to call the police.  Nine one one did not work.  So I looked up the Sheriff’s department phone number in the phone book and called that one.  It rang many times before someone finally answered the call.

I told them what happened and the woman asked if any bad guys were still alive.  When I said no she said ‘then you don’t need us do you’.  I asked what I should do and she said that it would be best if I buried the body because the carcasses could cause trouble if they weren’t buried.  Then remarkably she just hung up on me!

Apparently things were pretty bad all over the county besides just in the city.  I told Beth about the conversation I just had.  She had heard my side of the exchange.

“I guess we just bury him then, huh?”

“Well, I will bury him.  You can go back to the garden work.”

“Oh I get to do the woman’s work?”

“Yes er no.  I just thought you would not want to be around a dead body.”

“I don’t and I will just work in the garden unless you need me.”

I will never be able to figure out women.  I turned to go out and take care of the body when Beth grabbed me and hugged me for a long time.  I don’t think she was crying but it must have been close.

As I walked back out I remembered to reload my revolver.

Chapter 8

I walked out to the dead guy I had killed.  When I got there and looked down at him lying on the ground I felt a little light headed and had to lean against the car for a bit until it passed.  I had shot many different critters in my life but I guess shooting a person is a little different.

After a short while I got down to business.  I knelt by the man and removed his belt to retrieve the holstered pistol on his hip.  I also went through his pockets and removed everything in them.  I threw everything onto the seat of his car including the black pistol lying next to him and his belt.

I grabbed hold of his foot and started dragging him back down the road.  He was tougher to drag than a dead deer.  I moved him maybe hundred and fifty yards and thought that was far enough. 

I left him and went back to get a shovel.  I actually came back with a shovel and the old rototiller.  I started the tiller and tilled a patch in the ditch along the dirt road.  Then I started shoveling it out.  The grave was not three foot wide and six foot deep when I was done and rolled him into it.  The grave I dug was only a foot and half wide and maybe two or so deep and just barely long enough for the body to fit. 

When I rolled him in he fit good enough and I filled it over much faster than I had dug it.  I tramped it down with my boots and called it good.  Next I went back and put both the tiller and the shovel back in the shed where I had got them from.

The keys were in the ignition so I drove the man’s car around back and parked it out of the way along side one of the sheds.  There was quite a lot of gear and stuff in the car; both on the seats and in the trunk.  I put what was useful in the shed and the food, guns and ammunition, and a few other things into the house. 

Putting the stuff away gave me a couple minutes to think and started the car again and drove it part way down the driveway and left it there.  It would block the drive so the next car could not drive right up to the house.  Then I went out to the garden and started to help Beth with the garden work.  Neither of us spoke while we were working.

I think it took both of us a couple days to get over the killing.  The car sitting there was a constant reminder.  But both of us always carried our guns with us all the time now and we were both thankful for having them when that man stopped. 

We took a walk through the country side each of those days to supposedly forage for added food but we both just needed to get out and let nature calm us and get us back on track.  The long walks helped us both I think.  I know they helped me.

We often held hands when were walking.  It was the same when we sat on the porch side by side in the evenings watching the sun set and the stars come out. 

One day I did some looking around in the house for something and that evening when we were sitting on the porch I got down on one knee and asked Beth if she would marry me.

She pulled me up, kissed me, and held me tight when she said yes.  I got my Grandma’s ring out of my pocket that I had finally located and it fit reasonably well on Beth’s finger.

We talked about a wedding but in light of the situation we decided to just go into the city and see if we could be married at the courthouse.  If it was even still open.  Neither of us saw any reason to wait.  We knew we wanted to be married and we left the next morning in Beth’s car. 

We had each put on clean ‘town’ clothes but neither of us was dressed up at all.  We also each were wearing a revolver on our hips.  This would be something like an old fashioned shotgun wedding I guess.

I was very cautious as we drove into the city.  I wanted no problems like we had on the last trip.  I drove directly to the courthouse and was very relieved to find it open.  We both walked in after locking the car and we found very few people inside but when we inquired about getting married we were directed to someone who could help us. 

We got the marriage license but to be married we needed two witnesses.  Luckily two of the employees were nice enough to sign as witnesses.  It all took very little time and we were soon walking out as man and wife.  I kissed the bride a few times for practice.

While there we asked about whether any grocery stores were still open and we were directed to two that still were open for business on our side of the city.  Though we could get by without buying anything I felt that as long as we were here we should pick up whatever we could.  Because I thought we should shop I had brought a fair amount of cash in with me.

I drove to the closer of the two grocery stores and I parked in the mostly empty parking lot.  There was nothing in the car to steal so we left it unlocked when we went inside.

The store was open and had merchandise but it would be fair to say the shelves were way more than half bare.  The prices were higher than I remembered but not way out of line.  There were also two armed guards near the single checkout that was open.  The guards were armed with both handguns and long guns.  I had Beth take a cart too besides the one I started pushing.

We started going up and down every isle.  We bought a lot of paper products but skipped most of the canned vegetables though I did grab a large amount of the canned meats.  Pasta, rice, flour, sugar, spices, a lot of salt; things we could not grow or make at the farm and would keep a long time.  Though we could make soap we bought a large supply.  Also things like vitamins, toothbrushes and toothpaste; we tried to think of everything and we heaped up the carts to overflowing.

“You sure you have enough money for all this stuff?”

“Of course.  You did not marry a deadbeat husband you know.”

When we got to the checkout the man there showed his surprise at the load we brought up.  While I was piling our stuff on the counter Beth went over and grabbed three carts to make it easier to put the stuff in after it was rang up.  One of the guards walked over closer just in case we tried something with all this stuff.  Both Beth and I added a few more things from all the stuff near the checkout.  When the clerk had the final total I pulled out the cash and paid the bill without a problem. 

I took two carts and Beth took the other one and we headed for the door.  One of the guards said he would walk us out to our car and stay while we loaded.  Something that I appreciated.  But we loaded up with no problems and I handed the guard a few dollars for a tip.  He even took all three carts back inside the store for us.  The load filled the little car of Beth’s very full but we had no more stops and drove directly home without mishap.

At home we unloaded all the stuff and found room for everything. 

“Where did you get all that money?”

“Though my folks were fairly poor I have been living a life that required very little cash out lay.  I have always mostly eaten stuff from the farm or nearby areas.  I seldom ever bought anything new and only bought stuff I needed.  At the same time I worked out all week long every week and often worked out on my own on weekends.  So I made a fair amount of money.  I just kept tucking the money away so I would have it when I needed it.  Like today for instance.  Let me show you.”