The Tarnished Shooter

by Charles James

  The thing is—I never knew when the old man was going to blow his top. His tantrums seemed to get worse as I got older. To deal with the unknown I had to learn to tune in to my intuition and look for clues as to his state of mind. The way he walked, the way he looked, and the tone of his voice gave me clues as to what I could expect. I figured out when a good ass-chewing was coming because he would let out this big heavy sigh before starting in on me. I started zeroing in on more of his mannerisms and body language. When I noticed the aggressive signals, I realized something was going to go down and I had to quickly devise a plan of action to try and protect myself. But there was never anything I could do. Mostly I thought of the day when I would get even.

  When I became a master at figuring out his body language and mannerisms, I started analyzing everyone I met with the same intent. I looked for subconscious telltale signs that gave them away. I tuned into disguised negative comments directed toward me which automatically made my heart beat faster alerting me that the adrenaline had started to flow and I should prepare myself for a confrontation. I prided myself on my keen ability to see potential threats of bodily or emotional harm. My developing mind had hardwired itself for reaction to anything I perceived as threatening. I had a built-in radar system fine-tuned to the frequency of impending violence. Anyone who has been in a dangerous situation can identify with what I am saying here.

  ****

  On days when he came home from work crabby and found unwashed dishes on the countertop, he would extend his arm and with one powerful swipe send the whole stack of dishes crashing to the floor. He’d expect my mother or whoever was near to clean up the busted mess. Then he acted like nothing happened. In the warmer months when the windows were open, he yelled so loud the whole neighborhood knew when we were getting an ass-whipping or getting chewed out.

  Of course on the outside everything was played out to be like we were an all American family with nothing out of the ordinary going on. The old man was interested in city politics and knew plenty of people about town. He presented a squeaky clean image and ran for city council once or twice, but never got elected. Nobody—not even close relatives were privy to what was going on behind the closed doors of our house. The practice of a perfect cover-up had been in force for years. On another note he always made sure we had a roof over our heads and never cheated on my mother, or abandoned us, so in that respect I guess he figured he was doing his duties as a man.

  Many Saturdays and Sundays were eaten up on tool hunts. When one of my father’s tools was missing, it was up to me to organize a tool hunt. My brothers and I could spend an entire day combing the grass in the back and front yards on our hands and knees looking for lost tools. We must have looked silly while the neighbor kids played. All of us boys had to search for the missing tool until it was found, no excuses, no exceptions. Usually it was the younger ones who’d lost the tools, but I was always the one blamed and held responsible because I was the oldest and was supposed to be watching what they were doing. There were days when I could have hauled every last one of his tools down to the river and just thrown the whole stinking lot right into the drink; forever done with the damned tool hunts.

  It seemed like I had a battle to win every day. I navigated between the ever changing moods of a man who’d seemed destined to destroy my spirit, or at least test my mettle at every chance he had.

  Then on my thirteenth birthday, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my face resting in my hands, wondering if I was going to get anything for my birthday, when the old man walked into the kitchen. I immediately became tense. A tight feeling overcame my gut making me feel like I was going to vomit. For once, instead of yelling at me, or demanding I do something, he sent a silver dollar rolling across the table in my direction. I caught the big 1921 silver coin in my hand surprised. He said, “Happy birthday” and walked out the door. It was the first time he had given me anything that seemed special. Our birthdays always seemed like they were a pain-in-the-ass to my parents. To them our birthdays were just another day in the life of a stupid kid. So to get an actual present was a big deal.

  I showed the coin to a couple of my friends the next day. A few weeks later it just disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Even with the few good times I experienced, I couldn’t ever wrap my mind around the idea that my father actually liked me. If he did, he had a strange way of showing it. By the time I was nearing my fourteenth birthday, having endured a lifetime of haphazard beatings with a belt, unannounced slaps alongside the head and daily emotional abuse of derogatory and demeaning comments, I’d grown to hate almost everyone and especially him. I believed that most people were complete idiots. Mostly, I was an anxious and unhappy boy due to the petty things people would find to criticize or punish me for. Like an angry old dog, I thought about the day when I would finally growl and bite back looking for revenge and freedom from it all.

  Chapter 6

  To escape the madness of my home life, I loved to hike down the railroad tracks into the country. I’d purchased good quality hiking boots for the long walks using some of my hard earned money. I pretended I was one of those train hopping free spirits living off the fat of the land. Many days I was tempted to just keep on walking and never look back. I liked to look into the far distance, viewing the tracks as they narrowed into nothingness, always wondering where they led to. The railroad tracks were the only place I could think straight. There was nobody around telling me what to do except for an occasional do-gooder letting me know I was trespassing on railroad property. I dreamed of the day when I could follow those tracks to who knows where. I fantasized about disappearing from all the craziness of my world into another dimension—like on the TV show The Twilight Zone.

  ****

  Near the end of one summer, my father realized how much time I was spending down at the river fishing. For some reason he decided to buy me a brand new casting rod and reel. He got pissed when I didn’t catch any fish so one day I threw all my fishing gear in the river. I was all done fishing. If he wanted fish for dinner he’d have to catch it himself.

  Once summer ended things always got worse because a new school would begin and it wouldn’t take long before I was in trouble because my marks tanked. Every year they were only good enough to scrape by and get me to the next grade level. Having never developed good study habits, from seventh grade on, I failed just about every subject and quickly fell behind. Sometimes I scored so many failing grades my mother and aunt would change the grades on my report card in fear of another world war starting if my old man saw them. I took up playing the trumpet as a way to learn about music and I knew the old man liked Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, so I figured if I got good at that maybe he’d get off my back about other stuff. But that plan didn’t work either.

  All hell broke out if I brought home an F or a bunch of Ds. My mother always seemed to take some heat from the old man because of my disrespect and lack of enthusiasm for the learning institution. Mom never nagged any of us kids about school work. When my dad came home on report card day, he would sit at the kitchen table and study my grades with his magnifying glass and make a big deal out of it, asking me questions about why I got an “F” here and a “D” there. Maybe he was truly concerned about my education, but to me he only seemed to care when it got to be report card time. Then he had something to belittle me about. I never knew how to explain my failures. I just handled his KGB-like interrogation with a “Yes, sir, I’ll do better, just wait and see.” At times being under the gun about grades or schoolwork was more pressure than I could handle, and it caused all kinds of physical ailments imagined or otherwise.

  I wasn’t lazy or stupid. I just hated school. I think one of the reasons I failed most of my classes was because I was usually too anxious, or upset about something that had happened at home to pay attention to the teachers. At times teachers were nasty to me because I was quiet and didn’t interact in class. There were bullies that saw me as an easy target because of my i
ntroverted or meek behavior. I stayed quiet trying to avoid the attention of bullies and school yard idiots. If one whips a dog over and over in time it will become either angry or submissive. I hadn’t figured out yet when I was going to bite back. But I knew my days of being submissive were short. One day I recall a class clown throwing a handful of salt in my eyes. Yea, the whole fucking class laughed at that. The rage inside me was building bit by bit. It makes me think of the way buildings are built. They start with a foundation—then a frame—then a skin. I had a solid foundation of anger and rage, I had a framework built of bad memories, and I had a thick skin with a healthy tolerance for emotional and physical pain. I also knew some day my building would become overstressed and come crashing down on some unsuspecting fool.

  Most days I just daydreamed, doodling with my pencil and paper in my own private little world—dreaming of the day when I wouldn’t have to play such silly games. I went to school to put in my time, like I was serving a prison sentence. I waited impatiently for every bell to ring so I could get the fuck out. To sit in a classroom and listen to teachers talk about nouns and verbs bored me to death. I also hated sitting next to idiots who screamed for attention day after day with smart-aleck comments. Then the teachers wanted to call on me to answer some stupid question they’d asked that had no bearing on anything. It seemed more like they just wanted to see me screw up and humiliate myself, sending the class of attention seeking idiots into a laugh fest.

  If teachers had really wanted me to succeed they should’ve been more understanding of my needs instead of trying to be standup comedians at my expense.

  I always had to be thinking and staying one step ahead to avoid the consequences of pissing off Father and sparking his wicked temper. He might have been a closet psychopath because he could put on such a phony front and never seemed to have any empathy toward anyone. If one of us misbehaved when Father was gone Mom would go at us with a belt or a dishrag; she used whatever she had handy. At the same time she was delivering her licks she would scream, "You dirty rotten little pup! What the hell is the matter with you?" I don't know why she called us dirty rotten little pups, but those words I will never forget. Punishment came at me from all directions.

  I can still see her chasing me down and beating me with her belt screaming. “You just wait until your father gets home!” I think maybe she took it out on us kids because the old man took everything out on her. We lived in a vicious cycle of dysfunction, fear and abuse. I didn’t trust anyone. Our house should have been called, “The house of fear” because we all lived in fear, except for the master himself.

  We got lessons on the meaning of Latin words while we played chess or checkers. That was Fathers idea of helping us get smarter, or proving to us just how much smarter he was. Mostly we let all that nonsense fly in one ear and out the other, pretending to soak it up. I especially didn’t care about Latin words, German words, or what French lovers whispered in each other’s ear. I was having a hard enough time just figuring out how to get passing grades in the English language.

  When we didn’t have to spend our days learning games, or Latin, I liked to enjoy some of my Saturday or Sunday mornings on the carpeted floor building card houses from three or four decks of cards—pretending they were huge skyscrapers. I liked to experiment with different designs; I had a distant vision of being an electrical or structural engineer someday. In the back of my mind, I made it a life goal to learn engineering and earn a degree, along with all the other things I wanted to do. Of course I didn’t do well enough in school for anyone to take any of my goals or talents seriously. “Learn a trade.” they would say. “I don’t think you’re smart enough to be any kind of engineer, but I’ll bet you could swing a hammer pretty good. Do good work and everyone will seek you out.” It seemed to me like my life’s work and my future had already been hammered out by those who thought they knew more about me than I did. I guess if I could have learned and understood some of those Latin words I would have been smart enough to do just about anything.

  A good time for me was using my imagination and creating something from nothing; spending time alone building things out of Erector Sets™ or Lincoln Logs™ or drawing pictures of buildings or people. I was interested in any kind of creativity. I bought a fancy notebook downtown to draw and write about things and keep as a journal of all my science experiments. One day my father found out about the book and became infuriated, wanting to know why I had such a stupid thing. He said, “What kind of a man writes things in a little book.” The next day I threw the book in the trash and never again possessed anything again that would reveal my dreams or accomplishments. I learned to keep everything a secret, in an attempt to have some form of control.

  I developed severe stomach pains from the everyday fear, anxiety and uncertainty I experienced at home and at school. Nobody cared about that.

  PART 2

  Guns

  Chapter 7

  Stick’em up! The old man figured with my eyesight, I should be able to be a gunslinger in no time at all. All it would take is a little practice. Guns took a high priority in my early years. He demanded I shoot guns in the basement with him at least a couple times a week, if not nightly. I practiced shooting at targets with a 380 automatic and a 22-caliber single six pistol. I went to hunter’s safety school so I could get a certificate to hunt alone at the age of fourteen. At the hunter’s safety course held in an old recreation hall, I shot a 22-caliber rifle every week and received instruction on how to handle firearms safely. Ear protection was never mentioned, much less provided, at home. I frequently had ringing in my ears and many ear infections. Probably not all the infections were from the noise, but the shooting and ringing sure didn't help matters.

  At times it felt good to have a pistol in my hand and shoot at targets. There seemed to be such a sense of control and power holding a gun. When I got mad at my friends or they got mad at me they insinuated, “What are you going to do run home and get a gun?” Sometimes I’m surprised I never did get the urge back then to stick a pistol barrel in someone’s face and pull the trigger when pissed off, or rob banks and grocery stores. Maybe I should have packed a rod everywhere I went, or walked into the old man’s bedroom some night and opened fire on his mean ass. Bang!-Bang! “Pa, how is this for some shooting?” As much as I liked guns, I disliked them too because they were so loud and always hurt my ears, but I dare not complain lest I be labeled a sissy.

  The old man usually had a loaded 380 automatic in the glove box of Ma’s car and I was encouraged to use it if necessary, especially when we traveled to Chicago to visit my aunt. We were taught not to trust blacks or any other nonwhite race. When I thought of that pistol in the glove box, I imagined how it would feel to take it out and shoot someone who was bullying me. Bang!-Bang!-Bang! You’re dead.

  My father wanted his boys to be tough guys—he hated sissies and made it known every chance he got. He had taught Jack and me how to improvise and make extremely sharp knives out of steel mill files. Sometimes I spent all day in the garage workshop grinding and shaping an old flat file into a razor sharp knife, then fashioning a wooden handle for it. It was an attempt to please his image of what a macho young boy I could be.

  When it came to shooting guns, Les Barker couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, so I was the designated shooter in the family. He bought clay pigeons by the case and used one of those hand held throwers to send them into the air so I could blast them apart with a shotgun or rifle. I went with him to auctions where he had me inspect guns and tools that were up for grabs. I inspected gun after gun and after a while I could tell the difference between a piece of junk and a masterpiece of blued steel. If I steered the old man to the right gun he could get a bargain. Saturday-Night-Specials were everywhere. Those were the small cheap 32 caliber guns carried by criminals. I looked for better quality pistols that would shoot straight and retain value.

  I liked small game hunting by myself, but hated deer hunting with my father. When the dreaded dee
r hunting season came around, I had to use a 44-40 Winchester rifle he’d picked up at one of the taverns he frequented. The rifle was big, loud and it kicked like a mule. I hated shooting it. A fucking cannon it was.

  Our three person hunting party was made up of one of my father's friends, my father and me. We were up by four-thirty in the morning and to the hunting site by the crack of dawn. My father bought a box of M-80 firecrackers, sometimes referred to as “ashcans,” to set off as he walked ahead of me through the woods. Using those firecrackers was illegal, but he didn’t give a shit. He taught me that most laws were meant to be broken because they were made by idiots who had no common sense. The object of using the ashcans was to scare deer out of hiding without having to waste ammunition, driving them out into the open, into my sights, or the sights of other hunters waiting at the edge of the woods.

  The woods we hunted were thick with under-brush and tamaracks making it almost impossible for me to walk while wearing oversized winter clothes and toting that big heavy rifle. It was freezing cold. Like most youngsters my fingers and my toes were cold. My nose was running, and I sniffled with an irritating rhythm that pissed the old man off. He was badgering me about the nose sniffling—breaking my concentration when I caught my foot in the underbrush, falling flat on my face—landing right on top of the rifle. I almost broke my nose on the barrel. Instead of rushing over to see if I was okay, he looked down at me and growled, "If you do that one more time I’m going to take that rifle and wrap it around your God damned neck!"