Guns [John Hardin 01]

by Phil Bowie

  He took it back to the clearing day after day and fired it at cans and dead trees. It was startlingly loud and had a kick that jolted his whole arm. The fat slugs could inflict heavy damage on a tree stump. He fired first for accuracy at ranges from ten feet to a hundred feet, then for speed, not using anything to protect his eardrums, getting used to the noise and the recoil, squeezing the trigger for each shot. He learned to reload quickly with the spare magazine, doing it over and over. He carried it with a round in the chamber, the hammer back and the safety on—what they called cocked and locked—and drew and fired, drew and fired, until his hand was sore from it.

  He and the old man devised a training run. Wasituna got a stock of plastic gallon and half-gallon jugs from a recycling center. The Indian first went out and placed a dozen or more water-filled jugs along both sides of a particularly rugged stretch of trail. Hardin ran the trail, drawing and firing when he spotted the first jug, moving on and firing when he saw the next, and so on. Wasituna was creative with the placement, using tree forks, swinging some from ropes, partially hiding others behind rocks, putting two close together, varying the range, and keeping careful score of hits, which were few at first but gradually increased until Hardin was getting frequent hits almost instinctively. He kept the gun meticulously clean and it never failed to fire, never jammed. He could see why the Colt had remained in service for so long and had been praised by so many servicemen over those decades. Wasituna had to go back to the gun shop for more cartridges.

  One day Wasituna took him hunting with only his best blowgun, a seven-foot length of dried river cane that he had hollowed with care, smoothing the bore until it was slick and true. The darts were sharp six-inch slivers of locust feathered with thistledown. “Too much feathering and the dart will drag in the tube,” the old man said. “Too little and it will not fly straight or far.” It was an ancient simple weapon, but not easy to make with precision. In the old man’s hands it was virtually silent and absolutely deadly to small game. Hardin watched him stalk, flush, and, incredibly, kill a loping rabbit with it. Hardin tried the blowgun but could not control the accuracy. He realized it must have taken the Indian many years to become so adept with it.

  That night Wasituna prepared a savory stew with the meat, fresh vegetables, and a concoction of herbs, then they sat in front of the fire while Hardin told him of his killing plan.

  Wasituna listened intently and made several suggestions and refinements.

  Hardin’s body was rapidly toughening and strengthening, no traces of fat on his frame now, as he maintained and some days increased his workouts, driving himself hard while he tried to cleanse his mind of every last distracting thought.

  But there were still doubts. “I don’t have any special fighting skills,” he told Wasituna one night. “I’ve never been in the service or trained in martial arts.”

  “How do you think these men you go after fight? It took two or three of them to come after you, and in the end they failed. They think you’re dead. When you go at them one at a time with surprise on your side and the killing-will strong in you they will be dead men. It will not be a contest with rules where skill is matched against skill. You track each one, surprise him, and kill him. You go at them as coldly as they came at you. They will see a dead man coming for them with ice eyes and they will know fear. I’ve watched you, I’ve seen inside you, and I know you can do this. You must have no more doubt. Doubt can cripple you.”

  Wasituna spent hours telling him stories about the feats of great Cherokee warriors, of how, when threatened by the Creeks or others, the seven clans gathered and went on a war footing with a war chief, and how on nights before battles the warriors painted themselves, put on head, arm, and leg bands of otter skin, danced the brave dance near the fires, and sang the war song, so preparing their minds and setting loose the killing-will.

  Wasituna said, “Their weapons were round stones lashed with rawhide in the forks of sycamore sticks, sharpened stone battle-axes, bows of shaped and smoothed hickory soaked in bear oil and seasoned by fire. They had cane arrows tipped with flint and made to fly true with the help of the sacred eagle feathers, and flint-tipped spears, and slings, and flint knives.” In the light from the fireplace his storytelling was hypnotic.

  Gazing into the hickory fire Hardin could easily imagine the fighting that raged through the forest and witness the individual violent clashes and hear the atavistic war cries. He knew Wasituna was using the stories to help prepare him for the coming trials.

  Early on a sunny Saturday morning in the unusually warm winter, seven weeks after he had come to stay with the old man, in the foothills southeast of Boone, he found a skydiving school operated as a sideline business by an ex-Airborne man and his wife, Elwood and Francine Osborne. The tattooed Elwood piloted the jump plane—a ragged-looking Cessna 182 with its right door and right front passenger seat removed—and also taught chute packing and free-fall techniques. Francine was a lithe athletic brunette who had competed successfully nationwide in skydiving events and was the more articulate of the two, teaching an informal ground school on the sport. Her trophies filled a shelf in the office of their old barn that served as a hangar, rigging loft, and clubhouse beside the 2,500-foot grass strip that was flanked by large grassy fields.

  There were three other student jumpers there that morning—a nervous, smiling young couple from States-ville and a balding middle-aged man who looked like a minister.

  The Osbornes spent the morning teaching the components and functioning of the sport parachute—the rectangular canopy that by directionally spilling air produces forward speed and is controlled by pulling wooden toggles mounted on the risers. They went over the fine points of the harness, shroud lines, back pack, and small tightly-packed reserve chute. They explained how the sport rig is operated by pulling the ripcord from its pocket on the chest harness, which pops the spring-loaded pilot chute that serves as an air anchor, dragging a deployment bag out of the pack. The shroud lines trail out followed by the pilot chute, pulling the canopy free from the deployment bag.

  The student would be expected to steer the canopy to land as close as possible to the target, which was two white strips of canvas laid out in a cross three hundred feet from the barn. As the ground drew close the jumper would clamp his or her legs together, slightly bend the knees, and pull both toggles all the way down to knee level, which, if timed correctly, would momentarily reduce the rate of descent enough to allow an easy stand-up landing.

  They all watched Elwood pack one of the orange-and-white canopies they would use. With a chalk board Francine outlined the various kinds of emergencies that could occur and went over how to handle each of them. Each student would be directed during the jump with the aid of a small helmet-mounted radio receiver.

  In turn they practiced exiting the jump plane while it was parked on the brown grass, pivoting out the doorway to place the left foot on a short length of two-by-four clamped to the gear strut, the right leg hanging free, gripping the angled wing strut with both hands. On a signal and radioed voice command the jumper would push off backward, arch the back as much as possible, and spread-eagle.

  Since the belly would be the center of gravity, the jumper would pivot forward to fall flat, chest-first, in the stable position, and the static line attached to a seat belt bracket inside the plane would do the work of opening the chute while the student pulled a dummy ripcord from a harness pocket. The chromed handle had a bright red kerchief tied to it so the instructor, watching from the plane above, could see that the student had actually torn it out and not just a patch of shirt front.

  “Above all else you need to protect the reserve ripcord handle,” Francine told them. “If it should snag on anything and open the chute accidentally inside the plane, the canopy will very probably stream out the door and take you and a good chunk of the fuselage with it. Not a happy thought.”

  The couple elected to go in the second load, so Hardin and the other man dressed in baggy jump suits a
nd soft-soled boots, readying themselves for the first load. Hardin’s much-used helmet was too tight and the boots were too loose. The scratched goggles turned the world yellow. Elwood cinched up the bulky backpack chute harness tightly and said, “You don’t want no slack in the rig or you’ll think it jerked a knot in you when it opens.”

  Hardin lumbered to the plane feeling like a trussed turkey. The other man sat on the back seat beside Francine, and Hardin sat on the floor where the passenger seat had been, facing backward, wondering how he was going to athletically swing out the doorway to grab the wing strut and face forward into the wind.

  Elwood climbed into the left seat and fired up the old Cessna. At the end of the grass strip Elwood did a run-up and then pushed the throttle to the panel. The engine bellowed and they jounced over the uneven strip, the wind blasting in the doorway. The ground fell away and they climbed into the chilly blue day, bounding slightly on mild currents.

  At 3,000 feet above the rolling ground the view of the nearby mountains was spectacular on this bright day decorated with only widely scattered cumulus clouds. Elwood lined the plane up and made a pass over the target. The merest wisp of a cloud whipped past the open doorway. When the white cross was directly below, Francine tossed out a paper streamer, weighted to fall at about the same speed as a jumper. She watched how far it drifted downwind to land at the edge of a tree line as Elwood banked around in a wide circle. She would adjust the jump point an equal distance upwind. The theory was that the jumper would then drift back with the breeze to land somewhere near the target cross.

  Francine was smiling at him behind her goggles while his heart rate climbed to what felt like machine-gun frequency and Elwood lined the plane up for the jump run. At a hand signal from Francine, Elwood reduced the power and the plane began to mush, the wind blast past the doorway diminishing somewhat. “Okay, John,” she said over the helmet radio, giving him a thumbs up. “Out you go onto the step.”

  His heart hammering and his breathing rapid and shallow, he swiveled sideways, put his left foot out onto the step, grabbed the strut with his left hand, said, “Well, what the hell,” to himself, and lurched out to grab onto the strut with his right hand. The wind blast was fierce, pressing the goggles tight to his face, the baggy jump suit whipping like a flag in a gale, the plane bounding gently, the prop a gray blur three feet in front of him. He looked down over the strut. Abruptly all the fear drained away and he felt a totally unexpected exultation, a wild sense of freedom.

  Francine was looking below, waiting for the exit point to come up, holding her hand spread. Then she looked at him, nodded, and said over the scratchy radio, “Okay, John, push back and spread eagle. NOW.” She pointed downward.

  He pushed off strongly, arching his back, his arms and legs flung out wide, and he caught a glimpse of the plane receding like a big startled bird. His arched body pivoted forward until he was falling prone. The fall was brief and he felt the jerk of the opening and looked up to see the big gaily-colored rectangle billowing out. He swung twice and then settled down, all the wind and loud plane noise gone now, the ride soft and silent.

  He was aware of the far-off drone of the Cessna above, and sounds wafted to him from below—a truck chugging up a hill several miles away, a dog barking, a crow calling sharply. Nothing far down under his boot toes but the soft green countryside. He reached up and got hold of the small wooden toggles and tried a turn to the right, the chute responding instantly and surely. It felt more like floating than descending, but as the ground drew closer he seemed to be falling faster. That was illusion, he knew. He tried to stay upwind of the target until the last hundred or so feet, then he turned for it. Francine, watching from the plane above, told him over the radio to turn back into the wind and get ready to land. He made the turn, still 50 feet up, brought his legs together, and pulled both toggles down to his knees.

  It was as though he had put on brakes. The rate of descent declined sharply, and he touched down lightly about 75 feet shy of the target cross, stumbling only slightly before he regained his balance, the chute collapsing in a gaudy billow beside him. The young couple waved excitedly from near the barn, and he gave them two thumbs up. He looked up to see the other student descending under a good canopy, then gathered his canopy in a big loose bundle and walked to the barn.

  Over the next three weeks he made seven jumps at the strip, the last a 30-second stable freefall before he pulled his ripcord, with a landing ten feet from the center of the cross. Francine and Elwood told him he was one of the fastest-learning students they’d had in some time. They invited him to join their club and attend the next of their evening meetings, but he didn’t go back.

  One night by the fireplace he told Wasituna he was ready.

  “You’ll leave tomorrow?” the old man said.

  “Yes. Early. Thank you for all your help. If it goes well I’ll be back to see you one day.”

  “You’ll be in my thoughts,” Wasituna said, and looked into the flames.

  23

  WALTER CALZO LIVED IN A NARROW TWO-STORY DUPLEX apartment on a street lined with other nearly identical shoulder-to-shoulder duplexes in Newark not far off of I-95. The address had been right there in the phone book. Late one cold afternoon, Hardin began watching the apartment from a block away in the only parking slot he could find for his car. There was little activity on the street apart from the continual sparse traffic. Two teenage boys flashed past on rollerblades, not looking to either side, weaving expertly, expressions intent. A siren wailed in the distance. An aged couple walked by, bundled in rags, the man pushing a rusted shopping cart that had one wobbling wheel and was half filled with aluminum cans.

  Just after dark a cab stopped down the street and a heavy woman dressed in a brown overcoat and with a scarf tied over her hair got out and moved slowly up the steps to the Calzo apartment. She carried a bulging shopping bag and used the step railing to help pull her bulk upward. She used a key to go inside.

  At seven-thirty a man lumbered down the apartment steps, looked up and down the street, and stood waiting in the down-glow of a streetlight with his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, his breath pluming in the cold night air. It was Calzo.

  Within five minutes a white Mercedes with heavily tinted windows stopped and Calzo got into the back seat. The car moved off briskly.

  Hardin followed in his old dark blue Camry, staying at least a block back. There was enough other traffic so he believed he wouldn’t be noticed easily. The Mercedes took a right turn on a main thoroughfare where the traffic was much heavier, then kept straight for a dozen blocks. It took a left on a side street and after three more blocks it slowed and pulled into the parking lot of a place called the Little Italy Lounge. Hardin drove on by slowly and stopped at the next intersection at a red light. He canted his rearview mirror and saw three men get out of the Mercedes and walk toward the canopied lounge entrance.

  He found a parking slot in the next block and backed into it to wait. At eleven-fifteen the three men came out of the lounge and drove away in the Mercedes. Hardin started the cold Camry and drove back to his motel.

  He watched Calzo carefully for the next two days. The big man seemed to have no particular schedule and no job. He drove his own car, a late-model green Trans Am that was garaged out behind his duplex apartment, to some kind of meeting in a house out in a suburb, went into a barred-and glass-fronted pawn shop on a Newark back street where he angrily harangued the owner for fifteen minutes, the owner obviously cowed, worried, and anxious to please.

  He made several brief stops at small Newark businesses ranging from a butcher shop to a hardware store, spent two afternoon hours in a pool hall, and returned to the Little Italy Lounge on the second night, riding in the same white Mercedes, this time with only the driver.

  Hardin considered attacking Calzo in the lot of the Little Italy Lounge or outside his house, but there were always too many people nearby. Breaking into the man’s home was out because of the wife.
He needed to find out more about Calzo. His habits. His haunts.

  Late the next afternoon Calzo wheeled a square green trash container out to the curb. There were several other similar containers curbside along the street. An hour later, as dusk was falling, Calzo and his wife left in the green Trans Am.

  Hardin drove three blocks away and parked near an alleyway where two derelicts were sharing a bottle of wine on the steps of a run-down rooming house. He offered one of the men ten dollars to swap his tattered camo jacket and dirty red ball cap for Hardin’s new heavy windbreaker.

  “Hey, sure thing, Sarge,” the man said. “Listen, you make it twenty you can have the pants, too.”

  “Just the jacket and cap, thanks.”

  As he walked away he heard one of the men say to the other, “You sit anywhere in this freakin’ city long enough you’ll see one of every freakin’ kind, you know?”

  Dressed in the jacket and cap and affecting a slight limp he walked down Calzo’s street. He picked up a plastic bag from one of the trash containers and half filled it with rags and cans to give it some bulk. He poked through two more containers before he came to Calzo’s container.