by Joe Russell
Chapter 16
Middletown, Virginia. November, three years earlier.
Dave laid stretched out on the hammock in his backyard. Sandra often teased him that he had a hard time relaxing the way that normal people did. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy it or even that he didn't do it, but he couldn’t sit still for long. Watching a movie was about as long as he could stand to sit in one place and not do anything, and no matter how appealing the thought of relaxing and doing nothing appeared to him ahead of time, he couldn’t just sit and watch tv or do nothing for long before he had to get up and do something. He liked to tinker with his gear, take walks, even just sit and think or meditate or pray, but he was doing something. Today however, he was making unusually remarkable progress doing nothing in his hammock.
The hammock was stretched between two walnut trees in the backyard. There was an outdoor table sitting beside it with a half-empty bottle of cold beer and empty bowl, formerly containing Sandra’s awesome chili. Max, their German and Australian Shepherd mix, lay contentedly underneath. Dave let his hand fall and scratch his furry companion behind the ears, much to Max’s delight. It was late November and Dave had taken a few days off work to bolster his Thanksgiving holiday. Despite the time of year, it was almost seventy degrees outside and sunny, unseasonably pleasant but not really rare for Northwestern Virginia. He had spent most of the day working around the house, taking advantage of the warmth. He had split a good deal of firewood that he and his dad had cut earlier that year, raked leaves away from the house, and taken care of some other chores that were much more enjoyable than working his day job. It was now close to three in the afternoon and Dave had decided to stop early and relax in the traditional sense for a change.
Dave took another sip of his beer and closed his eyes, enjoying the sun on his face. He drifted into a state of semi-consciousness where one knows they are falling asleep, just before the thoughts take off randomly into the subconscious and sleep takes over. Sometime later, he didn’t know when, he awoke and at that time, realized that he had fallen asleep and was a little bit surprised. He looked at the sun and figured that he hadn’t been out for too long. Less than an hour, he thought. He looked around him and noticed that Max was gone. Usually when Dave was outside, Max was there beside him as reliably as his own shadow, but Dave supposed that he could have gotten hungry or heard an animal in the woods.
Dave reluctantly sat up and slowly climbed out of the hammock, stretching dramatically as he did. He didn’t want to get up, but also didn’t want to lay awake half the night, either. He was naturally a morning person and enjoyed getting up and getting things done earlier than most, but didn’t do well when lacking sleep. He moved stiffly around one of the walnut trees to the other side of the hammock where he collected his bowl in one hand and his beer in the other, finishing it off in one long pull. From there, he began making his way back toward the house.
Once in the kitchen, he rinsed his bowl out in the sink and placed it upside down in the dishwasher, then tossed his bottle lightly into the recycling. Straightening up and indulging in one more satisfying stretch, he looked out the window to see Max laying in the driveway. That’s weird, Dave thought to himself. Dogs certainly could make themselves comfortable anywhere, but Max was a creature of habit and Dave had never seen him lay there before. A little anxious, Dave left the kitchen and went out to the front porch. When he called Max’s name, the dog gave no indication that he had heard, which was even more unusual.
Scared, Dave left the front porch and began up the driveway toward the road. His heart sank when he got close enough to see Max’s face. About twenty feet from where the driveway met the road, Max lay, barely alive. His eyes were open, regarding Dave sadly and weakly. Blood trickled out of both nostrils and onto the gravel below. Dave rushed to his side, dropping to his knees. The gravel cut into his exposed skin, but he didn’t notice. He began to pet his companion of many years, same as he always had, but this time, with a purpose. He knew the loyal dog wouldn’t make it and Dave just wanted to comfort him in his final moments. Max seemed to know this as well. He wasn't struggling to move and although melancholy, seemed to enjoy his final moments with his human. His tail thumped weakly on the driveway as Dave scratched behind his ears and Dave smiled, just a little bit. Then, his tail went still and Max looked Dave in the eye for a long moment, before taking his last breath and resting his head gently on the ground. Dave’s hand became still, but remained on the dog’s neck. He hung his head, eyes closed in grief and a tear dropped from his cheek, mixing with Max’s blood on the cold gravel.
✽ ✽ ✽
She didn’t know how long they had been like that and she didn’t ask Dave, but that was how Sandra found the two sometime later, when she arrived home from work that evening. Dave was seated on the driveway beside his fallen companion and Sandra could tell what had happened as she approached. Not wanting to park on the edge of the road, she pulled onto the grass where their driveway ended and around Dave, parking behind them on the driveway. She got out and came to Dave’s side, not speaking at first, but placing a hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. During their years together, she had learned to love Max, but having rescued him as a stray when he was little more than a puppy, she knew Dave had more of a bond with the canine than she ever did. After a minute, Dave looked up at her. She could see that he had been crying, but his face was still now. In his eyes she saw sorrow, undoubtedly for the loss of his friend, but there was something else, too.
Dave stood slowly, and Sandra embraced him. They stood like that for a long while before Sandra finally broke the silence, speaking for the first time since she had arrived home.
“Do you know what happened?” she asked.
“I have a pretty good idea,” Dave responded, a hint of bitterness in his otherwise soft words. He pointed to the driveway in front of them. “See those ruts?”
Sandra turned and followed his finger. “Yeah.”
“It looks like someone pulled in here, then accelerated really hard. Look, there’s some loose gravel out in the road. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there before.”
“There is another set of ruts here,” Sandra replied, looking down, a little closer to where they stood.
“Yeah, but those are in the opposite direction, like someone was backing out in a hurry.”
“Has UPS of FedEx come today? Maybe they did this by accident.”
Dave shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said, then paused. “But I don’t think it was the mail truck,” He paused again, then continued softly with the dark bitterness in his voice rising a notch, “and I don’t think it was an accident.”
Chapter 17
Middletown, Virginia. January, two years earlier.
Sandra and Dave had buried Max the same evening he had been killed. They chose a spot in the backyard near the hammock, partially because it was a good spot for a grave and partially because the dog had seemed to enjoy spending time there in life. Being just the two of them, it was not a drawn-out thing like a human’s funeral, where the family attends and nice words are spoken in honor of the deceased to comfort those affected by the loss. It was a simple affair, but the emotion was there, and it was especially difficult for Dave to heap the first shovelful of dirt onto his late companion.
After some thought and deliberation, the couple decided to notify the Sheriff’s Department of what had happened. With no concrete evidence that Max’s death was a deliberate murder, much less committed by a certain person, Dave had no expectation that it would directly lead to an arrest. The main reason he had wanted to do it was that he feared that Larry or one of his kin had found out where Dave lived, and had murdered Max as retribution for whatever bullshit offense they thought he had committed against them in the last three months. Of course, Dave saw it as pretty much the exact opposite, that Larry’s now-deceased partners-in-crime got what they had coming to them by the actions they’d chosen to partake in, and Larry was lucky that he’d neither been kil
led as well, nor received anything more than a slap on the wrist by the justice system. It’s not that Dave necessarily thought that any of them deserved to die for what they had done, but that the position they had put Dave and his grandparents in, not only justified but left them no practical choice, but to resort to the use of lethal force in self-defense. In other words, they reaped what they had sown, and Dave felt no remorse for doing what he had done to protect himself and his people. He regretted that it had to happen the way it had, but fortunately, never lost any sleep over what he had done because he knew in his soul that he had only reacted to the wicked actions of others who had forced his hand, and that hand was clean.
It was this feeling of wrongdoing on the part of Larry and his family that made him so upset, especially in light of what had just happened to Max. He knew many people couldn't understand, but he was completely unable to sympathize with this family, even for the two that had died. The thought of those men following his grandparents home, planning ahead of time to threaten, beat, or possibly even kill them just to get high made his blood boil, but at least those two had paid for it with their lives. What really made Dave angry was the fact that Larry and his family not only blamed Dave for the two mens’ deaths, but had the nerve to continue this feud over it as if they were the victims. Dave certainly understood their need to grieve for their late family members, but felt with unfaltering conviction that they needed to recognize who was to blame in all this and not target himself and his family, just because they were the ones who had walked away from the conflict. Mourn your dead all you want to, he thought, but blame the guilty. Just because someone is dead, doesn’t mean their guilt should be transferred to someone else, especially their would-be victims. And when he had found out what had happened in the bathroom between the two mothers, he’d been infuriated for this exact reason. Sure, she had every right to grieve the loss of her son, but didn’t she realize why he was there? How dare she blame his family, much less make hostile actions against them? Dave was glad that the confrontation had gone the way it had, that Larry’s mother got what she had coming to her without his own mother getting hurt or getting in trouble, but part of him wished his mother would have beat the shit of that bitch, just for the nerve of what she had done. The phrase ‘you can’t fix stupid’ didn’t even begin to cover how Dave felt about these people. Dave felt like if anyone had the right to want vengeance, it was him because his side hadn’t done anything wrong. Yeah, two of them were dead and one hurt, but fuck them. They asked for it. All Dave wanted was to be left alone, but if they were going to keep bringing the fight to him, he was going to give them hell.
Now, to make matters worse, these people, instead of letting it go and recognizing that they should be the ones afraid of Dave taking physical or legal vengeance on them, had escalated the conflict by coming to his house and murdering his dog. He didn’t have any evidence, but didn’t need any as far as knowing in his heart and mind who was responsible for this wicked and cowardly act. And what angered him like he never had felt before, and at the same time scared him to death, was the feeling that they weren’t finished.
It was for this reason why he had decided to inform the police of what had happened, so that if they came back and struck again, an arrest and subsequent charges might come more easily or more severely, if the two incidents could be linked. Dave was just tired of feeling threatened and victimized when he hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place and wanted to do what he could to prepare. In addition, he implemented a few more measures for security. One thing he did was to hide trail cameras, the kind that were typically used for hunting and designed to blend in with the outdoors, run on battery power, and could withstand the elements. He figured that catching photographs or videos of intruders or their vehicles might not stop someone from doing something bad, but it would certainly help identify and prosecute them later.
Another defensive measure Dave began was carrying a rifle in his vehicle with him, in addition to his typical sidearm and concealed carry piece. Virginia, a relatively friendly gun rights state, despite its increasingly left-leaning population to the east had, in Dave’s opinion, some pretty vague laws as far as long guns in vehicles. In Virginia, it was legal to open carry a loaded rifle, shotgun, or handgun in public, and a concealed handgun with his concealed carry permit. As far as he could gather, it was legal to carry a loaded long gun in a vehicle, as long as it wasn’t concealed or hidden from plain sight and readily accessible. To him, this meant that if it were out of reach, in a zipped case, etc., it was legal to carry. Still, not wanting to break the law, he kept the rifle unloaded, with loaded magazines ready to go if the need for it arose. Of course, this meant that the weapon wouldn’t be immediately accessible to him, but would require some time to retrieve and ready it. But he decided that if he were to return home one night to find trouble waiting for him there, with Sandra’s safety at risk or a similar circumstance, he figured that it was much better than not having it at all. He knew that most people, if they knew of his practice, would think he was paranoid at best, but he didn’t care. After what he’d experienced, he wanted to be as prepared as he was legally allowed to be against threats that, in his mind, were very real. After all, it was better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Dave also discussed all of this with his grandfather, knowing that these people probably saw him as just as guilty of the inferred crime as Dave was, and clearly weren’t above picking on the elderly. Dave and Paul placed some trail cams at Paul’s house, too, and Marie prayed vigilantly for their safety. Other than that, time marched on as usual. For a little while, anyway.
✽ ✽ ✽
On another particularly warm day, this one being a Saturday the following January, Dave and Sandra had planned a weekend out in the mountains of West Virginia. Their plan was to hike all day at Blackwater Falls in the Allegheny Highlands, then stay at a cabin there in the State Park before returning home the following day. They rose relatively early that morning, packed Dave’s truck with everything they’d need for the weekend and headed west. They arrived at the park around 10 A.M. and began a day hike that they had picked out. However, Sandra began to feel ill in the afternoon. They headed back to the truck early and after trying to enjoy the area with some physically less-intense activities for her sake, decided to cancel their reservation and return home that evening.
Being the time of year it was, it was dark in Western Virginia shortly after five o’clock and they didn’t get back to Middletown until closer to seven. Dave drove a little on the slow side down the road to their house. Sandra was asleep in the seat beside him and he was a little sleepy himself. However, he woke up immediately upon turning into his driveway and seeing an unpleasantly familiar Pontiac.
Dave slammed on the brakes, jarring Sandra out of her sleep. Dave smacked her on the thigh a few times to get her attention.
“What is it?” she said with irritation, yawning and with hair covering half of her face.
“They’re here!” Dave responded, not quite yelling but with a tone that certainly supplemented his words and succeeded in arousing her level of alertness. “Call the cops. Quick.”
While talking to Sandra, Dave had kept his eyes on the dark house and the car in the driveway. It was full dark outside, but the clear winter sky and half-full moon gave enough ambient light to see a decent amount. At that moment, the driver’s door of the car opened, the dome light coming to life like a beacon. A man jumped out, holding what appeared to be a huge shotgun. He leveled it at Dave’s truck and quickly fired. Instantly, the top half of the windshield spiderwebbed from multiple pellets making contact, but because of the range, none penetrated completely.
Dave grabbed Sandra’s shoulder and shoved her down into the floor space in front of her seat where she curled up like a cat, fumbling for her phone. Dave thought briefly about trying to get to the rifle under the backseat, but decided that being both unloaded and out of reach, it would take a dangerous
ly long time to retrieve. Instead, he grabbed the small 5.11 sling pack he used for his everyday carry items, opened his door, and bailed out. Because he had come to a stop at a skewed angle relative to the Pontiac, he was able to take cover behind the driver’s side corner, protected by the engine block. Kneeling, with the bag on the ground, he pulled out his old Beretta 92FS, along with two loaded spare magazines that he shoved into the left-hand side pocket of the Carhartt coat he was wearing.
After confirming his pistol was loaded and ready, he stole a peek from over the top of the truck’s hood. The man with the shotgun was standing to the side of his car, the muzzle still pointed in his general direction. When the man saw Dave’s head, he swung the shotgun wildly toward him and fired again. Dave flinched and heard the shot tear through his mailbox behind him, and to his left several feet. When Dave saw the man break open his shotgun to reload what must have been the double-barrel, he knew it was time to make his move.
Breaking cover, he charged the man, who was rummaging clumsily in his jacket pocket for more shells. Dave brought up the Beretta in a well-practiced two-handed grip and began firing. The man had successfully reloaded the old shotgun and was in the process of bringing it back up to sight in on Dave who by now, was inside thirty yards, when the first 147 grain 9mm hollow point made contact. The man flinched visibly, but didn’t drop the gun, so Dave kept shooting. Dave was less than ten yards away when his slide locked open, and the man finally went down at about the same time. Dave saw that he had hit him several times in the chest and gut. He started to wonder why it had taken so many rounds to incapacitate his attacker, but his pondering was interrupted by more gunshots, coming from the house. He ducked instinctively, dropping the empty magazine from the Beretta and letting it fall to the ground while reaching for a replacement. He reloaded quickly and turned to face the new threat, sidestepping to gain cover behind the old car. He saw an arm holding a big revolver, sticking out from behind a bush in the front yard and firing wildly in his direction. Dave leveled the pistol over the hood, took aim at the bush and began firing. He had fired seven or eight shots when the hand dropped the gun and a moment later, the rest of the body it belonged to flopped into view on the ground beside the bush. Dave quickly surveyed his surroundings, wary of a third intruder waiting for him to leave the cover of the car. Not seeing or hearing anything except the ringing of his ears, he cautiously moved around the car and toward the second man, pistol still trained on his center of mass. The man was not dead, but definitely wounded. When he saw Dave approaching, now less than ten yards away, he made a final defiant reach for his revolver laying in the grass in front of him. Reacting out of pure instinct, Dave fired the 9mm at the reaching hand, and dirt, grass, and gore flew from the impact of the bullet. The man screamed and retracted the hand immediately, cradling the now-mangled appendage. In the dim starlight and ambient light of Dave’s headlights lighting up the side of the house, Dave recognized both the deformed nose and look of pure resentment on the man’s face. Dave leveled the bore of his Beretta at that face, seriously debating ending this piece of shit once and for all. Then, he noticed the gas can behind the bush and the lighter on the ground next to it. Dave’s finger took up the slack on the cold metal trigger, almost hoping that Larry would go for his gun. Go ahead, make my day, he thought.