Harold bought a gun. It was a Sig Sauer 22mm pistol. It rested firmly in its holster against the small of his back.
In Tucson Arizona, crime rates were up 15% and Harold felt he needed a gun. His dad carried a gun. His mom carried a gun. His father said often, “There are three kinds of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and shepherds. Which would you rather be?” Sheep, wolves, shepherds--a popular topic at the dinner table. As those words repeated, they had stuck soundly in Harold's conscience and transposed themselves onto the faces of people he passed. Sheep, wolves, shepherds.
Today, in the lobby of the Tucson City Bank, as Harold stood in line to deposit his paycheck, a man in a mask fired a volley of bullets into the ceiling. The citizens in the small bank-room scattered dumbly, and Harold, forgetting himself, scattered with them.
Behind the counter, the teller fumbled with a handful of trash bags the gunman had instructed her to fill. The other civilians in the room cowered like animals in disparate parts of the lobby, waiting for the ordeal to come to a close. The masked gunman spun circles nervously in the center of the room, pointing his pistol in every direction. Harold recognized the model--a Sig Sauer 22mm. Harold's stomach twisted around his heart and squeezed.
Several times in his youth, Harold almost did terrible things: when he was eight years old, as he rode in the backseat of the car he wondered what would happen if he opened the door and jumped. When he reached out for the door handle, a frightful yet wonderful feeling shot through his stomach, and he withdrew his hand with a gasp. At thirteen he played with his little sister at the top of the stairs and wondered, for a brief moment, what it would be like if he pushed her over the rail. Afterward, he distanced himself from the balcony. At seventeen he was in love with roller coasters. When he got his driver's license, he nearly ran into a woman crossing the street and never once considered why he didn't slow down. Once, when he was twenty-one, he found himself staring wistfully down a tall flight of stairs, enjoying the strange feeling of power that rose in his stomach, and cringed with excited morbidity at the question: What if?
The gunman swore at the teller for her slowness and moved his attention toward a group of students near the counter. Shaking, and holding out a paper bag, he demanded in a squeaky voice for them to empty their purses and wallets. They did. He moved about the room ordering others to do the same. “I am a shepherd,” were the only words running through Harold's head.
Harold was a good shot. His father trained cadets at the police academy, his mother taught gunmanship courses, and together they had raised him to be a competent shepherd. Shooting was in Harold's blood. Today in the bank-room, he remembered the fear he felt in the backseat of the car. The danger, the excitement, the power--it frightened him in a familiar, wonderful way. He felt like he was standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, one movement away from the most fearfully exhilarating free-fall he could ever experience.
Harold woke from his daydream to the sound of bullets. Things had not been going fast enough. An older gentleman had refused to cooperate. In an attempt to escape, the he had run for the door. The gunman had panicked, lifted his pistol and shot. The old man was lying on the floor holding his thigh. The masked gunman stood in shock. There was screaming.
Harold stared. He'd missed it. His moment.
The gunman pointed his pistol at a woman in the aisle and told her to watch the injured man. Now mad with anxiety, he jumped from person to person, emptying their pockets and ripping off their jewelry. All the while, he moved closer and closer to Harold. “What if?” Harold thought, and the feeling in his stomach returned. The gunman was twenty feet away. Harold’s fingers itched for his gun. The masked figure skittered toward him. Harold had never shot a man before. Fifteen feet—he could make out the bloodshot eyes, filled with panic. Ten feet—Harold’s heart pounded in his chest and he could feel the sweat trickling down his spine. Three feet. The gunman squealed at Harold to empty his pockets. I am a shepherd, Harold thought, This is a wolf," and his hand moved toward the holster on the small of his back.
"I've finished," muttered the bank-teller as she pointed at the filled bags. The wolf turned from Harold and rushed to the counter. Sirens blared in the distance; the authorities were blocks away. The wolf was trapped. It grabbed the bags and scrambled for the door.
Harold wouldn't have it. His finger itched, his stomach twisted. He drew his pistol, placed his feet firmly on the ground just like he was on the shooting range. “Stop!" Harold yelled, "I’ll shoot!” The wolf did not stop, instead it turned and fired into the ceiling and ran for the door. Harold focused and fired twice--two well placed rounds into the lower torso. The wolf collapsed to his knees, bag in hand, facing the exit. In the split second that followed, as the wolf slumped to his knees and looked out the exit at the flashing police cruisers in front of the Tucson City Bank--in that split second, as Harold kept the wolf’s head fixed down his Sig Sauer’s front sight—Harold's adrenaline pumped, his heart turned flips—his mind formed the word’s “What if?” and his stomach howled with excitement as Harold's finger pulled the trigger.
As the citizens of the bank-room stared in shock, the masked man fell forward in a heap, and Harold felt like a million dollars.
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Inspiration For Short
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Cafeteria
John sat calmly at his buffet table with his hands folded in front of his face. His splayed fingers moved in and out with slow calculated motion, like interchanging locks in an organic machine. This is not how things were when I left for the bathroom, he spoke aloud. Julie’s had long since quieted to a low hum. His restless fingers made more noise than the cafe's silent patrons: docile creatures who would have been more than willing to protest the silence had they not been so still. They lay sprawled at their dining places, as varied forms collapsed into their soup bowls, motionless figures prostrate on the floor with food scattered before their outstretched arms. They lay still, as tranquil shapes suspended in time--eyes gazing up at the ceiling and mouths hanging open expectantly, waiting for a sound to crawl out of their throats to conquer the stillness. Perhaps they were making a sound that John could not hear. He wondered if they were crying for food.
A dark breeze brushed through John’s hair as night swept through the small Julie’s on the hill. A sign on the broken remains of the street window read, “Don’t be scared! Made fresh and served hot, just like momma does it,” and creaked against the shattered glass. The stars outside glimmered in mournful silence over the surrounding countryside, and reflected starlight into John’s eyes from the rear-view mirror of an old Ford pickup truck that lay, turned on its side, in the middle of the dining hall next to John’s booth. The sign rocked back and forth. John stared.
Three years ago, June 7th 1989, John’s mother cried while washing dishes at breakfast. John looked up from his bacon and hash browns to see Tienanmen Square footage playing on the television and couldn’t finish his meal. 3,000 dead was the estimate. She said it was horrific, atrocious, terrifying. She couldn’t understand, so she asked him to try. There was nothing he could do. “It’s sensationalist news. They’re inflating the numbers,” he had said. Sensationalist news, sensationalist news. She told him that he was heartless. He told her to change the channel. He wanted to finish his breakfast in peace.
He was right. Later, The New York Times concluded that it was probably only 400 to 800 dead, not 3,000. Only 400 or so—-a much more palatable number. As John looked at the scene around him now he wanted to cry, but the tears refused to come.
John put a finger to his lips inquisitively and tapped his sandal on the tile. It slid out a little—the floor was slippery. He drew his feet up beneath him. He did not want to get his sandals wet. This is not how things were when I left for the bathroom, he spoke aloud. He had been repeating this sentence for the past twenty minutes or so. The words had a calming effect. Earlier, when the noise had come to a halt, those words had helped him stumble back to his booth. They had helped him find his seat and finish his meal. They had helped him understand that something was out of place; that, indeed, he had stumbled upon the greatest mystery a man of 23 was likely to encounter. They had helped him avoid the crimson puddles on the floor that were becoming stickier.
It seemed like the set up to a good joke, he thought. “A man walks into a cafeteria bathroom, and when he comes out…everyone is dead!” Silence. “Why?” someone would ask, to which John would seize up, hardly able to contain his feeling, and reply . . . here he drew a blank. Well, what exactly is the punch-line, he thought. There certainly wasn’t much to laugh about. Then why is it so damn funny? he thought as a smirk crept across his face. He bit his hand to think of something else. I guess you just had to be there, he concluded morbidly. He felt like a stranger who laughs at jokes he does not understand. He wanted to leave. But, leaving meant stepping out onto the floor, and he did not want to get his sandals wet.
A trail of scattered chickpeas caught John’s attention, and he followed it with his eyes past upside-down faces, turned over chairs, and pools of red to its origin—a salad plate lying next to another sprawled outline in the aisle several tables across the room. It was lying all wrong. It was positioned face down on the tile, its arms splayed awkwardly at its sides, like a doll dropped by a child. Its belongings were strewn from a satchel in a line along the floor, as if propelled toward an enemy obscured by a booth in the corner of the room. In the debris along the floor lay make-up, glasses, papers, ordinary things. Before he looked away, John noticed a small handful of brochures hidden among the papers. As he looked closer, he thought he could see pictures of smiling faces grinning through the brochures up into the ceiling.
The pools of red grew wider. The level was rising. John pictured his mother crying as she watched the television, and he wished that he could cry as well. Of all the things he wanted at that moment, he wanted to see those happy faces. Maybe then… he thought. He took a deep breath, and stepped into the aisle.
John stood in a river of blood and cafeteria food: the room where the pickup had driven through the windows, where the crumpled bodies had been crushed upon its entry; the broken glass, the lunch trays, the holes in the tables where stray bullets lost their momentum, the coconut meringue pie in the crevice of a chair, the red splotches on the wall, the long bloody smears across the room leading to silent clumps in the distance. Human beings had been murdered here. The murderer, a dirty pair of upturned boots, peeked benignly behind a booth in the corner of the room.
John felt nothing.
Mechanically, he constricted his focus on his goal, the sprawled outline he had seen earlier—No, the dead woman, he thought—who lay across the aisle. Maybe then..., he thought and waded through the sticky red floor to get closer to the smiling people near her satchel. When he arrived he could not see her face. Her hair was in the way. He reached down toward her satchel and peeled a brochure away from the wet pile with difficulty. He had been misled.
“Feed the children,” it read in bold-faced letters above grotesque images. They were smiling. Their chests hung out in front of their bodies and their eyes bulged from their faces, but they smiled for the cameraman—their mouths closed tightly, grinning with their teeth. They were smiling at something they could not comprehend. They were laughing at the same punch-line.
A torrent of air swept into the cafeteria through the broken windows. The sign above the window creaked and read “Don’t be scared! Made fresh and served hot, just like momma does it,” as it rocked against the shattered glass. John shivered. He methodically positioned the young woman’s arms neatly by her sides and brushed the hair away from her face. As the stars flickered weakly over the countryside, John blankly wiped the blood onto his pants, placed the brochure into his pocket, and stumbled outside into the darkness, bloody and confused, like a child trying to crawl back into the womb.
A dark breeze brushed through John’s hair as night swept through the small Julie’s on the hill. A sign on the broken remains of the street window read, “Don’t be scared! Made fresh and served hot, just like momma does it,” and creaked against the shattered glass. The stars outside glimmered in mournful silence over the surrounding countryside, and reflected starlight into John’s eyes from the rear-view mirror of an old Ford pickup truck that lay, turned on its side, in the middle of the dining hall next to John’s booth. The sign rocked back and forth. John stared.
Three years ago, June 7th 1989, John’s mother cried while washing dishes at breakfast. John looked up from his bacon and hash browns to see Tienanmen Square footage playing on the television and couldn’t finish his meal. 3,000 dead was the estimate. She said it was horrific, atrocious, terrifying. She couldn’t understand, so she asked him to try. There was nothing he could do. “It’s sensationalist news. They’re inflating the numbers,” he had said. Sensationalist news, sensationalist news. She told him that he was heartless. He told her to change the channel. He wanted to finish his breakfast in peace.
He was right. Later, The New York Times concluded that it was probably only 400 to 800 dead, not 3,000. Only 400 or so—-a much more palatable number. As John looked at the scene around him now he wanted to cry, but the tears refused to come.
John put a finger to his lips inquisitively and tapped his sandal on the tile. It slid out a little—the floor was slippery. He drew his feet up beneath him. He did not want to get his sandals wet. This is not how things were when I left for the bathroom, he spoke aloud. He had been repeating this sentence for the past twenty minutes or so. The words had a calming effect. Earlier, when the noise had come to a halt, those words had helped him stumble back to his booth. They had helped him find his seat and finish his meal. They had helped him understand that something was out of place; that, indeed, he had stumbled upon the greatest mystery a man of 23 was likely to encounter. They had helped him avoid the crimson puddles on the floor that were becoming stickier.
It seemed like the set up to a good joke, he thought. “A man walks into a cafeteria bathroom, and when he comes out…everyone is dead!” Silence. “Why?” someone would ask, to which John would seize up, hardly able to contain his feeling, and reply . . . here he drew a blank. Well, what exactly is the punch-line, he thought. There certainly wasn’t much to laugh about. Then why is it so damn funny? he thought as a smirk crept across his face. He bit his hand to think of something else. I guess you just had to be there, he concluded morbidly. He felt like a stranger who laughs at jokes he does not understand. He wanted to leave. But, leaving meant stepping out onto the floor, and he did not want to get his sandals wet.
A trail of scattered chickpeas caught John’s attention, and he followed it with his eyes past upside-down faces, turned over chairs, and pools of red to its origin—a salad plate lying next to another sprawled outline in the aisle several tables across the room. It was lying all wrong. It was positioned face down on the tile, its arms splayed awkwardly at its sides, like a doll dropped by a child. Its belongings were strewn from a satchel in a line along the floor, as if propelled toward an enemy obscured by a booth in the corner of the room. In the debris along the floor lay make-up, glasses, papers, ordinary things. Before he looked away, John noticed a small handful of brochures hidden among the papers. As he looked closer, he thought he could see pictures of smiling faces grinning through the brochures up into the ceiling.
The pools of red grew wider. The level was rising. John pictured his mother crying as she watched the television, and he wished that he could cry as well. Of all the things he wanted at that moment, he wanted to see those happy faces. Maybe then… he thought. He took a deep breath, and stepped into the aisle.
John stood in a river of blood and cafeteria food: the room where the pickup had driven through the windows, where the crumpled bodies had been crushed upon its entry; the broken glass, the lunch trays, the holes in the tables where stray bullets lost their momentum, the coconut meringue pie in the crevice of a chair, the red splotches on the wall, the long bloody smears across the room leading to silent clumps in the distance. Human beings had been murdered here. The murderer, a dirty pair of upturned boots, peeked benignly behind a booth in the corner of the room.
John felt nothing.
Mechanically, he constricted his focus on his goal, the sprawled outline he had seen earlier—No, the dead woman, he thought—who lay across the aisle. Maybe then..., he thought and waded through the sticky red floor to get closer to the smiling people near her satchel. When he arrived he could not see her face. Her hair was in the way. He reached down toward her satchel and peeled a brochure away from the wet pile with difficulty. He had been misled.
“Feed the children,” it read in bold-faced letters above grotesque images. They were smiling. Their chests hung out in front of their bodies and their eyes bulged from their faces, but they smiled for the cameraman—their mouths closed tightly, grinning with their teeth. They were smiling at something they could not comprehend. They were laughing at the same punch-line.
A torrent of air swept into the cafeteria through the broken windows. The sign above the window creaked and read “Don’t be scared! Made fresh and served hot, just like momma does it,” as it rocked against the shattered glass. John shivered. He methodically positioned the young woman’s arms neatly by her sides and brushed the hair away from her face. As the stars flickered weakly over the countryside, John blankly wiped the blood onto his pants, placed the brochure into his pocket, and stumbled outside into the darkness, bloody and confused, like a child trying to crawl back into the womb.
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