Tuesday, August 05, 2008

But I Did Not Shoot The Deputy...

I shot a man three times in the torso last night with my J.C. Higgins .22 rifle. He was a little over a hundred feet away, panting heavily like a chased animal finally allowed to rest. I did not recognize him from that distance, but I could see he was wearing shooting glasses and he had a 30 .06 with a scope and he wasn’t aware that I had chased him up the hill.

The event started while I was at my old home, the home of my childhood years, a large group of familiar faces checking out the interior of someone’s brand new Winnebago motor home. Through a window from inside the motor home I saw him, setting up behind a tree maybe a hundred feet out or more, his intention clear-- he was going to shoot us with that big gun of his.

I yelled “man with a gun!” and pointed. We all pointed and some shouted, giving the man in the shooting glasses two options-- shoot at us and risk not getting all of us, or run.

He did both. He shot quickly several times into the side of the Winnebago, and then he ran down the street two houses and up a dead end section of road which led up into the hills.

I ran up into our garage and grabbed my .22 and a large screwdriver, and then ran back down to the street where there was a man hole cover that I levered up and jumped inside.

About eight feet down, there was a large culvert pipe that guided water from the creek behind my house into the storm drain system during the winter months. If I bent over, I could run up this pipe and out into the hills where I knew this man would be heading.

I carried my gun carefully, running stooped over and mindful of the top of the pipe. I had skinned my head before, playing war games in this pipe with my brother and our friends.

The pipe simply opened up into a creek. Weeds and rag bushes hid the opening, and as I exited, I spotted the man with the gun just crossing over the now dry creek upstream a ways. He was heading uphill where another road dead-ended and his car must have been parked, but he looked too winded to make it.

There was an old oak snag a hundred feet up the hill from the creek, and I watched as the man scrambled his way toward it. Not knowing I was there, I watched him position himself to shoot at anyone who followed him, his large scope menacing as it gave him a great advantage over me and my scopeless little .22.

I stood in the creek bed and used the bank as a bunker. Only my head and shoulders were above the side walls of the creek, but I was hidden by the high grasses that grew with their foxtails dangling.

This gunman had no idea I had come the way I came, and he kept his eyes trained on the way he’d run, making sure he had not been followed.

As he panted and worked at regaining his breath, I shot at him three times ‘pechoo pechoo pechoo‘, aiming toward his lifting and falling ribcage.

As I woke up to Wenzel panting heavily in my ear-- in her manner that suggested I'd overslept and she demanded breakfast-- I wondered if I’d got him.

5 comments:

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

Cool!

I dream about shooting people all the time...the last was a big "Indiana Jones" type battle in my basement with my granddaughter at my side reloading. I had several nice head shots!

We won.

Scott from Oregon said...

Mushy, I think even we "nice fellers" can have dreams in which we use violence in heroic acts...

I bet there is even an evolutionary reason of some sort for it...

Nikky said...

I just LOVE dreams like that... not so outrageous so as to be known to be fake, but pretty far fetched, enough to make someone wonder...LOVE the way you posted this!

Jeannie said...

Quite the adventure. Strange how dreams are sometimes just like a movie.

Kind of a letdown when you wake up.

Cheesy said...

“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. Talk low, talk slow and don't say too much.”
J.Wayne :o)