faller Chapter 13 Gun
Chapter 13 - Gun
In all the years I’ve been wearing this uniform I’ve never once pointed a gun at another human being. That’s a cliché I know. The cop who never pulled his gun before. But even when I was in country with my military unit I never once had to fire off a round at another human being or even take aim at another human being. I never even liked hunting. I just went along to be one of the boys, but I never really wanted to kill anything when I could just go buy meat at the grocery store.
Part of it was me avoiding action and, more importantly, danger, whenever I could. But part of it too was just that I never ended up in a situation where any of that was required of me. I walked away with a Distinguished Service medal and the word veteran on my license plate, but I never once pointed a gun with live ammunition at another human being before that moment.
This time I came close to pulling the trigger.
This time I came way too close to pulling the trigger and shooting another human being.
Don’t even want to imagine the shitload of paperwork that would have meant.
Shitload.
Definitely one more for the jar.
Just for the briefest moment my finger was sliding down toward the trigger and I was actually going to shoot.
When he ran. That was the moment. When he got up and ran and I realized that he was running I almost dropped the girl so I could shoot him. I guess I just didn’t want to have to explain why or how I let a guy just run away like that and even though I know that is the wrong reason to shoot another human being I came so close, for just a moment to doing it.
I didn’t do it.
Don’t know how I ended up with the girl in my arms. Not sure how she got there. Trying to calm her down I guess. To quiet her down. All that screaming was just making the situation worse and I guess I figured if I could get her to calm down I could get control and calm everyone and everything else down too. I guess that’s what I was trying to do and it did work, kind of, but don’t know if she came to me or I went to her. Just that she did stop screaming. She was shaking like a little frightened bird but at least she wasn’t screaming.
But in doing all that I lost sight of the guy and he started to run off.
That was going to mean a lot of paperwork and a lot of fucking explaining to do.
Another one for the jar.
I almost shot him just because I didn’t want to have to write it out or explain to anybody him getting away like that. You’d figure once you become Chief of Police, you get to stop answering to people. But there’s the council and the Grand Chief and all the other people who are looking for a reason to justify my salary.
I thought about shooting him. I never even thought about shooting anyone before that moment in my entire life. I really wanted to shoot the guy.
I didn’t.
I don’t know why exactly I wanted to shoot him so bad, other than looking to avoid the paperwork. It was more than the paperwork and the explaining. I mean, it’s not like I never got a runner before and it’s not like things never got tense before. It’s the Rez. Shit happens. But I never once pointed my gun and I never once wanted to shoot somebody as much as I wanted to shoot this guy.
Maybe it was the kid. Maybe that the kid could get hurt by this guy or that people were going to get worked up about me not properly protecting a kid. Maybe I was just pissed at the guy for running and making my life more complicated.
I don’t know.
Despite being a cop and being ex military and growing up on the Rez I don’t think that I’ve ever been a violent guy. I’ve been in some fights. I can take care of myself better than most. But I never really wanted to hurt anybody before, not even when I was a kid.
So I’ve got this woman, this girl really, shivering in my arms and the kid disappeared into the woods and the guy seeming to follow the kid and my gun’s still in my hand and I can’t believe how badly I wanted to use it. I mean in a very unhealthy way. I never met this guy before in my life and I barely knew the kid but there I am wanting to go Dirty Harry on some stranger.
She’s shivering like a baby bird. She felt as light as one too.
If we had a kid, if we could have a kid, she’d probably be about this age. Hopefully a little tougher and not so easy to freak out.
Near as I could tell she was freaking out about nothing much at all. Maybe the guy was a perv and maybe not. For all either one of us could have told he was completely harmless. He didn’t exactly look harmless. He looked like somebody who’d been walking on the hard side pretty much his whole life. But he also looked about as run down and beat down as you could get way more than he looked like any kind of danger. I mean I only got a quick look but from what I could tell.
I held her and I holstered my gun real slow. I never even took the safety off, but what was in my head gave me plenty of reason to be cautious and, like I always tell my deputies, always better slow and easy than sorry. So I eased that thing back into its holster and held her with both hands, let her cry it out. Said some comforting shit that I can’t even remember.
Shit.
Two more for the jar.
The boy’s going to be just fine and everything will be alright and some shit like that.
Another one for the jar.
She cried all over me and then she started to fight me, trying to work loose to go after the boy. I held her tighter and kept saying comforting shit trying to quiet her down. No! No no no! she screamed into my chest. No! Please! I need to... Let me go please!
I eased up my grip on her and then she changed her mind and started trying to push me towards the woods. You have to go! she yelled at me. You have to go after them now! Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand? He’s in danger and you have to save him! You have to go after them now!
I tried to explain that running into the woods, even if I was in any kind of shape to go running after anybody, with a loaded gun at that, was just going to make things worse if anything and the best I could do was round up a search party. But she kept pushing at me and screaming about how I had to save the kid and I couldn’t make her understand that chasing them wasn’t going to get anybody anywhere.
If the guy was going to hurt the kid it was going to happen with or without my fat ass chasing after them. Truth be told I was very worried that I might end up shooting the guy or missing him and hitting the kid. And maybe me being on his ass would make the guy do something way worse than he had any ideas about doing.
I didn’t say that part of course. Scaring her even more wasn’t going to help anything.
Instead I held her kicking and screaming with one hand and, after a whole lot of wrestling, managed to call in with the other. Told Delores at dispatching to call in anyone she could think of to form a search party. Delores kept asking if I meant a posse for some reason but I assured her that I meant search party. We didn’t know yet that the guy did anything that would call for a posse if things like that still existed. But Delores, being Delores, kept calling it a posse.
I just hoped the girl wasn’t one for the nuances of language.
She started to calm down then enough so that I could let her go and start gathering up her groceries, getting some order in all that chaos. I explained to her as I gathered up what I could how we were better off waiting and forming a group to find them instead of inflaming the situation. I could see in her eyes she didn’t buy that but I could also see that she was calming down enough to realize that she didn’t have much choice.
To tell you the truth I wasn’t so sure I was right.
I just knew that I didn’t want to go into those woods with my itchy trigger finger. And I didn’t want to get caught up in that thick forest. Maybe I also didn’t want go running after a guy all on my own. Maybe I knew that I was too old and fat and lazy to be pulling off that shit.
Another one for the jar.
It wasn’t like a stolen purse or catching somebody in the middle of a B & E. It was more complicated than that.
She was calming down.
She looked deep into my eyes.
Will you find him? Will you save him?
I smiled as gently as I could. Didn’t answer. I had been a cop, and a politician for long enough to know better than to make promises I couldn’t keep.
I hoped we would find the boy.
And I hoped that we would find him alive.
I wasn’t sure we would.
And I wasn’t sure enough to say.
I definitely was not fucking sure enough at all.
Shit.
That’s two more for the jar.
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