The Tarnished Shooter
I hopped on a Continental Trailways bus out of Jacksonville, North Carolina and found an empty seat next to another Marine on his way to somewhere. After a few minutes we started sizing each other up and broke the ice with a few words about Jacksonville. The Marine I sat next to said he was a 2nd Battalion Force Recon Ranger stationed at French Creek. I was also stationed at French Creek and knew for sure a recon platoon was maybe a couple hundred yards from my barracks, so his claim seemed believable. The Ranger didn’t talk much if he talked at all and seemed to be in a world of his own yet tuned in to everything around him.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Wisconsin.”
“It’s cold up there,” he replied.
“Yea.”
“They call me Snake. What’s your name?”
“Barker”
There was no more conversation for a few miles as we kicked back to look at the scenery. Then Snaked popped this question.
“You got a weapon?”
“No, why would I need a weapon?”
“I’ve got a job I need help with.”
“What’s the job?”
“I’m going to take out a motherfucker that raped my little sister, but the scumbag belongs to a gang, and I could use some backup.”
“No. I don’t want to be any part of that.”
****
I couldn't make sense of some of the decisions I’d made. Everyone wonders why they do the things they do. At some times in life it’s almost like there are unseen forces pulling you in a certain direction without your control. Sometime you don’t even realize you’re making a wrong decision especially when everything feels right at the time. In today’s world just about everything is illegal so the individual must choose to accept some risk, or stay static and play it safe even if playing it safe makes you miserable. I was all done playing it safe.
Even though I declined his proposal Snake and I became buddies as we headed north. I had no way of even knowing if the dude was a Force Recon Ranger. Believe it or not, I think everyone who ever wore a Marine Corps uniform, at one time or another, told tales of being a sniper, or recon ranger.
Snake looked like he could be a ranger. He was built like a bulldog, solid, and muscular with a third phase high and tight haircut. He looked like the typical gung-ho white boy redneck Marine. But I knew from experience that everything wasn’t always as it seems.
It seemed like I had a way of attracting some of the most useless people. I must be sending out subconscious loon-attraction signals. I didn’t want to deal with another loon, even if he was a Marine who claimed to be a recon ranger.
Long range bus rides were so exhausting. I was glad I only had about another ten hours on the bus before I would be home. Riding on a bus cross-country is never like it is portrayed in the movies. With all the bus trips I have been on going across the country, I never got the chance to sit next to some incredibly hot, single female, and then instantly form a romantic connection. That stuff is all pure fiction. Usually I got stuck sitting next to some bull-shitter like Snake, or someone that couldn’t stop coughing.
On the bus I remembered there was a time when I met, an attractive military woman at a Chicago airport. A black man was pestering her about coming to his crib. The Army chick and I were on a twenty four hour layover. I didn’t want to spend the night sleeping on the concrete floor and under her breath she made it known to me she wanted to get away from the guy, so I invited her to spend the night with me in a hotel across the street from the airport. She agreed and I had to laugh because the black dude was pissed as hell.
Snake gave me the address he would be staying at in Boston along with a phone number. Before I transferred to another bus he said, “If you ever need to give someone an attitude adjustment just let me know.” I knew a list of people I would like to give an attitude adjustment to, but I had enough of that kind of nonsense. All I wanted to do was go home and hide out for a while so I could figure out what I was going to do next.
Back home, my uncle Seth knew all kinds of people who could help me out while I was on the lam. He belonged to the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club and was even president of the club for a while. Though my uncle didn’t especially like me because he knew of my hatred for my old man, he had people contacts that could get things done. I didn’t have a driver’s license so Uncle Seth gave me a blank driver’s license document and said all I had to do was type in my information. He also said if I got caught with it to leave his name out of the equation. I never typed anything in the blanks and just forgot about it. Seth said if I had it in my wallet when I got arrested the cops would act like I just walked off an alien space ship. They’d go ballistic and make a big deal out of it. They would charge me with illegal possession of a government document. “Good Lord!” I thought. Everything is illegal these days, even possessing a worthless piece of wallet sized blank paper. Seth seemed to harbor the same resentment for silly rules and regulations as I did. That was about the only thing we had in common.
Chapter 19
I was home and a fugitive once again. The house was still the same. My mother was taking in more strays and the parties were bigger than ever. My younger brothers were becoming of age and they had the charisma to make friends easily. Good looking girls were always hanging around trying to hook up with my brother Leland. He had the long hair with movie star looks along with a magnetic personality that seemed to suck the wind out of some of the most attractive girls.
The younger boys grew up without all the pressure from my old man that Jack and I endured. They were able to just be who they wanted to be. Jack and I took the brunt of the abuse. If the old man were alive and had seen Leland with his shoulder length hair, he would have buzz-cut it himself. There was no way he would’ve let him have hair that long. The old man was dead and buried, but I still harbored hatred and rage about the way I had been treated. I couldn’t get that rage out of my mind. It isn’t as easy as people think to be able to just forget about the past and move on. My personality had been established with the values that had been pounded into my mind not only by my old man, but school and the military played a part in establishing my point of view too—I will probably be the way I am for the rest of my life. I don’t know if Jack thought of himself as abused or if he figured it was just part of growing up. But then everyone is different and I don’t remember Jack getting whipped with a belt or getting backhanded in the head nearly as often as I had.
I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to just sit and think without always having someone on my ass telling me where to go or what to do. I wanted to be the captain of my own life. I was sick and tired of any structured system, be it parental, educational, military or legal.
Clem was out of the Marines too and up to some of his old tricks. I also heard he had started dealing cocaine. I didn’t want anything to do with any of that shit so I stayed clear of him. I heard he’d met some cute little blond and they’d been going out for a few months, spending a lot of time in the bars and going to parties. He was hanging around with people I didn’t care for, a crowd into drugs and drug dealing. I felt sort of trapped. I didn’t want to be in the “suck” anymore and I didn’t belong home either. I spent my time doing what I did the last time I was home; going to bars and hanging out at the house, always fearing I would be apprehended, dragged back to the base, and thrown in the brig. For some reason unbeknown to me, I was setting myself up for a fall.
One night I decided to go out for a few tappers of cheap beer. Drinking seemed to me like the only way to quiet the panic attacks I’d developed from anxiety. Some would call that self-medication. Whatever anyone wanted to call it, it worked for me. When the bar got to be crowded with people pushing and shoving their way through the circles of loudmouthed drunks, I figured it was time to go. I didn’t want to get into any fights with punks who’d had too much to drink, then land in jail.
I heard there was a party going on where I would know most of the partiers. Many of them were
long haired, pot smoking, band boys that drew good looking women like magnets. I always seemed like the square peg trying to fit into a round hole when I was around those people, but I decided to go anyway.
I couldn’t figure out the fascination women had for those long, greasy haired, pot heads. My little brothers knew all kinds of those guys. The thing that also amazed me was that they always got the best looking women to-boot. The circle of friends my little brothers hung out with all thought I was a little too psychopathic. They avoided me at all costs, especially when I was drinking. I tried to pick up on some of the hot little female entourage that followed those boys, but I didn’t have the long hair to fit into that crowd. My Marine Corps buzz cut made me stand out like a sore thumb. Remember, the military was a bad word in the days of the Vietnam War. We weren’t heroes and nobody gave a shit.
Usually I stood alone and guzzled enough beer to take the edge off my anxiety. Then I slipped into a demonizing world only alcohol opened up. Once I was in that state of mind, I began to feel the rage and anger that was always lying just beneath the surface.
When I left that party my intention was to go home and go to bed. Once at home, I walked into a dark house. I stumbled up to my room with my head spinning from too much booze. I started thinking about the rejections I got from the little groupie dolls at the party. I turned on the stereo and then turned it up loud to drown out my thoughts—never thinking about the rest of my sleeping family. I never felt so alone, and it was painful.
When Jack burst into my room, there was no way he could have known what was on my mind or that I would end up pulling out a gun and threatening him with it. Looking back on that fateful night, I wish I had never called the cops on myself or gone up onto the roof looking for a confrontation with the police. Hindsight is always 20/20. If I could only have known the future and the lasting effects that my actions would have, I would have made different choices.
If you ever want to study human psychology, just get thrown in jail. There you will find the strange and weird of the world for sure. I also believe if a person of average intelligence gets locked up, he or she will become as weird, and as paranoid as the crazies already in crazy land. The less than six foot long steel bunk was welded to the side of the wall. There was a porcelain sink and toilet right next to the bunk. If I slept with my feet towards the bars then my face would be damned near in the toilet.
Some men like to think being locked up in prison for a while makes them more of a man. They think of Johnny Cash singing, “Folsom Prison Blues.” Songs about being locked up seem to have a romantic kind of appeal to some men. For me, the romanticizing ceases after an hour or two—then freedom becomes like a narcotics fix to a drug addict. The feeling of being released from jail to me is paramount to being born again.
This wasn't the first time I had been locked up, but ninety days seemed like a long time to be caged. I spent five days in jail when I was a juvenile for skipping school and those first five days still seemed like the longest five days of my life. They will be forever etched into my mind. Now I had ninety days, it seemed like an eternity compared to those five days. People out there who think locking someone up in jail will keep the world safe have another thing coming. Most people behind bars just get angrier and most will get out some day. They end up doing more crimes just to say “fuck you” to the system.
Three days after my sentencing, I was transferred into the jail’s bullpen where all the prisoners were lumped together so they could talk, play cards, fight with each other or watch an old black and white TV. I hated jail, but always seemed to end up there for doing stupid things, especially while I was drunk.
I noticed three individual cells within the bullpen. I looked for a bunk in one of them to call mine for the next sixty-five days. I dragged with me a thin mattress, pillow, bed sheet, and a blanket. The bunks were solid steel, not quite long enough to satisfy my height and very uncomfortable. In each of those three cells, were eight bunks, four bunks on each side wall with a toilet right in the center of the back wall and a locking door with bars to the front. At any given time there could be up to twenty four other inmates in the bullpen. If one had to take a crap, everyone could watch. The toilet was shared by all eight prisoners—“yuk!” Nobody ever cleaned that thing. There was absolutely no privacy anywhere. The place reeked of ripe underarm stench. Some of the inmates would be pissed off, just looking for an easy mark to fuck with. Boredom and routine added to the anger. There is nothing more nerve racking than getting thrown in a cage with a bunch of angry brutes looking for a fight. Even a small town jail is no place for the meek—it is like a powder keg ready to explode.
As I walked in the bull pen dragging my gear I was the center of attention. I could feel those angry eyes upon me. I could sense I was being studied for any observable weaknesses that could be used for exploitation. There is no place for kindness or even a smile when locked up with the kind of assholes that would just as soon beat you to death.
I was nineteen—lean, and angry, but I also feared for my wellbeing in that place. I noticed older and bigger guys with tattoos showing gang affiliations. I also saw the cousin Clem and I boosted the stink weed from. He was in the bull-pen. I learned he had been sentenced to a year in the county jail for assault. Power and control were sought by the majority of criminals. I knew those were the guys that I needed to avoid. I read a book once that said when in a combat situation, if you are strong, look weak, and if you are weak look strong. Never let your enemies know your true ability. The more uncertain your enemy is about your strength, the better. If I look weak, some little tough guy want-to-be will come and start fucking with me just to impress the top dog—a test to see if I have any balls.
I had a plan. Once the want-to-be tough guy started fucking with me—I would drop him like a bad habit, and drop him fast with absolutely no mercy. Unload with a furry of unrelenting blows to the head and face; maybe a chop to the throat. Then other tough guys will think twice about starting some shit with me. I learned from experience to always have a plan set up in my mind for a defensive move in case I was attacked. If I go in there like some sort of bad-ass I will probably have some six-foot-six two-hundred-twenty pound "top dog" challenging me, just to show everyone he is the boss. A fight like that I might not win. After all, size and experience have advantages when it comes to a brawl.
In those government rat-holes everyone is trying to have some control. Just like the cops and law abiding do-gooders on the outside. The more people they can control through fear or intimidation, the more powerful they feel and act. The thing is that most of the criminals in jail couldn't make it out in the real world because they want everything their way. If a social outcast can't get what he wants, he resorts to some form of violence or unethical activity. Then he gets caught and ends up in the slams. On the inside he continues with the only way he knows, which is intimidation or physical assault. It seems like a dog eat dog world no matter where you hang your hat.
Chapter 20
My time in the county jail for “reckless use of a weapon” would most likely get me a six—six—and a kick. At the end of my ninety day sentence a couple of cocky Marine MPs would come pick me up and transport me back to the base in handcuffs where I would most likely face another court martial. While in their custody, they will do everything in their power to make me feel like low life scum by calling me derogatory names—even threatening to shoot me if I try to escape. It seemed like humiliation was right around every corner. When you’re a criminal or even accused of being a criminal, others feel like they’re better than you, even though their shit stinks too. Nobody comes out of this world alive. Eventually even do-gooders and self-righteous zealots break the law. Most are lucky they haven’t been caught yet.
I couldn’t worry about that now. My first order of business was to survive in that jail. In jail, it doesn’t take more than a “look” to get you assaulted by some lunatic that has self-esteem or respect issues. The best thing I could do was keep my mo
uth shut. The more information made available to backstabbers and con-men, the weaker you became. I knew that talking about anything would only get me into more trouble. My plan was to keep a low profile.
So much boredom; I asked the jailor for a pencil and a couple sheets of paper to write some letters home. Mostly I wanted to doodle. I felt a wave of inspiration and wrote this little poem to express my feelings at the time.
Sand Dreams
Sifting through the sand
I want to build a castle
Not far from the shore
So wet, yet so solid
The water makes its way
Waves carry the idea out to sea
The washed out particles remain a mystery
Of what was once conceived
Now trampled under the feet
Nobody knows what was what to be
For every dream there is a force
So real, yet so vast
How will my life ever last
A crashing sea is like the destructive me
Powerful and limitless
I shall build another castle
Far from the sea
Yet even further from me
I also requested a couple of magazines. My intention was to use the magazines to make an improvised secret weapon. I could roll up the magazines, wrap them with strips of torn bed sheet, and attach them with a rope, also made from torn twisted bed sheets.