The Great Shoot Out

One day while I was teaching in Waeldar, Texas, one of my students just would not shut up. She kept running her mouth all morning long. No matter what anyone said, she had a comment to make. Not being the brightest ornament on the tree, most of what she said was just annoying. I finally lost it and told her that she was like a broken Chatty Cathy doll. She kept saying something, but nobody was pulling her string. She had never heard of a Chatty Cathy doll, so I explained that it was a doll with a string hanging out of its neck, and that it talked when you pulled the string. She couldn't picture that, so I acted it out for her. I pretended to pull a string from her neck and said, “Now you talk.” I thought she understood.

The next day, I got called to the office. That child's grandmother had flown up to the school in a rage hollering about how, “That white boy thinks he's gonna tie a string around my sweet grand-baby's neck!” and how she was going to “kill him dead”. The principal, did his best to calm her down, but I honestly don't think we got through to her. After she left, the principal told me that she was embarrassed that she had over reacted, but wasn't willing to back down in front of me. I was not convinced. I drove through town expecting a bullet to put an end to the situation at any second.

I lived on a little thirteen acre farm that had once belonged to the school board president's mother. It was about ten minutes from Waeldar in the middle of nowhere. There had been a small black community out there called Mt. Eden, but the only thing left was a church that was still used and a post office building that was boarded up.

My house was a ramshackle Green Acres sort of affair. It had three bedrooms, but for the most part, I spent all my time in the one in the back where I slept. I chose that room because the others had issues. One, which was the smallest was crammed full of whatever the family had left in the house when the president's mother had passed away. It smelled of mouse urine, and I only went in there on occasion to find furniture or other items to use in the house. The front room had pink walls and was really big with lots of windows. I just didn't like it for some reason. Mom and Dad used to use it when they visited. They called it camping.

My bedroom was in the back corner of the house closest to the bathroom. It had windows on two walls. I put the old window air conditioner in one of them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Luckily, there was a decent shady tree outside, and the room stayed comfortable with a box fan in the other window when it didn't work. In the winter, I hung heavy curtains over the windows and used a kerosene heater to keep the room warm while I was awake. I had an electric mattress pad that kept me warm while sleeping. That and my dog, Trooper, who slept under the covers down by my feet.

I had an electric heater on a timer in the bathroom. It warmed it to a bearable temperature for the morning S³ session. One time, before I put the heater in there, I had to chip ice in the toilet. That old house had absolutely no insulation. The boards you saw inside, were the boards you saw outside. There was no sheet rock or anything. At one point in time, someone had glued newspaper on some of the walls like wallpaper. I'm sure that was to stop the wind.

I absolutely loved living out at that old house. It could be a little scary sometimes. For example, the first night I stayed out there, Trooper and I were awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like a bunch of lunatic ghost children running by the house. At school the next day, the local teachers got a big laugh about that. I was ready to move back to town, it scared me so badly. Turns out that it was just a pack of coyotes. That's right- a pack of coyotes. I somehow think the ghosts were less frightening.

Anyway, on the night after my run in with that grandmother, Trooper suddenly stood at the front screen door giving this really strange low guttural growl. He was shaking and the hair on his neck and back was standing up. When I got to him, he looked at me with a , “What the hell is that?” expression on his face. I had no idea what he was worrying over, so I carefully stepped out on the porch. Suddenly, the brake lights on my car went on. I panicked. Someone was sitting in my car with their foot on the brake. That grandmother, true to her word, had sent someone out to kill me. I went back in the house, slammed the door, locked it, and ran for my 22 semi-automatic rifle.

I had bought that stupid rifle about a week earlier after coming home from school one day and finding a turd on my kitchen floor that was from no animal I had ever seen. I always left the back door open for Trooper to come in and out as he pleased while I was at school. He was acting a little skittish, so I new something had been in the house with him. It wasn't a mouse. It wasn't a rat. I didn't know what it was. I put Trooper in the car, and we drove to the Gonzales Walmart, where I bought the rifle.

I had never owned a gun before. For the most part, I was scared of the stupid thing. Still, I loaded it and went around the property shooting to get the feel of it. I remember thinking that maybe I could shoot a squirrel or something for dinner, but we never saw any critters. In fact, I never did figure out what that was that came in the house. People at work suggested it was probably a raccoon or possum that Trooper had scared “shitless”, and it would never come back. I had never understood the phrase “scared shitless” until then.

So there I was at my door holding on to a 22 that I barely knew how to shoot. I did know that I would get something like 12 shots or something, I don't really remember, before having to reload. I stepped out on the porch and sure enough, that brake light was still on. Then it went off. Then it went back on again. I hollered, “Get out of my car. I have a gun, and I'll use it if I have to!” The brake light went off, but nobody got out of the car. It was too dark to see who it was. I shouted, “I'm not playing!” and shot the rifle into the air. Nothing happened. I shot it again and stepped a little closer. The brake light went on. I panicked and shot several more times. I screamed, “the sheriff is on the way!” in a scared choking little voice that even I wouldn't have believed. I remember thinking, “Brilliant, Einstein. Why didn't you call?”

Way off to the left about a half mile away, I saw lights coming on at the neighbor's place. I was still standing there looking at my brake lights going on and off thinking how crazy this was. It really pissed me off. I went up to the car like a SWAT team member ready to kill whoever was in there, only to find that there was absolutely nobody in my car. Somehow that was even more terrifying to me. The thought of some ghost intruder sitting there playing with my brakes made my blood run cold. I just froze. I wanted to scream. I couldn't. I wanted to run back to the house. I couldn't. Fortunately, I wasn't scared “shitless”, although I may have wet myself a bit!

I must have lost some time because suddenly someone was talking to me. It was my neighbor, a kindly old man, whom I had never really met except to wave at as he passed by my house. He had a shotgun with him and asked me what was going on. I told him about the brake lights and how I thought someone was in my car. He opened the gate and came over to me and asked, “Where did he go?” I told him that there hadn't been anyone at all. Well, he looked at me like I was crazy. I thought he was going to shoot me for troubling him, but suddenly the stupid brake light came on again. He jumped back and swung his shotgun around at the car. After a few minutes he scratched his head, walked over to my car and kicked it with his foot. The brake light went off. He kicked it again, and the brake light came on. He started laughing, and headed back to his truck. He turned and hollered, “Boy, you gots a short in them wires!”

I stood there with my mouth hanging open and watched him drive into my property, make a loop around me and my car, and drive on out and to his place. I could hear him laughing most of the way. I, however, did not laugh. I cried like a stupid little baby. I felt so embarrassed and just too stupid for words.

That grandma came to a special ed meeting about her grand daughter about two weeks later. She was as nice and friendly as ever. I sometimes wonder, whether or not she had heard about my night of terror.