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Somebody Got Shot

Jack Smiles

    Randy's sister Melissa burst into the house. “Ohmigod, Randy some kid got shot,” she wailed, her voice trembling, her eyes watering.
    “Shot? Where? Who?” Randy asked.
    “Right over on Spring Street. Just a minute ago. Maryann and I saw him. We saw the hole in his head, oh it was so awful. I’ll never get it out of my mind.” She collapsed on the couch, a sobbing, quivering heap.

****

    When Randy got home from school an hour earlier his Mom and Dad were out. A present with a card propped up on it was on the telephone desk in the foyer. He crossed his fingers and made made a steeple with his hands. “Please, Please,” he said aloud. Oh how he wanted a lever action Winchester .30-30 for his 12th birthday like the one the Cimmaron Kid used on his favorite TV show. He knelt before the present, tore off the wrapping paper and beheld the box: “Golden Ranger Replica Winchester Cimarron Lever Action Rifle. You won’t believe what it can do.”
    The card read, “Randy, you talked us into it. Have fun, but be careful. Love Mom and Dad.”
    He pulled it out of the box, ran out back, stuck the barrel in the dirt, lifted it waist high, cranked the lever to cock the hammer and pulled the trigger.
    Wow, cool. It fired with a pop louder than opening a shook up bottle of root beer. Dirt and grass flew out the barrel a good twenty feet. There was even a little recoil. “Yahoo,” and took off running down the alley behind the house. He couldn’t wait to show his rifle to his best pal Pat Fadden who lived in the last house on the alley before Spring Street. “Fiends’ Alley” Randy and Pat called it because it was where the tough kids smoked cigarettes in the morning before school.
    Randy didn’t make it to Pat’s house. As he was running through the alley an older kid, a teenager on a bike, stopped in front him. When Randy tried to get around him he said, “nice gun,” ripped the Replica Cimarron Lever Action Rifle from Randy’s hand, spun his bike and peddled off toward Spring. Randy ran after him crying and screaming, “it’s my birthday, it’s my birthday.”As the thief turned onto Spring Street his tires slid on gravel and he went down, the rifle clattering as it bounced toward Randy. He picked it up. The thief got up and took a step toward Randy, but just then a car came down Spring Street. Seeing it the thief got on his bike and peddled away. I waited for the car to pass. I stuck my rifle in the tree lawn, lifted it, sited the thief and cranked the lever. But the feel was different. It was hot and heavy in my hands. I pulled the trigger. “Take that,” I said and laughed at the futility of my shot. I turned and ran home.

****

    Nothing like it had ever happened in our little town. Two girls, one of them Randy’s sister Melissa, walking on Spring found Bill Bantell laying in the street in front of the Winter’s house, a stream of blood running from the hole in the back of his head. Their horrified screams brought Mrs. Winter onto her porch. Not understanding what she saw, Mrs. Winters went back in her house and called the ambulance and police. By the time the ambulance got there, half the town was crowded around the corner six deep.
    Police Chief Rowland said on a special TV news report Billy had been killed by one shot to the back of his head with a .30-30 bullet. But who would shoot Bill Bantell, the star of the high school basketball team, and why? The Chief went door-to-door in the neighborhood. Nobody heard a shot. Mrs. Winters said she heard someone, might have been the Wills boy, screaming “It’s my birthday,” but thought nothing of it.
    Based on what Mrs. Winter said, the Chief came to my house.
    My father answered the door. I stood alongside him. “Mike,” he said to my father, “someone was shot over on Spring Street a little while ago. Mrs Winter said she thought she her your boy crying and yelling about his birthday.”
    Well, it is his birthday,” my father said.
    The Chief looked at me. “Randy, do you have a 30. 30 rifle?”
    “Well, sort of,” I stammered looking down at my feet. “I just got it for me birthday.”
    “Let me see it.”
    “Get it,” my father said.
    I got the rifle from my room and gave it to the chief.
    He looked it over, tried not to laugh and handed it back. I heard my father say, “no, no other guns in the house” as I climbed the stairs to my room.
    I sat on my bed with my rifle on my lap feeling the smooth warm wooden stock and cool metal of the barrel. I rubbed the lump on my head and thought about Casey Reed and how he had purposely beaned me in a Little League game.

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