The Shoot Out!

This piece was published in "Out of Order" a zine that Kerry Thornley published in the mid-90s in Atlanta.

The Shoot Out

(the view from space)
Look...down there...
See that group of large lakes?
Lets look a little closer...

There's a city of tall buildings on the southern shore of that long lake. Different shapes of art-deco concrete, cubes and obelisks, silver window pock-marked in ultralinear regularity. A couple towers, several rounded and arched. From above, it looks like an electrical circuit, in a way, it is. Swarming energy on crowded grids of circulation. Capillaries spew yellow taxis and commuter corpuscles through arterial spaghetti into the suburbs.

Foundry black becomes brick red becomes brownstone brown becomes flagstone of many colors with trim matching garage with alleyway behind. Red crisscrosses on white. The same thing in blue. the next block over, and reversed in brown, four houses up. The family auto in every garage except for a Plymouth on the sludgy street.

The house with the red crisscrosses has a rumpus room in the basement. Slovak relatives do the chaddadash there. There is music, you can hear it from the driveway, where a large, teal Cadillac is parked, covered with snow. Let's peer into the basement window. It's smudged grey from the snow. Wipe it off...

Look, they're having a birthday party. There are several little girls there and two moms. Father, in a cowboy outfit, is teaching the parakeet to say "Pretty boy Melvin!" Marvin Rainwater is yodeling "Gonna find me a bluebird." There is going to be a show. The record changes to "Theme from Gunsmoke". Dad is poised with six shooters, facing the ornery varmint on the stairs, a tiny, two year old boy in a cowboy suit, ready to draw. The tension is building, though the girls are more enthralled with the cuteness of the child's red cowboy outfit (in total contrast to the mean look in his eye!). There is a cold stillness in the air. Then, a loud-
"BANG!"

Two girls faint, one mom is holding her chest and screaming in Slovak. The little boy is jumping up and down and laughing, then he falls down and hits his head on the rail and starts crying. There is a smoking hole in the step below the child, and dad is holding the smoking gun. The Slovak curses get louder and head slapping begins. There will be complaints from other moms when their daughters tell them this. "I didn't know it was loaded!" shouts the dad getting his head slapped. The little boy is laughing again and the bird is repeating "Pretty boy Melvin" and the record is stuck, and the fainting girls are okay enough to have three helpings of birthday cake apiece.

Oh, look, the Boxer dog has been hiding under the stairs the whole time and has now decided to come out for a piece of birthday cake the boy is sharing with her off his plate. Now, she is licking the icing off his face. Good dog! That gun must have scared her.

Years, later, fireworks will scare her enough for her to get herself stuck behind an aluminum shed, wedged in between the house and shed, in about three inches space. The boy would remember the dog wedged behind the shed, her black jowels squeezed between the blue-grey/black at night and orange fireworks flashing.

He won't remember the shootout, his mom will relate the story, years later, though we have visited it in our voyeuristic jaunt.

[From the blogs of Stephendedalus]