Killing Time

Eight

Down on the street, it was still June and sunny, and the women shoppers were still bustling back and forth, lugging their shopping bags with “I’ve been shopping at SHELDON’S” emblazoned in red letters on both sides, and the Sal Mineos and Brigitte Bardots were still milling around the library entrance. In the window of Hutchinson’s Auto Dealers, somebody was putting up huge signs for the summer sale, as Fred Hutchinson got ready to unload the last of this year’s model before September, when next year’s cars would be showing up. Gar Wycza was still standing in the middle of the street, at the intersection of State and DeWitt, waving his arms as though he was doing something. We grinned at each other, and as I went by he said, “Good day to go drinkin, huh?”

“When’s a bad day to go drinkin?” I asked him.

He laughed and waved his arms, and I went on across the street. The grizzle-faced old-timers were still sitting on the benches in City Hall Park, leaning back and squinting off toward 1930.

City Hall was kind of impressive, seen from head-on. There was the block-square park, with a wide gravel walk cutting right down the middle of it from DeWitt Street to the wide stone steps of City Hall. Stately old trees — maybe they were elms, maybe they weren’t, I’ve never been much for identifying trees — were dotted here and there on both sides of the gravel walk, and the City Hall loomed high up above them, gray-black weathered marble in a combination Greco-Roman and American Colonial style, like most small-town City Halls in the northeast, the windows wide and tall and single-paned, towers awkward and out-of-place jutting up at the corners.

It was an architectural monstrosity, complete with a little bit of Dutch influence in the choppy roofline, but it was impressive anyway. It was impressive because it was ugly and awkward and bulky. I guess it seemed as though a building that far from being beautiful must be functional.

I walked down the gravel path, and something tugged at my right trouser cuff. I looked down, and there was a new rip in the cuff. I couldn’t figure that out to save myself, and I looked around on the gravel for a piece of glass or something, but there wasn’t anything there but gravel and my shoes.

The tree beside me went putt. I looked at it, and didn’t see anything in particular, and for a second I thought maybe I was going crazy. I looked around at the gravel path again, and a tiny dust puff sprang up from the path about four feet from me, toward De Witt Street.

Somebody was shooting at me! It was the middle of the afternoon, there were thousands of people around, school kids and women shoppers and old-timers, the sun was shining down, Gar Wycza was waving his arms up at the intersection, chrome-shiny cars were driving by with muted engines, and somebody was shooting at me. And my chunky frame was too good a target to miss forever.

I was behind the tree in one quick step. I looked around, and the world was still normal. There hadn’t been any sound, none of these people all around me knew I’d been shot at. One or two of the old-timers glanced at me curiously when I ducked behind the tree, but that was all, and they looked away again after a second when I didn’t do anything else interesting.

The shots had come from City Hall. I peered around the tree at the building, the wide blank windows, feeling silly. Right in the middle of all those normal people doing all those normal things, there was a stocky nut, me, peeking around a tree at City Hall.

After the first few seconds, I didn’t feel scared. I felt ridiculous, I felt as though somebody had just made a fool of me. And that made me mad. I stood behind the tree, trying to figure out what to do next, and my own helplessness made me even madder.

What could I do? I couldn’t shout for help, the only people in hearing distance were the old-timers on the benches. I couldn’t go charging City Hall. And I couldn’t stand behind that stately old tree forever, either.

I finally backed away, heading back toward DeWitt Street again. I was trying to keep the tree between me and City Hall, and at the same time I was trying not to look like a nut playing games in the middle of the park, so I had a few awkward moments before I got to DeWitt Street. And when Gar Wycza grinned at me as I crossed the street, I growled at him, and that made me feel even sillier.

The sillier I felt, the madder I got, and the madder I got, the sillier I felt, and all the way back to the office it kept spiraling up, until finally the anger blanketed the silly feeling, and I felt nothing but enraged. By the time I got to my office, impatiently working the keys, I was boiling.

There was a shallow closet beside the filing cabinet, where I kept my overcoat in the winter. Hanging on a hook in there was a shoulder holster, and in the shoulder holster there was a.32 revolver. I had a license for that revolver* but I hadn’t toted it for years, not since the first novelty of owning it had worn off, back in ’46. There had never been any need for it, not in a town like Winston.

There was a need for it now. The next time somebody shot at me, God damn it, I was going to be able to shoot back.

I’d put on weight since I’d bought the gun and holster, so it fit a little too snug, but I could still move with relative freedom, and I could get at the handle of the revolver without too much struggling. I felt a lot better once it was safely on. Not quite so ridiculous, and not quite so impotently angry. I put my suit coat back on, locked myself out of the office, and went off to pound on a conference table.