Admiration at a Cost

Through the rifles scope I can see her beautiful smile. Her short blonde hair is held back in a small ponytail and she’s wearing a burgundy Christmas dress with a mint-green sache tied into a large bow about her waist. The corners of her mouth are curled upwards as that smile widens, letting her shiny white teeth show – all accounted for which is nothing short of a miracle for such a young child. Despite the cold weather, a group of adults are huddled in a circle on the lawn beside the driveway which is where the child sits holding a plastic doll. The adults are bundled up in sweaters and beanies and a few of them are holding mugs of something hot as steam rises quickly from between their hands. The rest of them are clinging onto glass beer bottles.

Across the street and atop a hill adjacent them, I am perched against the outside of a house enshrouded in darkness. All of the lights are turned off. I can see the warm breath escape my body as each exhale splits the brisk night air. The puffs of steam seep out of me steadily as I struggle to hold tight the heavy rifle. The gun’s metal is even colder than the winds chill, and because of the sweat beginning to crawl down my face due to my exertion, the rifle sticks to my face. Everyone behind me quickly grows irritated the longer their anticipation stretches on.

“Aim for the porch light next to the garage,” Carl says, and he points a finger to my mark. The light bulb burns white from within its fixture, illuminating most of their front yard. “Hurry the hell up, we need to leave.” He walks away from me and through the open door of our house, leaving the others standing behind me with their eyes remaining fixed on the neighbors porch light. One of the men behind me, Chris, is holding a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand and occasionally takes a chug then passes it to the other man, Jace. Before the gun was brought out and handed to me I was next in line for the alcohol. But not now.

With one eye socket pressed to the scope, I close my other eyelid. This is how they did it in the movies. I had used one other gun before, and that was in a remote desert with nothing but brush and sand to aim for. But I was an excellent shot with a rubber-band gun, and an even better showman as I could spin the gun around a single finger and place it into a plastic holster – all in one very quick motion. Yet, despite fancying myself a more handsome Doc Holiday, this time everything just felt… real.

The sound of swishing liquid from within a bottle drew nearer. “You need to just aim straight and hold it a little higher,” Jace suggests and he begins to contort my shoulders and arms using his free hand. From within our house doors are slammed shut at a frantic pace as Carl goes from one to the other. Taking aim once more, the cross hairs begin to sag down to her face yet again as my arms grow weak and begin to tremble. The little girl is sitting in the driveway still, only now she is fidgeting with her doll’s clothing. My fingers ache from being held in place for so long and my shoulder has gone numb from the pressure of squeezing the weapon firmly. The stucco exterior I am leaning against has scratched at my skin forming a rash. The drunken mumbling from behind me is comforting; I know if anything goes wrong these men will protect me. I want to impress them and be accepted. I can still see the bullets being pressed into the cartridge and the cartridge then loaded into the rifle I am now holding. The copper tips of the bullets felt sharp when pressed to my fingertips. I pause to look back at them: Carl has now rejoined the group outside and the trio look to me and then in unison back across the street – signaling for me to continue.

My mind races so fast that I feel groggy, and many emotions course through my veins with such intensity I feel as though my chest will burst. I fear the immediate effect of pulling the trigger: the rifle exploding sending vibrations deep down to the bones of my body causing me pain. I fear losing my grip afterwards and the rifle falling out of my hands and to the ground. I fear missing the porch light and hitting the little girl and the sound forever echoing guilt throughout my existence. What if it goes off again once it hits the dirt? What if the pressure breaks my shoulder? Most importantly, what if I let them all down? It must be a test of some sort, I think to myself. In an effort to bolster my resolve, I begin to think of how I can brag to my very few Jr. High friends about actually shooting a rifle and drinking whiskey with adult men — as though I too am already a man and have quickly surpassed anything I could ever learn in school. The teenagers during my lunch period will foam at the mouth in jealousy, or so I hope.

“He isn’t going to do it, I told you we shouldn’t have even bothered.”

“Shut the fuck up, he’ll do it just give him some time.”

“It has to be done tonight. That little motherfucker isn’t going to get away with it, and we need to know if Will can do it, so get him to hurry the fuck up.” I keep rigid despite Carl’s lack of confidence, but I don’t want to imagine doing whatever else it is they expect me to do. This is a new development and something I was never made aware of. I was told stories about Carl before, and though embarrassing my brother by failing to do what they ask would be tough on our relationship, I find myself more bothered by the thought that I might actually do whatever is necessary simply to gain their trust and become a reliable part of the group. That and, of course not to piss off Carl. The stories weren’t the prettiest. Movement from across the street catches my attention.

The girl slowly stands up and the wind catches her ponytail swaying it about as she then straightens her dress. She looks around the yard and over to the adults, then to the street and then up to our house. Even though I know just how well hidden we all are, I can’t help but feel naked at the same time. Thinking back in hindsight, she glared at us through a darkness that I had no idea of just how sinister it truly would prove to be. Then, as if she saw nothing, she smiles and turns away from us.

Now is my chance. My biceps burn but I force the pin-point of the scope to be as close to the porch light as possible and I squeeze the trigger slowly. I was only committed to them knowing I fired the weapon, not that I could hit the light. So I let the barrel’s aim fall fast to the dirt a few feet in front of us and far from the little girl just as the trigger fully compressed. I cringe in fearful anticipation and clench both of my eyes shut. But there is no sound. There is no screaming, no blood soaked child sprawled out and no shattering of glass. Not even an explosion of dirt from where I truly aimed. I exhale slowly, relieved that I found a way around their demands. Then I notice the absence of sound. Nothing at all actually happened. The gun is still within my hands. So I open my eyes and look to the neighbors house which remains brightly lit. Behind me no one has noticed my gallant effort, and I am quickly berated for taking so much time. The aches in my body are too much to bare now, and I let the gun down slowly and its barrel rest on the ground. Carl rushes to my side and seizes his weapon from me. “Stop fucking day dreaming,” he says before stomping away. Chris grabs me by my shoulders, turns me around to face them all and presses me back against the stucco wall – which now digs into me even worse than before, piercing through my shirt like a million tiny daggers. Carl goes into the house and begins to lock the other doors and windows getting ready to leave. Jace glares at me and then follows behind Carl pleading on my behalf for a second chance.

“Listen, ignore them, if you don’t want to do it then don’t. It’s totally cool man, just calm down and relax.” Apparently my shaking was from far more than the bitter cold and not having a jacket. “Can you do it? We need to know now if you can do it,” he says. I’m confused; am I being asked to help them with ‘that little motherfucker’ or am I being asked if I can shoot out the neighbors porch light despite an entire family standing outside of their house.

I conclude it’s the former and again I am frozen in fear. I think of the little girl and how the texture of her hair looked like my mothers whenever my mom would brush her hair out in our living room. In her sky blue robe reeking of cigarette smoke, my mother would sit on our couch and brush her hair and brush her hair and brush her hair until it nearly fell out. Her hair became so thin over the years it took on an originality I had never seen before. Brittle and wispy, her hair was a light brown and despite the damage done to it it could always be made up into something beautiful and exquisite when she would get dressed up. Their smiles were similar too I thought; my mothers and the little girls. My mother even had a velvety mint-green evening gown she would often wear during the Christmas season. The thought of inadvertently putting a bullet through either of their heads – and anyone else’s, was more than I could take and so in that moment with Chris I told him no.

“No, I can’t,” I said loud enough for the other two to hear. For some reason I felt as though I did the opposite of what the screwed up logic of the situation demanded: and thus by not doing what was expected I showed guts and boldness and passed their test. Alas, from within the hallway of the opened house all I heard was, “Told you he’d pussy out.”
Chris grips both of my shoulders and says, “Listen, good. Good for you, don’t feel bad for that at all. It’s okay little man.” Then he and Carl get into a car. Shortly after, I’m enveloped in a large shadowy silhouette as Jace approaches me. He has a look of contempt that causes me to feel ashamed in a way I had never felt before. “You just lost yourself fifty grand. There goes college and anything you could want. Fifty fucking grand, gone. That was fucking stupid.” He walks away from me and to the car, which is loaded with other weapons and the bottle of whiskey. He gets in and they drive off leaving me alone and in a dismal state.

I go back inside the dark house, shut and lock the door, and then peek through the blinds of a window facing that little girls house. She’s now gone, and most of the adults too. Those adults left gather patio furniture and put it into the garage. They shut the garage door, go inside the house through the front door and then the outside porch light quickly goes black. I walk over to a table in the kitchen and empty my pockets.

Beside a slew of spread out playing cards and poker chips and a bottle of E&J, I toss out some pieces of gum, a crumpled dollar paired with a thrift store receipt, a few beer bottle caps and an I.D. Everything glistens in the starlight shining through a nearby window. The emblem on the I.D. opposite my photo is an angry Jaguar taking a swipe with a paw. It reads:

  Jaguars Jr. High School 2000
William Raynor, 09/19/87

Below my date of birth is a nine digit number and a bar code that, once scanned in the cafeteria allows me one free lunch per day. The photo on the card seems to mock me as I turn over an empty shot glass from the table and pour it full of the brandy, then throw my head back and toss the liquor down my throat. I need to feel something other than embarrassment and the burn from the alcohol seems to help. I slowly and methodically grab a blanket from the top of the couch in the living room and lay down covering myself with it, making sure to lay on my stomach so as not to asphyxiate on my vomit if I were to throw up while in my stupor.

My world was constantly spinning at that age and not just from the alcohol. It took me more time than it should have to finally steady it. Little did I know, holding the gun toward that child would prove to be one of the more innocent things I would be involved in in the coming future. Within a few years time I would be living with an aggressive, psychopathic drug dealer in a carousel of addiction, cruelty, obsession and stuck in a peculiar trance — with an abundance of wealth at our disposal. Unfortunately, it felt like it was the only option available to me at that time and an option that I have since been amazed I worked my way out of.