| General Fiction posted May 4, 2024 | Chapters: |
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Dangerous encounters
A chapter in the book What We See
What We See - Chapter 40
by Jim Wile
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
| Background A high school teacher wrongly accused of sexual assault reinvents his life. |
Recap of Chapter 39: Alan offers Andrew Oleson the job after checking his references. He then closes shop early, and buys a blank gun as a deterrent if needed, and prepares for the long trip to Arkansas the next day. He leaves early the next morning and arrives there 10 hours later. He lets Ginnie know he arrived safely, then finds out where Dennis Meyers lives and heads over there.
After secreting the blank gun in his jeans, he exits the car only to find Warren, who had been out hunting, has spotted him. When he turns around to confront Warren, there is a rifle pointed at him. Warren is not going to let him just get back in his car and leave, so he orders Alan to head up to his brother’s house while he keeps the gun trained on him. They stop at a shed, where Warren retrieves a shovel, and he orders Alan to keep moving. Alan correctly guesses that Warren plans on shooting him and burying him, but Warren is going to make him dig his own grave first.
Chapter 40
“Alright, start moving. Make for that big tree there in the distance.”
I was about 20 paces ahead of him and walking slowly. I had to think of a way to escape from this lunatic. Even if I could pull my blank gun, which he didn’t know about because he never got close enough to frisk me, what good would it do? Unless the sound of it firing gave him a heart attack, it was pretty useless in this situation. I had to think of something else.
We were walking through a rocky field of sparse scrub grass. There were a few trees here and there, but no houses around. It was desolate, and if he were to shoot me, no one would likely hear the shot, or even if they did, they wouldn’t think much of it. Apparently, Warren hunted around here, so I’m sure occasional stray shots meant nothing.
Maybe the guy would chicken out. He never struck me as a killer. Perhaps he didn’t have it in him. But could I bank on that? No. I had to think of something to distract him and perhaps just run off, out of range of a shot. Who knows how good of a shot he might be? I could always zig-zag to make it harder to hit a moving target.
I didn’t have too long to think about this because he told me to stop after another 20 paces. We were now 100 yards behind his house.
“Alright, Alan, this is far enough. I’m going to toss you the shovel now, and I want you to start digging. I’m going to stand well back behind you so you won’t be able to throw dirt at me, but I’ll have the gun trained on you the whole time.”
He tossed the shovel then and stepped back a few more paces. I just stood there watching him.
“Now pick it up, turn back around, and start digging.”
“Why should I? You’re going to kill me anyway; you can dig my grave yourself. Besides, I don’t think you’d go through with it. You’re no killer, Warren.”
“Yeah? Don’t bet on it. You wouldn’t be my first, you know. Let’s see now; you’d actually be my fourth. The first was kind of accidental, but the other two? Well, it was pretty much this same way. I could shoot you right now, but I really don’t like digging, so if you want to live a little bit longer, and perhaps—and I’m not saying it’s likely—but perhaps you’ll even think of a way to get out of it somehow. So, pick up that shovel and start digging.”
He had a point. Maybe something would come to me with a little more time. I reached down and picked up the shovel, turned around, and started digging. The soil was slightly dry, so progress was slow, not that I was objecting to this. It gave me longer to think. It was a little bit rocky too, and the shovel would often hit a rock as I drove it in with my foot. One rock that I hit was nicely rounded. Because the soil was dryish, it didn’t cling to the rocks, especially the smooth ones, and this one was fairly smooth. It was about half the size of my fist and would make a good projectile if I could somehow separate it out and put it within easy reach. Rather than throw the shovel-full of dirt containing this rock on the existing pile I had been making beside the hole, I threw it a little to the side, so the rock was away from the center of the pile now. As long as I didn’t bury it with subsequent shovel-fulls, I would be able to bend down, pick it up, and use it as a weapon.
In college baseball, I started out at third base, but they saw what a good arm I had because of the long throws needed from third to first, so they turned me into a relief pitcher. With a little practice, I could probably still throw a 90-mph fast ball with good accuracy.
Now I just had to figure out a way to distract him long enough to pick up that rock and bean him with it. He was 20 feet behind me, and I would have only one shot at this, so I’d better be accurate.
I continued with about five more shovel-fulls as I got up my nerve. Then I stopped to stretch my back. I turned around to face him and looked over his shoulder.
“You must be Dennis,” I said.
Warren turned then to look behind him, pulling his gun off me, and in that split second, I bent down and picked up the rock. When he turned back and began taking his aim again, I hurled it at him. It struck him right in the forehead with a thud, and he went down like Foreman after a straight right from Ali. The rifle fell to the side as I ran up to him. He was out cold.
He'd fallen for the old “Hey, look at that!” trick, and much to my great relief, he was no longer a threat. Now, what to do with him? I could see his chest rise and fall, so he wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t about to lug him back to the house. I planned to go back there and search until I found the hard drive. I didn’t want him coming to and coming after me again, so I decided to restrain him.
All I had were his belt and my own, so I removed both. I turned him over so he was prone and bound his hands behind him with one of the belts. I tied the other belt around his ankles. Then I bent his knees back to bring his feet closer to his hands and tied the two belts together, pulling them quite tight. He was essentially hog-tied. I made sure everything was tight, picked up his gun, and headed back toward the house. On the way back, I emptied all the bullets from the rifle, smashed the firing mechanism against a boulder to disable it, and heaved it into the scrub.
I entered the house through the unlocked side door. It was a two-story house, and on the first floor were the kitchen, which this door led into, a dining room, a living room, and another room off the side, which I guess was a den. The place was disgusting. There were beer cans strewn all over the floor, piles of garbage here and there, sparse, ratty-looking furniture, and piles of old magazines in two of the corners. It stank too, as if there were dead animals in the walls. There weren’t any obvious places to have stored a hard drive down here, so I went upstairs, where the bedrooms were. They were the most likely place I would find it.
I started by glancing into both bedrooms. The one furthest from the head of the stairs, was a complete mess with an unmade bed, clothes covering the floor, and more magazines piled in a corner. The other, which was right opposite the top of the stairs, was quite a bit neater. I figured Warren was staying in this one. Besides the bed, there was a dresser and a desk. The bed was made, albeit sloppily. Opposite that was the dresser, and beneath the window, which was directly across from the door to the room, was the desk. This room also reeked, so I opened the window wide to be able to let in some fresh air. There was no screen on the window, but what did it matter if a few bugs were let in?
I figured the hard drive would probably be in one of the desk drawers. It wasn’t in the top drawer on the right or the next one, but I found it in the bottom drawer and pulled it out. I recognized it as the hard drive from my computer.
As I was sitting there enjoying my victory, I heard a deep voice say, “Who the hell are you?”
I turned around and saw a huge man standing in the doorway, holding a shotgun, pointed right at me. This had to be Dennis, home early from his bluegrass show.
“A friend of your brother’s,” I said as I stood quickly and flipped the hard drive at him like I was throwing a frisbee. I then reached behind me, pulled the blank gun from my waistband, and began firing at him. He was so startled by this rapid turn of events that he began ducking and backing up, but there wasn’t much room until he reached the top of the staircase, and suddenly, he lost his balance and fell backwards down the stairs. I heard the shotgun fire and the sound of a large body tumbling backwards down the stairs until there was a sickening thud as he reached the bottom. He had lost his grip on the gun during the fall, and it was lodged between some balusters of the banister, many of which were broken during the fall. Dennis lay in a heap at the bottom, and he was groaning loudly. His leg appeared to be badly broken, and I could see bone sticking out the side. It looked like an elbow was bent completely backwards as well.
My hastily-derived plan had been to hurl the drive at him, fire the blank gun, then jump out the window over the desk to the roof of the den below, which was only a few feet down, but his fall down the stairs eliminated the need for that plan. I picked up the hard drive from where it had fallen, went down the stairs, and stepped over Dennis’s body to reach the floor. Dennis was still groaning loudly while cursing and crying at the same time.
I found the telephone on a table on the side of the staircase and placed it down next to him. “Better call for help, Dennis. Your brother’s unconscious back there about 100 yards behind the house too. He’s tied up. I’m taking off now. Good luck.”
And I left.
(2 more chapters to go)
 Recognized |
CHARACTERS
Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985.
Archie: David's orange tabby cat
Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan.
Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse.
Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St.
Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street.
Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend.
Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher.
Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.
Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer.
Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop.
Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.
Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney.
Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren.
Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer.
Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother.
Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother.
Andrew Olafsen: Alan's new assistant at the store.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Alan Phelps: The narrator of the story. He is a 28-year-old high school physics and natural science teacher in Grantham, Indiana in 1985.
Archie: David's orange tabby cat
Tommy Boardman: Alan's 12-year-old next door neighbor. He is dyslexic like Alan.
Ginnie Boardman: Tommy's mother. She is 30 years old and is an ICU nurse.
Artie Intintoli: Tommy's friend who also lives on Loser St.
Ida Beeman: Alan's first customer. She is a nice old lady who lives on Loser Street.
Leroy Beeman: Miss Ida's grandson and Tommy's friend.
Mrs. Dunbar: Tommy's 7th grade English teacher.
Callie Lyons: A nice girl in Tommy's class at school.
Trent Lyons: Callie's father, who is a lawyer.
Warren Meyers: Alan's assistant in the repair shop.
Abby St. Claire: Callie's cousin who is a math major with an engineering minor at Penn State University.
Harold Carmody: A patent and infringement attorney.
Wilson Fraleigh: The owner and president of the company that bought the patent from Warren.
Samuel Dvorak: Warren's former employer.
Elizabeth Meyers: Warren's mother.
Dennis Meyers: Warren's brother.
Andrew Olafsen: Alan's new assistant at the store.
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