The Crossland ShootoutA Novel by JOHN MYERS
Chapter 5
A Front Row Seat at the Crossland Shootout, Act I,
or, 'Don't Take Your Gun To Town, Jay, Stay Home'
Well, I did listen to the first voice and not the second one. For a while. I resolved that I would forget about Hector Cruz and said no more about him to Suzy, the major, or to anybody.
But as that Saturday evening rolled around two weeks later when the big party was supposed to be at the Cruz house in Sandspur Acres, dope that I am, I got in my car and rode up to take a look.
I said nothing to Suzy about where I was going, deciding that not only did I not need an interpreter, better that she stay home.
That's about the only wise move I made on that Saturday night.
Even if I didn't know where I was going, I'd have had to have been deaf to miss the big party at the Cruz house. As I drove through Crossland, I could hear throbbing music half a mile off.
Sandspur Acres is just outside the town limits of Crossland. I suppose the reason the town board hasn't annexed it into town might have something to do with its sizable population of Mexicans, who might get uppity and vote in a Mexican mayor or something. So the city cops had no authority to come out and order them to turn the volume down a couple of hundred decibels.
When I got to the Cruz house, I could see the source of the noise, a live band rocking and rolling in the front yard, their sounds blasting forth from a bank of speakers taller than I am.
That's another thing that changed in my life. I used to love rock and roll like a hog loves slop, but since I got saved, now it grates on my nerves like fingers scratching on a chalk board.
But I'd come this far, and I decided a little music wasn't going to stop me now. I parked a block or more from the Cruz house, at the tail end of a line of cars parked on both sides of Moonshine Road. Obviously, the party was already well under way with a fair-sized crowd though it had just turned dark that late July evening.
I got my camera and flash out of the trunk of the car before I locked it up. I suppose the camera and flash hanging on a strap on my shoulder makes me feel more official. I took it along.
It's more of a habit than anything else, always taking a camera along when I'm working on a story. My photo instructor at Missouri told us one time, "Nobody has ever taken a good picture with the camera he forgot to carry with him."
And for some reason, perhaps because I was hearing the still, small voice in spite of the noise of that blaring music, I left my gun in the car.
Now don't spread this around, but I do keep a pistol in my car. It's a habit I got into working in the big city for morning newspapers, when you have to drive home early in the A.M. on spooky streets after first getting in your car in a dark parking lot.
It's perfectly legal to carry a gun in your car. As long as it's locked up in the glove compartment or in the trunk. The way North Carolina law reads, it's legal to keep a gun in a vehicle, as long as it is not readily accessible to the driver when inside.
Now I don't know which particular idiot wrote that law, but what good is a gun if it's not readily accessible? If the occasion arises when you need a gun, you're going to need it bad, right now.
I can't imagine the carjacker who would be gracious enough to hold his fire while you fumble with your key to unlock the glove compartment, or even worse, get out and walk around to the trunk.
Of course, there is a legal way to carry a gun in your vehicle. Leave it out in the open. So when I'm in my car, I lay my pistol on the seat beside me in the open, to make it legal.
Or you can strap a holster to your side and walk down main street with your Colt .45 six-shooter just like Marshall Dillon, and you are breaking no law in North Carolina. Now if you take that six-shooter out and start waving it around, that's against the law.
The statute calls that "going armed to the terror of the public." But wear it openly in a holster, or in the case of a vehicle, leave the gun lying on the seat in plain view, and that's a perfectly legal way to carry a gun. It's also a very good way to get a $650 pistol stolen from you, leaving it in the open, inviting somebody to come along, bust your window and take it.
So I break the law, at least for a few seconds as I enter and leave my car, God forgive me. When I get out of my car, I put my .45 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol under my driver's side seat, snugly mounted in a holster strapped to the bottom of the seat. When I get in the car, all I have to do is lean down and grab it. Then I lay it in the open on the seat and I'm legal again.
If I ever get caught during those few seconds when I have illegally concealed my pistol, I'll just have to take my chances with a jury of my peers. It's one of those compromises with the letter of the law I feel is necessary to make in this day and time.
I have yet to see the occasion when I needed my pistol that quickly, at least not to defend my life. I've killed a snake or two with it, but never any of the two-legged kind. But if the occasion should arise when I do need my Glock, I feel quite sure I'll need it in a big hurry.
I formed the gun-carrying habit when I was living in bigger cities than Crossland, but even small towns are dangerous now.
I learned to fire a pistol with a .45 automatic, an Army Springfield that my daddy had. I refined those skills considerably in the Navy with those same kind of pistols, .45 Colt automatics.
Of course, automatic is a completely inaccurate term for this type of pistol. Unlike that fully automatic AK-47 rifle I had been searching for, this type pistol is actually only semi-automatic.
That means it will only fire one shot each time you pull the trigger. A full automatic will empty the magazine if you hold down the trigger long enough. Semi-autos are legal. Full autos are not.
Anyway, after I got out of the Navy, I bought a .45 Colt like the ones Uncle Sam uses, but I seldom if ever shoot it anymore.
I learned the shortcomings of the Colt and the virtues of the Glock from a cop friend of mine who taught me how to pistol shoot.
To begin with, a .45 Colt auto holds only seven rounds—and the powers that be in Uncle Sam's Navy would only let us put five rounds in a clip because it supposedly weakens the spring to fill it—while a .45 Glock auto holds 14 rounds (13 in the magazine, one in the chamber). And as I learned in Crossland Elementary School, 14 is twice better than seven. Particularly if somebody is shooting at you and you want to shoot back, as early and often as possible.
Speaking of early, if you want to shoot a .45 Colt auto, you have two choices. You can carry it the safe way, no shell in the chamber, seven in the magazine. But in order to shoot it, first you have to grasp it firmly in one hand, then use the other hand to pull back the slide, then let it go to put a round in the chamber.
Then you're ready to shoot. By that time, you're already dead.
Or you can do it the way most cops do. Chamber a round, leave it cocked and flip the slide lock up. When you want to shoot it, you just flip the slide lock down and squeeze the trigger.
This position is known as cocked and locked, and while it's quicker if not safer than the other way, if the slide lock slips, you may shoot your whatever off. I'm right fond of my whatever and I'd prefer to keep it right where it is, in one piece, preferably.
If you want to shoot the Glock, you just pick it up and pull the trigger.
It has a double-action trigger, so you can leave a round in the chamber and the hammer in the uncocked position. From that position, you can drop it, kick it or beat on it and it won't fire.
But you can pick the Glock up and just pull the trigger without flipping any slide locks or safeties or even cocking it and shoot 14 rounds when you need it. Not to mention that it's lighter and better balanced than the Colt .45 auto. It's a better pistol.
Now I already knew how to fire a pistol before I met Tom Golden, a police officer in one of the big cities I formerly worked in. But when I enrolled Suzy in Tom's shooting course, I decided to enroll, too, and I learned how little I knew about pistol shooting.
The first thing I had to learn about a pistol from Tom Golden is a lesson I should have already known. Pistols are not accurate.
If you want to hit a particular spot, use a rifle. The average pistol barrel is four to six inches long, while rifle barrels are 18 inches or longer, if legal. The longer the barrel, the better the accuracy; while the converse is true, shorter means inaccurate.
The lesson is this: only movie cowboys shoot pistols to hit a particular spot. If you're shooting a pistol at somebody, don't bother with aiming to wound, or maybe try to shoot their gunhand.
Odds are if you do, you'll miss entirely, and end up dead.
Golden's number-one rule of pistol shooting: shoot to kill.
Maybe that's why I left my Glock in the car that Saturday.
It's one thing to learn Golden's rule on the firing range.
It's something else to practice that rule on real people. Even if I was about to venture into a dangerous situation, which deep inside me, I knew I was, protestations to myself to the contrary, I also knew inside me that I wasn't prepared to shoot anybody.
So even though I was tempted to take my gun along, it would make the situation more dangerous unless I was ready to use it.
At best, somebody might spot it and decide to rob me of it, since it was possible, even likely that other people in this crowd were also armed. I did a story just a few weeks back about an argument among some Mexicans in a volleyball game. The one who won the argument did so by pulling a 9 mm automatic from his belt and fatally shooting the other party, who happened to be his brother-in-law. I suppose that means the shooter was a brother-outlaw.
Strange equipment for a volleyball court, a 9 mm pistol, but then Mexicans are a little different from the average laid-back Crossland good ol' boy. More serious about volleyball, anyway.
And at worst, if one of those brother-outlaws spotted the pistol under my shirt, he might just shoot me first, then take my Glock from me after I'm in no position to resist that act.
So I figured I would be safer unarmed than armed at the Cruz party. I waltzed across the Cruz yard, armed only with a camera, looking for Hector Cruz. I located the Mr. Cruz of the house, who I had met earlier with Suzy, and since I didn't recall or maybe never even knew his first name, I just called him Mr. Cruz.
No, Mr. Cruz hadn't seen Hector, but he was expecting to.
No, Mr. Cruz didn't mind if I waited around a while. I really don't know what I had in mind with my camera and flash, but I asked Mr. Cruz if he minded if I take a picture or two. He gave me a funny look, but then just shrugged and said go ahead if I liked.
This short conversation took place using mostly sign language and shouts, because it was conducted downrange of the band which was blasting away at jet-engine noise levels.
So I waltzed around in the crowd for a few minutes, mingling in what must have been at least two or three hundred Mexicans.
They were having a high old time, dancing, drinking and some of them were even smoking some of those funny looking cigarettes, the sweet smell of marijuana wafting its familiar smell in the air.
And every time I made eye contact, I got another one of those funny looks. I felt about as out of place as a whore in church.
That little voice was saying, Jay, get yourself out of here.
But I was resisting, telling myself, what could happen in the middle of all these people? Nobody in their right mind would start anything in this crowd. I'll just hang around a few more minutes.
When I charged my flash up and took the first picture, I saw immediately that was a big mistake. The music continued blasting away, but almost every head turned to stare at me when the strobe light flashed in the early evening darkness across the yard.
Oh well, I thought, that's enough of that. It was a bad idea anyway, that thought I had of maybe using some pictures of the party for a feature piece on Mexicans and their culture in the U.S.
I reached up to flip the flash battery switch back off when I heard a sound that I recognized, and everybody at the party froze for the second time, but this time it wasn't because of my flash.
I have a SKS assault rifle at home, the Chinese-made version of the AK-47 assault rifle. It looks almost exactly the same and shoots the same .30 caliber round as the Russian-made AK-47.
The main difference between the SKS and the AK-47 is price. The SKS is cheaper, and cheaper is better on newspaperman pay.
And it sounds the same when it shoots, too, except it shoots semi-automatic, one round at a time, the legal way.
And what I and everybody else had heard was a burst of full automatic fire from an AK-47, the illegal kind, and the burst of fire had occurred real close by, or we would have never heard it over the jet-engine noise of the band, still blasting away.
And as I heard that awful ripping sound of rolling thunder, a line from Clint Eastwood's war movie "Heartbreak Ridge" came to mind, when Clint's Marine gunnery sergeant surprises his young troops in a training exercise by popping out of the woods and spraying the bushes over their heads with a full auto AK-47.
Note the distinctive sound of an AK-47. Remember it," Clint lectures his troops as they're digging for their lives in the sand.
Well now I was hearing that distinctive sound, ripping through the blaring music, and then I saw where that sound was coming from.
A red and white two-tone Chevy pickup truck came speeding up Moonshine Road, and a short, stocky guy with black hair and a mustache, wearing a white shirt and an evil grin on his face was standing up in the bed in the back of the truck, spraying the Cruz yard with that AK-47, rocking and rolling in full automatic.
People were screaming and running everywhere. I dove behind a car parked just off the street in front of the house and tried to roll my large frame into a little ball behind a front wheel.
As that Chevy truck roared by, the guy with the AK took care of the music problem. I'm not sure whether he shot the guitar pickers or just blew out the speaker system. But the music stopped.
And I heard quite clearly some of those AK-47 rounds slap into the car I was hiding behind, with at least one blasting through the windows or the windshield, showering my head and back with glass.
I tried to squeeze into a smaller ball behind that front tire, praying that the motor block would stop any round from punching through the car's sheet metal hood and fenders and hitting me.
And in the quiet as the speakers stopped throbbing, I heard a lot of pop, pop, popping accenting the ripping of the AK-47 fire as the pickup truck raced on by the car I was hiding behind.
I peeped up and saw at least three or four guys in the crowd were shooting back at the truck as it raced past, armed with pistols that had magically appeared from somewhere.
And I thought I was safe here in this crowd. Oh Lord, please forgive me for not listening to You. And get me out of here, now!
Then the truck was gone and one of the Mexican men at the party was standing in the middle of Moonshine Road, firing his pistol in the direction of the departing truck, standing tall in his high-heeled cowboy boots like Gary Cooper in "High Noon."
As I started to straighten up, the man standing in the road, a young Mexican, turned and came running toward me with his gun in his hand. And when he saw my white face staring up at him from beside the car, up came the gun in his hand, pointing at me.
I don't know why he started to shoot me. Maybe he thought I was a cop or a drug agent. Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong color skin. I knew I had to do something as he charged closer and swung the gun into my face.
As I started to uncoil from my hiding place behind the car, I still had my camera and flash in my hands, I was reminded by the blinking glow in the dark of the ready light on the back of the flash announcing the batteries were on and the flash ready to go.
So I raised my camera, pointed it at him and pushed the shutter release button.
I didn't have time to think about it. I just did it.
The bright blast of the flash stopped the young Mexican in his tracks about one long step away from me as he threw the hand with the gun up to his face, temporarily blinded by the flash.
Again, I didn't think. I just acted. I drew back and swung my camera with my left hand, the one holding the pistol grip handle on the flash, and whapped him hard with my camera up side the head. He went down like he was shot, which is no surprise. He was maybe 5-2 and 140 lbs. and I put every ounce of my 215 lbs. in that swing as I slugged him with the camera. He pitched forward with the force of my left-handed roundhouse blow, dropping his pistol and laying there without even twitching. I hope I didn't kill him, I thought.
And then I found out what the young Mexican was running from.
I heard that terrible noise again, that ripping sound of rolling thunder as here came that Chevy pickup back up Moonshine Road, that same guy in the back, standing spread-legged and spraying everything with that AK.
That, I thought as I dove down again, must be Mr. Hector Cruz, the man who Jim whoeverhewas said knows all about full auto AK-47s.
And as I tried curling up into a ball again behind that tire, my eye hit the pistol the young guy had dropped when I hit him.
I don't know why, but for some stupid reason, I dropped my camera and reached out behind the car and picked up the gun.
Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I was mad. Maybe I was just tired of being shot at and not being able to shoot back. Anyway, I did it.
As that red and white Chevy came roaring by the second time, as soon as it passed the car I was hiding behind, I popped up, steadied my arms on the hood and with that two-handed grip learned from Tom Golden, I drew a bead on the shooter and started shooting.
Since I didn't know squat about the sights on this particular pistol, some type of semi-automatic, I just sighted down the barrel at the man standing in the back of the pickup, who had passed the car by now and was speeding away, and pulled the trigger.
And I kept right on firing, even as my mind registered the image of the guy in the back of the pickup as he stopped shooting and dropped the AK-47 and fell down into the truck bed.
As the pickup went out of sight, I realized I was still squeezing the trigger of the pistol, though the magazine was empty and the slide was all the way back in the locked, empty position.
I looked at the pistol in my hand and somewhere it registered that it was a pretty nice gun, a Ruger 9 mm, almost brand new.
Then I just sat down in the grass, leaned back against the side of the car and sat there for a while, holding the empty gun.
People were moaning and crying and some were still running around, but it was mostly quiet now. No music and no shooting.
I could see three men lying still, not moving at all. And for some reason, I couldn't move. I seemed almost paralyzed, my arms and legs heavy as lead. So I just sat there, holding the gun.
After a bit, I heard the sirens in the distance. About time, I thought. Where are the cops when you need them, anyway? In town, minding their own business, like you should be, I answered myself.
The first cops on the scene, a pair of Crossland officers I knew, somehow didn't even notice me sitting there by the car.
They got their shotguns out of the trunk of the car and sort of wandered around, looking at the shot-up yard and shot-up people.
The thought came to me, this is what a battleground looks like, up close and personal. I'm glad I missed this in Vietnam.
I watched and never said a word. Then some more sirens sounded and the second wave of cops arrived. One of the cops parked near me, then came over to me and squatted down and said, "Here, let me have that, Jay," and took the gun out of my hand. I looked up and recognized him.
It was Bob Brown.
Bad Bob Brown is a real character. He played tackle on the Crossland High football team, made all-conference and got an offer to play college football at one of the smaller schools somewhere up towards the mountains. I forget where. It doesn't matter, because Bob didn't stay in college long enough to change his underwear.
He got homesick, came back home, worked first one job and then another, partying heartily all the time, until he finally settled down a bit and took the basic cop course over at the local community college.
By the time Bob graduated, I was back in Crossland, and he got his first law enforcement job with the Midland Police Department in the next town up, five miles north of Crossland.
But he had a rocky start with the Midland Police. Seems one of his old buddies dared Bob to moon some girls on Main Street while he was on duty one night.
Don't ever, ever dare Bad Bob to do anything. He'll do it or bust hell wide open.
And he did it. And did the Midland Police Chief ever give Bad Bob one first class chewing-out and all but fired him, I heard on the grapevine. Maybe Bad Bob grew up a little from that experience. At least he quit mooning girls.
On duty, anyway.
Right now, for some strange reason, I was delighted to see Bob. I darn near reached out and hugged his neck and kissed him.
I'm glad I didn't because Bad Bob would have probably knocked me into the middle of next week. And that he could easily do.
Bad Bob is about 6-even, but his frame carries about 250 lbs. with the light-footed grace of a natural athlete. He can outjump me on a volleyball court anytime, and often had, in our backyard games in and around Crossland.
Anyway, seeing Bob sort of brought me back to my senses.
I explained to him briefly what had happened and he told me, "Just wait right here. Don't leave. We'll have to get a statement."
Bob tucked into his belt the gun that I had liberated from the young Mexican and walked away, so I got up and picked up my camera.
Checking it out, I was amazed to see it looked to be unbroken.
I'm old-fashioned in a lot of ways, and one of them is very definitely my cameras. I'm still using a pair of Nikons I bought way back yonder in my Navy days when I visited Japan. They still work just fine and I'm comfortable with them, so why get new ones?
Besides, the old ones are built tougher than the new ones, as I had just demonstrated by the application of my old Nikon to the side of the young Mexican's head with favorable results.
I was also glad to see that the young Mexican who almost shot me was now also sitting up, shaking his head and looking around.
He didn't seem to be hurt too bad, so I left him sitting.
Only one way to find out if the old Nikon still works after using it for a club, I thought. Use it for a camera this time.
So I did. I started walking around the yard, taking pictures, sort of on automatic pilot now, and I found that both the camera, flash and me still worked just fine, thank you.
I've shot quite a few crime scenes during the years I've been in the newspaper business, so it didn't take a lot of conscious thought to do it one more time.
Frame, focus and shoot. The flash batteries seemed to be holding up just fine, though it seemed like hours since I first turned it on.
There was Bob, standing over one of the apparently dead men.
A crowd of Mexicans, men and women, even children, were sort of lined up in front of Bob, looking at the body of the young man, lying there face down on the ground. I focused and shot several times, then moved on to the next body, then did it again and again.
Five times for five bodies.
I ran out of film the same time I ran out of bodies. I had more in my car, so I went back and got another roll, loading up my camera to shoot more.
By that time, the ambulances had arrived, so I started shooting pictures of the EMTs and paramedics tending to the wounded, of which there were many, at least a dozen or more.
I shot pictures as they loaded some onto stretchers and put them in ambulances, then shot more as they helped the walking wounded to the nearby ambulances.
I shot more as they worked on the wounded in the ambulances.
Then I was out of film again, and the flash batteries were finally running down. I have more film and fresh batteries in my camera case in the car. But I didn't get them out. I guess I was out of nerve, too.
I wandered over to my car, put my camera back in the case in the trunk and sat back down on the front seat and waited.
Hours later, around midnight, Bad Bob brought me back to my car. I had told my story, again and again and again, to cops, to deputies, to the SBI, then finally to the assistant district attorney they had called in to decide what to do with me. The ADA, Mike Mitchell, God bless his kind soul, told them to send me home.
If I change my mind, or if the D.A. wants to overrule me, I know where he lives," Mitchell said about me, then they let me go.
Before I left, the major left me with some comforting words.
I told you to leave that Hector Cruz alone, didn't I?" he asked. I nodded dumbly. "We think that's who was doing the shooting. Word is he fell out with his cousin over a drug deal.
If I were you," the major added, "I'd lay low for a while. If you did what you think you did, you may have hit Cruz, and if you didn't kill him, he's liable to come looking for you. And if you did kill him, his buddies will come looking for you. That is, if they find out you were involved. If I were you," the major said again, "I'd keep my mouth shut about what you did out there tonight."
So when Bad Bob dropped me off at my car, which miraculously was still sitting on Moonshine Road near the Cruz house, no bullet holes in it and all four wheels still on it with air in them, I had a new problem to ponder.
I'm a newsman, but I couldn't write a story on the shootout. At least, I couldn't write the whole story, about my part as one of the shooters in the Crossland shootout. If I wanted to keep living.
And if you can't write the whole truth, as you know it, and nothing but the truth, then you really can't write a story at all.
It was irony in the extreme that here I had happened to be right in the middle of the biggest story of my career and I couldn't write about it. I had reported hundreds of crime scenes, maybe thousands, but never, ever had I been right in the middle of one when the dastardly deeds occurred, watching them go down, which is any reporter's dream, not to mention any photographer's, too.
This time, I was there, saw it all, even photographed part of it as it happened, if my self-defense picture of the young Mexican pointing his pistol at me was in focus. Too bad I hadn't shot Hector with my camera instead of that borrowed pistol.
Of course, if that thought had occurred to me at the time, it would have been grossest stupidity to try it. That flash going off in Hector's face in the dark would have been like announcing on a bull horn, "Here I am Hector. Shoot me, please."
Yet I did have plenty of after-the-fact pictures, good ones.
But I couldn't write about it, at least my part in it, without putting my own neck on the line. Not to mention the journalistic ethics of reporting on yourself. If my role in the shooting became known, no newspaper but a supermarket rag would want me writing it.
So I was stuck, right in the middle, because in a moment of stupidity, insanity or whatever, I had put myself there.
Since I hadn't been charged with anything, maybe the major would keep my name out of the reports on the shootout that other uninvolved members of the media would see.
And maybe, just maybe if the major did that, and if all the cops and deputies and law clerks and everybody else in the courthouse who knew what I had done kept their mouths shut, maybe word wouldn't get out that this white boy shot Hector Cruz.
That was the worst part of the deal. Suppose Hector Cruz isn't dead, just wounded and highly insulted that somebody shot him. And then suppose he finds out that somebody is me. What have I done?
What's that word about the Mexican code of manhood? Machismo or something like that? Had I not challenged Hector Cruz' manhood? Would he be honor bound to even up the score?
Oh well. Time to worry about tomorrow when it gets here, I thought as I got into my car. I wonder now why I felt no remorse for shooting at, maybe hitting, Hector Cruz.
It's sure a long way from turning the other cheek. But that thought didn't bother me right then. Consequences would come later.
I ended a long day by putting my film on the bus to Charlotte, went home, called Frank Daniels and told him what was coming.
I missed the deadline for Sunday's Star with my pictures, but I knew that before I put them on the bus just after midnight.
I explained to Frank lamely why I wouldn't be writing the biggest story of my career, using the excuse that my nerves were shot. They were, but that was not the reason. Oh well.
I also gave Frank the OK to go ahead and release photos as he saw fit through the Associated Press photo wire to other papers.
Thankfully, Suzy was already in bed sound asleep when I arrived home, so I didn't have to explain to her what happened.
Then I went to bed and slept the sleep of the grateful dead.
Chapter 6
Can Your Home Fort Be Defended If Attacked?
or, 'Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition'
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