The Crossland ShootoutA Novel by JOHN MYERS
Chapter 6
Can Your Home Fort Be Defended If Attacked?
or, 'Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition'
Sunday morning arrived as scheduled and because I was a bit punchy I slept an hour later than usual. But I finally rolled out of bed, ate breakfast and got ready for church. I teach Sunday School every other Sunday, so this being my Sunday off, I decided to skip Sunday School and just go to preaching at 11 a.m.
That's unusual behavior for me, as I never miss Sunday School, even when it's not my turn to teach, but I decided I had good reason to be running a bit late. I couldn't tell anyone why, other than I had taken pictures of the shootout, not that I was in it.
I explained briefly to Suzy what had happened, leaving out my role as one of the shooters in the great Crossland shootout.
Of course, that was the main topic of conversation for everybody at church, the biggest news to hit Crossland in many years, the big shootout.
I answered about a jillion questions about the whole deal before, during and after church, leaving out my role as a shooter, of course.
As I was driving home with Suzy from church, still sorting this mess out in my mind, wondering where do I go from here, a verse of Scripture in the preacher's sermon came to mind.
The preacher had preached about the second coming of Christ, one of his and most Baptist preachers' favorite sermon topics, and his sermon text was Matthew 24, the signs Jesus gave of His return.
When I got home, I sat down a minute with my Bible and read back over his sermon text and found the verse that I remembered.
But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up," in Matthew 24:42.
Does that mean if you know the bad guys are coming, you get ready for them, and do unto them before they can do it unto you?
It was a rather unusual thought from the Bible, spoken by no less an authority than the Lord Jesus Christ His Very Own Self.
Jesus also said when your enemy smacks you up side the head, turn the other cheek and let him have at you again from that side.
How do you reconcile that with this defend-your-home command?
Then I remembered another one of Jesus' sayings and after a bit of searching, I found it in John 15:13, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Turning the other cheek is no doubt the right thing to do when we are threatened personally. But when our family and friends are threatened, that's another matter. For our loved ones, we should be willing to lay down our lives, or make the other guy lay down his.
Then I remembered my pastor's comment during his sermon about that guard-your-home verse he preached from in Matthew 24:42.
I've got two 16 gauge shotguns up at the house, and if somebody kicks in my door and comes in on me, I'm gonna shoot."
And I know one thing for sure, if he shoots at somebody, they'd find out the hard way what a load of 16 gauge shot feels like.
When I first moved back to Crossland, I joined Crossland Baptist Church for several reasons, but the chief one was because of its pastor, the Rev. Ralph Franklin. You see, he's a lot more than just my pastor to me. He's also my ex-father-in-law.
Back in 1971 when I got out of the Navy, Rev. Franklin had just moved here to pastor Crossland Baptist, and I met his middle daughter shortly after I got back home. One thing led to another and I soon married her under that cedar tree near my present home.
Two kids and six years later I got saved, and suddenly it seemed like the preacher's daughter and I got headed off in different directions. Several years and heartaches later, we parted finally and she got her divorce and I ended up back in Crossland.
But even though I'm not married to his daughter anymore, I still love Preacher Ralph, as he is known, so I never had a second thought about which church to join once I came back home again.
Before I got saved, I thought Preacher Ralph was the most dogmatic, narrow-minded, religion-crazy man I had ever seen.
But after I got saved, it dawned on me he had good reason to be narrow-minded. The best reason of all. Because he was right.
On the weekends I came home to Crossland, I started coming to hear him preach and learned to love the same Jesus that he loves.
Divorced from his daughter didn't mean I was divorced from the Christian fellowship that Preacher Ralph and I had come to enjoy since I got saved. And when it comes to old-time, hell-hot and heaven-sweet preaching, Preacher Ralph has no equal I've heard.
Life can be strange sometimes, the twists and turns it makes.
I left Crossland in the first place because it was just a dead little town here in the buckle on the Bible Belt. I headed off to the big cities to see what I could see. But I came to see that the broad road has no pleasures to compare to the less-traveled way. So I came back to Crossland for many of the same reasons I left. Crossland didn't change, and the preacher and his preaching didn't change, but I did, or rather, the Lord changed me.
Aside from preaching, another one of Preacher Ralph's passions used to be bird hunting.
To explain for those who don't hunt, when you say bird hunting to a bird hunter, you're only talking about one kind of bird, Bob White Quail. They're fat, squatty birds with delicious white meat who congregate in coveys and love the sandhills around Crossland.
Preacher Ralph is a country boy who grew up in the area, hunted all his life and had always kept at least a pair of bird dogs who were excellent pointers. Those are the type dogs who will go out and find you a covey of quail and then freeze into a perfectly motionless pose just short of flushing up the covey, their nose pointing right at them, as if saying to the hunter, "They're right over there, boss. Come and shoot them, quick!"
I grew up hunting, too, with my brothers and my daddy. But I had no place to hunt while working in the cities, and I came home not very often. So I had quit hunting until I moved back home.
But I hunted with the preacher for the first year or two after I moved back, and if a bird didn't want to die, he better not flush up in front of Ralph Franklin. He may be a hell-fire-and-damnation preacher come Sunday, but when he had his bird-hunting britches on, he was one of the best shots with a shotgun that I ever saw.
But a couple of years ago, the preacher stepped in a stump hole out bird hunting and caused an intestinal rupture. He got the rupture sewed up, but that ended his bird-hunting days. Still and all, I would be the last fellow to kick in Ralph Franklin's door at night, because if he is nothing else, he's a man of his word.
And if the preacher says he's gonna shoot, you better duck.
I quit bird hunting when the preacher quit. I was never very good with a shotgun anyway. I could always hit about anything I could see with a rifle, but birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer, the small game in the Crossland area where I grew up, never seemed to want to cooperate by holding still when I was shooting at them.
In order to hit a bird, or anything else not holding still, you have to learn the fine art of leading your target, shooting ahead of the game at the spot where the game will be when the shot arrives. It's an art I never learned, much to the pleasure of the shotgun shell manufacturing companies, of which I should own stock.
I'm surprised at least a few of them haven't gone out of business since I stopped hunting a couple of years ago, because I sure was good at shooting up shells, with little or no results.
I sat and pondered shotguns, full auto AKs, dropped pistols, kicked-in doors, other cheeks turned and such as Suzy fixed lunch.
Then I heard a vehicle grinding up our driveway, so I got up and looked out and, lo and behold, it was the prodigal son returning home in his little dark blue Mitsubishi pickup truck.
J.J., my other offspring, is out of the Army now and working down around Pinehurst at one those zillions of golf courses there. I don't see a whole lot of him these days, so I was surprised.
J.J.'s real name is John Jay Barton III. I'm John Jay Barton Jr., and since my daddy, the original John Jay Barton, was known as John, I was called J.J. when I was a kid. I began using Jay as a first name in the Navy, so it was just natural to call my son J.J.
But name notwithstanding, few people would ever guess J.J. is my son. I'm tall and gangly, tending to middle-aged spread, and J.J. takes after his mother's side of the family, short and compact and muscular. His granddaddy could have been a major-league baseball player, if the Lord hadn't called him to preach.
J.J.'s about 5-9, maybe 175 lbs., a bit heavier now than when he was in the Army, his beer-drinking ways beginning to show a bit.
He's also a natural athlete, again from his mother's side of the family, which is chock full of baseball pitchers, football running backs and basketball guards. I was too clumsy to play much in sports, though I had the size for it. My few successes came at track as a middle-distance runner and a discus thrower, both of which required more perseverance and practice than ability.
I always figured J.J. would end up a cop. He sort of started out that way, palling around with some of the younger cops and cops' kids that I knew in my newspaper relations while he was growing up.
And when he joined the Army after high school, he chose the Military Police specialty. But once he got out, he briefly attended the cop course at the local community college and then dropped out.
Since then, he's worked at several odd jobs, finding a pretty good job in the past year or so as a golf course maintenance man.
He's only 22, and will probably change jobs a lot more times before he settles down to his life's vocation, if he ever does.
He grew up in church, but since he left home, or maybe since our home split up and sort of left him, he's about quit church.
He shows up every now and then for church, but most of the time he does what he did this Sunday, shows up for Sunday lunch.
I'm not really disappointed at all that he didn't follow up on his plans to be a cop. It's lousy work for lousy pay, long hours with little or no respect, plus you can get yourself killed, too.
I could say the same to all of the above for newspaper work, except for being killed, and considering recent events I suppose I could add that to the job description as well. So I certainly wasn't disappointed that neither of my offspring had decided to be cops or to follow in my footsteps to become newspaper people.
We talked about the shootout during lunch, again with me leaving out the part about what I did, because I knew if Suzy found that out, she'd go crazy. She's a level-headed young lady, very mature for her age, 20, but I didn't think she was ready, or for that matter will ever be ready, to accept her daddy as John Wayne.
Suzy was chattering away happily at lunch, with twice the audience she usually has to talk to, just as happy as a jaybird.
I decided that unless it became absolutely necessary, I wouldn't trouble her pretty head with the truth about my part in the big Crossland shootout. And she is a pretty girl, far too pretty for a father's comfort. Blonde and brown-eyed, built like a Tennessee brick outhouse, her big brother's nickname for her when she began to mature early was "Floppy." You can guess what part of her began to get big enough to flop, starting at about age 13.
As I said, far too pretty for an aging father's comfort.
After lunch, upstairs with J.J. with the TV drowning out Suzy overhearing us talk, I told him what really happened.
Wow, pop, you did that? I'm proud of you," he said.
Well, I'm not very proud of myself," I replied, and then I explained what kind of mess I had gotten myself into, journalistically and personally, with one Hector Cruz, bad guy.
Hey, pop, you need some backup, just ask," J.J. responded.
I will," I promised. "I'm not sure yet, but I'll know soon."
Soon turned into now a few minutes later when the phone rang. It was the major, and he had some news for me, all of it bad.
The dude in the back of the pickup truck was Hector Cruz all right," he informed me. "We found the pickup truck abandoned over near the river, all shot up. It was so bloody in the back of the truck bed, it looked like somebody had stuck a hog back there. We checked the registration, and guess whose it was? One Hector Cruz.
And one of those Mexicans at the Cruz house identified Hector as the man shooting the AK-47. Some of those Mexicans also saw you shooting at Hector and now all the Mexicans know it. They want to give you a medal for shooting back at their cousin. He is not a much-loved member of the family. But if Hector ain't dead, I doubt he wants to give you a medal. Unless it's a purple heart.
If I was you, I'd walk real light and careful for a while."
He paused for a minute, but I couldn't think of a word to say.
Except maybe to holler "Help!" real loud. But the major explained the facts of life to me about that before I could holler.
We really don't have the manpower to assign a deputy to come and live with you, but I'll spread the word for the deputies and the Crossland Police to keep an eye on your place for the next while.
And if you see anything suspicious, anything at all, you call and we'll be there within minutes, OK? I'm afraid that's about the best I can do for you right now," the major concluded.
Thanks, major, I appreciate the information. Forewarned is forearmed. I'll try to be ready if Hector Cruz shows up," I said.
Well," I said to J.J., after hanging up the phone, "I believe the proverbial brown, smelly stuff is about to hit the fan."
I explained the major's news to him. My worst fears seemed now to be realized. If one Mexican knows I was the guy who shot Hector Cruz, they all know it by now. And therefore, Hector Cruz knows it.
You want me to stay for a few days, pop?" J.J. asked.
Yes, I think that would very definitely be a good idea."
I'll need to go in to work in the morning and tell the boss I want off for a while. I've got some vacation coming. And if he won't let me off, I'll quit. Screw him if he can't take a joke."
Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that, son. But I'd sure appreciate it if you could stay around a few days. I think this is pretty serious stuff, and we better take it seriously," I said.
We sat quietly for a few minutes after that, digesting the gravity of the mess I had gotten myself and my family into.
And when you go by work in the morning," I resumed the conversation, "go into the village and stop by the gun shop. Pick me up a couple or three boxes of .45 Glasers. And get a couple of boxes of .40 caliber Glasers, too. And about a dozen boxes of .30 caliber softnoses for my SKS. You need some cash for all that?"
Whoa, pop, you sound like you're getting ready for war."
We are, aren't we?" I replied. "And when you go by your place on the way back here, don't forget your .223 rifle and plenty of rounds for it, softnoses if you've got 'em, and get your Ruger."
Which Ruger, pop?" J.J. asked.
Then I remembered he has two Ruger pistols. I was thinking initially of a nasty little .357 magnum revolver he has. With its short 4-inch barrel, it's a pretty handy little short gun, if it is heavy enough to drive nails with.
And now I remembered why I had recognized that 9 mm Ruger pistol I had borrowed briefly from the young Mexican at the shootout. It was the same model 9 mm as the other Ruger J.J. has.
Bring both of them," I told him. "This is a case of every little bit helps."
That Ruger 9 mm pistol my son has is another one of the failings of his upbringing. When my daddy taught me how to fire a pistol with that old .45 Army Springfield of his, he also taught me a few lessons about the relative merits of various calibers.
He believed that the bigger the bullet, the better the bullet.
Son," daddy told me, "If you ever have to shoot somebody, you want to make sure they stay shot. This .45 here will do the job right. There's lots of guns that are easier to shoot, little old piddly .38s and .32s and .25s and .22s, but you shoot somebody with one of those little guns and you might just make him mad at you.
Shoot somebody with this .45, and if the first shot don't knock him down, shoot him again. You got seven shots here, and if the seventh one don't knock him down, throw it down and run like hell. Because the man you can't put down with a .45 is one helluva man."
Well, I taught J.J. how to shoot a pistol with my old, reliable Colt .45 automatic, but his hands are a lot smaller than mine, and when he got old enough to buy his own guns, he got that .357 magnum revolver and then the Ruger 9 mm auto. Both of them have fairly small grips, smaller than the Colt and Glock .45s.
And though the .357 magnum has about the same recoil kick as the .45, the 9 mm has a lot less kick and is far easier to shoot.
The shortcoming of the .357 mag. is it only holds six rounds, but then six rounds of .357 will stop most anything you hit with it. That magnum round has as much knock-down power as a .45.
J.J.'s Ruger 9 mm holds 16 rounds—15 in the magazine, one in the chamber—which is a whole lot more than six, but the problem with that is the size of the rounds.
Convert metric into inches and you'll come up with about .35 caliber, which is even smaller than that other famous underpowered pistol round, the .38 caliber. And because they are underpowered, both .38 cal. and 9 mm are the most common pistols used by the large law-enforcement agencies, as they are supposedly "humane" in that they're more likely to just wound somebody, rather than kill.
Add to that the most widely available shells for 9 mm are military steel-jacketed rounds, because the Germans pioneered 9 mm in World War I for their pistols, and you have an excellent recipe for a disaster just waiting to happen, in my humble opinion. Remember the Germans lost both big ones, WWI and WWII using those famous 9 mm Luger pistols.
Steel-jacketed bullets were developed as a "humanitarian" round for military rifles and pistols on both sides in WWI.
The theory was that a steel-jacketed round would pass right through a soldier shot with one, leaving a nice neat hole on both sides, wounding that soldier, but not killing him. And then at least two or more other soldiers would be occupied with toting the wounded soldier from the battlefield. Of course, that's assuming no vital organ is hit. Even a .22 will kill if it hits a vital organ.
Now that may be a fine arm-chair strategy for generals and big city mayors and police commissioners. But in the real world, if you shoot somebody with a small-caliber, low-powered, steel-jacketed bullet, you'll probably not kill him, just make a nice, neat hole through him, piss him off, and he keeps on coming and kills you.
He may lay down later and bleed to death, without treatment, but you're already dead, so how does that help you stay alive?
Only in the war movies will one shot from a German 9 mm Luger drop a charging soldier in his tracks, killing him graveyard dead.
So my daddy's advice is pretty wise. If you want to shoot somebody and knock him out of action, so he won't get up and come kill you, shoot him with a big powerful bullet, like a .45, and do the job right the first time. Then they're won't be a second time.
Kids. You can't tell them anything.
And that's why I told J.J. to pick up some Glaser rounds for my two Glock pistols, the .45 and the .40 caliber, and some softnose rounds for my SKS and for his .223 cal. Colt Sporter, the civilian version of the CAR-15 military rifle he learned to shoot in the Army, basically the same weapon as the M-16 used in Vietnam.
Softnose rounds are standard hunting-type shells, a jacketed round with an exposed lead tip for knock-down power, so when the bullet goes into something, instead of passing on through, it expands and makes a bigger hole coming out than it did going in.
And if it hits a bone or something else inside, it will tear it up. In short, softnoses bullets are to kill or disable, not just to wound. Sort of like Tom Golden's pistol shooting rule extended to use for rifles, don't shoot to wound, shoot to kill.
That may sound harsh, and perhaps anti-Christian to some, a long way from turning the other cheek. But if Mr. Hector Cruz is going to come to my house and kick in my door, I had decided that the cheek-turning stage had already been passed some time back.
And if I have to shoot him, or his minions, I want them to stay shot. Since I expected at least one and probably more of that crowd to come armed with full auto AK-47s, softnose bullets for our two one-shot-at-a-time rifles and Glasers for our pistols seemed the minimum offsetting advantage we could adopt for home defense.
Glasers are a fairly new type of pistol round that have two admirable qualities. They're sort of like shotgun shells for pistols. It's a bullet with a thin shell on the outside, filled with shotgun-sized pellets on the inside. First, if you shoot someone with a Glaser, the round won't go all the way through and come out the other side and kill your dog, or worse still, your son or daughter, or make holes in the walls of your house either.
Secondly, and even more importantly, those Glaser shotgun pellets that stay inside whatever you shoot will do a whole lot more damage than one single bullet, usually requiring only one shot to disable or kill if you hit almost anywhere in the body.
Glasers even make 9 mm pistols worthy weapons. Put Glasers in a .45 or .40 cal. pistol and then you've really got a weapon.
My other Glock pistol, a .40 caliber virtually identical to my .45 but in the slightly smaller caliber, is a concession I made for my daughter, who also has smaller hands than my large claws.
I bought it for her to carry around in her purse (which is also illegal, so don't tell anybody) and the tradeoff you make for the smaller caliber is it allows for a smaller, lighter weapon.
And the .40 caliber round isn't even that much of a tradeoff.
It's not underpowered like the 9 mm or .38 cal., but is nearly as powerful as the .357 magnum, yet shorter and more compact, so the Glock .40 cal. pistol also holds 16 rounds, 15 in the clip.
Aside from my 12 gauge Ithaca pump shotgun, my old reliable Colt. 45 auto pistol and two or three .22 caliber rifles lying around for varmints and such, that's about the extent of the Barton household arsenal. Not really all that impressive in firepower.
But I thought it ought to be sufficient to hold off Hector Cruz and his evil minions—should they come—until the cops' cavalry could arrive.
Chapter 7
"My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean," or,
Hector Cruz, You Are One Mean Man
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