The Crossland ShootoutA Novel by JOHN MYERS
Chapter 8
Waiting For Hector Cruz To Arrive, or,
Hurry Up, Hector, Before I Kill Myself
All week, it was quiet. Too quiet, as Custer's men once said.
We had done everything we reasonably could to make sure this wasn't the Bartons' Last Stand, so now all we could do was wait.
I found out as the week passed by how many friends I had among the deputies and police departments of Morgan County. A whole bunch. Before one deputy left, another arrived. And "off-duty" cops from all five police departments in the county started showing up, too, some of whom I knew and some I had never even met before.
Even the high sheriff of Morgan County, Frank Murphy himself, came by the day after the vigil began, on Tuesday morning.
Howdy sheriff, come on up and set a spell," I greeted him from my front porch after he drove up slowly and parked his unmarked patrol car next to the "off-duty" deputy's car.
Sheriff Murphy is a likable fellow, a small man with very little, or even none, of the swagger and bluster most small men have. He really looks more like a preacher or a salesman than a lawman, and a more unlikely looking sheriff is hard to imagine.
He's about 5-2, 150 lbs., mid-40s, clean shaven and a fairly good-looking man, even somewhat of a ladies' man, I had heard. Even though he favors some type of 10W-40 hair oil that went out of style with his white socks and black loafers 40 years ago.
The faintest hint of scandal that has ever been attached to him during his law enforcement career, all of it spent here in Morgan County, was when he divorced his first wife and remarried.
But hey, I'm divorced, too, though not by my own choice. But being divorced is sort of like being pregnant. You either are or you aren't, there being no halfway measures in either and little profit in trying to assign guilt for whodunit afterward in either.
After serving some years as Midland Police Chief, Murphy was in the right place at the right time when a former Morgan County Sheriff got caught by the state boys with his hand in the cookie jar. Being of the right party—the only one of any consequence in Morgan County, the Democrats—Frank Murphy got the nod to be appointed to fill out the unexpired term of the outgoing sheriff.
And he's been sheriff every since, some 11 years and two elections later, surviving against a lackluster group of opponents in the Democrat primary, which of course is the election here.
As I said earlier, he leaves the running of his department in the capable hands of Major Jimmy Worley, rarely making an appearance at an actual crime scene, unless major media is there, and never has been seen doing any actual investigative work.
I don't suppose I qualify as major media, but at least by Morgan County standards, I suppose I do carry some weight, as a medium-sized frog in a very small pond. There is a weekly newspaper over in the county seat, but I'm the only journalist living here who has any connections to the daily newspapers in our fair state.
But I suppose the real reason Sheriff Frank Murphy dropped in on me that day was to let me know, without coming right out and saying it, that he knew about my "unofficial" arrangement with his deputies through the good graces of the major. And he also didn't have to say it, but made it clear by his visit that he approved it.
That's what was not said. What was said? Very little.
After we had exhausted the usual topics: the weather, "Hot enough for you?" and baseball, "How 'bout them Braves?" he offered a word of sympathy for our only casualty so far, poor Bonnie.
Sorry about your dog, Jay," he said. Then after an uncomfortable pause, he added, "Don't you mess around with this Cruz fella. You see anything, you call us and we'll come running."
I assured him I would, but I knew his "we" didn't include him.
After his brief visit, shorter even than his usual morning visit to his office for a cup of coffee and to check his mail, the high sheriff was on his way. And I knew I wouldn't see him again until the shooting was over. If I was still here when it was over.
If we accomplished nothing else that hot summer week that began August, J.J. and I got a lot of needful yard work done.
It was hot, sweaty work, with the extra aggravation of doing it all with handguns strapped on our hips and rifles laid nearby.
My greatest fear was that Hector Cruz might arrive and catch us outside the house, so while J.J. and I worked, Suzy and whichever deputy or cop happened to be "off duty" at the time stayed inside. If she'd been playing for a penny a point, Suzy would have been a rich young lady by the end of the week as she taught the officers how to get whipped soundly at knock Gin Rummy.
We could hear her occasional happy hooting cries of "Knock!" or "Gin!" through the open windows as we worked in the yard.
That's another feature of my home that I love. Those thick log walls keep the heat on the outside in the summer, so except for the very hottest of days, you can stay comfortable inside with the windows open and the ceiling fans going full blast.
And considering the circumstances, we couldn't afford the luxury of closing the windows and turning on the air-conditioning, no matter how hot and uncomfortable it got inside.
You can't hear what's going on outside with the windows closed and the air-conditioning running, plus I didn't plan to be shooting through closed windows, if it came to that. So they stayed open.
There's an old folk saying about August being the "dog days" of hot and muggy weather, but the good Lord favored us with fairly temperate weather that week, only 80s instead of 90s and 100s, which are fairly common in June, July and August in the Piedmont.
But you couldn't tell it was temperate by looking at either J.J. or me when we'd come in for a break from our yard clearing.
I sweated off 11 pounds that week, not that I didn't have it to lose, and I could see that J.J. was sweating some of that brew out of his system, too. As I got out of the shower and stepped on my bathroom scales Friday afternoon, I noted with pride I had trimmed down to a svelte 204 lbs. I hadn't weighed that little since the year I got out of the Navy. Thanks, Hector Cruz, I said to myself, even if you don't show up, the work has been worth it.
And if he did show up, the work would definitely be worth it, because what we were doing was clearing the "fields of fire" to use J.J.'s Army term. As I said earlier, I don't believe in mowing grass so I had planted none, and a small volunteer patch in the front yard around the front door and steps is all I had ever mowed.
That's the only spot in my yard open enough and flat enough for grass to grow, and the rest is covered in pines and bushes.
Or it was covered in bushes before J.J. and I started.
We eliminated just about all of the undergrowth around the house by week's end, all of it that obstructed shooting angles, or was big enough to hide anything larger than a jack rabbit.
By Friday afternoon, J.J. and I declared the yard work done.
If our plan went as expected, there were no lanes of approach to the house that would not be covered by fire from the tower or the second or first floors.
The days that week were consumed with yard work and the evenings with four-handed Canasta games. By Friday, there were few lawmen left in Morgan County who hadn't learned the game of Canasta from the Barton trio.
The word Canasta means "basket" in Spanish, Suzy once told me, perhaps appropriate because we were all sitting in a basket like Little Red Riding Hood's lunch, waiting for the big, bad wolf to arrive and gobble us up.
If nothing else was accomplished that week, it dawned on me Friday evening that this was the most time I'd spent with my two kids in several years. After our home broke up in divorce, I spent my vacations with them on camping trips and so forth, and I picked them up every other weekend to come to Crossland with me.
Suzy came to live with me in Crossland when her mother got remarried, but soon she was off to college. And J.J. soon was in the Army and then off doing his own thing as a young man.
So this week had really been a time of family togetherness we hadn't enjoyed anything like since camping trips some years before.
For that reason alone, I didn't want to see this siege or whatever it was come to an end. But that was the reason we all three were together, and it stayed there, unspoken all week long.
Until Friday night, when we had finished playing Canasta about 10 p.m. and were about to go to bed. The "off-duty" deputy had stepped outside for a minute to look around and get ready to hand off the job to his relief, who would be arriving at about 11.
Wait a minute," I said to Suzy as she got up. "Let's talk."
When she and J.J. and I were all seated again, I really didn't know what or how to say what I wanted to say. Without knowing how this episode in our lives was going to come out, there certainly was the real possibility that one or more of us might not make it.
I thought for a minute as my two kids waited to see what I wanted, then I realized there was only one concern I could voice.
Suzy, J.J., are both of you sure that you're saved?" I asked.
Yes, daddy," Suzy answered, and J.J. added, "Sure, pop."
I really didn't have to ask, but I wanted to hear them say it.
Shortly after I got saved, when J.J. was just a little fellow, we were living within driving distance of his grandfather's church in Crossland at that time and I had started going to his services.
I'll never forget little J.J., maybe 5 years old or so, getting up one Sunday morning and marching down the aisle like a little soldier when his grandfather gave his usual altar call.
Granddaddy, I want to be saved," J.J. said loud and clear.
I suppose he had seen the difference in me and heard the discussion about being saved and decided he wanted to be like me.
And Suzy did the same a year or two later at about the same age, too, so I knew that both of them had made professions of salvation years before.
But when you're facing what we were facing, the possibility of death, it will make you want to check up and be absolutely sure you're ready for eternity, and that your loved ones are ready, too.
That's good," I told them both. "I don't know how this is all going to come out, but if we don't all make it through it, it's good to know we'll all be together again, over on the other side."
I went on upstairs to bed and first I tried to read a while, but I couldn't keep my mind on the words on the pages of my book.
And I wasn't sleepy yet, so I just lay there a few minutes and reflected on this mess I had put myself and my loved ones into.
Oh well, I finally concluded, I've been in a lot of messes so far, Lord, and You've always gotten me out of them. The good Lord takes care of fools and drunks, my daddy always told me, and while I wasn't a drunk anymore, I had surely played the part of a fool by taking things into my own hands when I shot back at Hector Cruz.
I thought back over all the foolish things I had done as a drunk and a dope head, long before I had any realization that the Lord was protecting me then, long before I knew anything about Him.
And I've gotten in more than a few messes since I got saved, too, but the Lord has brought me through every one of them.
And I have come to see that even the worst event of my life, being divorced, had its good side, too. Though I surely hadn't seen it for a long time. The worst day of my life so far was that day when I had to load up my car and drive away from the home I had known for some 15 years. We had lived in several different places, but home was not the place, it was the people. For wherever we had lived, from Missouri to central North Carolina, wherever my wife and two kids had been was home, until that day I had to leave them.
After years of growing estrangement between my wife and I, she finally announced she wanted a divorce and set a day for me to move out—with the ultimatum that if I didn't, she and the kids would.
As much as I didn't want to leave, I wanted even less to force the kids to be uprooted, too, so I agreed finally that I would go.
Strangely, it all came to a head over a traffic ticket. My wife had been charged with improper passing, a small offense that would not cost her driver's license, with minimal increase in insurance costs, which always comes with any traffic violation.
But she wanted me to use my influence with the law enforcement types—which she somehow imagined was much greater than it actually was—to get the ticket dropped. I refused, pointing out that the only legal option was get it reduced in court, which would cost us more in attorney fees than the fine and insurance increase.
But she refused to accept that, and finally made a telling comment. "You see, that's the difference between us. You want to obey all of man's laws and all of God's laws, and I don't want to do either more than I have to. I believe the Lord helps those who help themselves, and you could fix this ticket if you wanted to."
Now that may sound like a strange statement coming from a preacher's daughter, particularly the part about God's laws. But that was the only major bone of contention between us, or at least it had become a major disagreement in the years since I got saved.
Though she grew up a preacher's daughter and was supposed to have been saved at a young age, I guess she had always rebelled against her father. She certainly rebelled against him to marry me.
So when I got saved and started going to hear her father preach, then joined his church, I suppose her worst nightmare had come true, that her husband had started becoming like her father.
In particular, she seemed to resent the habit of prayer that I had picked up from her father. In 1972, when the Vietnam War peace talks were dragging on over the issue of our prisoners of war, her father began a prayer meeting at his church every morning from 6 to 7 a.m. to pray for the release of our prisoners.
He continued that prayer hour after their release, and still does, and I began to join him on the weekends I came home to Crossland about a year after I got saved. And as I saw the benefits of prayer, I also formed that habit at home, praying silently beside our bed each morning for that same hour. Though she never openly objected, for some reason my wife seemed to resent that hour. Or at least, she refused to join me when I asked her.
In the one conversation we ever had about my prayer hour, she told me, "I don't believe God would require that of anybody."
Well, God didn't require it of me, or her daddy either. It was something we wanted to do. But she never could understand that.
And I guess there were a lot of other things she couldn't understand about me, because God knows there was a lot about that woman I never could understand. I guess the old divorce excuse lawyers use applied in spades to us: Irreconcilable differences.
On second thought, I don't suppose it's that complicated to understand why she wanted a divorce. She knew what she was getting when she married me after a very short courtship when I first met her right after I came home from the Navy. I was a drinking, doping, partying, cussing fool and her father the preacher was totally opposed to her marrying me. But she did it anyway.
And then after six years of marriage, I changed completely.
Instead of a doping, drinking, partying and cussing husband, she suddenly had a church-going, praying husband. She didn't change, I did, so I guess in that regard, the divorce was my fault.
I made one last attempt to keep from leaving, telling her that regardless of her feelings, I was willing to stay for the kid's sake.
She paused briefly, then said, "No, that's not good enough."
Just what would have been good enough I never did find out.
So I guess it was inevitable the separation finally came, though that sure didn't make it any easier, for me, at least.
The day I left, I packed all my clothes in the car and went back in the house one last time. My wife and J.J. were both gone off somewhere, with only Suzy left at home to say goodbye to me.
When I went back inside the last time, neither Suzy nor I could say a word. I just held her and cried, while she cried, too.
After a while, I finally let Suzy go and walked out and drove away. The trip back to Crossland seemed to take forever. I hope and pray I'll never have to make another one like it as long as I live.
But if my home had never broken up, I would have never come back to Crossland, or at least not until perhaps in retirement.
I drove the long commute for a few months back to the big city from Crossland, and then the job as editor of the weekly paper in my home county opened up, so I changed jobs to do that for a while.
And then finally, it dawned on me to try to make a living as a freelance, so I screwed up my courage and took the big chance. I may not be rolling in the money, but I've made a living at it so far, and guess what? I like being my own boss, having the freedom and independence to do whatever stories I like, as long as what I like to do will sell to the newspapers here in the Old North State.
So even the darkest cloud of my life had a silver lining. Without the divorce, I'd still be living in the big cities of our state, still working for somebody else, making somebody else money.
As Paul said in Romans, God makes all things work together for the good for those who love Him, for those who are called according to His purpose. And I have come to see since I was saved that God's purpose for my life is a Christian writer. God knows it's been a battle, working for the secular press these past 19 years, trying to wedge a word in edgewise for the Lord along with all the other writing I've done about the "bad news" newspapers are all full of.
The word gospel means "good news" but it's the good news that most newspapers just never seem to have the space to print. What could be better news than Christ loves sinners and died for us?
Mostly my Christian witness has been restricted to personal editorial columns, plus occasional features about Christians. And just trying to live the Christian life before others, those I meet and co-workers, has also been a battle, for many newspaper people not only don't claim to be Christians, but are openly hostile or contemptuous of "Bible thumpers," defined as anyone who tries to live by the Bible. And by that definition, I definitely qualify.
But I believe that what we do always speaks much louder than what we say. Through it all, I am sure that this is the Lord's calling for me and His purpose for my life, to write for Him.
But just where the silver lining was in this dark cloud hovering over us now, this cloud named Hector Cruz, I couldn't see.
And before I went to sleep that Friday, I spent more than my usual few minutes on my knees beside my bed that night, praying.
Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, a beautiful day.
Since I moved back home to Crossland nearly seven years ago, I had begun joining the preacher every morning in his prayer hour at the church. On the weekends, sometimes there will be as many as half a dozen men and occasionally a few women for the prayer hour. But during the week, it was usually just me and the preacher and perhaps one or two other church members at most on occasional days.
But when the siege began, I called the preacher and explained all that had happened to him. And the preacher and I had agreed that this seemed to be one time that I should stay at home and pray there. Which is what I did as usual from 6 to 7 that Saturday.
As I came downstairs at 6 a.m., the young police officer lying on the couch in the living room heard me clang down the steel tower steps and raised up. I just said "Good morning" and went on out.
I sat in the rocking chair on the front porch waiting on the sunrise as I silently prayed that morning, and as I had all week long, the expected coming of Hector Cruz was my main prayer topic.
And by the end of that hour, I found what Paul calls "the peace that passes all understanding." I didn't understand why I suddenly felt peaceful about this siege, but I did. I didn't know how it was all going to come out, but I found the confidence in praying that morning that it would all come out well in the end.
Maybe, I told myself, Hector Cruz isn't even coming at all.
Shift change, for the police and sheriff's department, is at 7 a.m. The Midland Police officer who had been "off duty" at my house since about 11 the night before, a young fellow named Chris Newton, told me at 7 that his relief, a deputy, was delayed over in the county seat, 12 miles away. He said the deputy had a busy Friday night and had to do some paperwork before he could go off-duty, but expected to be here by about 7:30 or so. I told Chris to go ahead home to his young wife and kids. We could handle it.
And that's where our best-laid plans began to go astray.
I fixed breakfast for myself, as usual, and enjoyed my usual two eggs sunny-side up, grits with no butter, wheat toast with no butter and coffee. A couple or three years ago, I finally got it through my thick head that there's a direct relationship between what goes in your mouth and what ends up hanging on your waist.
On one of my infrequent visits to a doctor's office with a nagging stomach ailment, I had to climb on a set of scales and found to my amazement that I had swelled up to a huge 245 lbs.
So I went off the see food diet—eat everything you see—and got serious about losing weight. I began eating sensible breakfasts, mostly salads for lunch and sensible suppers and guess what?
I lost weight, slowly, down to about 215 lbs. It seems I've struck a stump at this point, or at least thought I had until I trimmed down to 204 with the benefit of a week of hot yard work.
And I have not only lost weight, but found that as long as I stay fairly active, playing volleyball in summer, riding my bike in winter, I have managed to keep my weight at 215 or a bit less, which I tell myself is a reasonable heft for my size, 6'-3".
But perhaps the hardest thing for me to give up has been the big breakfasts I've always enjoyed. When I was growing up, us kids would eat a bowl of cereal just to warm up while mama or daddy were cooking eggs, sausage, bacon and toast or pancakes or waffles.
When I got serious about my weight, I dropped bacon or sausage completely and have gotten used to no butter in grits or on toast.
And the one good news of that 245-lbs. doctor's checkup, my cholesterol level was only about 160 despite a diet rich in dairy foods. So I have been able to keep eating eggs with no problems.
But one habit I have never been able to break is eating fast.
I formed that habit trying to eat on board ships in the Navy, particularly in a storm when the table is moving around. It encourages one to eat quickly, or end up wearing your supper.
So from start of cooking to finish of eating, it took me my usual 30 minutes or so to go through breakfast that morning.
With my second cup of coffee in hand, I came out to sit on the front porch at about 7:45 with the day's ration of newspapers.
Suzy and J.J. were both still in the bed, sleeping soundly.
Clyde had already been out for his morning run and I had let him back in the house. He was probably piled up in the bed with Suzy again, where he usually sleeps, snoozing away with her.
The birds were singing and it was a beautiful morning. I sat there, drinking my coffee, not even finishing reading the papers I started reading while eating breakfast.
The breeze was gently stirring and the heat of the day had yet to arrive. It was that perfect temperature, not too chilly, not too hot. Just right.
Thank you, Lord, for such a beautiful day, I silently prayed. The beer commercials are wrong. It don't get no better than this.
Then I heard that awful ripping sound of rolling thunder.
Chapter 9
The Crossland Shootout—Act II, or,
Hector And His Auto AK Rides Again
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