Targets
By tome
- 376 reads
Thomas Emery 8100 Paseo Del Ocaso La Jolla, CA 92037 (858) 454-0775
(Words: 4,144) Targets A story by Tom Emery "What a precious baby girl.
Is that your sister?" "Yeah. She has naturally curly hair," Johnny
responded. "So tiny!" "Yeah, she was a preemie." "How old is she?"
"Two." "My, my. Doesn't even look one." "A whole month in the
incubator." "Seems to be doing just fine now." "Yep. Sure is." Oh, no.
Oh, no. Spiders. Spiders. Spider webs spiders worms oh, no the
crocodile where's the cat? Where's the elephant? Be careful! Watch your
trunk watch your tail. Crocodile! Crocodile! Oh, no. Don't tell Mother.
Don't tell Mother. Trouble trouble trouble trouble crocodile spiders.
Johnny. The crodocile. What about the crocodile? Watch out for the
spiders. Johnny, Johnny. Have you tasted the spider web? It tastes like
cotton candy. Is it cotton candy? Johnny, Johnny. Help me, Johnny. Red
spot. Is the spider bad? Should I stomp it? Stomp it? I can't stomp the
crocodile. The crocodile has the cat's tail. The cat's tail. The
elephant's trunk. The cat is dead. It's dead. Here's the cat, Johnny.
The cat is dead. See the blood? The blood is all over me Johnny. See
the blood? Help the cat. Don't let the cat die. The cat is dead. Look
at all the blood. The blood is all over my clothes. Don't tell Mother.
Don't tell Mother about the blood. The blood is all over my clothes.
The cat is dead. What about the cat, Johnny? What about the cat? Help
the cat, Johnny. Can you save the cat? The crocodile has the cat's
tail. The ice cream truck ran over the cat, Johnny. Can I have a
Popsicle? The crocodile has the elephant's trunk. What about the blood?
Johnny Johnny Johnny what should I do about the blood? Don't tell
Mother. Help me. Help me. Help me, Johnny. But she wasn't really doing
fine at all. Jenny started out behind and never caught up. The parents
were too drunk to notice until it was time for her to enter school. By
then, "cute" turned to "odd." She couldn't catch on to her lessons no
matter how much they punished her. The school kids made fun of her
dwarf-like features. The naturally curly hair turned to unkempt tangles
where they claimed to spot cooties. It always started with the dreaded
stomping of the feet, in Gestapo fashion, as the kids approached from
behind. Stomp stomp stomp stomp, in unison, getting closer and closer,
louder and louder until little Jenny covered her ears with her tiny
hands and stubby fingers, shutting herself in and shutting out the
noise. That's when the chanting began: "Coo-tie, coo-tie, coo-tie,
coo-tie, coo-tie," until she finally turned and screamed, "Stop it,
please stop it!" "What's the matter, Cootie? Are you about to pee in
your pants again?" "Shut up, stupid," she snapped back. "Look who's
calling who stupid." "Leave me alone." "Make me." Stupid stupid stupid
cootie cootie cootie. What's cootie, Johnny? What's cootie? I don't
like cootie. Pee pee pee I have to pee. Cootie. Where's the crocodile?
Be quiet. Be quiet. Help. Quiet. Pee pee pee I have to pee, my pants
are wet socks wet. Wet cold stop it stop it. Help me, Johnny. Ice
cream. It's the ice cream truck. Where's the cat? The crocodile has the
cat's tail. My socks are bleeding. Blood blood don't tell Mother don't
tell. Hush. Hush. Stop it. The crocodile has the cat's tail. It's
pulling. Pulling. The cat's screaming. The cat says, "Stop it, stop it,
before I call the copit." The cat is dead. The crocodile has the cat.
My clothes are bleeding, Johnny. Johnny. Take the cat. She dreaded
class. She dreaded recess even more, because that's when the tormenting
intensified. But the walk home was the worse part of the day. It turned
from verbal abuse to physical abuse, until Johnny spotted her in
trouble. In seconds he sent the young kids running. His love for Jenny
never wavered in spite of her constant dumb questions. In spite of her
refusal to take baths, brush her teeth, and make herself presentable.
In spite of his loss of stature with the other kids, caused by her
constant companionship. And so, Jenny became his only friend. And he
hers. One, scoop. One two, scoop scoop. One two three, scoop scoop
scoop. Johnny Johnny Johnny look scoop scoop scoop scoop. See me. See
me. See me scoop scoop scoop scoop scoop. Johnny, do you love me
sitting in a tree scooping up the jacks one two three? Jenny reached
under her bed and pulled out the shoebox where she kept her jacks. She
took the box out to the front porch and sat down on the adjoining
sidewalk to play. When she opened the box she saw a large spider among
her jacks and ball. It was a big, black spider with orange spots on it.
It slowly crawled across her jacks as she stared at it. With the palm
of her hand, Jenny reached into the box and squished the spider. Now
her hand was a mess. She looked at the remains of the spider on the
palm of her hand, and then wiped it off on her shirt. She looked at her
shirt and thought, "Uh oh, I'm gonna get in trouble. I'm gonna get in
trouble for sure." Jenny remembered the last time she ruined a good
shirt and got into trouble. "In trouble like when I picked up the dead
cat that got run over in the street and carried it inside to show
Mother." Jenny thought about the dead cat and the dead spider as she
took the jacks out of the box. "Maybe Johnny will come home before
Mother wakes up. He can help me figure out what to do so she won't find
out." Jenny began playing jacks and the problem left her mind
completely. Jacks required her full concentration. Whenever she played,
everything else, including all of her worries, was dismissed from her
mind. She had not been quite the same since Johnny taught her to play
jacks. She spent hour after hour before and after school, bouncing the
ball on the sidewalk and scooping up the jacks, with eyes and mind
fixed on them in a total trance. Her simple mind was so focused on the
task of scooping jacks, that negative or distractive thoughts never
entered her mind. Johnny watched her progress in amazement. He could no
longer beat her at this silly little girl's game he had taught her,
even if he tried. It made him very happy and quite proud of his little
sister. One day Jenny took her jacks to school and began playing at
recess. When she beat the other girls, they accused her of cheating.
"Your stubby little midget fingers give you an unfair advantage. You're
a cheater." "I am not." "Are too." They refused to play with her,
taking away the advantage of her one skill in life. She continued to
play jacks alone and with Johnny. When she was playing jacks it was as
if nothing else in the world existed. Even after Jenny was moved to the
"special" classes, she couldn't evade her tormentors on the walk home
from school. As Johnny entered junior high school, he wasn't near to
help her, and things grew worse. Neither had friends, except for each
other. When summers came the pressures eased because Jenny wasn't such
a handy target for her adversaries. She never left the house except at
Johnny's side. He took her with him everywhere he went. Until he
discovered drugs. The big bad wolf the big bad wolf the big bad wolf is
gonna get me but he can't because I'm sitting on a cloud and his teeth
go right through me and I can't feel them. Who's afraid who's afraid
who's afraid of the big bad wolf his teeth are rotten his breath is
foul he can catch me but he can't eat me up who's afraid afraid afraid
blood kill kill who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Drugs made everything
seem better for Johnny, just as jacks did for Jenny. The more he took
them, the more he liked them. But drugs were expensive especially in
the quantity he began to require. So when Jenny slept at night, Johnny
stole out and sold drugs to make money to buy more. "Drugs are good,"
Johnny thought. He began wasting away, playing jacks with Jenny with
his eyes glazed over, just like hers. Summers are nice. But summers
pass. There's nothing quite like the fresh feeling of autumn in the
air. Relief from the heat, changes in the wind, the turning of the
leaves, and new stimulation for the senses. Some can smell football.
Others honeysuckle. There is praise to be earned from teachers and
coaches. Laughter and acceptance from the other kids. Yet all that
Jenny can feel is the fear of going to school. The anxiety of being
called on in class and belittled after giving a stupid answer. The
panic when normal children choose to show their superiority and harass
her on the way home from school. Jenny hated autumn. Johnny dreaded it
for her, and more and more for himself also. Fall was easier to endure
with drugs. He could listen to the coaches and teachers criticize him
without even hearing them. Yes, drugs were nice. Until he got busted
for selling them at school and sent to a juvenile detention home. Now
Jenny was on her own to fend for herself against the other kids, and
against her parents. In some ways the juvenile home was better than
school, but he missed Jenny and missed the easy access to drugs. He
frequently ran away to check on her and to get a fix. He kicked ass
when she told him stories of her tormentors, but that just made it
worse for her the next day when he was no longer there to help. So she
quit telling him. But Johnny knew and he worried more and more about
Jenny. The more he worried, the more drugs he did. When they caught him
with drugs at the detention home, there wasn't much they could do but
take them away. He was still too young to go to prison, and he was
already detained. Blood blood oozing from the mouth the eyes wide open
staring blankly as the blood oozes from the mouth and the nose and the
hush hush hush of dead silence. As soon as he was of age, his keepers
saw to it that he entered the military. "Those drill instructors will
either straighten you out or kill you," they laughed. It looked like he
was doomed for failure from the start in Marine boot camp. He wasn't
healthy. He craved drugs. At first he couldn't make it through the
obstacle course and fell out on forced marches. As his self-esteem
dwindled, he thought of running. Most AWOL recruits end up with a
dishonorable discharge, and just being out was good enough for him. But
then something happened. Halfway through boot camp, recruits are moved
to the rifle range for intense training in the art of shooting. So far
he had only carried the M-14 and learned to disassemble and clean it.
Now it was time to learn to shoot. Johnny took to marksmanship like
Jenny took to jacks. He was the best in his platoon. After shooting his
way to an expert medal, he was finally respected for something. After
graduating from boot camp and completing his advanced combat training,
he landed in Vietnam. Johnny loved rifles. He loved to shoot. He didn't
mind killing. He became obsessed with his skill. Here in Nam he had
good weapons, plenty of ammo, many opportunities to shoot, and better
drugs than he ever experienced. When his tour ended, he considered
re-enlisting, but he knew he had to go home and be with Jenny. Jenny
hugged him and hugged him when he arrived. Four years had passed, and
she was thirteen years old. She still acted like a child but didn't
look like one. Less than five feet tall, she was apparently full-grown.
Her short, muscular legs needed shaving but she never bothered. Her
stubby feet and toes had knots on them, as did her knees, from hours
and years of playing jacks on the concrete sidewalk. There wasn't an
ounce of fat on her dwarfed body, yet there was nothing attractive
about her. Worse than the legs was the facial hair, which confused
beholders as to her age and gender. Her hair was a nest of tangles that
already showed traces of gray in spite of her mere thirteen years.
Jenny was no longer a child but a freak of nature. Tiny but strong.
Muscular yet grotesque. A creature to be tormented not only by her
peers, but also by the older boys and girls on the long walk home from
school. One day while playing jacks with her, Johnny said, "Let's go
try something different. If you can concentrate this intently on
something as silly as jacks, I'd like to see how well you can block out
everything but sight-alignment and a bull's eye. He took her to a
shooting range. Maybe it was in the genes, or perhaps it was just her
ability to focus on a target and block out everything else. For
whatever reason, Jenny found something besides jacks that she could do
very well. Suddenly shooting bulls eyes was all she wanted to do.
"Let's go back, let's go back," she begged, but it was expensive to go
to the range, rent rifles, and buy ammunition. Johnny got a job in a
fast-food restaurant and tried to save money. He quickly realized the
difference between the $3 an hour he could make cooking hamburgers and
the $300 a day he could make selling drugs, so he quit his job and got
heavily involved in selling and doing drugs. Soon he had enough money
to buy a used M-14 and a smaller .22 caliber rifle for Jenny. Now they
would box up their rifles and ammo and go outside the city to shoot tin
cans. It was cheaper than the range. But she loved shooting bull's eyes
best of all, so Johnny bought targets and nailed them to trees for her.
After mastering the .22, she learned to shoot Johnny's M-14 in spite of
its greater size and kick. When she focused on the target, her worries
of the day were blocked out as she aligned the sight perfectly and
squeezed the trigger with the calm touch of a sniper. It's not easy for
a 22-year-old veteran to protect a 13-year-old from other teenagers.
Johnny was an adult threatening teenage kids, which made him more of an
outcast than ever. When the teens weren't ganging up on him, the
parents were. Fights became the norm. Fights, drugs, jail, and shooting
with Jenny. Jenny was happier than she had ever been. Even happier than
the day that she discovered jacks. Hitting bull's eyes gave her a sense
of accomplishment and power. She was soon as accurate with Johnny's
M-14 as he was. One day after they were out shooting targets, Johnny
got pretty loaded up on drugs as they headed for home. "Jenny," he
said, "I want to tell you what my drill instructor told us in boot
camp. Me and the other recruits had been in training for about four or
five weeks, learning how to get yelled at for no apparent reason other
than we were privates and he was a sergeant. Then it was time to go to
the rifle range and learn how to shoot our M-14s. The night before we
went to the range, he had us all standing at attention in front of our
bunks. This is what we did every night right before lights out, when he
would tell us how bad we screwed up during the day, and how we could
expect to get our asses kicked the next day. But this time he said,
'Privates, for the last few weeks we've been whipping you into shape.
We've taught you a little karate and judo, built up your stamina, and
toughened you up. And all of that helps. But there's one thing you have
to always remember. When you come face to face with your enemy, and
you're bigger and stronger and tougher than he is, and you know all of
that karate better than he does, you're still dead if he can shoot
straighter than you can. Your rifle is your best friend out there.
You've learned how to take care of it. Now you must learn how to shoot
it. It's not the strong who survive in that jungle you're going to.
It's the straightest shooters.' " Johnny looked at her and said,
"Jenny, if you're ever in danger, remember that, OK?" "OK, Johnny," she
said. "I'll always remember." There was blood in the crocodile's teeth
and part of the elephant's trunk was gone and the cat lay dead in the
street and she picked up the cat and held it close to her body and
sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Johnny took Jenny shooting every weekend,
and sometimes after school. She got better and better. Many times
Johnny just did his drugs and watched her. She really missed shooting
when Johnny had run-ins with the law and had to spend a few nights in
jail. It was during one of these absences when Sammy Johnson, the older
brother of one of her long-time tormentors, led an assault on her on
the way home from school. Stalking her, followed by eight jeering kids
her own age, he threatened to rip her blouse off to see if she had any
tits. Jenny broke into a cold sweat. "Touch me and you'll be sorry,"
she cried. "Ha ha. Whatcha gonna do?" he chided. "Just leave me alone."
"Your brother's in jail. He can't help you now." He grabbed her. She
bit into his forearm all the way to the bone and wouldn't let go. She
sunk her teeth deeper and clenched harder while shaking her head like a
coyote with a rabbit in its jaws. Her eyes were red, she frothed at the
mouth, and blood poured from his arm, covering her face, but she
wouldn't let go. The others beat her and beat her until she was
unconscious, and finally managed to pry her jaws open to release his
arm. Then they stomped her face and body and hurried off to bandage
Sammy's bleeding arm. Cootie. Cootie. Cootie. Stop it stop it shut up
make me ok squeeze and she wiped blood from her teeth and vomited
pieces of elephant tail and hugged the dead cat close to her shivering
body. Usually there's a difference between tough kids and mean kids. A
kid can be tough without being mean. Or mean without being tough. Most
are just scared and fall in line with the crowd out of pure fear. Sammy
Johnson was both tough and mean. He delighted in beating a smaller kid
unconscious, then giving him one last kick to the face. Once he left a
girl naked in the woods after screwing her, just so he could show her
to his friends as she struggled home in the dark. So here was a very
mean 17-year old being bandaged by a group of younger kids who rescued
him from the jaws of a retarded 13-year old girl. If this humiliated
Sammy, it also made him meaner. Jenny had drawn first blood. He wanted
revenge. The next day after school, he was behind her again, this time
with a bandaged arm and two of his friends, Jake and Steve. Jenny was
not afraid...until she saw Johnny coming, and then she feared only for
him. Johnny came in swinging, but he didn't have a chance. They left
him, and his little sister, unconscious in a ditch. Sight alignment,
sight picture. Sight alignment, sight picture. Squeeze squeeze squeeze
dead dead dead dead crocodile dead dead dead with blood oozing from his
big teeth as he vomits cat hair until his eyes quit moving and stare
into the heavens waiting for hell. Jenny skipped school the next day,
so she wasn't there to pick on. Sammy and his friends laughed and
goose-stepped, Gestapo-style, down the sidewalk on the way home from
school. The little brothers and sisters followed in admiration, until
they heard the crack of the rifle and watched Steve slam to the ground
as an M-14 bullet pierced his temple. The kids ran screaming. No one
saw the sniper. Johnny disappeared the next day. The police vowed to
determine whether it was a tragic accident or a gang-style murder.
Jenny was surprised it took three days before the dreaded knock on the
door. She stayed in her room but listened closely as the police
questioned her parents on the whereabouts of their son. They were too
drunk to respond coherently, so the police searched the house. When
they came to her room, all she could do was tremble. "What's the matter
with you?" one of the officers asked. "Nothing," she meekly responded.
"Why is her face bruised?" he questioned the drunk father. "Don't
know." Without knowing to look between two loose slats in the garage
wall, they found no trace of a weapon. Looking at Jenny again in
disgust, the policemen admonished the parents for child abuse and vowed
to return when they had more time. "And in the meantime, you'd better
call us as soon as you hear from your son." A week later the police
still reported no suspect in the case, but announced they had a lead: A
Vietnam vet who disappeared about the time of the shooting. After
school, Sammy and Jake stalked Jenny, demanding to know where her
brother was. She spit on Sammy, and they knocked her to the ground.
This time she didn't even fight back as they beat her in the face,
ripped off her shirt, and made fun of her tits while the younger kids
watched and laughed at her. Jenny just sat there, silently taking the
abuse until they left, glad that Johnny wasn't there receiving the same
treatment. She worried not about herself, but about him as she picked
herself up and slowly walked home. Later that night Sammy and Jake met
friends at the high school football game. After the game, as they
goose-stepped out of the stadium taunting kids from the opposing
school, an M-14 bullet pierced Jake's temple and he fell dead to the
ground. "We have a definite suspect in the case," Chief Conners told
the press. "We haven't yet made an arrest, but we have examined the
military records of the alleged sniper. This is the work of an expert
marksman firing an M-14. Our suspect is a Vietnam veteran. He has a
record with our department that goes all the way back to his teen
years. He's a troublemaker and a drug user. Parents tell us that he's
been picking on teenage kids since returning from Vietnam. We will make
an arrest as soon as we locate him." Sammy received full police
protection until an arrest could be made. They found Johnny three days
later but it was too late to make an arrest. He was dead from an
overdose. The police identified him as the murderer and closed the
case. Parents breathed easier. Sammy collected black widow spiders to
be released on Jenny's bound and naked body. His followers promised to
help, wanting to watch. Jenny was a much easier victim now, without
Johnny around. Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny Johnny help me Johnny. But
Johnny was gone and the birds pecked at her eyes until there were only
sockets left and she could no longer cry. Jenny didn't weep as she
stood emotionless with her near-sober parents and watched Johnny being
lowered into the ground. She seemed very strong. Her eyes were glazed
over, as if in a trance. Two days after Johnny's burial a nervous Chief
Conners called a press conference. "Another teenage boy, Sammy Johnson,
was found dead today from an M-14 round through the temple. There are
no suspects. Your police department is diligently investigating files,
looking for other Vietnam vets with good M-14 shooting records. So far
there are no leads." Jesus. Where's Jesus? In the sky? Lie on your back
on a wet sheet in the Saint Augustine grass and look for him in the
Milky Way in the smoke fire blood squeeze squeeze squeeze. The
crocodile's dead. Where's Jesus? Where's the cat? The cat's with
Johnny. Sight alignment sight picture squeeze. 1 3 Targets 3
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