Jim Courter -- A Serpent in the Garden
I’ve never considered myself a gun person, and still don’t, although I own a handgun and even shot someone with it to save myself from a severe beating, or worse. That’s the only time I fired my gun since acquiring it, illegally, from a student of mine, whose name, like the others in this story, I’ve changed for the sake of confidentiality.
Jalen was on my opening-day roster in a lit survey class but didn’t show up until the third week, pleading family problems back home on Chicago’s West Side. (I later learned that those family problems involved the death of a cousin in a drive-by shooting.) He rarely attended class, completed only a few assignments, and came to my office numerous times to plead extenuating circumstances and ask for leniency. He was a linebacker on the football team, or would have been if he could get his eligibility straightened out. He had an upbeat demeanor, no matter what dark circumstances he spoke of. And dark they were.
What started as excuses for missing class turned into vivid stories about his fatherless childhood, his struggles in school, his life in a street gang, and his desire some day to escape all that and play professional football. I was fairly certain he was conning me, at least part of the time, but he was a gifted storyteller, and it was difficult not to like the guy and sympathize with him. Whenever possible I steered the conversation toward his performance in class, encouraging him to take the work seriously—prodding, cajoling, admonishing—all of which he took in good spirit.
Jalen missed the last two weeks of classes and should have failed. Instead, I gave him a C, which he had to know was gift-wrapped and tied up with a bow. I didn’t want to contribute to his loss of eligibility to play football, which he saw as his only hope of escape. I doubted that he had done passing work in his other classes or that his other teachers had given him the same kind of break, and I assumed I had seen the last of him.
But he showed up at my office early the next fall, looking serious. He said he was returning to Chicago and wanted to say goodbye. He seemed to know his days in school were over. Before leaving he encouraged me to tell him if there was anything he could do for me. He seemed embarrassed in saying that, as if he thought that someone in my position couldn’t possibly need anything from him. I guess he wanted to repay me for the favor I had done him, or at least to show that he was willing to. He looked surprised when I took him up on the offer then and there.
Among the things Jalen had spoken of in our talks was weaponry—guns he had owned, guns he could acquire on short notice, guns that got passed around in the street gang he was in. I got the impression that they traded guns the way my friends and I traded baseball cards when I was a kid.
At that time the news was full of stories of mass shootings, including on college campuses: a grad student at Iowa who killed six fellow students and a professor before killing himself; a disgruntled student who shot a teacher during an office conference. Then Virginia Tech happened. Then Northern Illinois, eerily close to home.
Here at West Central State, threatening notes had shown up on campus, putting everyone on edge. I took to locking my office door when I was in there alone. When I went to bed at night I saw the faces of former students who either struck me as spooky or held grievances against me for one reason or another.
In the ensuing bitter public debate, Second Amendment advocates speculated on how things might have played out differently in those scenarios if someone on the scene had been armed and able to take out the shooter with a dose of his own medicine. As I said, I had never been a gun person, but that argument gained some traction with me.
All that was fresh in my mind when Jalen made that offer to do me a favor. Without hesitation I said, “I’d feel safer if I had a gun, something small I could carry without drawing attention.”
He brightened with surprise, then said, “How soon you need it, Professor?”
“As soon as you can get it to me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
To be honest, I didn’t think I’d see him again. Then a couple of weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, with not many people in the building, Jalen came through my office door. He sat across my desk from me and opened his book bag, took out a brown paper sack, and pulled from it a small handgun and set it on the desk between us.
“Walther PPK nine millimeter,” he said. “Nice little piece. Very effective from close range. It’s not loaded.”
I picked it up. It was light and compact and fit within the span of my hand.
Jalen reached back into his book bag and brought out a small cardboard box with a flip lid.
“Bullets,” he said. “For you, probably a lifetime supply, even if you do some practice shooting.”
I sat there trying to assimilate. Jalen stood and smiled.
“How much do I owe you?” I said.
“Nothing. That’s what is cost me. You take care, Professor,” he said, and left.
For a while I considered trying to keep it a secret from Claire, my wife, but I doubted I could pull that off over the long run. One night after the kids were in bed I told her about it and explained how I had acquired it and why. I showed it to her and was frank about the illegality of my possessing it. I must say, its presence there on our dining table had a chilling effect.
Claire frowned and said she didn’t like it and that I had introduced the serpent into our garden. I told her I understood, but that I was determined to keep it. She appealed to reason, but I didn’t yield. She appealed to emotion with no better results. She appealed to safety concerns—tragic stories of kids in a house with a gun—and I assured her that that wouldn’t happen to us. She appealed to our shared faith in the higher power in which we should trust in all matters, with no better result. I tried placating her, without success, by saying that the likelihood that I would ever need to use it was virtually nil. That didn’t work, but I kept the gun.
A few weeks later, that virtually nil likelihood materialized, thanks to a student from hell in my Intro to Lit class. I’ll call her Ashley. She rarely attended, disrupted class when she did, and did a poor job on the few assignments she completed. When I told her if she didn’t change her ways she was sure to fail, she accused me of treating her unfairly.
After that she not only persisted in her behavior, but escalated it. Her disruptions when she showed up got so that I was barely able to conduct class. I finally called her advisor and asked him to drop her from my roster and told him why. He wasn’t surprised, and did what I asked.
End of story, or so I thought.
One of my other classes that semester met on a Monday night, from six to nine. About a week after thinking I was rid of Ashley, I stayed in my office awhile when that class was over then left about nine-thirty. My car was in a dark corner of the adjacent parking lot. As I neared it, someone bear-hugged me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides. Then a guy appeared in front of me and hit me hard in the gut. The guy behind me let me go. I doubled over and sucked in air.
The one who hit me said, “This is for my girlfriend,” then clipped me with an uppercut. He was of medium height and stocky, with a buzz cut. I recognized him as the guy Ashley had met out in the hall a couple of times after class.
The other guy slammed me against the side of my car. He was shorter and lighter than his partner, but I felt plenty of strength in that shove.
No one else was around. They stood in front of me, effectively cutting off any angle of escape. And they seemed to have more in store for me. Instead of waiting to find out what that might be, I pulled my gun from a pocket of my jacket and shot Buzz Cut in the left leg, just above the knee.
His partner split. He was quick and fast. As he put ground between us, I could see him under a pole light looking back over his shoulder, like he was going out for a long one, but he didn’t slow down or stop. Nothing like loyalty among friends when the going gets tough.
Buzz Cut swore and writhed on the pavement.
“You shot me! You actually shot me!”
He seemed as much surprised as in pain.
“You need a better class of girlfriend,” I said.
I drove off with his curses and threats in my ears.
When I got home I turned on the interior light in the car and checked myself in the rear view mirror before going in. I had a cut on my forehead above my left eyebrow.
In the house, after a hug and a kiss, Claire leaned back from the waist and gave me an appraising look. When I didn’t say anything she said, “Disgruntled student?”
“Boyfriend of the one I told you about.”
“I just put the kids to bed,” she said. “They may still be awake.”
I went into their separate bedrooms to tell them good night, hoping that in the dark they couldn’t see my cut forehead.
Back with Claire, she regarded me with sympathy and skepticism. She waited to hear more.
“You should go to bed,” I said. “I may be up a while.”
“You come home looking like you’ve been in a fight, and I’m just supposed to go to bed? What’s going on?”
“Okay. You might as well know. I shot a guy.”
She gave me a long look then said, “You shot a guy.”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“I don’t think so. I shot him in the leg. There were no witnesses, as far as I could tell.”
“I hope it was in self-defense, that you had no choice.”
“Of course.”
After convincing Claire to go to bed, I spent a mostly sleepless night on the couch, thinking and keeping vigil in case trouble showed up at the front door. The next morning, after the kids went off to school, I told Claire the whole story. She took it as proof that my acquiring a gun was a bad idea. I said it validated my choice to do so.
My guess is that Ashley’s boyfriend had reason to avoid cops, because they never came looking me up. Nor did he, who probably saw incentive to avoid me in the future. I like to think he healed nicely.
The incident wasn’t entirely without consequences, though. It threw a harsh light on a major difference between me and Claire, who for the most part always try to present a unified front to the world. She would navigate the troubles of that world equipped only with faith and prayer, while I had become a firm believer in faith, prayer, and a loaded gun.
As I said, all the names in this story have been changed. As for mine, if you need one, call me Gunnar. DSS
Jim Courter of Macomb, IL., is the author of novels and many short stories. They have appeared in the United States, Canada, and England. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and has won an Illinois Arts Council award for short fiction. His mystery novel, Rhymes with Fool, was published in 2018 by Peasantry Press. Its sequel is forthcoming. First Things First: Ephemera and Offscourings of a Distracted Writer, a collection of essays, humor, and short stories, was published in 2019.
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