The night of the gun on Tadpole Creek

By Ed Rogers

There are a few stories I haven’t told yet about my time growing up on Tadpole Creek. One night, fearing for our lives, my friends Herbert and Willy and I had to hide under their bed because a large, drunk, crazy-mad black man came raging through their shotgun house with a pistol in his hand.
    Before I continue, in case you have never seen a shotgun house – or you’ve seen one but never been inside – I want to give you an idea of what my friends’ house looked like. Some say the name “shotgun” comes from the fact that such a house is long, like the barrel of a gun. Others say it’s because you can fire a shotgun through the front doorway and it will come out the back of the house.
    From the front porch of my friends’ house, a person would enter the largest room in the house (that’s not saying much), which served as both the sitting room and the master bedroom for Mister Jack and Miz Rosa, their parents. It was the only room in the house as wide as the house, and also the only one with a potbelly stove for heat.
    A wall with two doors separated the front room from Herbert and Willy’s, on the left side of the house, and their sister Ann’s on the right, which were divided by a wall that ran down the center of the house all of the way to the back. At the back of Ann’s room was a door into the kitchen, which had a large wood burning stove.
    At the back of Herbert and Willy’s room, on the right, was a permanent opening about the size of two doorways into a small area with a wash tub to bathe in, and with a door on into the kitchen.
    On the left at the back of Herbert and Willy’s room was a door onto the back porch, which paralleled the kitchen. That is, if a person entered the house from the back porch, he would be in Herbert and Willy’s room. Across from the porch on the left was a shed, and about 50 feet straight back from the porch stood the family’s outhouse.
    That gives you some idea of the setting for this story.

Herbert, Willy, and I were sitting on the back porch, and Esll, their older brother, who was married and just visiting, was working on something in the shed. (I’m not sure about the spelling of Esll’s name, but that was how it sounded.) Mister Jack and Miz Rosa were in the front room, and Ann was out for the evening.
    Suddenly a large black car raced up the gravel driveway, which was visible from the back porch, and stopped in the yard at the front of the house. “Who’s that, Herbert?” I asked.
    “That’s Ann’s boyfriend, Boo.” (Boo, the boyfriend, was the one who thought we were a bear out in the cotton field in the story “Farewell” [January 14, 2014].)
    Herbert said, “He must have heard Ann is seeing someone else. Let’s go in and hear what he’s saying.”
    We eased in through the back door and were halfway past their bed, when we heard Boo shouting, “Tell me where she is or I’m killing everybody in this house.”
    No order was given, no word spoken – the idea popped into our heads at the same time and we all three dove under the bed.
    There aren’t many places to hide in a shotgun house and we were dreading the moment Boo decided to start looking under beds. We heard him turning over Ann’s bed, and we whispered about making a run out the back door. But Willy was afraid, so we just stayed where we were to await our fate.

Esll was still outside when Boo began raising hell in the house. He must have guessed Boo had a gun. They were friends and I’m sure he knew Boo well enough to know he always had his gun. We heard the screen door open and watched Esll’s feet as he tiptoed past the bed, through the opening into the washroom, and on into the kitchen. He came back through shortly carrying Mister Jack’s old shotgun, a 10-gauge, older than the hills, and went back outside.
    I had fired this old gun once myself. When I pulled the trigger, fire shot out from the breach and the barrel, and I was knocked over a log on the ground behind me. At the time I thought my shoulder was broken. They called it a goose gun because the barrel was longer than normal.
    Directly we heard Esll hollering from outside, “Boo, if you’re looking for Ann, she’s out here.” That, of course, might have contradicted whatever Mister Jack and Miz Rosa had told Boo. But Boo seemed to believe it, because he came charging from the front room into our room and flew past us like a bull and almost took the screen door down as he ran onto the back porch, and on across it into the yard. He was screaming and cussing at the top of his lungs when we heard the blast from that old 10-gauge. For what seemed like a long time you could hear a pin drop; I’m not sure anyone of the three of us was breathing.
    The screen door, which Boo had run out a few seconds before, banged open and Boo, no longer running, but dripping blood from the shot that had hit his arm and face, passed us, screaming, “Mister Jack, help me, Mister Jack! Somebody done shot me!” If Boo still had the pistol, we couldn’t see it. But I think he must have dropped it outside when he was shot.
    Suddenly, Mister Jack came in from the front room with a piece of firewood. He began hitting Boo and cussing him for being in his house. Mister Jack drove Boo back out the back door and off the porch, and Herbert and Willy and I came on out from under their bed to watch through the window.
    In the yard, Esll, who apparently considered his friendship with Boo to have ended, joined in beating Boo until he made it to his car and drove off down the dirt driveway. Boo drove a 1948 black Dodge sedan – that’s what Herbert said it was anyway. Boo missed the big oak tree at the end of the short drive and took a left turn on his way out. The next turn was a right onto the road. He didn’t miss the big oak there – the car smacked the tree and stalled, and we listened as Boo tried to restart the engine. When Esll fired the shotgun again, Boo threw open the car door and took off running. That was the last I ever saw of Boo.

The next day was Sunday and I had to go back into town for school. While waiting for my aunt to pick me up, Herbert and Willy and I sat on the little hill overlooking the driveway and watched as two men pulled the fender of Boo’s car away from the tire, started the engine, and drove off.
    I never heard anybody ever speak of that night again. To this day I don’t know if Boo lived or died.

Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers