Chapter 6

Dad made a special trip to the library to pick up some Westerns for me to read. He also stopped off at a newsstand to buy four of the pulp Science Fiction magazines. I especially liked the magazines because of the less than completely clad young ladies pictured on the covers. Mom was appalled at the pictures, but Dad insisted that I was old enough to have them. Thus, I had plenty of interesting stuff to read while my back was healing. That was when I formed my abiding interest in SF.

By the way, SF was the only acceptable abbreviation for Science Fiction. The few times that variations of SciFi appeared, they were sneered at to the point of deep ridicule for anyone so unintelligent as to use such stupid abbreviations. Okay, I am still somewhat biased on that subject.

It took two weeks for my back to heal to the point where I could forget to worry about the pain when I moved. I do have to laugh at the thought of how my brother’s estimate of me went up as a result of this attack. I was the only person he knew to be shot, and the fact that I survived made it even more exciting. I had told him a couple of times what had happened, but he was sure that I was leaving out something important.

As soon as I could get around without pain, I was going to track down the boy who had shot me and get some questions answered. I figured that would be another week. I was afraid that I would have to fight, and I didn’t want tinges of pain to cause me to flinch at the wrong time.

Meanwhile, I did everything I could to stay in good physical shape. I had a series of exercises that my grandfather had shown me, and they had worked well before, so I was sticking to them and doing what I could to make sure that my muscles stayed loose.

A week later, I was ready to start my hunt for whoever had ordered me to be shot. I was not yet sure what I would do when I identified my enemy, but I might wind up killing him if that were what it took to get him off my back. It did seem strange to me that the thought of murder to save my life did not bother me in the least. Maybe it was because, down deep, I didn’t think that it would go that far.

I looked up Charles Nickles late one morning. I was not surprised that he was not home. I talked to his sister who did not seem to have much regard for him. She told me that he ran with a rough crowd of teenagers who thought of themselves as a notch better than anybody else.

I was surprised at her candor when she told me that Charles had been arrested for theft on two occasions, but had gotten off when he sweet-talked the woman juvenile court judge. His sister said that the crowd that he ran with would probably not stop at murder if it looked advantageous to them. Wow, that was something that I had to take into account.

Well, I had a potential answer to that concern. My brother and I had been nosing around in some obscure storage locations at home and had found a Smith & Wesson (S&W) .32 caliber pocket pistol, a revolver, that Dad’s father had bought to take with him on his fishing trips to the wilds of Florida. He had bought it from Sears back in the late ‘30s, and I would bet that it had never been fired.

Anyway, the pistol was small enough that it would fit nicely in my pants pocket. I bought 20 rounds for it and started carrying it whenever I was away from home. It held five rounds in the cylinder, so I loaded four rounds per the safety instructions I found in a magazine. I wasn’t concerned about a fast draw, so I didn’t practice that.

However, on my next trip to Arlington to visit my other grandparents, I took the pistol to a large vacant field and fired a few rounds. I found that I could hit what I was aiming at as long as it was within about 20 feet, so I did not shoot up much ammunition.

My grandfather asked me about the shotgun wounds, and I showed the remnants to him. He also asked me what I was doing about investigating why I had been shot. I told him what I knew, and I trusted him enough to show him the old pistol that I had found.

“Jack, you know that .32 is a piss-poor self-defense weapon. What you really need is a .38 and a lot of practice with it.”

“Yes, Sir, but I don’t have the money to buy a .38, so I guess that I will have to try to get by with this pissant .32.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it. Give me a couple of minutes.” He disappeared into the house for about 10 minutes and came back to the barn with an S&W .38 revolver with a 4½-inch barrel. He also had a box of 50 rounds of ammunition. “Here, take this. Just don’t let a cop catch you with it. This ain’t a long-range gun, but it’s sure adequate for up to 50 feet, and you don’t need to be shooting at anything farther away than that. Come on, let’s go out to the farm where you can get in some decent practice with it.”

By damn, my grandfather had come through for me again. He loaded my tricycle and walker in the back of his ‘38 Ford pickup and drove us to the farm. We stopped at the farm barn long enough to pick up a couple of boards about 9 inches wide to use for targets. He drove us to a section of the farm where nobody was working, and it was safe for a rank beginner to learn to use a pistol.

This revolver was safe with six rounds in the cylinder, but he only loaded in one round. “Okay, Jack, you have fired that .32, so you already know most of the fundamentals. Now, here is how you should hold the pistol whenever you have the chance.”

To my amazement, Grandfather held the pistol with both hands straight out in front of him and fired at the target board about 20 feet away. The bullet hit the board about 4 inches from one edge and at belly-height for a man. “Did you see how I held the pistol? Always use two hands if you have the opportunity because that lets you hold the gun a lot more steady, and that’s the secret to hitting what you are aiming at. Now, let me show you rapid fire.”

He loaded in all six cartridges and held the pistol at his side. Suddenly, as if he were a machine, he raised the pistol, grasped it with both hands, and fired the six cartridges so fast that it almost sounded like one continuous noise. When he finished, he ejected the spent shells and reloaded one bullet. What amazed me even more was that the board now had a set of six holes spaced no more that 2 inches apart and just a little higher than that first bullet hole.

“Jack, that’s the kind of shooting that you can do with a lot of practice. I wasn’t just showing off. I wanted you to see that I really did know what I was doing with a gun so that you could believe that what I said was gospel truth. Now, watch exactly where I put my left hand.”

He held the gun in both hands and let me examine all of the details of his stance. “Okay, now I want you to show me what you can do. I’ve got the bullet in position so that the first five times you pull the trigger, you will not shoot a bullet, but the sixth time will fire the bullet.

“Hold the pistol the way I showed you and squeeze the trigger. I want you to feel how the gun will react when you first pull the trigger.”

I followed directions as carefully as I could, and I was kind of surprised at how easy it was to do. That old .32 had a rough travel to it, but this gun was as smooth as silk as the hammer came back, the cylinder revolved, and the hammer fell forward. Frankly, I could hardly believe the difference between the two guns.

At first, my aim tended to wander as I pulled the trigger, but I had settled down by the time I got to the fifth position. I felt like I did not shake at all as I pulled the trigger, and Grandfather said, “Jack, you are a wonder. Go ahead and pull the trigger for this live shot and try to come as close as you can to the place where my first shot hit.”