Chapter 9

I pulled my van into the gravel parking lot of the Country Boys' Outfitters and Weapons Emporium, which was owned by the family of my Dad's boyhood friend Ted Jigeazian. There were maybe seven cars and six pick-up trucks in spaces to the right and left of the wide three front steps going up to the covered porch that managed to give the entire front of the hugely-oversized wooden barn-like building that housed the business a welcoming homey appeal. There were even two pairs of red rocking chairs on the spacious porch. One pair of chairs was in front of each of the two impressive plate glass steel-barred display windows, on either side of the heavy front double doors.

I parked beside a nice black Dodge pick-up and got out into the fine fall afternoon. The clean country air smelled fantastic and I could almost feel the remaining colorful leaves up in the surrounding trees waiting to drop to the ground. It was warm enough for me that I pulled the arms of the sweater from around my neck and off my back. I tossed the garment across my seat and the cowling cushion. It landed in a bunch on the passenger side captain's chair as I closed the driver's door with a satisfying clunk.

As I turned for the back of my van, I heard the measured ker-pow! - ker-pow! -ker-pow! that sounded to me of at least two pistols being fired in the distance off to the left. I knew the shots were coming from down the creek valley behind the huge building, where the Emporium's outside firing range was located. It was a great day to be outside doing anything at all in the fine fall weather I told myself.

Going behind my van I unlocked the right-side back door. Inside were two heavy black curtains hanging part way down from a steel bar across the top of the door area. The two closed black curtains blocked the top two-thirds of the interior from view. Below the bottom hems of the thick curtains was a set of built-in crafted wooden drawers that were part of the mattress support riser for the bed in the back of my van. I opened the top right drawer and pulled out Jhoni's blue aluminum case.

I closed the drawer and locked the back door. Heading along the side of my kidney bean red van to the front steps, over the sounds from the firing range, I heard a dog bark somewhere off to my right, toward the west end of the parking lot where there was a short driveway going up through the trees to Ted's big old two-story brick home.

I wondered who would be working today as I topped the solid steps and walked into the shade. It had been almost eight months since I had last stopped in to say hello and visit, and I felt like I'd been remiss in not returning before today.

I'd spent a lot of time here on Ted's property growing up. Even though we went to different school systems, during seventh and eighth grade I had played in a band with George, who was my age and Ted's oldest child.

Being one of Dad's best friends since he was a boy, Ted's family had always visited with my family. And Mom and Dad had also bowled in a mixed doubles league with Ted and his wife Maude for ten or twelve years, starting from the time I was five. Both couples were also avid euchre players. So that was another reason I had spent many Saturday evenings with George, his sister Stephanie who was two years younger and Tammy who was born when George and I were eight, keeping our selves amused while the folks played cards and drank ice tea, either here or at my childhood home.

Holding the blue case in my left hand, I opened the right double door and went inside Country Boys' Outfitters and Weapons Emporium. Fourteen feet in front of me was the edge of thick high wall that divided the front two-thirds of the huge barn right down the middle. A four-foot red and black enamel-on-tin NO SMOKING sign was in a heavy wooden frame mounted head high on the edge of the wall facing the door.

On the left side of the wall was the Outfitters shop, and on the right side of the old barn-siding clad wall was the Weapons Emporium. There were customers on both sides that I could see, along with two sales girls in the Outfitters aisles. And I saw a sales guy working the weapons side of the Great Wall, as us kids called it since we were little. I knew there would be other sales people around because this was Saturday.

I turned to the right and walked into a National Rifle Association member's wet dream.

Not counting the long counter along the Great Wall, for rifles, and the long counter along the right wall of the shop for pistols, there were four aisles down the length of the place with perpendicular aisle openings every twenty-five feet down the rows so it was as easy to get from side to side as it was to walk from the front to the back of the Emporium.

The back third of the building housed the mail-order business and supply rooms, and the customers' toilets. The full basement under the place held more storage; as well as the vault-like gun locker; the mechanical and heating and air-conditioning equipment; and six firing stations and lanes of a thirty-yard pistol range for night shooting classes and foul weather. There was a second floor up above the back half of the building holding office space, the civilized bathrooms as Maude called the employees' facilities, as well as a full break room and kitchen. The ammunition and powder bunker was further behind the building and built into a natural dry limestone cave up on this side of Honey Bear Creek. The 120 acres Ted owned had several limestone caves along the creek which had been a source of hours of childhood play, and half of the land was woods. Great mushroom woods, too.

I walked toward the right side of the Emporium looking down each filled aisle until I saw Ted, his shaved, or bald pate, depending who was describing it, gleaming under the fluorescent lights hanging down from the tall ceiling. Ted was behind the pistol counter clear at the back wall. That space was his unofficial office area. He was looking healthy and fit and carried his sixty-three years very well on his short compact frame, as I started down the outside aisle toward him. On my left, I past shelves of different sizes of paper targets, clay pidgins and other skeet supplies, glass bottles of solvents and cleaning kits and accessories, gun tools, and all kinds of reloading equipment for just about every imaginable caliber of ammunition.

Ted had just hung up the phone and was putting a note pad and pen down as I walked up to the counter in front of him. He looked up and when he recognized me he grinned.

"Well, if it isn't Iggy Junior," he crowed and started to laugh. "Long time, no see!"

Very few people knew that my Dad's full name was Vincent Ignatius Sitwell. And fewer people now knew that he had been know as Iggy to his very close boyhood friends, and Ted was number one on that boyhood friends list. And with the last name of Jigeazian, Ted and my Dad had been known as Iggy and Jiggy.

"Dammit, Jiggy," I protested as I put my right hand down between us on the thick glass of the counter top, "I wanna buy a big pistol, right now, so I can shoot you if you call me that one more time. You hear what I am telling you? No wonder I don't stop by this place more often."

"Hell, James," Ted said to me in a quiet voice as he looked around quickly. "I should start calling you, Chance, then? I don't think so.

"Unless..." he said and looked up at the ceiling, obviously scratching his chin with the middle finger of his right hand, " ... I can get my picture taken with you wearing your hair long again and those asshole glasses perched on your big beak ... Then I'll get that sucker blown up to life size, in full color.

"With a really big caption over our heads," the older man said and spread out both arms of his blue plaid long-sleeved shirt, as far as he could reach, "saying Chance Brandson buys all his weapons and supplies and archery needs from only one place—Country Boys' Outfitters and Weapons Emporium! So all you girls, be forewarned; he's always packin'."

"Very funny," I said, secretly tickled at Ted's bodacious imagination. "But ... all that work ... just to have it crammed up your ass."

"Naw ... I'll put it under the No Smoking sign out front so everybody can see it second thing when they come in the place. Hey, you know ... I could put a small version of it on the top half of the back of our mail-order catalog, come to think about it ... right above the mailing panel. How is that for advertising?"

"Don't knock down the Great Wall and open this place up as a comedy club," I told him, "you'll go broke in a week."

Ted chuckled and slowly shook his bald head, "It is good to see you, James. Good to see you ... How have you been?"

"I'm still back in school and doing good; how is the family?" I asked him, with my own grin coming out on my face.

"Welll ... Maude is really good, and out somewhere shopping with George's wife and the grand-girls," the shorter man told me and smiled. "Stephanie is with two students at the range, she should be coming back in half-an-hour, if you are going to still be here. Tammy is still going to nursing school, one more year of that. So ... are you seeing anybody?"

"As a matter of fact," I told him, feeling a goofy grin breaking out on my face, "I am." And I put the blue aluminum case on top of the counter by my right hand.

"What is in the box?" Ted asked, looking curiously at the metal object.

I flipped open the latch on front of the blue container, "Something my new girlfriend found. She wants to learn to shoot properly and wants to use this to do it."

I took out the folded red towel, being careful of the old ammo boxes on their sides in the bottom left corner of the case. I place the lump on the counter top and unfolded the red material so the pistol was pointed to my right and displaying the angular stylized VIS lettering inside the upside down triangle on the black grip cover.

.

"Well ... I'll be damned..." said Ted with a shake of his head as he looked down at the pistol, "and in forty-five caliber too ... My goodness ... And where did you say this girlfriend of yours found a Polish, Pistolet VIS WZ Thirty-five?"

"I didn't," I said as a thrill of adrenaline shot into my blood at Ted's recognition of the weapon. "But that is what it is ... a Polish pistol?"

"Oh yes," Ted assured me, shaking his head. And then he started chuckling as he turned around to a tall red metal tool chest of drawers against the wall behind the counter. He pulled his huge key-ring on its spring-loaded thin metal cable out away from the spool-housing on his belt. Quickly locating the key he wanted, Ted unlocked one of the drawers. He reached inside and pulled out what I recognized as pistol wrapped in a lightly oiled cloth.

He put the bundle on the counter beside the Polish VIS pistol. Then, he unwrapped the material of the cloth, which exposed the gun. And right there ... was an almost identical pistol resting on the oiled white cloth. I experienced a feeling of awe looking at the two guns under the light from the high ceiling.

"Look at this..." he proudly told me, indicating the pistol with the fingers of his right hand, "this one is a nine millimeter VIS WZ Thirty-five. A guy brought it in, back in June, wanting to trade it even-up for a nicely used PPK I had. He said his dad picked it up during World War Two. I was going to show it to your Dad the next time he stops by, because it's got his initials on the grip cover just like that one. V-I-S."

We both gazed down at the two weapons as if we were looking at a two hatchlings we'd raised, or something else equally mysterious and precious.

"I've done some research on the gun since then," Ted told me with a confidential edge coming into the sound of his voice. "I have to say I cheated the guy on that PPK trade, now that I know what this nine millimeter is worth. Cheated him bad ... But he was really happy with getting the PPK. And that is our goal here, make our customers happy and still make a buck. But I have to say, this pistol your girl found is worth about three times what this nine millimeter is worth ... maybe more, because only ... oh, maybe two thousand ... were ever made in forty-five caliber. And some people claim the original Polish VIS WZ Thirty-fives were one of the finest pistols ever made."

He gently turned both pistols over so the angular letters FB in the inverted triangle on the grip covers on the other sides of the guns were showing and pointed to the slides and the lettering incised in the steel there, "This nine has the Polish eagle on the slide, just like yours ... and so because of that, and the year, we know they were both made before the Germans invaded Poland in thirty-nine. There were less than fifty thousand of those nine millimeters made up to that point, and who knows what happened to most of those during the invasion and then throughout the war.

"You think your girlfriend will be able to hit anything with a forty-five, even after we train her up good?" Ted asked me, and then looked up at me with a quizzical grin. "You are bring her here for her training, right?"

"Of course," I told him without taking much of my attention from the two pistols on the lighted glass counter top. "That's why I brought in the pistol. I have to say, Jhoni won't be happy until she fires the forty-five and runs a couple clips through it. I had to promise her I wouldn't shoot it until she gets her chance first ... just so I could bring the gun along with me today for you to go over and clean up. It looks like it will fire, but I want to know it is safe before we let Jhoni use it.

"But, Ted," I said, and looked at him, thinking if he had taken the pistol in trade for the PPK, that he was planning on reselling it. "I am sure that nine millimeter would be much more suitable for Jhoni to fire. What would you sell it to me for?"

Ted pursed his lips together for a moment and then shrugged his shoulder.

"If she takes the nine, will she keep the forty-five?" he asked me. "Maybe let you use it? I know you've been saying you were going to get a Model 1911 at some point—actually for quite a while now."

"I would really like that..." I admitted to Ted, nodding my head, " ... if Jhoni will agree to using the nine millimeter and let me use this forty-five ... No use in her learning how to shoot if she insists on trying to use a gun she has trouble controlling. But, I think she'll come to that conclusion on her own though, once she's has some training and can appreciate the difference in the way the two guns handle. She is much more sharp than a most people give her credit for, I've been discovering."

"Well..." Ted drawled out, bringing his right hand up to his chin again, "I am sorry to say, but just from her hanging around with you ... her common sense has to be suspect."

"Ha ... ha..." I said, and picked up the forty-five and pulled back the slide, "crap, damn thing is empty."

"It would be a shame to break up this pair, James," Ted told me, ignoring my implication with the pistol, as I put Jhoni's VIS back down on the red towel.

"So ... I'll tell you what. If this girl is going to be taking all of her training through our normally offered classes—or better yet, private lessons from my daughter—and she is going to be conscientious about the whole thing ... I'll sell you the nine for ... oh ... let's say, six-fifty. I'll be making over three on the deal and you'll be getting the nine for a third of what a collector would probably be willing to pay. But, I will know you or your girlfriend will use the pistol, instead of putting it away behind glass somewhere. I'll tell you this, Stephie and I really like the way that nine handles. The grip design produces very little transfer of stress to your hand on firing. Ergonomically designed before they knew what the term meant. You can get some impressive groupings with this nine, and I bet the forty-five will give somewhat similar results."

"You've got yourself a deal," I said and reached into my front right pants pocket and pulled out a big folded wad of bills. "What is that with tax?"

Ted looked from the big wad of bills in my hand and into the blue case at the ammo boxes still on their sides in the left corner.

"You're not going to let her fire those old rounds are you?" he asked me, pointing to the old cardboard boxes. "They might work and not blow up, but I know a guy who would buy them as collector's items. How about I call him and see what he'd be willing to pay for the shells once he gets a chance to come in and look at those old boxes. We'll split the proceeds on that and I'll take your cut off the final bill."

I smiled and nodded my head. The old boxes were neat to look at for a while, but I wouldn't pay to keep them. And if Ted knew somebody who was willing to pay to take them, I was all for it. Jhoni hadn't expressed any interest in the box of shells other than the fact she had bullets to use in her hand gun once she was ready to start firing it. The old newspaper clipping that had been at the bottom of the metal case, however, was back at the Loft, already flat in a plastic bag along with a piece of cardboard to keep it from being damaged. That had been an interesting read.

When we were little, one of the television shows George and I liked to watch on Saturday nights when our folks were playing cards around one family's or the other's kitchen table was The Untouchables. It was about the FBI agent Elliot Ness and his men, who fought organized crime in Chicago during the days of Prohibition. That show was where I first learned about the gangsters of the 1930s such as Al Capone. George had been pleased to learn from the show that there had been another gangster in Chicago, belonging to a gang that rivaled Al Capone, who was named George 'Bugs' Moran. And Moran was further immortalized in our eyes because it was members of his gang that had been killed during the infamous Saint Valentines' Day Massacre.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered from that scrap of old newspaper from July 1, 1946, that on the previous day that year, it was reported that Bugs Moran had pulled a robbery right here in town. Bugs and a gang of reported local gangsters had hijacked the car of a businessman after he had walked out of a Winters Bank on West C Street, which was across the river on the other side of town from my East C Street just a block away from the Loft. The businessman had just withdrawn a $10,000 payroll out of his business account.

The partial newspaper story said the robbers had forced the businessman to drive them from the Bank in his car and had later released the man several blocks away, while stealing his automobile. The businessman reported the robbery to the police immediately and said he knew it was Moran because he had not only recognized him from published pictures, but other members of the gang had freely used his name as they talked inside the victim's car. Police reported that two other members of the gang had been identified from descriptions provided by the victim as well as first names he had overheard driving the robbers away from the scene of the crime.

It was right after Jhoni had announced, "My juices ... are starting to dribble down the insides of my thighs," that I had decided if I were to read the account from the newspaper out loud to Jhoni, her arousal might cool down because she would then have something else to think about. I failed completely in my ploy, because she had gotten even more excited than she was already, thinking the pistol she'd found had been in the hands of the infamous gangster, Bugsy Moran. But Jhoni was the one who had noticed that on the other side of the clipping someone had used a pencil to write in the margin of those news columns the words:

Ha! Ha! The key to this heist is in the rounds fired, not the tales reported here from the mouths of liars!

At first we had been both excited but confused, because no where in the news report I had read out loud was there any reference to shots being fired. While Jhoni and I were resting our elbows on the black-granite counter top looking at the startling message written between the columns, she started reading the partial news story on that side of the clipping out loud to me.

According to that news report we learned that, about the same time Bugs Moran was robbing a businessman on West C Street, ten blocks southwest of the Winters Bank incident another robbery was taking place in an up-scale neighborhood. It was reported that two masked and armed men had entered a restaurant and not only robbed the cash register of approximately $350; they also took valuables from the patrons eating lunch.

It was reported that one of the men fired a total of seven rounds into the floor of the restaurant to convince some of the victims at their tables to turn-over their valuables, telling the people at the tables, 'the next one can easily be in your knee or somewhere.' The patrons reported that robbers made off with wallets, purses, watches and jewelry. While the gunman went to each table, the other robber had guarded the door with his revolver drawn. They had then taken a Miss Ruth Rosenstein, 22 years-of-age and a waitress, hostage as they walked out of the building while threatening; it was reported, to 'kill this little lady, and any other hero who might try and stick their head out of the door in the next four or five minutes.'

It was reported that no one outside the building had seen the two men flee with their hostage, although the police spokesman did say there had been two calls reporting hearing shots fired in the neighborhood. The police also confirmed that there had also been calls from the neighborhood reporting kids testing firecrackers in preparation for the upcoming Fourth of July. It was thought the robbers had turned down the alley next to restaurant and that they had possible driven away in an automobile parked in the lot behind the buildings on that street.

At the time the story was going to press, the reporter stated, the whereabouts of Miss Rosenstein was not known, and she was considered missing. In further news about the incident, the owners of the restaurant, along with the neighborhood business community had already announced a $500 reward for any information that would result in the arrest of the two men involved, as well as another $1000 reward for the safe return of Miss Rosenstein. Miss Rosenstein, it was reported, had recently relocated to the United States from Europe to live with relatives after having lost all of her immediate family during the War to Hitler's death camps.

All of that excitement had culminated with Jhoni being so turned-on, that she had attacked me. Wanting to save myself for the evening that Jhoni had already planned for Georgieanne, and us, I decided to go down on her right there, hoping to get her off as quickly as possible and calm her down that way.

But now, here I was, standing across from Ted as I found myself rubbing the back of my neck with my left hand. The soreness was almost completely gone. I had to turn my head to the far right or left to get any kind of twinge out of the muscles now.

"You want me to figure the full treatment—cleaning, tune-up, and testing the pistol, along with private classes on gun safety and shooting lessons?" Ted asked me, a funny look on his face as he watched me. "We can settle up the next time you come in, and you introduce me and the family to this girlfriend of yours, if that will work for you?"

"Sounds good to me," I told Ted, trying to put the whole riddle of the Polish .45, the two news stories, and the cryptic pencil-written rhyme out of my thoughts for later as I held up the thick folds of bills in my right hand. "You sure you don't want a deposit? I'm flush with cash ... It looks like I'm going to be playing Chance again, once a week starting around New Years and lasting maybe into March depending on the mini-tour schedule."

"Well..." the older man said, looking at all that cash and scratching behind his left ear with the fingers of his left hand. "I guess ... if you're going to be a rock-n-roll star again, I better look out for my investment ... what with upcoming bills for destroyed hotel rooms, and drug-induced amnesia to cloud your recollection of our negotiations here and all ... But, since you're going to have tons of disposable income again—and before I start tallying up for your deposit—are you interested in any other types of firearms, ammunition, supplies, or archery equipment that I might have in stock, or that I could order for you? If you get good enough to ever start tubing arrows, you'll need another dozen of those faggot gray-and-hot-pink Easton arrows Connie made up for you."

When I didn't reply to his barb, Ted added, "And, you know ... don't you? All the kids will want tickets to one of those shows, if you're going to be anywhere within a four-hour drive from around here."

"Consider the tickets taken care of—I don't know the venues we will be playing yet," I said with a smile. "But I'll make sure your kids will definitely get to see at least one show somewhere. You wouldn't believe all the money, the unlimited expense account, and the other perks they tossed at me to get me to agree to sign-on for this rodeo. In fact, if the kids want to, I can arrange for them to come down and watch the band's last rehearsal before we go out on tour, too. It won't be all glitzy and flash, like at a concert, but they would only have to drive twenty minutes to get there. And I can guarantee—there will not be much of a crowd."

"Wow..." Ted said, his bushy black and silver eyebrows arching up into the bottom of his wrinkling forehead, "Maude might even be talked into coming along with me and the kids if that is the case. We'd bring our ear protectors, you understand; like when you guys were in junior high."

"Not a problem," I told him with a fond smile at the memories his statement brought up in my mind's eye. "I wear custom plugs myself when the music gets loud."

"So..." Ted ventured, looking me in the eyes with his gray eyes. " ... the HumDingers are going to be using that fancy Loft place your Dad was bragging up the last time he decided to kick loose the dust and stopped by? He said he would even consider staying over, if your Mom ever sends him to the dog house. And speaking of your folks ... Have you introduced them to this mystery girl yet? Better not be bringing her in here before you take her home son ... that would not be a wise thing to do.

"I see the look you've been getting in your eyes each time you talk about her ... Come to think about it, might not be a good idea for Stephie to handle your girlfriend's training after all—once she sees that look. But don't you ever tell her I said that. She always hits what she aims at. And that would get her into a management position around here way before I'm ready for it."

"I will be taking Jhoni to see the folks before we come here," I reassured my Dad's best friend, gazing back into his gentle gray eyes, " ... maybe as early as Monday evening for supper or something ... But, Ted ... I want you to know, up front—she is about to go through a divorce—and she was born in India, but grew up in Southern California ... So—"

"So ... she has some kind of a different outlook on life then?" Ted asked, bringing up what I thought was the obvious. "Sounds like she will hit it off big time with you Dad then ... And, if you think you are signing-up for grandkids with this one, your Mom will learn to get along with her; especially if your girl lets her name one of them."

"Ted, you're one of my Dad's best and longest friends," I said, and rested both of my hands on the beveled edge of the glass counter top. "And everybody who meets Jhoni falls for her sweet naïve caring nature...

"But ... did you know," I asked him, sounding unsure even to my own ears, " ... there are cultures in India that are like some of the old-time Mormons ... in their beliefs and practices, sort of?"

"So..." Ted asked me, with a touch of humor in his voice, " ... you would be talking—or hesitant to be talking—about polygamy then, right?" He looked at me and shook his bald head and took a breath. "You know, James ... just because the mid-sixties and early-seventies was the first time free love and alternative lifestyles got written up in all the magazines and newspapers in the country ... well, that doesn't mean your generation invented fucking with the lights on—or caring about more than one partner.

"As long as you love somebody and want what is best for them, and other people can see that; well, I think the people who love you and want what is best for you will at least try to understand and accept what you decide for your life. And, well, if it will get your Mother grand babies, she'll learn to deal with your ... well, you know ... living arrangements."

"Thanks Ted," I told him, feeling relief come up my spine, "that eases my mind a good bit. Sorry for dumping this on you, though. Some of the things that Jhoni tells me she wants ... I never seriously pictured being involved in. I don't understand how it is going to work ... but I love her, you know?"