Exactly how it happened.

While I was home for Christmas, I drove around the old home town to see who I could run into.
Unlike all my previous visits, most everyone was there, either down at Turtle Creek Saloon or the Hi-Lite. I wasn’t sure what my reception was going to be like, but it turned out well: a lot of people had been reading my website and were really in to what I was doing. South Dakota doesn’t have much, really, in the way of celebrity — after Tom Dascle and Mt. Rushmore, they’re pretty much out of ammunition, so that night, among my old High School buddies, I basked in a rockstar-like glory. People drove me around town, and told me about parties that were going on in the next few days and that I should definately come.
When I got back to my folk’s house, I confided to my mom that it was already the best visit home that I’d ever had, and I hadn’t even gone hunting yet.
Of course, I’d forgotten to get a license, so I had to take care of that the next day.
I drove back into town in my pickup to buy a pheasant license and backed into a space in front of the pizzeria/movie rental shop/Sears outlet that also sold the permits I needed. (Yeah, in South Dakota, you can’t really specialize.)
When I came back outside, my pickup was partially blocked in by this other car. I tried pulling out but I kept tapping bumpers, no matter how much I hauled the wheel over to the left, so finally I just put it back in park and waited.
That was when I noticed the cops on the other side of the street. There were at least five, all out in front of the Clothes Garden (retail chains don’t really like South Dakota, btw). They were all heavily armed and peering in the windows of the store. I couldn’t really see what was going on, so I pulled my gun out of it’s case in the passenger seat and used the scope like a telescope to watch the action. It probably wasn’t a good idea to point a gun at a cluster of cops this way, but no one was looking my way.
All but two of the cops crept inside and started weaving through the circular racks of clothes, pistols out and crouched. I watched, and realized that I could see where the guy they were after was hiding. The problem was, I didn’t have any way of warning them, so I kept watching.
The cops in the store were clueless. They walked right by the guy about 5 times, until he finally got cocky and made his move, slipping past the deputies in the store and out a side entrance that led back to the front sidewalk.
He came out right behind the sheriff, who was a nice guy I’d known a long time. I only had one choice, so I squeezed the trigger and dropped the guy. The cops didn’t know what was going on, and by the time they’d gotten a clue, I’d pulled out of my space across the street and was driving calmly in the opposite direction. The only thought I had about the whole thing was that I’d have a really good story to tell at the party I’d been invited to that night, and that my sights were adjusted a little high and to the left.
~
It was a pretty wild dream.

10 Replies to “Exactly how it happened.”

  1. The annoying thing is that I have action-movie dreams all the time — full-on alien invasions, grass-roots resistance movements, explosions, fires, and a special effects budgets most directors would kill for.
    And usually, I can’t REMEMBER any of them.

  2. I’m actually a hell of a hunter. Well, decent shooter anyway. If nothing else, walking through matted-down, waist-high grass with a 10 pound hunk of metal held out in front of you (way out, because it will FUCKING EXPLODE if you get lazy) is good exercise.

  3. Heh. See there was the dear right? And it came right at me so I had to kill it with my bare hands……. ;-)

  4. Doyce-Man,
    Thanks for the belly-laugh. I am glad to see you are still a big supporter of “gun control.” I thought of you yesterday afternoon, because I almost got myself killed while driving. I was driving down I-90 while reading my notes for a presentation I was going to make. I was really getting into it, until I realized I had no recollection of the drive from Draper to Murdo. I still can’t believe you read novels on the highway.

  5. Hey, reading novels while driving was a past time of my own years ago! I can’t believe that anyone else was as psycho as me! :)
    Of course where I used to live, I could make the drive to work, about 30 miles and only see one or two cars.
    The worst thing that ever happened, was I got too close to the edge of the highway once and lost the rearview mirror on the passenger door!

  6. I have to say he had me going for awhile. Wierd shit you dream about, if I were any further into my counseling program I could interpret your dreams for you, they teach us that ya know!! Well worth the money.

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