The campfire was going strong, keeping the mosquitoes off and the cool October air at bay while me n Poot drank beer and talked about new stuff we could do. We had burned down all the empty shotgun houses in Leflore County, and we needed a fresh challenge, something fun. That's when we, he, come up with the thought of us shooting the water tower in north Greenwood. I don't know how he thought of it, but Poot always had the best ideas.
This one was special. The tower sat then, as it sits now, in a residential neighborhood not far off Park Avenue, the busiest street in town. To get away with that would be legendary, make us stars, heroes, only nobody could know or we would get caught for sure.
The goal we set was not only to shoot the tower, but to punctuate its structure so that it leaked water like a Gulliver peeing on the Lilliputians below. In order to shoot a hole through the steel side, we needed a big rifle, and we knew a little bit about big rifles now that our dads were taking us deer hunting. But getting caught shooting a high-powered rifle at public property in town would land us in jail for sure.
We had grown up enough to know that if we got nabbed having fun would not get us the death penalty or get us sent to Parchman for life. But we was also old enough to know we would get in pretty serious trouble and maybe go to jail for a little while besides our dads beating our butts.
After school that Friday-- our first year at Greenwood High-- we loaded the truck, Dad's yellow 1969 Chevy short wheel base with three on the tree, and hit the road. We could drive then because at that time the law in Mississippi was you could get driver's license at fifteen. A license gave us the ability to carry more guns and gear than our mopeds could. That meant camping in style and sleeping in a real tent, and even a Coleman Stove for cooking breakfast and coolers full of stuff to eat. And drink. We learned early on about the benefits of proper hydration.
We was on a ridge above the little pond on Dad's place in Carroll County when we come up with the idea. We liked to spend time in the country. That's one way we stayed out of jail all those years. That afternoon we had put some lines out in the water, pitched the tent, and gathered firewood. Our plan was to squirrel hunt first thing in the morning and then run our lines and cook what he killed and caught for lunch. After a supper of fire-burnt hot dogs and a bag of partially melted Snickers Bars, we started on the beer. The more we drunk, the better our ideas got.
We thought about shooting road signs and vowed to do it. We talked about shooting houses, ones people lived in and vowed to do it. We discussed shooting cars, ones people still drove and vowed to do that also. But when the water tower come up, we knew we was onto a proper project worthy of our time and attention. We got serious and done some heavy thinking. Poot was gung ho from the start, but I had my doubts. I told him we could never get away with it. He said there had to be a way, we just didn't have enough beer to figure it out. Poot thought if you drank enough beer, you could solve any problem.
What we did figure out was we needed to get out our deer hunting rifles. Poot had a 30'06, and I had a 7mm Magnum. Either one of those guns was big enough to do the job, but we wasn't sure about the bullet. We read Guns and Ammo every month, enough to have an idea that our deer loads might not penetrate the tower's hull because they was expanding bullets and would likely expend their energy upon impact and not punch through. But who could we ask? We actually knew who we could ask, but Poot was smart about stuff like that and said we couldn't never be associated in anybody's mind with anything connected with the water tower. We could ask Mr. Glover at the gun store, but to do that would leave a clue. We couldn't leave no clue, Poot said. If we went in and started asking about steel-penetrating bullets and then the water tower got shot, well, he might call the police. Poot always connected the dots, another way we stayed out of jail. Whatever we did was gunna to be well planned.
Me n Poot went to Glover's after school one day the week after we camped out and got the water tower idea. We went in acting like we was looking at deer rifles. We got to looking at ammo and found some 7 mag solids. When we went to buy them, Mr. Glover asked if we knowed they wasn't no good for deer hunting. "Punch right through," he said. "You'll have to trail him forever." We told he we knowed. Poot said we was shooting stuff at an old junkyard and we wanted to play with shooing some engine blocks. We had heard that a 7mm mag would shoot clear through an engine block. We wanted to see for ourselves. So we got our ammo and left.
After that I knowed Poot would never rest until we pulled it off. I tried and tried to talk him out of it, but you never could talk Poot out of nothin'. I told him over and over how we would get caught for sure, we would wake up the whole town if we shot the tower, and the police would never stop looking for us. The FBI would come out. Columbo would move to town. The whole world would be after us. But he just said he'd figure out a way.
The Friday night after our camping trip, me n Poot was riding around in town and we drove by the water tower. We stopped on Walnut Street which runs about a block away from the tower. We had a clear view of our prey.
"We could pop it right here," Poot mused.
"And get caught," I responded.
"Not at three of four in the morning."
"We would wake up the whole neighborhood."
"We'll be gone by the time folks look out their windows."
We drove a block farther and stopped at Clarico Park and talked some more. The night was warm for October, warm enough for us to have the windows down and the radio on. Loretta Lynn was singing over the speakers and in the background, the tree frogs and katydids were singing one of their last songs before summer disappeared the last time for the year.
Poot popped a top and seemed lost in thought. It was an Old Milwaukee, our drink of choice at the time.
"One person looking out and getting our tag number and we are done."
Poot was silent for a long time, long enough for Loretta to finish and somebody else to sing.
"This is how we do it. One of us gets in the truck bed. We stop where we were right back there on Walnut and we shoot it. Then the driver slowly motors away."
"One person," I protested. "Just one person looking out and we are caught."
"We daub some mud over that little light that lights up the tag. And we daub some mud over the tag. Even if somebody sees us, we will be gone long before the police come."
"They'll have a description of the truck."
The other singer finished, then Johnny Russell started singing about "rednecks, white socks, and blue ribbon beer."
"A different truck."
"We can't get another truck, Poot."
"A different description," Poot spoke from somewhere far away. His eyes were unfocused and we hadn't even drunk that many beers.
"How?"
He didn't answer, but Johnny Russell finished his song.
"I got it!" he said several songs later
"Got what?"
"Camper top."
"Huh?"
"We get an old camper top from Hank O'Donald. You know, that old junk yard on the outskirts of Carrollton."
"That takes money, Poot."
"Then if somebody looks out the window, they can't see our tag number, and they see a pickup with a camper top. We'll dump the camper top and we get away with it."
"Money. Who's gunna pay?"
"I'll buy the camper top," Poot yelled. "By golly, we can do this."
"Just cause we got a camper top don't mean the cops won't stop us."
"Dang it. You in or out"?
I didn't know I had a choice.
"We'll camp out in Carroll County," he started back. "We make the shot and then drive over the bridge. We dump the camper top and we did it."
I didn't say anything for a long time. Some commercial on the radio came on for a hemorrhoid medication. I thought I might need some.
"How do we get back to Carroll County?" I finally asked.
"You dumb doo doo head. That's the easy part. God created maps on the eighth day. Ain't you got no sense of religion?"
I drank the last of my beer and opened a new can of Skoal and filling my bottom lip full. "What if the highway patrol stop us? They'll want to know what we're doing out at four in the morning," I said while spilling some smokeless tobacco on my clean, white T-shirt.
"I'll figure something out," he said, and I knew he would.
So we done it the next Friday night, or I guess it was Saturday morning. Poot had bought a piece of a camper shell and hidden it off Steen Hill Road. We camped on the ridge above the little pond, put on the camper shell and waited for 3:00 am when we drove into town. I was in the bed of the truck with my 7mm. The driver's side window had been removed from the camper shell so I could shoot out that side. Why did I have to do the shooting? Poot didn't trust me to drive slow after the shot was fired. He said I would get scared and drive too fast and that might get us stopped. He was right. I would have stomped it and peeled out and run every stop sign and driven 100 miles per hour over the bridge.
Anyway, we drove into town, stopped on Walnut Street, and I shot the water tower. What happened next is another story.
No comments:
Post a Comment