Crack-Shot Crackpot
A brave young man standing on the bridge at the intersection, just doing his job.
The village is on fire. Palls of smoke hang in the air, burning embers from piles of rubbish, tree trunks, tyres, bricks and boulders litter the roads.
On Twitter I see images and video clips of a gunfight on the streets near my Nani-ma’s place. In the village where my parents saw their days out, another video of a gunfight in the streets. A black cloud hangs over the city and a dear friend talks about what his chances are if the building he’s in gets set on fire. The supermarket on the corner below him was looted and set alight during the night.
Other online chatter is reminding people to ensure they’re available for the defense of the village should the looting mobs make their way through the police cordon. Another friend is busy preparing to do a shift at the community organised checkpoint to the communal lands she lives on. The local shopkeepers are tense and resigned to another day of lost business in what is already the quietest holiday season in twenty years.
The little village supermarket has closed because they’re afraid remaining open makes them vulnerable to being looted. The petrol station is closed. The village deli is selling essentials out the side door, keeping things low key to avoid attracting the attention of the looters.
The young man in the private security company uniform and bullet-proof vest puts on a brave face as he stands alone at the intersection from where he’s got a birds eye view of any approaching mob. And he’s doing so without complaint or any major worry to the untrained eye. The epitome of doing the job in front of you. His eyes and the nervous tension of his voice give him away and I decide to stay a moment longer and speak to him about the miscellania of life. He was scheduled to have his day off but his colleague called him from behind another looter roadblock and told him he was trapped and would not be able to make it to work. Going straight into his third consecutive shift, he had a quick shower, grabbed his packed lunch, kissed his children goodbye and raced off to be at the duty point as soon as he could.
He lives in a suburb about half an hour away. He had to make a few detours and ran an early road blockage to get to work this morning. Now he was standing here alone — a single human being tasked with protecting a whole village. In a little city car, with a single handgun, about fifty rounds of ammunition and his bullet-proof vest. There’s no backup because the other guards and cars are busy and stretched to the limit in other parts of the city. He’s got a line to the local community group that’s on standby to jump in should he raise the alarm that a looting mob is en route.
I relent and leave the burst water pipe drama, the burning city, my concerns about how the remains of our little family will fare in the coming week, questions about why the army had not yet been deployed to curb the looting spree and that a severe cold front is headed our way and sit down to do the job in front of me.
I’ve lost the early morning to the water pipe drama and the later morning to being present in the village; listening and being supportive where I could be and now the self-imposed deadline to close off a vital piece of work was at risk of slipping away from my grasp.
My coffee tastes ever so slightly bitter and the water is not crisp and clear as it usually is. The sun seems too hot, the glare on the screen forces me to move spots, again and again until I eventually find myself sitting on the paved floor in the dark and cool south eastern corner with the twirling washing line for company. The slight grating and squeaking sound each time the whirling square completes a journey is oddly comforting and I am not even tempted to do the usual and go find the spray lubricant to shut it up.
Slowly, word by word the rough initial edit of the work goes on and eventually, I find myself at the end of the section. Suddenly there’s a rifle crack in what feels like the space right behind me and I instinctively throw myself down, the laptop skidding across the floor and slapping into the wall. I’m bent over, legs awkwardly crossed under me, my heart pounding. Move, dammit, move I scream silently to myself while I scrabble to get my back against the wall and under the staircase.
Panting, ears prickling and mind racing I sit up and listen intently. There’s no follow up shot. I move myself out from under the stairs suddenly, desperately worried about the laptop — as I remember I’ve not yet hit send on the document. The trusty Mac is lying on its edge, like an open hardcover book spine up. I reach out, grab it and retreat under the stairs. I decide I’m going to send this email even if the mob is almost at the gate, because it’s the job in front of me and nothing is going to stop me from meeting this deadline today. As calmly as I can I read the last bits, save and name the document version and send the email to the team with the usual update.
I close the lid and breathe deeply. I look around and realise that there can’t be a mob because it’s way too quiet. I summon my courage and slowly get out from under the stairs and start peering around, looking for any signs of where the rifle shot might have come from, a spent shell, trajectory marks, anything.
Then I see it as I move slowly up the stairs — a whole branch from a dead tree on the neighbouring property is lying on the ground, clearly freshly separated from the rest of the tree. I am beside myself with laughter and it is only as I grasp the hand railing to stand up on the stairs that I see I’ve grazed my fingers and legs in my rush to throw myself to the ground.
There’s blood on the floor and on the railings where I’ve held on. I sit down heavily on the stairs and let the laughter and the tears and the feeling of being an idiot wash over me. And I think about the brave young man standing there on the bridge at the intersection, just doing his job.
The neighbour’s head appears at the wall, smiling — howzit she says, you look like hell, what happened?
Crack shot crackpot is a mildly fictionalised account of events and any similarities to people, dead or alive is entirely unintentional. Except those mobs of criminal looters, those bastards are real as they come.
© Jesh Baker 2021 All Rights Reserved
