Saturday, January 31, 2009

Invaded

by Ben Small

It was the last days of winter, 1997, and I was sprawled out on the couch, just a month away from the back surgery that would once again make me whole. Deadened by heavy doses of Vicodin and Naproxin, I could walk, but just barely. My pain was constant, like that from a knife wedged in my lower lumbar vertebrae slowly twisting, sending off currents of agony down my legs. Sleep came in spurts and in strange positions, usually curled around or on top of pillows, with my legs flopped over or around one of those large sitting pillows with arms.

At my feet sat my wife, watching me carefully, hurting from watching me suffer, helping by comforting me and periodically refreshing my ice pack.

We were watching a movie… or trying to.

My twenty—one year old son walked in with a date trailing behind him. Three large young men followed them in. I turned from the movie and waved.

“Dad,” my son said. “I think we have a problem.” My son was still walking, and was beginning to look like he and his date were being chased.

Somehow, I twisted around and sat up. You forget pain when you have to. My wife scooted over to give me room, and so she could see what was happening.

“Dad,” my son said, his tone more urgent. “We got a problem.”

The lead man, a youth in his early twenties, huge, probably my size but bigger ala a steroidal Charles Atlas, stayed hot on my son’s trail. My son was hurrying into the living room, trying to shield his date from the onrushing Bluto.

I saw fear in my son’s face, something I’d not seen before. I started to rise.

“Sit down, old man,” said the brute. His tone was deep, threatening. And for effect, he stopped and gave me a hard stare. Meanwhile, his two buddies closed the gap behind him.

Instinct, anger and the need to protect my wife and firstborn drove me up, through the fog of pain, fully to my feet. Adrenalin pumped through my system, flushing me with attitude and action.

Time moves in slow motion during an adrenalin flush. Alternatives flashed through my head. Our only conventional weapons were some knives in the kitchen, more in a bedroom drawer, my father’s unloaded snub-nose .38 under the bedroom laundry basket, and an unloaded shotgun in the mudroom closet. I could fashion a make-shift weapon, perhaps, from maybe a piece of steel artwork or a busted up chair, but I’d never be able to overcome all three of these guys. The two companions of the lead brute didn’t have his size ― few people do ― but they looked as if they may have played high school football some years ago.

All three goons were drunk. They were shouting slurred curses and threats against my son and me, and their movements were wobbly.

I got between my son and Bluto where the living room met the kitchen, and as I moved forward, Bluto had a choice: stand still and take me on when I got too close, or move backwards into the kitchen. I closed to where I could smell the stale beer on Bluto’s breath before he budged.

But he moved backward.

I followed Bluto and his buddies into the kitchen, and motioned my wife to take care of my son’s date and to grab our two monstrous dogs. Two hundred pound Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, the hardiest and strongest of the Retriever family. Strangely, the dogs hadn’t sensed a threat. But I worried they soon would. Snarling, barking monster dogs wouldn’t ease raw tensions.

As my wife rushed to corral the date and the dogs, I whispered to my son to stay behind me, and when he saw an opportunity, to grab the phone and dial 911. As my son tucked behind me, I pushed forward, driving Bluto and his buddies back, issuing a steady stream of threats as I moved. “You know I’m a lawyer, don’t you?” I said. “I know criminal law, a lot better than you idiots do. Lemme see, you’re currently guilty of trespass, assault and home invasion, misdemeanors, which means you may not go to jail for much beyond six months. But you or your buddies touch one hair on my head or anybody else in this house, and battery is added to the offenses, they all become felonies, and you will spend ten to twenty years in jail being raped by your cellmates.”

One of Bluto’s buddies grabbed him by the shoulder, but Bluto shrugged him off. He took a swing at my son, who’d picked up the phone and was dialing, but I managed to shove him and throw off his aim. He caught air. Once more, I moved between Bluto and my son.

I repeated my message over and over, adding to it that the police had just been notified and were now on their way. “Time’s running out,” I said. “Get on it, or get out. But remember, you touch one hair, and it’s felonies all round. Most of your lives in jail.”

I stepped forward, my movement something of a dare. I wanted them on defense.

“Hey, man,” one of Bluto’s pals said. “Come on, we didn’t bargain for this. Let’s go back to her place. C’mon, this isn’t worth it. She’s hot; we’ll have more fun there.

I didn’t know who “her” was and didn’t particularly care, except that any diversion was certainly welcome.

“Yeah, tough guy,” I said. “The cops will be here any second. Maybe you better go back and tell your girlfriend how tough you were to break into a stranger’s house and threaten him, his wife and his son.”

Bluto was still talking tough, pointing his finger at my son, threatening him, pointing at me, threatening, starting forward like to charge, then stepping back. But his progress was backward, a retreat into the mudroom and then the garage.

I followed them, repeating the trouble they were in, their need to get away quickly.

And my son followed me, ignoring my hand signals to get back, to shut the mud room door and lock it. He wasn’t going to leave me alone with three drunken brutes.

As I passed the mud room closet, I reached inside and pulled my shotgun. Empty, but our invaders didn’t know that. And besides, even without shells, the Browning made a good club.

The invaders’ eyes went wide, and Bluto’s two buddies tugged harder on him, one of them grabbing him by the belt, one by the shoulders.

They passed into the garage, and that’s when I saw someone I knew: my son’s former girlfriend. They’d broken up two weeks prior. Sally looked a bit worse for wear, rumpled, like from a rollicking sexual marathon, drunk, so bombed she could barely stand. And she was bawling.

“Sally,” I said. “What have you done?”

She was so upset she couldn’t talk.

Bluto had been trying to climb into the front seat of Sally’s car, but when he saw me talking to her, he charged out and ran at me. CIack, clack, I racked the shotgun’s slide, and pointed the gun at him. Bluto tried to slap the barrel away, and as he did, I swung the butt around and drove it toward his head.

Both of us missed.

Bluto’s two buddies managed to grab him and pull him back to the car. He resisted, but they succeeded in pushing him into the back seat. My son handed me a couple twelve gauge shells, but I slipped them into my pocket rather than up the tube.

One of Bluto’s pals held up his hands. “Look,” he said, “we’re sorry. Sally got us drunk and promised us sex if we hurt your son. We’re leaving now, and we won’t be back. Just let us go.”

I lowered the shotgun, and Sally, still bawling, managed to slip behind the wheel. Her engine roared, and her tires spun. She fish-tailed as she turned the corner. I heard the car rocket down the street.

About an hour later, a sheriff’s deputy showed up. They’d caught the invaders and arrested them. He wanted statements from all of us.

As he readied himself to leave, the deputy turned to me. “Oh, one more thing...”

“Yes, officer,” I said.

“The kids said you pulled a shotgun on them, racked the slide and pointed it at them. They remember that shotgun very well.”

“Yes. It wasn’t loaded, but they didn’t know that.”

The deputy stared at me.

“Officer, what would you do if three guys that size invaded your house and said they wanted to hurt your family?”

“I’d have loaded the shotgun,” he said.

Years have gone by since that incident, but it still looms large in my memory. An event like a home invasion is a shock to the system, an unsettling cause for great reflection. There’s the vulnerability, the parental and spousal protection instincts, the male ego… Over the years, I’ve broken down this event second by second, wondering if there was anything else I should have done, or could have done. This time, everybody survived, and the matter ended well. Nobody was hurt, and the bad guys were caught.

But what about next time?

We no longer leave our doors open. We once felt safe in the wilderness boonies of rural Wisconsin, yet we were victims, at the mercy of three drunk guys with an agenda. Now we live in Tucson, with an illegals problem so bad, our city is among the leaders in home invasions.

I vowed that Wisconsin night that we would never again suffer a home invasion. And we haven’t. We hear about them on the news every night, and they’re on the increase, but we’re better prepared now. We now have complex security systems, and I’ve got small finger-pad gun safes in the rooms we usually occupy. I read recently in a police magazine that a victim of a typical home invasion has approximately eight to twenty seconds to react. I can open my safes in three seconds. The magazine also said that if the victims aren’t immediately killed, they’re often stashed in the master bedroom closet. So I’ve got a shotgun hidden there, and shells nearby. There are no kids in my house, so I don’t worry about them finding the shotgun. Besides, when children do visit, the shotgun goes into the master safe, the one bolted to the floor in my garage.

Call me paranoid if you want, but my wife and I have lived through a home invasion.

We refuse to be anybody’s victim.

8 comments:

Adele said...

yikes, worst nightmare!

Morgan Mandel said...

Wow, that would make a great short story for a confession magazine.I had to keep reading.

I'm glad you survived to tell us. It's a good think they didn't have guns or we wouldn't be hearing about it.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

Jean Henry Mead said...

Terrifying exprience, Ben, and happening more often than we know, which is why we can't allow the government to take away our guns, as they have in other countries.

Dana Fredsti said...

Holy crap. A home invasion is something people think only happen to OTHER people, but obviously they can happen to anyone. I personally think you handled it amazingly well, thinking on your feet and avoiding any real violence. I believe in gun control, but NOT in taking away everyone's guns. Just a little more thought in the tests people take for ownership.

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

What a frightening story! Years ago on New Years Eve I was babysitting all the neighborhood kids along with my own. Everyone but my youngest son who was 3 was in the living room. He came in and said a man was in his room. (That room had a sliding glass door) I grabbed a baseball bat and went running in there yelling, "Here I come and you better be gone before I get there or you'll be sorry."

I saw a man's leg disappear out the sliding door.

Would I have hit him with the bat? Probably, I had a bunch of kids to defend. I still have a bat in my bedroom.

Now we have lots of dogs, always lock up at night, not really worried.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Anonymous said...

Powerfully written and succinct, which gives gives the piece impact along with the vision of being the subject of a home invastion.

Sad to hear that it is worse where you are now living--in terms of the frequency of that kind of crime.

Take care,

Pat Harrington

Anonymous said...

Well written story, Ben. Goes to show that bad things can happen to good people. What happened to the group? The ex-girlfriend?

And how's your back? Did all that exertion hurt you?

I can imagine the effect of that shotgun. I grew up around guns. My dad nearly killed a neighbour who came up the drive and dad didn't hear him. That would have been disastrous. Thank god it didn't happen.

When I left Arizona in 1995, the murder rate in the state was something like 600 that year. The murder rate in the entire country of Australia, 6 times the population of Arizona then, was less. Just sayin...

Jan

Unknown said...

Thank you. In answer to Jan's question, my back is fine now, although surgery made it so and I have to be careful what and how I lift.

The girlfriend? She slid downhill into a sea of drugs and alcohol. Last I heard, she'd stolen her father's guns and been caught trying to sell them for cocaine.

My son has grown up and become a fine man, with a family and a very good reputation. He's now settled in the mountains of North Carolina, where he's a building contractor. Times are tough right now for him, as they are for most people in construction, but he's coping well and is doting on his wife and daughter.

The prosecutor dropped the charges against the three men, so they could serve in the Marines and Army. I haven't heard anything about them since. I moved from that area, where unfortunately, there's not much for young people to do but drugs and drink, in 1999.

The Border Patrol picks up over 800 illegals a day in Southern Arizona. Home invasions are on the increase, as is crime generally. Tough times, tough people, and a tough problem. The violence from the Mexican drug lords is spreading into border communities across our entire southern border, and there are even news stories predicting the collapse of the Mexican government. I don't see the border issues calming down for quite some time.

Dana, the people committing gun crimes are most often not law abiding citizens, the only people authorized by law to own weapons. They're the criminal element. Look at Chicago, where strict gun control laws are in effect. Chicago is being overrun by gang gun violence, and the only people with guns are the cops and the bad guys. Same with Madison, WI, where I still own property. Mexican drug gangs, specifically MS-13, are running wild and gunning people down. Yet, law abiding citizens in Wisconsin aren't permitted to carry weapons, so who's going to protect us, if we cannot protect ourselves? A year ago, a college coed in Madison was murdered while she was on the phone to 911. 911 didn't even call her back, and then refused to take any punitive action against the 911 operator or even release the tape. The Madison 911 Center provides services for 84 different agencies in Dane County, each of which has different procedures for the 911 Center to follow. Madison is a good example of government for government's sake, and government is the only thing growing in Madison. I'm selling my property there. The Harvard School of Law and Policy published an analysis of those cities and countries that have strict gun control measures and compared the crime rates of those cities and countries to those where law abiding persons are permitted to conceal carry. They concluded that there was a direct correlation to strict gun control and higher crime rates.