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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 08/21/2024
Dr. Jekyl and Grandma Heidegger
Born 1945, M, from Boston/MA, United States“A week ago Tuesday I killed a man,” my grandmother announced in an off-hand manner, as though she might have been commiserating about a new pair of orthopedic shoes or the unseasonably hot weather. “Murdered,” she corrected. “The act was intentional, so it was more homicidal than self-defense.”
“In a perverse sense,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “I considered it my civic duty… moral obligation to send the bastard to an early grave, but I’ll explain that later, if you wish.”
It bears mentioning that Grandma Heidegger viewed herself as a natural-born comedian. The woman had a flair for the ridiculous. Always the practical jokester, her life resembled a one-woman vaudeville shtick, which she refined from one family gathering to the next. Her comment was outlandish, but then, Grandma Heidegger frequently displayed an obtuse sense of humor.
“Where exactly did the crime occur?”
“The alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy.”
I recalled that there had been a shooting at that location less than a week earlier. A twenty year-old was discovered by an employee. A grainy picture of the deceased, a heavy-set youth with a scraggily beard and chipped tooth, appeared in the local paper. The body lay curled up next to the dumpster overnight with a gunshot wound to the chest, execution style. The police had no motives, not a single suspect or witness to the crime.
I glanced distractedly about the room. A rather garish portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hung on the far wall just above Grandma Heidegger’s head. A devout Catholic, the woman littered her cramped apartment with a potpourri of devotional prayer cards from every funeral she ever attended as well as a quirky hodgepodge of religious ornaments and memorabilia. A portrait of Padre Pio done in sepia tones graced the wall over her bed next to a mahogany crucifix. The bearded saint, who had known much suffering, wore a mournful expression. A porcelain Madonna, eyes lowered and hands cupped in a supplicating gesture graced the bureau. “There was a weapon?”
“Yes, of course… a Ruger LCRX, 38-special.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her arthritic hands in a soothing, repetitive gesture. “The snub-nose, five-shot model”
I blinked and stared uncomprehendingly at the older woman. “Excuse me?”
“Here, let me show you.” Grandma Heidegger rose gingerly from the chair and hobbled disjointedly into the bedroom. When she emerged moments later, she was carrying a small handgun with a black finish and compact, three-inch barrel. She held the gun with the barrel facing down. Flicking a metal tab with her thumb, she released the cylinder, which fell forward to the left revealing five empty chambers.
Grandma Heidegger spun the cylinder and sighted down each opening to make sure the gun was empty. “Safety first!” she muttered and deposited the handgun on the kitchen table.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“The sporting store in the center of town.” She went and filled the tea kettle with water from the kitchen tap, placed two cups on the table with a Salada teabag in each and returned to her chair. “Let me begin at the beginning.”
* * * * *
As Grandma Heidegger explained it, the previous year several elderly residents of the condominium complex were beaten and robbed. “I didn’t want to become another statistic, so I took a gun safety course and got my LTC through the local police.”
“LTC?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“License to carry,” she clarified. “Last Tuesday a man accosted me as I was returning home from visiting a sick friend. He was lurking near the dumpster in the darkened alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy. When I refused to give him any money, he made a threatening gesture and I shot him in the chest.”
“Okay,” I muttered leadenly. Grandma Heidegger’s bizarre narrative was pervaded with an ominous air of unreality, and now I was beginning to wonder if, in the rich tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the woman harbored some macabre alter ego.
“He had me at an unfair disadvantage,” Grandma Heidegger grumbled. For the second time, she left the room and returned shortly with an oddly-shaped piece of fabric. “In case you’re wondering, it’s a bra holster. A woman fastens the revolver up under her blouse, where nobody can see.”
“For easy access,” I chuckled.
“Easy access and quick release.”
“Flashbang bra holsters… that’s what some of the younger women call them.”
“Flashbang,” I mused irreverently. Some unsuspecting nitwit tries to molest or rob an elderly woman and quickly finds himself holding the shit-end of the stick.
She dangled the flimsy, coffee-colored holster under my nose. “Mine is rather bland, but they come in all sorts of bright colors and flowery prints. Depending on personal preference, a woman can hang the holster in the middle of her chest between the breasts or under an armpit opposite her shooting hand. Either way, it’s a handy device.”
Grandma Heidegger place a palm with fingers splayed against her midriff then drew the hand upward and away, balling the fingers into a makeshift weapon. The elderly woman squeezed off an imaginary round in the general vicinity of a portrait of the Son of God hanging on the far wall.
“The thug was waving a thin object in the air,” Grandma Heidegger continued her narrative. “I had no idea what it was until he pressed a button and the shiny blade appeared.”
“A switchblade.”
“Yes, exactly!” “At first, when he confronted me, I was terrified… intimidated half to death. The nasty oaf was twice my size, a quarter my age, but once I saw the blade something in my brain snapped.” A coarse guttural sound welled up in her throat. “That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
Grandma Heidegger sighed; unburdening herself had tired the woman. “You’re the only person who knows what happened.”
I stared at the small weapon lying on its side. To avoid any unseemly appearance Grandma Heidegger repositioned the barrel so it pointed toward a sugar jar next to the refrigerator. “Where do you keep the gun?”
“In a shoe box in my closet.”
“You don’t own a safe?”
“On a widow’s pension I could just barely afford the freakin’ gun!”
* * * * *
From Grandma Heidegger’s house I drove home and fixed myself a stiff drink. My wife, Lois, waddled into the room holding her swollen stomach with both hands. “The baby’s been kicking all morning. Here, feel for yourself.”
Placing a hand on her belly, no more than a few seconds passed before I felt a rhythmic thrumming as the eight month-old fetus fidgeted and squirmed in the womb. “Yes, I felt that.”
Lois took a step back. “And why exactly are we drinking hard liquor at ten o’clock in the morning?” When there was no reply, she continued, “You visited Grandma Heidegger?”
“Yes, earlier.”
Lois screwed the cap on the liquor bottle and returned the whiskey to the cupboard. “Does this have anything to do with the visit?”
I ran an index finger tentatively around the rim of the shot glass. “Yes.”
“Is she sick?”
“No, Grandma Heidegger is in perfect health.”
Lois’ features clouded over. “Is she in some personal trouble?”
“No, I don’t think so… probably not.”
“Probably not,” Lois tossed the words back in my face with a perplexed tone. “Your choice of language is rather wooly… imprecise” After an awkward silence, she added, “Whatever occurred during your visit, clearly you’re not at liberty to discuss the matter.”
“She spoke to me confidentially… asked me not to share the content with anyone else.”
Lifting up on tiptoes, Lois kissed my cheek then brushed the wetness away with the heel of a hand. “The baby just kicked again.” “For what it’s worth,” my wife muttered just as the washing machine sent up a sustained beep, “you look like hell.” Without pressing the issue, she lumbered off to collect the wet laundry.
* * * * *
Flash! Bang!
Grandma Heidegger invoked a stand-your-ground defense; threatened with physical harm, the seventy-three year-old woman shot her assailant at point-blank range. I never owned a weapon, but now when I considered my pregnant wife and unborn child, I could only shudder, their wellbeing taking on a totally new immediacy.
Dumping the remaining liquor in the kitchen sink, I meandered out to the back yard and slumped in a wicker chair. It was a dazzling, sunny day with temperatures hovering in the mid-seventies. Five minutes later, the cellar door creaked opened, and Lois emerged lugging a laundry basket full of damp towels. Relieving her of the basket, I carried it to the clothesline. When we finished hanging the laundry, I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her mouth.
“Feeling better?” I nodded and kissed my wife a second time. “Grandma Heidegger isn’t ill or suffering any terminal disease?”
“I already told you her health is fine.”
Thirty feet away in a vegetable garden that Lois labored over with fanatical care the snow peas and bush beans had climbed four feet in the air. A profusion of chalky white blossoms dappled the upper portion of each slender vine. Behind the beans another blizzard of pastel yellow blossoms anticipated a bountiful harvest of beefsteak tomatoes by late July.
“Well, then that’s all that really matters.” Lois hoisted the empty basket, tucking it under her armpit.
* * * * *
Shortly before leaving Grandma Heidegger’s apartment, the older woman told me a humorous story. Toward the end of the firearms safety class, the instructor brought the students to a shooting range. He handed Grandma Heidegger a 22 caliber Glock pistol with twenty-five rounds of ammunition.
She pushed the box of bullets away. “I’d prefer not to shoot.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I just want my license to carry.”
“Well you can’t get that without firing a gun,” the instructor countered. “We purposely choose the Glock 22’s because the recoil is not as intense as some of the more powerful models.”
“I don’t know,” Grandma Heidegger waffled.
“You’ll have to fire off at least one round. It’s non-negotiable.” He slid the bullets back across the table and handed her a pair of protective earmuffs.
One of the students in the next stall squeezed off a round, causing Grandma Heidegger to lurch several inches into the air. “The noise is awfully loud.”
“That’s because you aren’t wearing ear protection.” He helped her arrange the padded muffs over her ears and handed her the Glock. “One bullet… that’s all that’s required.”
Grandma Heidegger loaded a single round in the clip then slid it into the handle as she had been taught earlier in the afternoon. Gripping the gun with both hands, she locked her arms, fully extended in a rigid triangle in front of her torso, thumbs resting parallel on the side of the weapon. The elderly woman bent her knees, inching her left leg slightly in front of the right and leaned forward. Only when she was ready to shoot did she snake her index finger around the trigger.
Bammmm!
Grandma Heidegger lowered the gun. “That wasn’t so bad… not bad at all.”
“Where were you aiming?”
“The heart.”
The instructor pressed a button on the wall and retrieved the target. He pointed to the single hole on the chest slightly to the left of the sternum. “Bullseye… you nailed him on the first shot!”
Grandma Heidegger removed the clip from the gun and began reloading. “Since I already paid for them,” she indicated the twenty-four unspent cartridges, “I might as well get my money’s worth.”
* * * * *
Over the next year I saw my grandmother infrequently. She was always in bright spirits, a barrel of laughs. Not once did she mention what happened in the alleyway bordering Duggan’s Pharmacy. At her seventy-fifth birthday party in late December, someone asked the woman about her philosophy of life. After seven decades what pearls of wisdom did she want to share with her progeny?
“Common decency is a precious virtue, and we should always strive to be kind and considerate.” The older woman paused, collecting her thoughts before continuing. “But when all else fails, retribution, an eye for an eye, is always an option.” An awkward silence that lasted the better part of a minute was only broken, when a cousin announce the cutting of the birthday cake.
* * * * *
“I got bad news.” One Monday in late August, my brother, Ted, called. “Grandma Heidegger passed away… died in her sleep last night.”
“Where are you?”
“At the apartment,” Ted replied. “I called the undertaker and also notified the police. They’ll be sending the coroner later this morning.”
The police – I didn’t like that at all. Blowing my cheeks out, I paused just long enough to collect my wits. “I’ll be there I ten minutes.”
When I arrived at Grandma Heidegger’s apartment, a police car was pulled up in front of the entrance, and a uniformed officer in the kitchen with Ted. I slipped into the bedroom. On the floor next to an enema bag and stack of musty picture albums was a shoe box. The Ruger revolver was nestled in the cardboard box alongside a carton of hollow-point bullets.
Glancing surreptitiously over my shoulder, I could see the officer hunched over a loose-leaf folder. With a deft motion I buried the gun and ammunition in my coat pocket and hurried out to the street, where I hid the items under the floor mat in the rear of my Toyota.
* * * * *
Both the wake and funeral were well-attended. Dozens of colleagues and administrators from the college where my grandmother taught for the past twenty-seven years before she retired paid their respects. Grandma Heidegger was laid out in a serge blue suit; the silk blouse was floral print. The undertaker tastefully wove a pair of rosary beads between the fingers. Her lips curled gently in a benevolent smile, suggesting the woman now moved in more contemplative realms.
The priest arrived around eight o’clock, offering a short prayer followed by a series of Hail Marys before disappearing out into the foyer. “Such a gentle soul,” one mourner murmured.
“A veritable saint!” her friend responded, as they dabbed their eyes, sighed and lapsed into private reverie.
“So sorry for your loss.” Glancing up, I recognized Stewart Nilsson, my sister’s husband, standing by my side. I was never particularly fond of Stewart – not that he treated my sister poorly or was a bad sort. A detective with the local police department, he was always cocksure of himself. To hear Stewart talk, you might believe that my brother-in-law singlehandedly solved ninety percent of local crimes. The man was bright enough and dedicated, just a tad too opinionated and dismissive of anybody else’s point of view.
“Your grandmother,” Stewart pawed the air in the general direction of the open casket, “was one hell of a woman!”
“Could we step outside a moment?” As a flutter of heart-felt sobs emerged from an older woman passing through the receiving line, I nudged Stewart toward the foyer, where several new arrivals were signing the guest book.
We left the building and stood under a flowering linden tree, where a thick clot of honeybees hovered about the white blossoms, collecting nectar that would eventually be converted to honey. “There was a murder in the alleyway that abuts Duggan’s Pharmacy a while back.”
“Yeah, the Crowley kid,” Stewart confirmed. “Jason Crowley… whoever shot him did the community a public service.” Only now did my brother-in-law fix me with a curious expression. “Why do you ask?”
“I know someone who had issues with the deceased.”
“And who might that be?”
“I’d prefer not to say,” I muttered, parrying the question. “Did they ever find the murderer?”
Stewart shook his head. “The case is unsolved.” Removing a cigarillo from a cellophane wrapper, he lit the smoke and puffed intently until the tip glowed bright red and the aromatic fumes clung like a shroud in the humid, late summer air. “I was tasked with interviewing family,” he continued. “The father was a career criminal and level-three sex offender. Two brothers – identical twins – pretty much had identical track records for shop lifting, check fraud and spousal abuse.”
“What about Jason?”
Stewart’s features cycled through a series of unflattering emotions. He sucked vigorously at his cigarillo before sending up a plume of circular rings gliding upward on the humid, superheated air. “Worst of the bunch!”
Poking me in the ribs in a confidential manner, he continued, “Wanna know what I think… a flatfoot’s perspective?” Without waiting for a response he rushed ahead in a gleeful tone. “Remember the 1974 movie, Death Wish?”
“The Charles Bronson film,” I confirmed.
“There were a whole series of flicks with the same basic theme. After home invaders brutally attack his wife and daughter, a young man becomes obsessed with delivering vigilante justice to the perpetrators.” Chuckling malevolently, Stewart knocked the white ash off the end of his smoke. “I think Jason Crowley accosted some guy in the alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy. ‘Your money or your life,’ the thug snarls and that’s when the would-be victim pulls out a thirty-eight special and returns the favor in kind.”
“Thirty-eight special,” I blurted, stumbling over the words. “How did you know-”
“Look here.” Reaching into a holster hidden beneath his jacket, Stewart withdrew a 9mm Glock pistol. Slipping the clip from the handle, he removed a single cartridge and tapped the bullet casing with the tip of an index finger. “Each round has the manufacturer and bullet type listed on the flat portion surrounding the firing pin.”
Studying the brass casing, I read: Winchester, 9mm in bold letters.
“We found the empty casing at the scene of the crime.”
“Perhaps a woman shot Jason Crowley.”
“Hell no! That’s ridiculous!” “Thirty-eight specials produce a sound like a goddamn howitzer… loud as hell, and the kickback is enough to fracture a woman’s wrist.” Stewart shook his head insistently a second time and removed the slim, walnut-colored cigar, which had burned down to a pencil-thin nub, from his mouth. “A female… that’s out of the question, not within the remotest realm of possibilities.”
I gazed into the uppermost branches of the bushy linden tree, where a hoard of ravenous honeybees was gorging themselves on a seemingly endless supply of nectar and pollen. Around the time Jason Crowley unceremoniously departed the land of the living, Grandma Heidegger began wearing a sling around her right arm. When I questioned her about the injury, she mumbled testily about an attack of bursitis.
* * * * *
In the morning I drove east of Interstate 195 through East Providence, doubling back across the state line into Massachusetts in the direction of Fall River. Reaching the outskirts of Cape Cod, I circled halfway around the Bourne rotary. Five minutes later, with the Sagamore Bridge looming up ahead, I pulled over at a rest stop. Sea bass were running from Nantucket Sound to the Cape Cod Canal and clots of fishermen were surfcasting in the fast-moving current. Picking my way down to the water’s edge, I lobbed both the weapon and box of cartridges far out into the frothy channel.
Dr. Jekyl and Grandma Heidegger(Barry)
“A week ago Tuesday I killed a man,” my grandmother announced in an off-hand manner, as though she might have been commiserating about a new pair of orthopedic shoes or the unseasonably hot weather. “Murdered,” she corrected. “The act was intentional, so it was more homicidal than self-defense.”
“In a perverse sense,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “I considered it my civic duty… moral obligation to send the bastard to an early grave, but I’ll explain that later, if you wish.”
It bears mentioning that Grandma Heidegger viewed herself as a natural-born comedian. The woman had a flair for the ridiculous. Always the practical jokester, her life resembled a one-woman vaudeville shtick, which she refined from one family gathering to the next. Her comment was outlandish, but then, Grandma Heidegger frequently displayed an obtuse sense of humor.
“Where exactly did the crime occur?”
“The alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy.”
I recalled that there had been a shooting at that location less than a week earlier. A twenty year-old was discovered by an employee. A grainy picture of the deceased, a heavy-set youth with a scraggily beard and chipped tooth, appeared in the local paper. The body lay curled up next to the dumpster overnight with a gunshot wound to the chest, execution style. The police had no motives, not a single suspect or witness to the crime.
I glanced distractedly about the room. A rather garish portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hung on the far wall just above Grandma Heidegger’s head. A devout Catholic, the woman littered her cramped apartment with a potpourri of devotional prayer cards from every funeral she ever attended as well as a quirky hodgepodge of religious ornaments and memorabilia. A portrait of Padre Pio done in sepia tones graced the wall over her bed next to a mahogany crucifix. The bearded saint, who had known much suffering, wore a mournful expression. A porcelain Madonna, eyes lowered and hands cupped in a supplicating gesture graced the bureau. “There was a weapon?”
“Yes, of course… a Ruger LCRX, 38-special.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her arthritic hands in a soothing, repetitive gesture. “The snub-nose, five-shot model”
I blinked and stared uncomprehendingly at the older woman. “Excuse me?”
“Here, let me show you.” Grandma Heidegger rose gingerly from the chair and hobbled disjointedly into the bedroom. When she emerged moments later, she was carrying a small handgun with a black finish and compact, three-inch barrel. She held the gun with the barrel facing down. Flicking a metal tab with her thumb, she released the cylinder, which fell forward to the left revealing five empty chambers.
Grandma Heidegger spun the cylinder and sighted down each opening to make sure the gun was empty. “Safety first!” she muttered and deposited the handgun on the kitchen table.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“The sporting store in the center of town.” She went and filled the tea kettle with water from the kitchen tap, placed two cups on the table with a Salada teabag in each and returned to her chair. “Let me begin at the beginning.”
* * * * *
As Grandma Heidegger explained it, the previous year several elderly residents of the condominium complex were beaten and robbed. “I didn’t want to become another statistic, so I took a gun safety course and got my LTC through the local police.”
“LTC?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“License to carry,” she clarified. “Last Tuesday a man accosted me as I was returning home from visiting a sick friend. He was lurking near the dumpster in the darkened alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy. When I refused to give him any money, he made a threatening gesture and I shot him in the chest.”
“Okay,” I muttered leadenly. Grandma Heidegger’s bizarre narrative was pervaded with an ominous air of unreality, and now I was beginning to wonder if, in the rich tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the woman harbored some macabre alter ego.
“He had me at an unfair disadvantage,” Grandma Heidegger grumbled. For the second time, she left the room and returned shortly with an oddly-shaped piece of fabric. “In case you’re wondering, it’s a bra holster. A woman fastens the revolver up under her blouse, where nobody can see.”
“For easy access,” I chuckled.
“Easy access and quick release.”
“Flashbang bra holsters… that’s what some of the younger women call them.”
“Flashbang,” I mused irreverently. Some unsuspecting nitwit tries to molest or rob an elderly woman and quickly finds himself holding the shit-end of the stick.
She dangled the flimsy, coffee-colored holster under my nose. “Mine is rather bland, but they come in all sorts of bright colors and flowery prints. Depending on personal preference, a woman can hang the holster in the middle of her chest between the breasts or under an armpit opposite her shooting hand. Either way, it’s a handy device.”
Grandma Heidegger place a palm with fingers splayed against her midriff then drew the hand upward and away, balling the fingers into a makeshift weapon. The elderly woman squeezed off an imaginary round in the general vicinity of a portrait of the Son of God hanging on the far wall.
“The thug was waving a thin object in the air,” Grandma Heidegger continued her narrative. “I had no idea what it was until he pressed a button and the shiny blade appeared.”
“A switchblade.”
“Yes, exactly!” “At first, when he confronted me, I was terrified… intimidated half to death. The nasty oaf was twice my size, a quarter my age, but once I saw the blade something in my brain snapped.” A coarse guttural sound welled up in her throat. “That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
Grandma Heidegger sighed; unburdening herself had tired the woman. “You’re the only person who knows what happened.”
I stared at the small weapon lying on its side. To avoid any unseemly appearance Grandma Heidegger repositioned the barrel so it pointed toward a sugar jar next to the refrigerator. “Where do you keep the gun?”
“In a shoe box in my closet.”
“You don’t own a safe?”
“On a widow’s pension I could just barely afford the freakin’ gun!”
* * * * *
From Grandma Heidegger’s house I drove home and fixed myself a stiff drink. My wife, Lois, waddled into the room holding her swollen stomach with both hands. “The baby’s been kicking all morning. Here, feel for yourself.”
Placing a hand on her belly, no more than a few seconds passed before I felt a rhythmic thrumming as the eight month-old fetus fidgeted and squirmed in the womb. “Yes, I felt that.”
Lois took a step back. “And why exactly are we drinking hard liquor at ten o’clock in the morning?” When there was no reply, she continued, “You visited Grandma Heidegger?”
“Yes, earlier.”
Lois screwed the cap on the liquor bottle and returned the whiskey to the cupboard. “Does this have anything to do with the visit?”
I ran an index finger tentatively around the rim of the shot glass. “Yes.”
“Is she sick?”
“No, Grandma Heidegger is in perfect health.”
Lois’ features clouded over. “Is she in some personal trouble?”
“No, I don’t think so… probably not.”
“Probably not,” Lois tossed the words back in my face with a perplexed tone. “Your choice of language is rather wooly… imprecise” After an awkward silence, she added, “Whatever occurred during your visit, clearly you’re not at liberty to discuss the matter.”
“She spoke to me confidentially… asked me not to share the content with anyone else.”
Lifting up on tiptoes, Lois kissed my cheek then brushed the wetness away with the heel of a hand. “The baby just kicked again.” “For what it’s worth,” my wife muttered just as the washing machine sent up a sustained beep, “you look like hell.” Without pressing the issue, she lumbered off to collect the wet laundry.
* * * * *
Flash! Bang!
Grandma Heidegger invoked a stand-your-ground defense; threatened with physical harm, the seventy-three year-old woman shot her assailant at point-blank range. I never owned a weapon, but now when I considered my pregnant wife and unborn child, I could only shudder, their wellbeing taking on a totally new immediacy.
Dumping the remaining liquor in the kitchen sink, I meandered out to the back yard and slumped in a wicker chair. It was a dazzling, sunny day with temperatures hovering in the mid-seventies. Five minutes later, the cellar door creaked opened, and Lois emerged lugging a laundry basket full of damp towels. Relieving her of the basket, I carried it to the clothesline. When we finished hanging the laundry, I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her mouth.
“Feeling better?” I nodded and kissed my wife a second time. “Grandma Heidegger isn’t ill or suffering any terminal disease?”
“I already told you her health is fine.”
Thirty feet away in a vegetable garden that Lois labored over with fanatical care the snow peas and bush beans had climbed four feet in the air. A profusion of chalky white blossoms dappled the upper portion of each slender vine. Behind the beans another blizzard of pastel yellow blossoms anticipated a bountiful harvest of beefsteak tomatoes by late July.
“Well, then that’s all that really matters.” Lois hoisted the empty basket, tucking it under her armpit.
* * * * *
Shortly before leaving Grandma Heidegger’s apartment, the older woman told me a humorous story. Toward the end of the firearms safety class, the instructor brought the students to a shooting range. He handed Grandma Heidegger a 22 caliber Glock pistol with twenty-five rounds of ammunition.
She pushed the box of bullets away. “I’d prefer not to shoot.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I just want my license to carry.”
“Well you can’t get that without firing a gun,” the instructor countered. “We purposely choose the Glock 22’s because the recoil is not as intense as some of the more powerful models.”
“I don’t know,” Grandma Heidegger waffled.
“You’ll have to fire off at least one round. It’s non-negotiable.” He slid the bullets back across the table and handed her a pair of protective earmuffs.
One of the students in the next stall squeezed off a round, causing Grandma Heidegger to lurch several inches into the air. “The noise is awfully loud.”
“That’s because you aren’t wearing ear protection.” He helped her arrange the padded muffs over her ears and handed her the Glock. “One bullet… that’s all that’s required.”
Grandma Heidegger loaded a single round in the clip then slid it into the handle as she had been taught earlier in the afternoon. Gripping the gun with both hands, she locked her arms, fully extended in a rigid triangle in front of her torso, thumbs resting parallel on the side of the weapon. The elderly woman bent her knees, inching her left leg slightly in front of the right and leaned forward. Only when she was ready to shoot did she snake her index finger around the trigger.
Bammmm!
Grandma Heidegger lowered the gun. “That wasn’t so bad… not bad at all.”
“Where were you aiming?”
“The heart.”
The instructor pressed a button on the wall and retrieved the target. He pointed to the single hole on the chest slightly to the left of the sternum. “Bullseye… you nailed him on the first shot!”
Grandma Heidegger removed the clip from the gun and began reloading. “Since I already paid for them,” she indicated the twenty-four unspent cartridges, “I might as well get my money’s worth.”
* * * * *
Over the next year I saw my grandmother infrequently. She was always in bright spirits, a barrel of laughs. Not once did she mention what happened in the alleyway bordering Duggan’s Pharmacy. At her seventy-fifth birthday party in late December, someone asked the woman about her philosophy of life. After seven decades what pearls of wisdom did she want to share with her progeny?
“Common decency is a precious virtue, and we should always strive to be kind and considerate.” The older woman paused, collecting her thoughts before continuing. “But when all else fails, retribution, an eye for an eye, is always an option.” An awkward silence that lasted the better part of a minute was only broken, when a cousin announce the cutting of the birthday cake.
* * * * *
“I got bad news.” One Monday in late August, my brother, Ted, called. “Grandma Heidegger passed away… died in her sleep last night.”
“Where are you?”
“At the apartment,” Ted replied. “I called the undertaker and also notified the police. They’ll be sending the coroner later this morning.”
The police – I didn’t like that at all. Blowing my cheeks out, I paused just long enough to collect my wits. “I’ll be there I ten minutes.”
When I arrived at Grandma Heidegger’s apartment, a police car was pulled up in front of the entrance, and a uniformed officer in the kitchen with Ted. I slipped into the bedroom. On the floor next to an enema bag and stack of musty picture albums was a shoe box. The Ruger revolver was nestled in the cardboard box alongside a carton of hollow-point bullets.
Glancing surreptitiously over my shoulder, I could see the officer hunched over a loose-leaf folder. With a deft motion I buried the gun and ammunition in my coat pocket and hurried out to the street, where I hid the items under the floor mat in the rear of my Toyota.
* * * * *
Both the wake and funeral were well-attended. Dozens of colleagues and administrators from the college where my grandmother taught for the past twenty-seven years before she retired paid their respects. Grandma Heidegger was laid out in a serge blue suit; the silk blouse was floral print. The undertaker tastefully wove a pair of rosary beads between the fingers. Her lips curled gently in a benevolent smile, suggesting the woman now moved in more contemplative realms.
The priest arrived around eight o’clock, offering a short prayer followed by a series of Hail Marys before disappearing out into the foyer. “Such a gentle soul,” one mourner murmured.
“A veritable saint!” her friend responded, as they dabbed their eyes, sighed and lapsed into private reverie.
“So sorry for your loss.” Glancing up, I recognized Stewart Nilsson, my sister’s husband, standing by my side. I was never particularly fond of Stewart – not that he treated my sister poorly or was a bad sort. A detective with the local police department, he was always cocksure of himself. To hear Stewart talk, you might believe that my brother-in-law singlehandedly solved ninety percent of local crimes. The man was bright enough and dedicated, just a tad too opinionated and dismissive of anybody else’s point of view.
“Your grandmother,” Stewart pawed the air in the general direction of the open casket, “was one hell of a woman!”
“Could we step outside a moment?” As a flutter of heart-felt sobs emerged from an older woman passing through the receiving line, I nudged Stewart toward the foyer, where several new arrivals were signing the guest book.
We left the building and stood under a flowering linden tree, where a thick clot of honeybees hovered about the white blossoms, collecting nectar that would eventually be converted to honey. “There was a murder in the alleyway that abuts Duggan’s Pharmacy a while back.”
“Yeah, the Crowley kid,” Stewart confirmed. “Jason Crowley… whoever shot him did the community a public service.” Only now did my brother-in-law fix me with a curious expression. “Why do you ask?”
“I know someone who had issues with the deceased.”
“And who might that be?”
“I’d prefer not to say,” I muttered, parrying the question. “Did they ever find the murderer?”
Stewart shook his head. “The case is unsolved.” Removing a cigarillo from a cellophane wrapper, he lit the smoke and puffed intently until the tip glowed bright red and the aromatic fumes clung like a shroud in the humid, late summer air. “I was tasked with interviewing family,” he continued. “The father was a career criminal and level-three sex offender. Two brothers – identical twins – pretty much had identical track records for shop lifting, check fraud and spousal abuse.”
“What about Jason?”
Stewart’s features cycled through a series of unflattering emotions. He sucked vigorously at his cigarillo before sending up a plume of circular rings gliding upward on the humid, superheated air. “Worst of the bunch!”
Poking me in the ribs in a confidential manner, he continued, “Wanna know what I think… a flatfoot’s perspective?” Without waiting for a response he rushed ahead in a gleeful tone. “Remember the 1974 movie, Death Wish?”
“The Charles Bronson film,” I confirmed.
“There were a whole series of flicks with the same basic theme. After home invaders brutally attack his wife and daughter, a young man becomes obsessed with delivering vigilante justice to the perpetrators.” Chuckling malevolently, Stewart knocked the white ash off the end of his smoke. “I think Jason Crowley accosted some guy in the alleyway behind Duggan’s Pharmacy. ‘Your money or your life,’ the thug snarls and that’s when the would-be victim pulls out a thirty-eight special and returns the favor in kind.”
“Thirty-eight special,” I blurted, stumbling over the words. “How did you know-”
“Look here.” Reaching into a holster hidden beneath his jacket, Stewart withdrew a 9mm Glock pistol. Slipping the clip from the handle, he removed a single cartridge and tapped the bullet casing with the tip of an index finger. “Each round has the manufacturer and bullet type listed on the flat portion surrounding the firing pin.”
Studying the brass casing, I read: Winchester, 9mm in bold letters.
“We found the empty casing at the scene of the crime.”
“Perhaps a woman shot Jason Crowley.”
“Hell no! That’s ridiculous!” “Thirty-eight specials produce a sound like a goddamn howitzer… loud as hell, and the kickback is enough to fracture a woman’s wrist.” Stewart shook his head insistently a second time and removed the slim, walnut-colored cigar, which had burned down to a pencil-thin nub, from his mouth. “A female… that’s out of the question, not within the remotest realm of possibilities.”
I gazed into the uppermost branches of the bushy linden tree, where a hoard of ravenous honeybees was gorging themselves on a seemingly endless supply of nectar and pollen. Around the time Jason Crowley unceremoniously departed the land of the living, Grandma Heidegger began wearing a sling around her right arm. When I questioned her about the injury, she mumbled testily about an attack of bursitis.
* * * * *
In the morning I drove east of Interstate 195 through East Providence, doubling back across the state line into Massachusetts in the direction of Fall River. Reaching the outskirts of Cape Cod, I circled halfway around the Bourne rotary. Five minutes later, with the Sagamore Bridge looming up ahead, I pulled over at a rest stop. Sea bass were running from Nantucket Sound to the Cape Cod Canal and clots of fishermen were surfcasting in the fast-moving current. Picking my way down to the water’s edge, I lobbed both the weapon and box of cartridges far out into the frothy channel.
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Denise Arnault
08/21/2024Another excellently crafted tale. You always include so much detail and background to support your theme. I very much appreciated Grandma's comments about being kind and considerate when possible, but disagree with the retribution aspect. She chose self defense, not retribution, which is a viable choice.
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Barry
08/21/2024This story was based in part on a true account written up in time magazine many years ago about a bully who was terrorizing a small town in Texas. The men in the town held a meeting and decided to shoot the bully and put an end to his reign of terror, which is exactly what they did. The police didn't bother to pursue the matter and it went as an unsolved crime. The United States is quickly deteriorating to that level of lawlessness were curbstone justice may represent the best/only recourse.
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