Short Story: Jim (from 2008 at OU)

 “C’mon!” Jim shouts. I wade out of the river, scurry across the sandy bank, and duck under the chain link fence where he is holding it up. We look up at the double coil of barbed wire and smile because the US government can’t manage to keep us off the air force base.

Fear of the Russians bombing the bridges and locks keep the base frenzied with activity. Bombers continually take off and land, flying low and steady over head. Small planes tow winged targets for fighter jets to blow apart for practice. Large pieces of the targets’ honeycomb material rain down from the sky over the woods, and we love to collect the pieces. My dream is to collect enough pieces to create a complete target of my own.

As usual, no one notices that Jim and I are slipping under the fence. Jim points at our treasure, and we run over to the precious trash pile, a heap of scrap metal, old wooden crates, and other junk, which is not far from the banks of the shallow river. Jim scrambles around the pile, his bare feet precariously close to rusty nails and broken glass. Water seeps out of my shoes as I climb up a pile of broken pallets. We work together to free a length of wire from the debris.

Jim stops, stands motionless, then stoops in the middle of the pile. 

“Jack pot!” he calls. Jim holds up a large .50 caliber bullet. He explains that probably a gun on a tank—or maybe a helicopter—fires these five-inch-something rounds like that. I rush over to admire his find, wondering how it got mixed in with the other trash. He hands it to me, and I rub the mud off the shiny brass casing on my shirt.

“Will you look at that?” I say, admiring the bullet. “Let’s shoot it off.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“A hammer,” I explain, holding the bullet upside down and demonstrating a strike with his other hand. “And I’ll use a vice to hold—”

A green jeep drives around to corner. It speeds up and heads for the dump.

“They see us! Let’s go!” Jim yells. He grabs the bullet and shoves it in his pocket. We both bolt for the fence, diving for the opening. We scramble under the fence and splash into the river. The current works in our favor as we float and swim and run downstream. No road follows the river, and the overgrowth of the woods prevents anyone from running along the bank. Still, we move as fast as we can.

When we get out of the river, we have to decide whether to run down the road or along the Detroit & Mackinac railroad tracks. We figure they would never guess we took the train tracks, and so we slowly jog between the rails, stepping from tie to tie.

At a grade crossing, the green jeeps turns and veers onto the track. We sprint along the roadbed, but they overtake us in an instant. Two military police guards jump down onto the roadbed with their pistols drawn. They don’t aim at us.

“Hands above your heads, boys,” orders one of them. They grab our arms and shove us against the jeep, forcing my face into the window glass.

“How old are you, son?” the older MP asks me.

“Twelve, almost thirteen.”

“Well, twelve-almost-thirteen is too young to die. You boys know you could have been shot as spies?”

“No, sir,” I say.

“You guys can’t even keep kids off your base,” Jim blurts indignantly.

The younger MP whips Jim around and presses two fingers against his sternum. “It is against federal law to trespass on military property like that. Even if you weren’t shot, do you know what the penalties are?” He pauses, almost challenging Jim to respond. “Do you?” Jim winces in pain until they spin him around shove him back against the truck.

“What are you boys doing there?” the older MP asks me.

Thinking about the bullet makes the blood rush out of my head. “We’re looking for wire.”

“And that’s all?” asks the other man.

“Yes, sir,” offers Jim.

The older MP looks stern. “I don’t want to see you on the base again. Ever. We will shoot to kill next time.” I turn my head around to catch him smile at the younger MP. “You boys get home.” They let us go, and we run down the tracks.

*  *  *

            A few days later, we meet at the quarry. It’s almost noon, and Jim pulls the bullet out of his pocket.

            “You gonna set it off?” I ask. Jim looks mischievous.

            “You don’t really just want to hit it with a hammer, do you?” he asks. “How fun is that going to be? We won’t even be able to hit something with it.”

            “What do you want to hit it with?” I ask.

Jim lists his ideas for targets: a rock, a tree, a bird, a paper target, glass bottles, and—his personal favorite— his step-dad’s windshield. “So we need whatever kind of gun shoots this bullet,” Jim explains.

            I think about it for a minute. Sounds good. “But where are we gonna get a gun?”

            “The dump,” says Jim.

            “No way, Jim. That’s stupid,” I say.

            “Chicken.”

            “No, I’m not. You’re stupid. You heard what they said,” I say. I don’t want any more trouble with the MPs.

            “Chicken crap.”

            “Gimme the bullet,” I demand. “We’re not going back to the base.” Jim turns and walks away with the bullet. I shove him, and he stumbles forward a couple steps. He continues to walk away.

            “Chicken,” he says.

            “Okay. Fine. We’ll just see if there’s a gun at the dump, then we’ll leave,” I concede. “But there’s no way they just threw out a perfectly good gun.”

            “Not a whole gun. Just parts. We’ll put something together.”

            We leave the quarry and walk toward the river. Jim keeps the bullet in his pocket. Jim is almost skipping. His excitement is contagious, and I forget about getting in trouble and focus on the bullet. My heart skips a beat as I think about firing the gun. A real gun. Jim is right—this is going to be great.

            At the river, Jim kicks off his shoes, leaving them near the weeds along the bank and marches into the water. I follow behind him, still wearing my shoes.

            We fight against the current, leaning forward to keep our balance. I can’t get much traction on the slick, green rocks. The water bubbles and churns around my knees, creating little swirls behind me. I duck under low-hanging branches, occasionally getting slapped in the face by twigs that Jim lets fly backward. Finally, the chain link fence at the base comes into view.

            We wade out of the river and approach the fence. A few iron posts have been jammed into the wet, sandy soil. The bottom of the fence has been lashed to the post with wire.

            Jim tries to pull up one of the posts. It won’t budge. It makes me nervous that they tried to repair the fence to keep us out. Now I feel like we shouldn't be here.

            “Alright, we tried,” I urge. “Let’s go.”

            “Chicken,” says Jim, working on the next post. It scrapes its way upward, out of the sandy ground. Jim lifts the bottom of the fence, and the gap is large enough. Jim does an army crawl, keeping nearly flat on his stomach, as he moves under the fence. I follow behind him.

            We both take a moment to look around. It’s quiet, except for the splashing of the river. The coast is clear.

            Again, we climb around the trash pile. Everything seems as we left it. So we get to work. We search and search, making circles around and through the junk pile. No luck. There are no more bullets and not a single part of a weapon.

Jim curses loudly. “Let’s just set it off,” he says, frustrated and disappointed. Jim drags to old cinder blocks about an inch apart. He takes the round from his pocket and drops it between the bricks, pointing downward, so that the bottom of the bullet is flush with the top surface of the blocks. He shimmies the brick closer together to hold the bullet securely. “Okay, now get me something to hit it with.”

            I look around and find a heavy steel pipe, two inches in diameter and about two feet in length. I bring it over to Jim, who rips it out of my hands. He is stooping in front of the blocks, his knees covering his chest.

In a flash, it all feels wrong. I don’t want to set off the bullet anymore.

            “About here,” he says, raising and lowering the pipe to line up his strike. The pipe strikes the cinder block, missing the bullet.

            Nothing.

            I wince and back away. He curses as he shifts his weight, preparing for a second attempt. 

            He raises the pipe again, gritting his teeth. I feel the blood rush out of my face, and my stomach drops. I don’t hear the river. Jim says something, and I don’t really don’t understand his words. I notice his bony shoulder blades slowly sliding under his skin as he raises the pipe above his head. His fingers are wrapped tightly around the pipe, and his knuckles are turning white. He wipes his forehead using the back of his other hand. He grunts and slams the pipe down. An ear-piercing crack rings out as Jim flops backward.

            At first, it's quiet and almost calm as he rolls from side to side. He grasps his leg, crying and groaning. His hands and legs are covered with blood.

            “Jim!” I yell. His left leg is obviously injured, but I can’t see the wound through the blood. I pull my shirt off and wrap it around his knee, trying to stop the blood. It isn’t tight enough, and the wound bleeds in streams. I reposition the shirt and press tightly. Jim screams and screams.

            When Jim loses his breath for a moment, I hear the river splashing behind me. The chain link fence clicks against the metals posts when the wind blows. Two planes roar by above us.

            I hear an engine in the distance, switching gears and bouncing along. A green jeep turns the curve into the dump. They drive directly in our direction, stopping in their own dust cloud. The two MPs leap onto the ground and run toward us. The younger MP grabs his radio and calls for help. They crowd me out of the way, trying to get a look at Jim’s injury. I wander toward the fence, but I can’t leave Jim like this.

*  *  *

            Jim was rushed to a big hospital in Detroit where they operated on his knee. They saved his leg, but he still doesn’t walk right. Jim’s step-dad waited for him to get better before he punched his stepson in the face. I told Jim I wished we found the gun and used the bullet to blow a hole in his step dad's windshield, like Jim had talked about. Jim said, “No, then I definitely would have lost my leg. Probably more.”

            My parents were pretty upset. They made me work off the trespassing fines and carry Jim’s stuff to and from school. I would have done that anyway. I wish I wasn’t the one to suggest shooting off the bullet—knowing full well that Jim would have thought of it, anyway.

            When he was feeling better, Jim helped me reconstruct an airplane target from all the chunks I found in the field. I tied it together with string and wire, which I purchased at the hardware store. Jim offered to drag it behind his bike so I could practice shooting at it. No way.


A Little Background: A coworker once told me about his childhood up north along a little river with a military base not far away. As he explained it, they swam in the river and messed around with shot-up targets and other junk. My uncle told me a story how they hit a bullet with a hammer when he was younger. (Attention Reader: Do NOT do that.) So I wrote this story using a "borrowed" setting and a stupid idea, which I also "borrowed."