Instead of hurrying up with her purchase so that *I* could be helped with my purchase of bullets, because I’m all about ME ME ME and was in a real rush to get my hollow-point ammunition, a petite, dotty older lady at the gun store told the clerk a rambling story about how she’s … Click Here to Read On! …
This is a gun. Criminals have guns. So do heroes. This gun belongs to a hero.
This man is a hero. He helps keep thing safe. To help him keep things safe, he … Click Here to Read On! …
The Disappearance of Eddie Harrington: A True Story In One Act
In the sixth grade I rode my bike two-and-a-half miles each morning. For what? To go to school. Merry fucking Christmas. Childhood independence begins when you get your first reliable bike. I had a reliable bike, so I’d I’d made an appointment to hang out at Vu’s house on a random SoCal day, because FUCK homework.
Vu Tran was a bright and kooky Vietnamese kid. He was more American than Vietnamese, and was a real original whom I wanted to emulate because of his unique style and infectious behaviors. He’d yell DEE-FENSE! for any accomplishment, athletic, academic or otherwise. When he ran around the kickball field he purposefully prevented himself from swinging his arms. He knew all the state capitals. He sometimes wore a lab coat. He loved MacGyver. He was a freak and a weirdo.
The plan was for me to show up at Vu’s so we could watch TV, play video games and kick it. He was the first kid I knew with an IBM-PC brand computer and I was amped to check out those sexy 8-bit color graphics he could conjure on that ancient box. I longed to dip my beak in science and technology but back in the late 80s, science and technology had just been invented so any opportunity was rare.
Vu and I were watching Robotech when the doorbell rang. Eric Glassman had shown up uninvited, but he was welcome. A cool kid as well, Eric was a year older, smart, creative and definitely more of a risk-taker than I was. He was alleged to have become a full-fledged stoner as early as the 7th grade, so obviously he was very ambitious.
Vu invited Eric inside, and a few seconds later we’d noticed that someone had tagged along with him. It was Eddie Harrington, the smelly, portly kid with the really shitty attitude. Eddie had two noteworthy features:
Vu hated Eddie, but for the sake of being a good host, there was no outright objection to him being there. Come to think of it, everybody hated Eddie. If we had any real bullies in our ritzy elementary school, Eddie was it. He was the guy who might have put you in an unprovoked headlock, but he wasn’t so oppressive that you couldn’t wrangle your way out and push his fat-ass off of you. Vu was taller than Eddie, so I doubt he ever got the physical treatment that I did, as a shorter kid. Vu must have hated Eddie simply for Eddie’s insistence upon being a cunt.
Eric and Vu shot the shit for a while. Eddie tried to entertain himself by poking around the house in a bored way, sticking his chubby nose in whatever business he could find. I was just chillin’ on the couch. Vu kept a close watch on Eddie’s sight-seeing because nobody trusted him.
A half-hour in, Eddie had manhandled every bloody tchotchke in the house, making a mess of everything and almost deliberately relocating everything he touched. Vu’s 12 year-old patience eroded and he confronted Eddie in the living room.
Eddie casually put his hand on a large survival knife that sat on the bookshelf. I tensed up. “I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie maintained.
“You’ve got to leave.”
Eddie wrapped his fingers around the knife and clenched his teeth. “I’m not leaving.”
“You have to go!”
Eddie gripped the knife and brought his hand down to his leg. “No.”
“Get out of my fucking house!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Get out of my fucking house!”
“Make me!” Eddie gestured in such a way as to make it clear that the survival knife he was holding comprised the entirety of his argument for not leaving. If Vu made Eddie leave, then maybe Eddie’d have to use that thing.
“Get out of my house!”
“No!”
Fuming, Vu bolted out of the living room. Eddie activated the servo motor that controlled the smirk on his rotund face. Holding that survival knife, Eddie figured he didn’t have to back down for shit, and that he was running the show.
Until Vu came back.
Vu stood in the doorway with his hand behind his back and said, “I want you to leave my fucking house!”
“No!”
“Get out of my fucking house!”
“No! What the fuck are you going to do about it?”
Vu’s hand whipped out from behind his back. Clenched in his fist was a blue steel 9mm automatic handgun. In a smooth motion he swung out his piece and pointed it straight at Harrington’s husky face. Eddie’s jaw dropped in terror and his yellowed, cracked tongue fell out of his head.
Vu confidently racked the slide on the handgun like a sixth-grade Mafioso, and pointed it directly into the valley between Eddie’s eyes, his finger poised assertively on the trigger.
“GET,” Vu said, “THE…FUCK,” he continued, “OUT…OF…MY…HOUSE, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!”
Eddie, scared out of his goddamn mind, but mindful of the remnants of his dignity, put that chickenshit knife back on the fucking bookshelf where it belonged, quickly ran his fat ass out of the house, and that was the last that anybody ever saw of, or talked about, Eddie Harrington.
[c] 2006 Russ of America
