Billy Tindall – a gas head if there ever was one – leaned back against the weathered sash of the country confectionary, his right leg drawn up so that the bottom of that well-worn shoe rested flat against the tortured wood door trim. The building – a true tinderbox – should have been razed long ago. Everyone in town knew it. And when (not if) it went there would be no point to any member of the volunteer fire department answering his phone. Those who even cared and had a little time to spare would probably just saunter down and watch her go.
The Marlboro that cantilevered down off is lips wasn’t lit. It never was. Billy didn’t smoke. Never had. The one lick of common sense the kid had was to have noticed that his dad had slowly murdered himself with cancer sticks, which probably made smoking them a bad bet. He did, however, think they made him look cool to the girls. Maybe – maybe not, but anyone who had ever talked to him knew for sure he had nothing better going for him. His blue t-shirt with the white silk-screened letters read, “ Does A Bear Shit In The Woods?” There was no evidence that the girls were also attracted by the shirt and it’s dumb-ass message but he liked it, personally, because he thought it enhanced his “rough around the edges” aura.
Billy had two prized possessions. The first was his 1978 Chevy pickup. It had been spit out of the factory, originally, in that nasty puke-like hue that was referred to on GM color charts as simply “Yellow.” Billy’s, like most of them, had oxidized to smudgy gold over the years. He was neither skilled at nor inclined to treat it with rubbing compound or wax. Luckily, he didn’t live in the Rust Belt. It doesn’t snow much in South Texas.
The small block 350 engine – one of the better ones GM ever made – leaked from its rear main seal. The condition wasn’t improving over time and Billy had lately taken to dumping cheaper and cheaper oil into it – “recycled” oil. Oil is oil, he reasoned, so at the rate it was running through his engine what harm could it possibly do? As an added bonus, oil changes in this maintenance plan had become moot. Strike a blow for cost-effectiveness.
Billy had learned to drive on the farm roads outside of Harlingen, Texas, in his dad’s ‘48 Chevy Thriftmaster. It was a three-window, not the five that possessed the duck bill outer shade visor. Powered by the original 216 straight-line six-cylinder motor with the poured Babbitt bearings, the thing was a complete dog. As added insurance so that Billy couldn’t do much damage if he drove it off one of those dirt roads into a cotton field his dad, Walter, had bolted a wood block under the gas pedal. That amount of travel only allowed enough throttle to get Billy up to a maximum of 25 m.p.h. Billy never caught on but at twelve years of age, he didn’t care. For a kid of that tender age this was an unfathomable level of freedom.
It was on those back roads that Billy learned how to shoot and about sex. His first gun was a Crossman gas-powered pellet gun. He’d shoot at anything, of course, but his favorite target was those stupid little shiner fish that populated the waters of the irrigation ditches. Kind of a metallic white and paper thin, they were a couple of inches long at most and they flashed like tin foil strips in a breeze when the sun hit the water just right. They’d hang in little schools, swimming against the flow. You had to account for the deflection of the water when shooting at them because they cruised at about a foot beneath the surface. He and his buddies made a game of it but, really, it was no contest. Billy dusted them every time.
Sometimes they’d park by a pasture and watch the sheep fuck. At some point, having noticed that the ewe just stood there and let the ram mount her, most of them would give it a go. Getting your rocks off, if only with sheep, was a good deal. And it learned them up about nature’s way – or at least a version of it. This version gave “the birds and the bees” a run for its money.
Tindall’s second most prized possession was his Savage 24 over-under 22/410 combo rifle and shotgun. His grandpa (whom he called “Pops”) used to say, “you got everything you need right there, son.” For Billy, truer words could not have been spoken.
Weighing only seven pounds and with a length of but 41 inches it was the perfect fit for a scrawny young man barely five foot four and maybe a hundred ten pounds soaking wet. The rifle was an early production model from the mid-50s, well kept – not, as they say, ridden hard and left out to dry.
Walt’s Mossberg 200K pump action 12 gauge was more than Billy, chomping at the bit to start shooting, could even begin to handle. Pops could hardly contain his composure when imagining an unsuspecting Billy knocked right on his ass the first time he triggered that thing. But alas, he knew Walt better than to think he’d spring that one on the kid right off the bat. There is a progression, time-honored, in a young boy’s learning to shoot. With the Savage, Billy was on his way.
Leave a Reply