John Ball - Johnny Get Your Gun

The adolescent from the car came closer and then Johnny saw that he was dark-skinned. He expected no friendship or help from such as him; he took a step or two backwards and fitted his fingers around the weapon which was now his best protection.

“Watcha got in the bag, kid, huh?” the Negro boy asked.

“My lunch,” Johnny answered. It was the only thing he ever carried in such a bag and the only answer he could think to give.

The older boy from the car turned and called back, “Hey, get this-he says it’s his lunch in the bag.” He bent over in imagined silent mirth.

Johnny stepped backward once more, far enough to give himself a little distance, not so far as to invite the Negro youth to follow. Then he looked and saw three more figures getting out of the car. One of them was taller, but that was all that he could tell in the darkness.

“I’m hungry,” the teen-ager in front of him said. “How about givin’ me somethin’ to eat, huh. Got any fried chicken?”

“It’s my lunch,” Johnny retorted.

“You’re out kinda late ain’t cha, kid?” Johnny recognized the change of subject as an attack from a new direction.

“I’m goin’ home,” he answered. “My dad’s gonna meet me.” He hoped that would frighten them off-if they knew his father it would.

The gambit failed. He looked up to find that he was staring at four dark Negro faces, faces that looked at him as though he were a cornered animal they could toy with for their own amusement. He would have been terrified except for one thing-the gun, the wonderful protector he held hidden in his right hand. He now saw his father’s wisdom in owning it and always keeping it close, ready for immediate use. The gun might be the only thing that would save him now, a Tennessee boy, from the clear danger he saw in the four black faces.

The tall one, who seemed a little older, spoke up. “Maybe you’re lost, how about that?”

“I come here all the time,” Johnny flared. He did not dare to show weakness.

“Ya do, huh?” that first one said. “Then what’s the name o’ this street? Tell us, go ahead.”

Johnny didn’t know, he hadn’t looked at the sign on the corner. “You leave me alone!” he demanded, putting all the thin authority he could into his voice.

“Whatcha say that for, huh? You don’t like us, maybe?”

“You’re niggers,” Johnny responded.

One of the two remaining faces that had stayed silent until now reacted sharply. “That ain’t a word we like,” he said.

The tall one spoke again. “Kid, we don’t like to be called that. You oughta know. You from the South?”

“Tennessee.” Johnny hadn’t meant to reply, but the answer was so easy he gave it.

“Well, that ain’t too bad a place, but it ain’t too good neither. You talk like maybe you come from Mississippi.”

“Never been there,” Johnny said.

“Maybe you’d like to come ridin’ with us. We’ll take you home.”

“Don’t ride with niggers,” Johnny flung back. He backed away, several steps this time, and they followed him, moving the same distance that he had.

“Kid, we tol’ ya not to use that word! You do it again and you got trouble!”

A little desperately Johnny turned and looked all around him-for someone, anyone-for a car coming by. It was strangely silent and the single streetlight was back at the corner where he had gotten off the bus.

“Let’s see the bag,” the first boy demanded, and grabbed for it. Johnny drew his hand back quickly; the bag came off in his tormentor’s fingers and the naked gun was left exposed, pointed toward the quartet which faced him.

The fourth face spoke at last. “He’s got a toy gun-look.”

Johnny backed two more steps and held the gun level; he had fired it once and he could do it again. “It’s no toy,” he said. “It’s real.”

“Better give it to me.”

“No.”

“How come you got it? Your father’s a cop, heh?”

“No,” Johnny repeated.

Then silently, as though they had rehearsed it, the four dark faces separated; the tall one began to walk behind him while the two quiet ones moved to flank him on each side. Johnny froze his attention on the one still facing him in front. He was frightened, but his fear gave him a kind of coldness. He formed a quick and binding partnership with the gun in his hand; they were afraid of it, he knew, and that meant that they were afraid of him.

The boy before him tried hard to take command with his voice. “Kid, gimme that gun!”

Without thinking Johnny moved to take one more step backwards, his left foot was still in the air when he felt two sudden strong hands seize his upper arms, pinning them to his sides. The outrage of being manhandled burst the thin bubble of his self-control. He yanked hard, blindly, to get himself free-he remembered doing that, then everything disintegrated in a violent blast of sound. He knew that the gun had fired itself, it had defended him, but nothing else would take shape. The world spun around him and a hoard of demons zoomed down upon him from the sky.

The hands that had been holding him let go, they actually pushed him away. He staggered forward to keep his balance, looked and saw a human face in sudden agony and shock. The boy who had first stopped him, his hands clutched over his abdomen, was slowly sinking to the ground.

Johnny stood stock-still, looking at what the gun had done. It had not been his own doing, only the gun’s-a living deadly thing.

He expected people to come running, to seize him, for the cops to pull up within seconds in their black and white cars, but the echo of the blast was stillness and the street remained as deserted as before.

Instinct seized him then; it caused him to whirl about, to take one last desperate look at the thing on the ground, and then to run harder, faster, longer than he ever had before. He saw an opening between two buildings and turned down it. It went all the way through to the next street; his heart was pounding hard when he reached the end of the passageway, but terror still had complete possession of him and the stabbing pains in his chest went unheeded. He saw that the street was free except for two cars retreating the other way; he dashed across it, found another opening, and flung himself inside.

He had to rest for a few precious seconds. His heart seemed to be trying to pound its way out of his chest, but he dared not heed it in his desperation. Gulping air, he set off once more, cutting between the buildings, stopping momentarily when his body forced him to, but driving himself to the limit that his burning brain could force out of his body.

He did not know how long he went on, how many streets he crossed without being seen, but when he reached a wider and busier thoroughfare he knew that he had to stop. He looked down at his right hand and saw that he was still carrying the gun; he had not dared to throw it away. Knowing that it must not be seen, he pressed back into the shadows. His desperate flight had exhausted him. For a few seconds he did not care what happened to him, then instinct returned and he looked about quickly for a solution to his problem.

Only a few feet away there was a tall trash can without a lid. He went to it and looked inside; there was a pile of waste barely visible in the semidarkness and, jammed halfway down one side, a shoe box.

He pulled it out, took off the lid, and saw the wet and soggy body of a dead kitten. The sight turned his stomach; in one automatic motion he dumped out the pathetic little body, sobbed, and then burst into tears as he carefully but quickly put his gun into the box and pushed it under his arm.

With the natural cunning of the pursued he went to the corner and forced himself to cross Orange Grove Avenue in a quiet and normal manner. When he reached the sanctuary of the other side he saw that there was a huge ravine ahead of him and he knew that it should give him a place to hide. He climbed down the steep slope of the Arroyo Seco in the near darkness, step by uncertain step, until he found himself at the bottom in a well-wooded part of the park.