John Ball: Johnny Get Your Gun

As he held it in his fingers he could sense that something was loose inside. With his lips quivering he very carefully clicked the switch that was supposed to turn it on. He rolled the little wheel as far as it would go towards full volume, but there was no answering sound.

Johnny cried. He did not feel the contrite hand that Billy laid on his shoulder or hear the words. “I’m sorry. My dad’ll get you a new one.” He was in a paroxysm of grief so all-engulfing he was alone on another plane belonging to a different world.

The thing he had loved and that had loved him was dead. The only thing he had had to cherish as his very own had been snatched from him.

By a murderer .

Billy had seized his radio, tortured it, and then hurled it to its helpless death.

His emotion changed. Total grief began to give way to blinding red anger. In awful rage his body tightened so that he could hardly breathe. Then the lust for violent revenge seized complete control of him, a great sob escaped him, and his fingers locked fiercely around the broken case of his beloved, trusted, murdered companion.

With frozen, terrible detachment he saw that for what Billy had done, Billy would have to pay. An obsession took hold of him, a total determination to do as he had been taught.

Billy was too big for him in a fist fight. He could run faster, he was stronger, and he had much longer arms. But there was another remedy that would still Billy’s mocking laughter, a way to make him pay, and pay completely, for what he had done. He could have his revenge and have back his shattered honor, because he knew where his father kept his gun.

Estelle Hotchkiss was disturbed about her son.

He had seemed all right when he had returned from school, but he had been quieter than usual and when she had spoken to him, he had replied only in monosyllables. She had at first dismissed this as another manifestation of the kaleidoscopic moods of a growing boy.

Later on the phone had rung. Billy had answered it and had had a short conversation; when she had seen him shortly after that he had appeared to be downright terrified.

“Is there anything wrong?” she had asked. He had answered something under his breath and she had let it pass, he was often that way when he had suffered a minor setback of one kind or another. He was having trouble with history and he had mentioned that there was going to be a test on the Revolutionary War or some such topic. That, she decided, was probably it-he knew that he had done badly on the examination and it was preying on his mind.

It was good for him to worry a little, it might inspire him to study a little harder the next time.

By five o’clock Billy’s odd mood had not passed, if anything it had deepened. By now Estelle had decided that something more than just an examination had gone wrong and that her son would tell her about it in his own good time. She went quietly about her normal affairs and waited for the moment to arrive.

The first real indication came when she said to him, “Billy, go outside and see if the paper has come, will you?”

“I don’t want to.” It was an abrupt, unusual answer.

She stopped the work she was doing and looked at him. “Billy, I asked you nicely to go and see if the paper is here, now please do it.”

“I can’t.”

Those two words caused her a sudden chill, her son had never spoken to her like that before. She put down the carrot she had been scraping, laid the tool aside, and turned to give him her full attention.

Billy stood there, not defiantly, but with his head down.

“Billy, look at me,” she said.

Reluctantly he obeyed.

“Ever since you came home from school you’ve been acting very strangely. I know that something is wrong. I want you to tell me what it is.”

After a long moment he lowered his head again and remained silent. For a moment she thought that it was stubbornness, then she sensed that it was far more than that. She dropped down until she was sitting on her heels and he could not escape her by looking down any longer.

“I want to know what’s wrong,” she repeated.

After another long pause Billy answered, dragging out the words only because he had to. “I can’t tell you,” he said.

Estelle Hotchkiss had grown up with three brothers, one older and two younger than herself, so she had a better than average insight into the sometimes strange world of boys. “Something happened at school, didn’t it,” she said.

Billy hesitated for another long interval and then nodded his head.

“Did you have trouble with one of your teachers?”

“No.”

From his tone, and the way in which he spoke, she concluded reluctantly that he was in some manner in the wrong, otherwise he would have been more anxious to defend himself. She pressed her lips together for a moment, thought carefully, and then looked at her boy once more.

“Is that why you can’t go and bring in the paper?” she asked.

Billy’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Yes,” he confessed.

“Then we’ll go out and bring it in together.”

Suddenly he became alive; he grasped her arm with almost frantic strength and his eyes widened in terror. “No, no!” he exploded.

She looked at him steadily. “Billy, what have you done?”

When he did not answer she started toward the front door, almost dragging him with her.

“Don’t go out there!” he shouted.

That settled it, something very serious was wrong. Her voice changed as sympathy gave way to authority. “Billy, I want you to tell me this minute what happened. If you don’t I’m going to call your father on the phone. This can’t go on any longer.”

Billy’s eyes were suddenly wet with tears and she knew that he was close to the breaking point. “I’m going to bring in the paper,” she said. It had suddenly occurred to her that there was something in it that Billy was most anxious she not see. She resolved to get the paper and to at least scan every item in it. Nothing else she could think of made sense. Without saying anything she forced him to let go of her arm and started for the door.

Then it came. In a voice that she had never heard him use before Billy cried to her, “There’s a boy out there with a gun and he’ll shoot you!”

She gasped for breath; she whirled toward her son. “A real gun?” she demanded.

“Yes!” The words came in a torrent now; Billy’s hands were clenched into fists as he fought to make her believe him. “I broke his radio. I didn’t mean to do it, but I did. He called me up a little while ago. He told me he had his father’s gun and that he was going to come here and kill me!”

There was a pause, a cold moment of frozen horror, then Estelle Hotchkiss looked carefully at her son. He was not lying, she could see that. In three quick steps she reached the telephone and dialed operator.

“Get me the police,” she said, and her own voice was shaking.

The desk sergeant who took her call passed a message to radio dispatch within seconds. It went on the air at once to officers Dick Stone and Barry Rothberg who were cruising less than two miles from the Hotchkiss home; within five minutes they were ringing the bell at the front door. At the sight of their uniforms Estelle swung the door wide and with a tight voice said, “Please come in.”

A painful few minutes passed while Billy reluctantly told his story, shamefaced at having to admit what he had done, terrorized by the realization of what he had begun.

As soon as he had finished Stone looked at his partner. “I’ll go outside and have a look around,” he said. “Suppose you stay with these people until I come back.”

“I’ll go,” Rothberg volunteered.