John Ball - Johnny Get Your Gun

“No, thanks. Go in and lay low. If the boy sees you he might recognize you and panic. He’s still got the gun.”

With admirable prudence Dempsey obeyed, despite the fact that he had come to see the action and didn’t want to miss a bit of it.

Virgil was in no mood to linger, but he still looked around him carefully while he hurried toward the clubhouse. There would not be many boys dressed in cowboy hats in the fast emptying stadium and he might be fortunate enough to spot the one he wanted.

Below him, in the long tunnel under the third base stands, Johnny McGuire felt his heart quickening as he knew that he was coming closer to the clubhouse and the one man who, at that particular moment, was the most important person in his life. Tom Satriano could not be wrong, the very thought was a blasphemy. The fearful burden he had been carrying was already lightening. The happy thought came to him that Tom Satriano would continue to be the first-string catcher for the Angels until he, Johnny McGuire, was grown up and ready to step into his place.

Then, ahead of him, he saw the usher.

It was the same one, the one who had made him go all of the way around just because he had waited a few seconds to watch a light bulb being changed. Instantly the shapeless fears which had been hovering over him all day swooped down upon him once more, as he faced the terrible possibility that he might be prevented from keeping his appointment.

The usher was young, hardly more than a teen-ager, but that did not make him any less of a formidable obstacle. Unconsciously Johnny slowed his pace a little, but he kept on coming, hoping for some sort of a reasonable miracle. And then the usher raised his right arm into the air and waved him back.

That shattered the hope that the usher would go away, or simply ignore him. He had to get past now; there was no use in trying to find another way. He kept coming steadily forward.

With a maddening display of authority the usher shook his head from side to side. Johnny was hardly more than twenty feet from him now, but he did not stop. His feet slowed in spite of himself, but his determined young spirit would not, and could not, accept defeat.

Then the usher spoke. “I told you that you couldn’t come down here. You haven’t any right to be in this tunnel. Now go back the way you came.”

“No!” Johnny stopped and faced his enemy. “Tom Satriano told me to come and see him after the game.”

“Then see him on the parking lot, that’s the right place to wait.”

Johnny made one desperate effort to be reasonable-to find a happy solution. “Go ask him,” he challenged. “He’ll tell you. Tell him it’s Johnny. He’s got the letter he sent me and he’s waiting for me now.”

The usher rejected it. “Don’t tell me what to do, I know my job. And right now it’s keeping kids like you away from the clubhouse. I’ve got my orders. Now don’t make me chase you away or call a policeman.”

At that moment, without any delay, Johnny had to make a decision. His mind flashed back to all the white-hatted heroes he had seen on television who, when all else failed, had depended on their reliable weapons. Then that image was immediately blotted out by the picture of the boy he had shot the night before; one more time in his tortured mind he saw him sinking to the ground. He made his decision: he would threaten, but he would not shoot. In the best tradition of the many Westerns he had seen, he drew his gun.

“Let me past,” he ordered.

The usher stood there and laughed at him, a mocking laugh that made Johnny hate him with a blazing fury. “You think I’m afraid of that toy gun?” he said. Then he took a menacing step forward.

“It’s a real gun,” Johnny warned between his tightly clenched teeth.

The usher had had enough, his patience with this troublesome boy ran out. The authority of his uniform had been challenged, and by a belligerent kid who refused to obey a reasonable order. He would not endure that humiliation, it was an affront to the whole organization that he represented. He began to walk calmly forward, to turn the boy around properly and send him on his way.

To Johnny the battle had been joined and there was no backing away. He was not thinking of Tom Satriano now, only the adversary before him whom he must defeat. The usher was bigger, of course, but Johnny knew that he had the weapon. For one frightened instant he hesitated, then he saw that the usher was much closer and would be upon him in a second or two. In that blinding moment, hating the usher as he did, he still remembered the boy he had hit. In a flash the answer came to him-he aimed the gun over his opponent’s head, and fired.

Inside the confining tunnel the explosive blast of the shot echoed with total violence. For an instant Johnny thought that his eardrums had been torn from his head; then to his utter amazement he saw the usher fall flat where he had been standing. He did not sink slowly like the boy had done; he dropped like a dead and lifeless thing and lay inert and still.

Then reason departed, the world rocked underneath him, and Johnny lost everything but the raw instinct to survive. With a scream of hysterical fright, he turned and fled.

In the clubhouse close by Tom Satriano heard the sound of the shot and jumped to his feet. In the instant the banter of conversation in the big room froze, for every man there knew about Johnny McGuire and was waiting for him to appear at the door.

Up above, still on the field box level, Virgil Tibbs heard the shot too. He lunged forward and hurtled down the remaining steps, almost throwing himself around the corners.

Back down the long corridor Johnny raced, his gun tightly clenched in his hand, ready now to use it if he had to to clear the path before him. Only the mute concrete bore witness to his flying feet, to the panting of his desperate breath. His new hat flew off and he did not even notice. He was in a frenzy now, a trapped animal running for the first available place that would give him sanctuary.

His lungs pounding with pain, he burst out of the tunnel into the sudden shock of full bright daylight. For a mad, blinding moment he had to stop; he did not know where to go. The gigantic, now empty stadium loomed above and all around him as though it had been designed specifically as a hopeless trap from which no one could escape.

He could never make it across the huge playing area, and if he did there was no place to go when he reached the other side.

The bullpen gate was open; he gulped air into his tortured lungs and bolted through, desperately hoping that there would be a way out on the other side. There was, another gate stood open, but beyond it there was only a great openness, and the concreted banks of a dry river where he could never hope to hide. Then he saw the foot of the towering A-frame and fastened to it the little car provided to lift the maintenance man up all of the way to the ringlike halo that was the symbol of the team and of the stadium itself.

In total desperation Johnny ran for the car and jumped inside. He swung the gate shut which gave him a slight protection and for a few precious seconds studied the simple control mechanism. Then he looked and saw two uniformed policemen running down the third base stands toward him. They were already dangerously near, and they had guns too. His last hesitation disappeared; he pushed the handle and felt the car at once begin to rise under him. It moved very slowly, but fast enough so that he could see the ground falling away and know that for the moment he had taken refuge in something that would give him sanctuary above his enemies.

He reached the base of the scoreboard and watched as the intricate panels moved past him, sinking downward as he rose. Then he looked over the edge and a quick paroxysm of acrophobia seized him. He fought it by looking upward and seeing the great suspended halo much closer than it had been before. The last of the scoreboard moved past and he was on the dizzying height of the overhead structure being carried steadily upward to his doom.