If an ox gores someone to death, the owner of the ox will not be held responsible. But if the ox has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills someone, its owner also is to be put to death.

Mishpatim Exodus 21:1

From his bedroom, George heard the glass window smash with a determined violence that he had imagined but never experienced.  The crashing sound chased through his living room, down the hall, and didn’t stop until it got under his bed sheets. For a moment he thought that he felt shards of glass on his bed.  He even swept his hands around on the sheets to be sure that this effect was only in his mind.  As the brutal reality of the situation separated itself from the fear and the excitement, the familiar plan took over everything in his mind.  An intruder had come into his house.  His job was to push himself to roll over across his bed.  There was no glass on the sheets; that was just his mind daring him to slow down.  He would open the drawer of the nightstand, grab his hand gun, sit on the side of the bed, and wait for the moment when his own nakedness would be the last image that would ever pass through the mind of this stranger, this villain.

He executed the roll with surprisingly little effort despite the paunch he needed to force his way over.  He could now hear the crunch of the glass beneath hard shoes coming from the living room and knew that he would have the gun cocked and ready long before being discovered or confronted.  The drawer of the night table rolled open smoothly.  It was exhilarating.  This must be what a shot of coke feels like.  He reached in for the weapon.

It wasn’t there.

It was just one drawer.  Nothing else was in it.  He swept his forearm through the entire drawer to cover it all. His gun could be nowhere else.  Or could it?  No, he was careful.  It was a new gun.  He had bought it just a few weeks ago, and he clearly remembered checking it, loading it, placing it by his bed where it would be when he needed it.

Then he felt himself assaulted.  Not by a bullet, but by a beam of light. The villain had turned a flashlight on.  The piercing light was aimed into his own eyes and all he could make out was his enemy’s arm extended with a handgun at its end.  The light was mounted to the villain’s forehead like a tiny miner’s light.  Now he could see his own nakedness and wondered if this would turn out to be the last image in his own awareness.

“Do you realize how disgusting you look?  Your dick is like a little turtle head and your stomach is like a giant pillowcase filled with sewage.”

Through all the insults, his first thought was just that this man hasn’t killed me yet.

“Turn around.  Keep your back to me, go to your closet and put on some pants and a shirt.  Make them comfortable.  It’s going to be a long night.”

It’s going to be a long night.  That’s a good thing.  But where is the night going to take me?

As long as this was going to be a long night, he tried to maintain his calm.  If he could keep calm, he could stay determined.  If he could stay determined then there would come a time during this long night that he could regain dominance.  He found the same pair of jeans that he had worn to the car shop that day.  He reached into the hamper for a used t-shirt.  Now, at least he already had the smell of a full day’s work on him.  If he died, at least he died at the end of the day, and not when a new one was just beginning.

“Now keep your hands on your head and back out of the closet.”

These were easy things.  Now was not the time to try anything.  It’s going to be a long night.  But he still felt a little brazen.  He needed to take some of the control.

“You know you’re a lucky man,” George said.

“I’m a lucky man?  No, I’m not a lucky man.  The last drops of luck drained out of me some time ago.”

“Like the motor oil drains out of an engine that’s been ignored long past its usefulness?”

“And leaves a stain that will not ever come out of the pavement.  I think you understand better than you imagine.  Why do you say I’m a lucky man?”

“If we’re going outside, can I at least put on my work boots?”

“Keep your back to me.  Point to your boots so I can see them before you touch them.  Then stand up and keep your hands on your head.  And tell me why you say I’m a lucky man.”

George followed the instructions.  He would have liked to sit on his bed to get his boots on.  His belly got in the way when he tried putting them on from a squatting position and it was hard to breathe.

“I say you’re lucky because I normally keep a loaded Glock 19 in that drawer over there.  I was ready to kill the man in my house the first second he appeared in the doorway.”  He had to restrain himself from saying I was ready to kill the piece of shit… He still had the long night ahead to look forward to.

“That’s not luck.  I knew you didn’t have that gun in your little table from the moment I bashed your fucking window in.”

“How’s that?”

“Because I’m holding it in my hands right now.”

George tried to picture the gun he had briefly seen in the stranger’s hands.  The Glock was a good gun and very ordinary looking, but it did seem possible that the man was telling the truth.

“Where’d you get it?”

“Where did I get it?  From your fucking drawer, where apparently you always have it. You just don’t learn.  You do not learn and tonight you must pay the price of your stubbornness.  And one other thing.  If you’re so concerned about home security, you should have locks on your doors that can’t be opened with a credit card while you’re away at work.

“I’m not concerned about security when I’m away.  I keep the gun to protect my family.”

“That turned out great, didn’t it.”

“Do I know you?” George asked.

“You do not.  But we share many things in common.”

“I don’t share a damned thing in common with you.”

“Then let’s share a car.”

The stranger spoke like he was reading from a script.  He seemed to have things planned as he directed George to his car, got in the back seat, and told him where to drive.  This wasn’t a poor part of the Bakersfield, but it wasn’t wealthy, and there weren’t many streetlamps.  The stranger kept him off the freeways and off of Edison Highway – probably to minimize the chance of running into other people.  George thought about the time – it was after three o’clock in the morning, and it wasn’t too likely that they’d pass a police car even on the main road.  Then George recognized where they seemed to be headed.  They were closing in on his son’s middle school.  He pulled over as directed, got out, and walked toward the front of the courtyard. They walked completely through the courtyard, to the back where the school baseball field was. The stranger directed George to the wet dirt where home plate would normally be and ordered him to get on his knees.  George felt the moisture soak into his jeans and chill his knees, and it made him want to piss.

“You’re kneeling on sacred ground.  I think you know why.  I think by now you know what we have in common.”

“It was your son?”

“It was Jason.  It was Jason you murdered right here at home plate.”

“That’s not fair, and you know it,” George shot back.

“You think it was your son that killed Jason?” Davenport asked George.  I grant you that Timothy was troubled.  Everyone at the school knew that.  But I don’t blame your son.  I really don’t.  But you just do not learn, do you?  I found this instrument of death in the same drawer that your son took the last one from.  I think it’s the exact same kind.  You replaced your last gun with one just like it, and you put it in the same unlocked drawer, and it just took a guy like me to reach in and get it, and someday come back and point it at you.  And now here we are.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mister Davenport.  You can believe me or not, but since that incident, I’ve been like a walking skeleton.  I can’t keep my mind on my work.  I feel nothing but grief over the loss of your innocent boy.  I feel grief every minute that I’m awake and most of the time that I’m asleep too.  And I’ve lost my boy too, you know, sitting in a jail cell.  They don’t treat him like a juvenile, you know.”

“I said we both have something in common.  We both lost our sons.  So, you took two lives.”

“Please stop that, Mister Davenport.  You made your point.  So, what now?”

“Do you know your Bible?”

“I pull it out from time to time.”

“If an ox gores someone to death, the owner of the ox will not be held responsible. But if the ox has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills someone, its owner also is to be put to death.

“In other words, strike two and you’re out.”

“A second person wasn’t killed, Mister Davenport.”

“You don’t know that.”

For a moment, George’s blood rushed at the thought that this man had killed someone with this gun now pointed at him.  But that seemed unlikely.  There was no one else but Timothy he would have any reason to kill.  He seemed sane and probably solid middle class, not the sort who would randomly kill a stranger.  For what reason?  To prove a point?  George wished he could get a better look at the man now to see how he held the gun.  

Davenport interrupted his thoughts. “You’re right.  A second person has not been killed.  But you left the pen open, George. You were warned. And I told you it’s going to be a long night.  Take a look at the pitcher’s mound.  What do you see there?”

“I see Timothy pitching.”

“Then what?”

“I know where you’re trying to take this, Mr. Davenport.”

“Why don’t you call me George?  I told you we have a lot in common.”

“You can call me whatever you like, Mr. Davenport, but I don’t particularly want to be on a first name basis with you.”

“So, what do you see when you look at the pitcher’s mound?”

“I know what you want me to see.”  George put his hands up in the air to signal that he wasn’t trying to make a move and then walked a bit away from home plate toward the mound.  Davenport followed behind but let the distance widen.  The moon was low behind them both and George’s head now cast a shadow on the mound.  George kept his hands up high and turned around to face his threat.  “I’ll tell you what I really see though.  I see a good kid who had no talent other than pitching baseballs.  But he was real good at that.  He could barely pass any of his classes but he could strike a guy out.  Me and Elizabeth loved watching him pitch.  If he gets through all this, someday I still think that’s gonna be his meal ticket.  You want me to see his moment of humiliation, don’t you?  You want me to see him smacked in his forehead and knocked down by the ball your boy hit at him, and then hear the whole stadium laugh hysterically.  Well, I can hear them now, and I was probably more humiliated than he was.

George went on, “That was the one good thing that he was proud of, and it was taken away from him.  Your boy wasn’t even much of a ball player.  What was it, a lucky hit?”

“Well for the second time this evening, you have an odd idea of what it means to be lucky.  But yeah, Jason wasn’t much of a ball player.  He loved computers and he hated sports. 

The count is one and one, it’s the bottom of the ninth, and with one out. The team on deck is behind by one run, and they wish that just about anyone besides Jason was at the bat.  Jason wishes the same thing, but maybe he can just get a piece of the ball, enough to let the man at second base advance, even if he himself gets thrown out.  Jason swings recklessly at the ball, but he gets more than a piece. He hears a sharp ping and he hears his teammates shouting “RUN JASON RUN”.  It takes a second to realize that he’s really not out yet before he drops the bat and heads for first.

But the pitcher is caught totally unaware. The ball smacks him right in the bridge of his nose and he falls backwards on his ass.  Where’s the ball?  All he notices now is the laughter and heckling coming from the stands.  He can’t see it but as he moves to straighten up, he feels it at his left thigh. He steadies himself and throws to home plate, but the man at second has beaten him there.  The crowd is hysterical.  They’re laughing, screaming, cheering.

“Jason should have been proud, but he was embarrassed that he beaned the pitcher,” Davenport explained.  “I spoke with him that night.  He would never lift a finger against anyone. He just wanted the game to end so that he could get back home sooner to write more computer stuff and some day maybe create his own video games.”

George backed up onto the pitcher’s mound and eased himself down to sit.  Davenport crept up to keep a constant distance.  George saw the gun still pointed at him and realized that he had never looked into the muzzle of his gun, or any gun, while it was loaded.  He started to think about guns in a new way, but he couldn’t put his finger on what was different.  Maybe it was a new sense of their power, not just to kill, but to make a statement more forceful than anything he could achieve with words.

“I know your boy didn’t want to hurt Timothy.  You know how I know?  Because even though I’m looking at a man pointing my own gun at me, I can tell you don’t feel comfortable holding it.  Can I help you?  Your grip’s wrong.  You’ve got your skin over the beavertail.  Squeeze that trigger, and when that slide recoils, you’ll be screaming in pain.  Not that I’m telling you to squeeze the trigger.  I think you should just put the gun down in front of you.  If you were to kill me accidentally, well, it would cause you a lot more pain than from the slide ripping across your skin.”

“You want to rush me for the gun.”

“Look at me,” and George squeezed his belly between his hands.  “Do I look like I could stand up, run, and reach the gun before you could?”

Davenport stepped back a little.  He sat down and aimed the gun at George so that he could be prepared if anything unexpected happened, and then he put the gun down on the grass in front of him.

“Now let’s just talk, man to man,” said George. 

It’s the following week and Jason has been moved up from batting last to batting seventh.  It’s the second inning and when he steps up to the plate, half the crowd is screaming Jason’s name.  Jason uncomfortably remembers the time, not long ago, when he could strike out and no one cared, because everyone expected him to strike out.  But then, the pitcher acts strangely.  He drops the ball on the mound and starts walking to home plate.  Middle school pitchers don’t consult with the catcher, they just throw the damn ball.  He’s walking up to Jason, and within a few feet of him, he’s reaching into his pants, it seems deep into his jock strap, to get something.  It’s a gun.  What is he doing with a gun?  He looks Jason straight in the eye and blasts a bullet straight into his chest.  Jason flies back and down, into the catcher’s lap.  The bat rolls weakly down the line.  The pitcher seems as cool as if he’d just struck out another batter.  He just turns around and walks back to the mound.  The crowd is silent except for a few yelps. The entire field is scrambling in any direction that seems further from the mound.  Then the pitcher drops his gun, picks the ball back up, takes his position on the mound, and hurls the ball squarely into the batter’s face. The crowd looks to see if the batter reacted, but except for the growing trail of blood, Jason seems as inert as home plate itself.  The pitcher sits down as teachers and a security guard rush the mound and flip him over on his belly.

“I’ve paid a price,” George says.  My son is sitting in jail, and because the charge is murder, they want to try him as an adult.  I could lose him forever.  My wife has left me over the incident.  I have no idea if or when she will ever come back.  And last of all, I am practically a dead man filled with grief.  I’ve lost my son, my wife, and my own self.  I have nothing left but the hope that someday in the future things may be better.”

“I said we had a lot in common.  I too lost my son.  My wife didn’t leave me, but she has been so destroyed by this that I don’t recognize her.  Nothing I say to her seems to register, and she seems unable to say anything to me.  So, you could say she’s gone too.  And I too have become a walking body whose soul has evaporated.”

“We are the same person. We even have the same first name. Please do not kill me.  You are a good person, George Davenport.  If you kill me, then we will both surely die.  You said this would be a long evening.  It has already been the longest evening of my life. And I know, now more than ever, I will even thank you for this evening.  I will thank you, Mister Davenport, for making me a better person.  I live in grief that I left my handgun in my night table where Timothy could get to it.  I live in a new found awareness that I was wrong to leave it there again, where a person such as yourself could get to it.  A person who I’m sure has never wanted to harm anyone before the incident between our boys.  If you want me to swear on a bible, then let’s go back to my home, and I will swear to get a gun safe and keep that pistol locked up.  And everything that came before my swearing, everything else this evening, never happened.  But I beg you.  Give me the gun so that we don’t both die this evening.  I told you.  I mean you no harm.  I have learned from you and I’m grateful to you.  Thank you.”

George went on repeating the words “Thank you, thank you” over and over again in the rhythm of a grandfather clock, hoping that eventually it would make its impression, or that it might hypnotize Davenport’s anger out of him.  He pushed himself back to a standing position on the mound, and with his hands in the air began walking in tiny steps toward Davenport.

“STOP!”  George froze and Davenport leaned down to pick up the pistol.  He held it out at George in the classic two hand stance, and then eased his palms down half an inch so that they were comfortably below the gun’s slide.  Davenport chuckled for a moment as he realized he had yet another thing in common with George.  They had both taught each other something that night.

Davenport spoke.  “It’s nice that you’ve learned something tonight.  But think of what the Bible said.  You were supposed to have learned the first time.  When your boy used the gun to kill Jason, that’s when the learning was supposed to have taken place.”

“The Bible says that you can kill me only after the second death.  Unless you lied to me before, no one else has died.  Am I right?”

Davenport stepped back safely from George.  He held the gun in his right hand, and with his free hand loosened the belt from his pants until he was holding it like a dead snake.

“Come with me to home plate, George.  Let’s stand together in the place my boy died.”

Davenport kept the gun aimed at George and backed up a few feet behind the spot for home plate as George followed orders.

“Now face the pitcher’s mound and keep both your hands all the way to the left,” and George did so.  Davenport took his belt and made a loop by slipping the tip through the window in the buckle.  He walked up to George keeping the gun extended far to the right.  Then he leaned in and stood cheek to cheek with George, and then slipped the belt loop around both of their necks, pulling it tight with his left arm so that the men’s jaws collided with each other.  He turned his right arm and wrist back in and pointed the gun to his right temple.

“George, it has been a very long night.  We’ve taught each other some things. We’ve learned that there’s a lot that you and I have in common.  And one more thing we have in common is that the last things to ever pass through our minds will be the memory of our sons, and this bullet.”

A series of animated home invasion stories

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