Decisions in the Dark
Brian Brown
Even waking from a dead sleep in the middle of the night, I knew what that sound was. I recognized it immediately. A car was coming, slowly, down my long gravel driveway toward my house. Slow gravel makes a different sound than faster gravel, and this vehicle was coming slowly. I sat up in bed, clearing my brain fog from a sound sleep. The headlights were indeed coming, cautiously, their headlights winking in and out of view as they passed through large date palms lining the driveway. I glanced at the clock: a bit after 3:00 a.m.
My wife had been taken by cancer about 6 months earlier, and I was still adjusting to the new routine that develops when you are learning to live and sleep alone. I live in a very remote place in the Mojave, deep in a canyon at the end of 2 miles of dirt road. My house is on an even more remote dead end lane within the canyon. What was this creeping car doing here at 3:00 a.m.? Who knew that I was now an old man, living alone? Everyone did. Questions came tumbling out of my brain, as I strained to come fully awake and decide what to do. Dark possibilities began to creep to the forefront.
The car came on, and I watched from the darkness as it turned slowly and stopped at a peculiar angle in way that no one ever parks at our house. This car doesn’t know me. It isn’t coming to report an emergency or bring drunken friends on a lark. This isn’t good. I slip on a pair of sweat bottoms and reach into the bureau next to the bed and extract a .38 caliber long barrel revolver, my fathers gun. All of my life he slept next to this gun with his seven children in our desert home, and now I did too. Yes, it’s loaded, it always is. 6 special rounds my cousin created, hot loads with the maximum amount of powder and flat nosed projectiles for maximum knock down effect on whatever they hit. I have my first moment of fright: can I do this to someone if I have to? I do a quick and silly reality check: Am I awake? Is this really happening? Am I going to go out there with this big, loaded gun and confront whatever comes out of that car? The answer that comes back to all of these questions is yes, and my fright ratchets up. What other choice do I have?
I still have not turned on any lights, my house is completely dark and quiet. The car lights go off, and from my bedroom window there is enough moonlight to see the car clearly. My advantage. The driver’s door opens and a man gets out and closes the door. The passenger door opens and another man gets out, but he stands there with the door open and the interior light on. The driver takes a tentative step toward my front door. It’s showtime.
Barefooted I quickly move to the front door in the darkness, looking out from the edge of the oval cut glass window in the center of the door. He’s about 50 feet away, walking slowly towards me. My mind is racing now - what am I going to do? I have multiple back exits, it would be easy enough to go out any one of them and come around the side of the house undetected. But then what? I realize that the front door is unlocked, as it always is way out here. To throw the noisy dead bolt now would give away my presence, and for some reason that secret is important to me. If I did run to the back and out, and they just walked into my house, then what? I’d be barefoot in the dark in the thorny ground and these intruders would be in my house. But, I would probably be safe.
He’s 40 feet away now. Maybe I should just yell out through the closed door, tell them I am armed and to go away. But if they are truly bad men they aren’t going to be deterred by that, and they may be armed too. I take another peek; it doesn’t look like he has anything in his hands, but I can’t see the second man well enough to know. Why not lock the door and call 911? Useless, I quickly decide. The closest deputy sheriff is 17 miles away in the nearest town, and most likely sleeping soundly. What am I going to do? My fear is palpable now. I know that something is going to happen real soon, and it might be real bad, or not, but I have to do something.
About 30 feet out now. What to do, what to do! I’ve never been in so much as a fist fight or brawl in my life, and now I’m being faced with the real possibility of killing someone. For a flash I wish I had my 12 gauge instead of this pistol, a nonsensical thought, one of many as I try not to panic, not to do something stupid, and not to put myself in any more danger if I can avoid it. My head is spinning like the reels in a slot machine, trying to come up with a decision. And then, when he is about 25 feet away and coming, the reels fall into place.
I have a sudden realization that no matter what else happens, I do not want these men inside my house. I do not want them close to me. To have them up close to me and inside the house would be to lose control, something I have a measure of right now. That’s it. That’s the decision. He’s about 20 feet away when I flip on the porch light and yank the door open quickly. The gun is in my left hand and the 2 inch solid plank of hardwood door is in my right, I have a vague notion that I can jump behind it or slam it if he comes up with a weapon. Probably unrealistic, but that reel in my mind is still spinning.
He stops dead in his tracks. I don’t raise the gun and point it at him, but I’m holding it pointed down and out from my side, finger on the trigger. I want him to see it clearly, to know that it is not a cell phone or a flashlight or anything else - it’s a big ass gun.
“ What do you want “
I ask, keeping my voice as flat as possible. It’s not really a question, it’s a chance for him to keep his life for a bit longer if he has a right answer and nothing bad happens. Behind him, I see the other man get back in the car and quickly shut the door. I have a fleeting thought that this is a good thing, at least I know where this one is, he didn’t dash off into the darkness between the palm trees somewhere. Things change suddenly, and within a couple of seconds I’m pretty sure I’m going to be OK. The one standing in front of me is frozen in place , and he extends his hands outward a little, palms down, as if to say easy there, whoa boy, everybody just calm down. He is unarmed and his body language tells me that he is probably no threat. He’s in a bad place and now he realizes it, and I think he just wants out.
“What do you want “
I repeat, suddenly feeling more assured. The gun feels light and comfortable in my hand. Now it’s his turn to be scared. Maybe he knows something about guns, that 20 feet away with a long barreled revolver is an easy shot. He sort of rotates his wrists and open hands up towards me slowly to show that he is unarmed, and he says that they were wondering if the gift shop was open, that they wanted to buy some stuff. This is absurd, of course, and I point out to him that it is 3:00 in the morning, the gift shop is closed, and that he and his companion need to turn around and go back out the way they came in. I just want this to be over, to end, and I’m certain he does too. I have no interest in berating or scolding or intimidating them, I just want them gone.
He nods and says OK, and backs up slowly for several steps, hands and palms out, like he is trying to calm a mean dog. He reaches the car and gets in, and in a moment they are headed back down the gravel driveway, a bit quicker this time, a different sound. I stand and watch for a couple of minutes in the complete silence and darkness of the desert as their lights wind their way up and out of the canyon. As I stand there, trying to make sense of this absurd situation, another reel drops into place, and I begin to smile, and then giggle. I think I’ve just figured out what this little scary drama was about.
I live at a historic property named China Ranch, about 25 miles from the border with rural Nye County, Nevada. Las Vegas is a quick 85 miles away. Nye is one of the so-called cow counties in Nevada, where prostitution in brothels is still legal. For some unknown reason, the brothels are all called ranches, as in the Bunny Ranch, the Moonlight Ranch, the Mustang Ranch, and so forth. I think these two men were probably liquored up, and decided it might be a good idea to drive out to Nye County and have a little brothel adventure. They may have gotten lost on the rural roads, spotted our advertising signs on the highway, and decided that China Ranch sounded enticing and just what they needed. They had stumbled upon my house, perhaps expecting some hot sex with exotic asian women and instead had found a frightened, balding old guy with a big gun.
Over the years similar things had happened before at our gift shop. A drunken carload of guys showing up expecting a hot time only to realize that this “Date Ranch“ was exactly that; we grow and sell dates. Severely embarrassed and probably a bit sobered they would slink away, sometimes spinning their tires on the gravel or flinging out a beer can as a hapless token revenge. We always got a good laugh out of it, but not this time. Alone, in the darkness, watching possible harm approaching my door, I had been forced to make decisions in the dark. Fortunately, it had worked out, but it was one of those moments when our lives can go out of our control, sending us down a completely new path to who knows where. Our ives can change in an instant, and luckily for me this had not been one of those .
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