TO-WIT: THE SHOOTIST (REVISED)
by S. Sponte, Esq.
(Author's note - From time to time, particularly when I can't think of anything new to write, I reread some of my earlier pieces and think "Golly gee, I could have written that one better." This has always been one of my most favorite pieces, and now, revised, I think it's even better. As I get closer to the end, please indulge me in this repetition; I love this thing.)
They come every night. Sometimes it’s John Wayne, sometimes Gregory Peck. Each night it's a different actor from a different western, and each night we act out the same familiar scene.
We stand face to face on a dusty, deserted street in a dusty, deserted town. We are alone but for the dust, the horseflies and the road apples, all that remains of the high noon bustle just now scattered by our ominous confrontation. I stare into his eyes and see sadness, the sorrowful markers of a soul all too accustomed to this deadly dance and weary of it to the bone, and I wonder what he sees in mine.
One of us says “draw” and does, the other one wakes up, sweating cold bullets. What does it mean, you may wonder? It means that I’m going to work out yet another one of my neuroses on you, that’s what it means.
These recurrent nightmares all started when I undertook a new case, a simple case, yet interspersed with a complexity we're hired to ignore.
I represented a landlord to evict an impoverished family who had fallen behind in their rent, the result of both recent unemployment and the burgeoning financial strain imposed upon them by what they professed was their obligation to feed and clothe their three small children.
My client was buying none of that, and instead he bought me. I was to collect the back rent with interest, to collect all future rent due by the acceleration clause in the lease and to regain possession of the inner-city hovel they would not for some reason vacate with glee. As soon as the retainer check cleared, I loaded my briefcase with pleadings and went out on the hunt for justice.
Some weeks later, I had the defendants cornered in the local magistrate’s office. They begged the judge for mercy, offering up that old, singsong "where can we go" refrain, but it was not an okay chorale. After the smoke cleared, I had a judgment for the rent and a writ of possession, and they had thirty days to get out of town.
That night, at high midnight, it was Gary Cooper. He stared at me with contempt, as if I were Jack Palance or Lee Van Cleef, for heaven’s sake. I slapped leather, he didn’t move. I shot him, he didn’t fall. He just stood there scowling at me for the longest time, then turned his back and walked away, boot heels slowly clomping on the wooden sidewalk, spurs forlornly jingling in the dusty, desiccated air.
In due course, I sent out a constable to evict them and sell their personal property. He brought me back the inventory; their household belongings were worthless and their car was an old, dilapidated Pontiac Aztec, a car so ugly that for a moment I enjoyed what I was doing to them.
That night Alan Ladd called me a varmint. I wanted to shoot him, I really did, but he was unarmed. He was also really short. I might have shot him anyway, but he sneered at me in a leading-man sort of way, and I was so stricken with shame I couldn't move. As he rode off into the sunset, I called after him "shame, shame," but he never answered.
The next morning, I called my client. “Listen,” I said, “I can't do this. These people have nothing. Why not just give them some time to find another place to live and let it go at that?”
“That’s really touching,” he replied. “I’m truly moved by your kindness and sensitivity, and that's why I’m not going to report you to the Disciplinary Committee.”
He was right, of course, I hadn't done my job. I had let my own mawkish sentimentality interfere with my professional responsibility. In the heat of battle, I flinched, and there are an awful lot of lawyers out there who would have simply shot me where I stood. This time I just got fired, the next time I might not be so lucky.
Last night they all came, even Randolph Scott. They filed past me one by one, their guns holstered, each in turn placing a hand upon my shoulder, each in turn gazing at me with a pathos that pierced my heart. There was a time I would have shot them all; now I merely acknowledged them with a certitude that having thus flinched once, I would surely flinch again. When that time comes, some colleague will assuredly fire off a fatal pleading aimed right at my heart, and for all I know, it may already be headed in my direction.
© 2018, S. Sponte, Esq.