Mother’s Day
by Don Niederfrank
The saddest Sunday of the year. I was really looking forward to my dogs greeting me as I came in the front door. But they didn’t. Then I saw him on the other side of the living room going through my old rolltop desk.
“What the hell? Who are you?”
He turned around, reached into a well-worn camo jacket and pulled out a small pistol.
“I’m the guy whose robbing you. Give me your billfold.”
Then I saw them, my two huskies. There was a lot of blood. Those must have been the shots I heard when I turned onto our street. They were gentle dogs. Samson was old and could hardly stand. Helena was a pup. I wanted to kill him. Only the gun kept me from it.
He was my age, mid-fifties, but lot bigger. I pulled out my billfold and took a step toward him. Let’s see if you’re as slow as you look. When he reached for my wallet, I kicked hard at the gun. Perfect. His eyes followed its upward flight. I took a quick step and pushed him. He fell. The gun landed in front me, and I picked it up.
“Sit there.” I nodded at the oak rocker. He sat. I opened the drawer of an end table. Now I was holding a familiar weapon—my dad’s old 9 mm. “You should have looked in there first.”
“I just got here.”
I fought to stay rational in my anger, but this bastard had come into my sanctuary and shot my dogs. My only companions. I wanted him dead.
“You gonna call the police?”
“After I kill you.”
“What? Wait. Why are you going to kill me?”
“Here’s why. My father told me, ‘Never be afraid to kill someone. It may save your life someday. Or someone else’s.’ We were sitting in metal chairs at a small metal table. All bolted to the floor. They weren’t going anywhere, and neither was my dad. He spoke from experience. He hadn’t been afraid to kill someone. Not a home invader, a car hijacker or someone attacking mom. It was a judge. A judge he knew was going to sentence his nephew to prison. A nephew who had harmed people but who was broken himself. Someone who would deteriorate in prison. Someone who need help not punishment.” I sat on the couch.
“What’s this have to do with me?”
“Shut up. There were three judges in our county. Two men and a woman. The woman and one of the men were from the sort of small town we lived in. These two judges were known. They had children in our schools. We knew where they lived. We trusted them. They knew the law, but also that they knew us. Their decisions were accepted. Sometimes criticized but always in the end accepted.
“The third judge we hated. He wasn’t from a small town, and he’d only been in ours eight or nine years. He never mingled. We didn’t know him. The one thing we did know was that he didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be with us. It came out every time he sentenced one of us to jail or community service or probation. He took away our driver’s licenses, our gun permits, our property, and sent any one of us, man, woman or even child to one institution or another for as long as the law would allow. He was a real jerk and needed to be stopped.
“When my father found out the honorable Terrance R. Radcliff was going to be the one to sentence my cousin Danny, Dad had climbed into the attic and brought down this nine-millimeter pistol with its eleven-shot clip. After supper he drove over to the Radcliff residence and shot the judge as he finished mowing his lawn. A warm July evening. Didn’t tell him why. Didn’t give the judge a chance to discuss the case. I doubt Terrance R. Radcliff fully processed the reality of my father, a man twenty years his senior, walking straight across his newly mowed with a pistol in his right hand.
“He did stop mowing though. Mrs. Radcliff testified she heard the mower stop just before she heard the gunshots. Five or six. She couldn’t be sure. She came to the door and screamed and ran to her husband, prone on his back, eyes open but unseeing the darkening sky.
“In the meantime, my father walked into their house, called the police, and went and sat in his car until they came. Sometimes it makes perfect sense to kill someone who’s a jerk.”
“It don’t make sense to kill me.”
“It didn’t make sense for you to kill my dogs.”
“They scared me. You should have them tied up.”
“See? You are a real jerk. Someone needs to stop you.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be you.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause if you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it by now.” He stood up from the rocker. “I’m leaving.”
He started across the living room. I looked at my dogs then back to him. The first shot hit him in the right calf. He stopped didn’t but go down.
“You’re a chickenshit.” He grinned then grimaced and started limping toward the door.
The second shot hit his left knee. He went down. “Ow! Damn you!” He grabbed the wound.
I walked over and looked down at him. “My father said, ‘Never be afraid to kill someone.’”
“No, wait.” He held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I—”
I pressed the gun to his forehead. “You are a very fortunate man. You are fortunate because I was a fortunate child.”
“How— How is that?”
“I had a mother too. She told me not to be a jerk.” I straightened up. “I’m going to call the police. You move, and we go back to my dad’s wisdom, understood?”
He nodded once.
“Happy Mother’s Day.”
Don Niederfrank is a retired clergy person living in Wisconsin and delighting in the companionship of his wife, the wit of his friends, the forgiveness of his children, and often commutes to Chicago to enjoy the growth of his grandchildren. He is usually a very grateful and happy person. His writing credits include a short story “A Problem with Numbers” in Ariel Chart; flash fiction “Rug” in Open: Journal of Arts and Letters and “Transcendence” in Gay Flash Fiction; and a sonnet “Up Lights” in Prospectus. He can be reached at dniederfrank@gmail.com.