You know what’s Crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
When Mayberry Cries.
A 20 year veteran of the National Guard was gunned down Wednesday night.
There’s no good reason for it. There’s no known motive. By all accounts he was a good guy, a decorated vet who served his company and loved his family.
Then, out of nowhere.
Blam.
Life changes in the flap of a humming bird’s wing.
It happened around 4pm on July 9th.
It happened in an instant, in a speck of a place, barely on a map.
Punch in the GPS coordinates of this location and the GPS says “huh? You kidding me?”
The armory is in a field at an intersection of two country roads lined by cornfields and nostalgia.
As I pull up, I see sunflowers 8 feet tall and a blistering golden sunset filtering through the gently waving plants.
The setting is ideal for a family reunion.
All that’s missing is a soda shop and the Fonz riding up on his motorcycle.
It’s Americana, straight out of the 50’s.
This is Apple Pie and Vanilla Ice Cream.
But look closer. There’s crime tape surrounding the armory.
The yellow neon is cautionary, alarming, out of place like flip flops at the North Pole.
The tape wavers gently in a slight 90 degree breeze.
The crime tape signifies something sinister has leaked through, soiled this bastion of purity.
As the sun sets and the heat of the day gives way to approaching dusk, the mood begins to change.
The chirp of crickets is extirpated by the sound of a Sheriff’s chopper flying low and hard over small country homes.
The wash of the rotor blades is close enough that clothes on a nearby line seemingly sways sideways.
The chopper dips down over a line of trees and hovers over a field.
“That’s where the shooter is hiding,” a man with a beer belly says.
He looks like a duck dynasty reject. His beard is mangled and his t-shirt soiled and twisted on his bowling pin shaped form.
He is friendly and the sweat dripping down his sun burned face.
I listen to his words about the town, about the armory, about his thoughts on the manhunt and who might have done it.
He slurs the English language like some kind of verbal slaughter-house.
While he speaks, I stare at his forehead. There are at least 2 dozen tiny black gnats stuck to his skin.
Each is smaller than a pin head and creepier than a minister with a toupee.
The man talks and the gnats undulate on his moistened skin like his epidermis is electrified.
The gnat dance is almost too much to look at.
Does he not feel the insect scrum playing out on his face?
I pretend I don’t care and thank him for the interview I will never use.
I suddenly have the urge to bathe.
I look at the intersection of this one light town.
The horizon has shifted from light blue to dark purple. There is a lone star twinkling in the crystal clear night sky.
The deputies guarding the intersection are wearing bright orange vests that say sheriff’s department. You know its small town America when the deputies are wearing blue jeans and Carhartt Work boots as if they just finished their job as highway workers.
The life long residents of this burg will tell me this has never happened here.
I look around at the crime tape. The National Guard Armory’s lights are all on. The sheriff’s department command center bus is blocking the driveway. The floating helicopter with the fleer device affixed to the front is landing in the rear of the complex.
I have seen this a 100 times over the course of my career.
Small town America is not immune to evil.
Small town America is frequently victimized.
It just can’t happen here, they always think.
But it does happen here. It happens here all the time.
The members of this community just didn’t know they were next.
It’s like standing in a putrid line of insanity waiting for an unknown number to be called.
It’s a diabolic meat counter where the butcher suddenly pulls out a meat cleaver and screams “you’re next!”
Sadly, this town’s number was abruptly, diabolically called.
Now the chopper and 2 dozen men wearing badges are scouring the countryside for a shooter. The rumor is he is a teenager with problems, a kid who had ties to the armory.
A woman who will use my cell phone to call her loved ones when she can’t get through the police barricade will tell me later that this boy got in trouble for drugs at high school.
“He said he was going to do something,” she says to me as if she all ready knows who did it.
I tell her we can’t jump the gun on the investigation, but deep down, her words somehow ring true.
Small town America always has a basement where a kid is on the internet building bombs, hatching plans, making videos of themselves wearing trench coats.
Small town America is crying tonight. It never thinks the reaper will knock on its door. But here he is, once again, reminding us that none of us can lock enough doors to keep away evil that is intent on doing dastardly deeds.
Enjoy each day America.
You never know when your number at the putrid butcher shop will be called.
Life’s Crazy™