The Power of a Gun

And the respect that immobilized it

Image created by author using Dall-E 2

I’d been itching to replace the fence in my backyard for months, as it’s a simple chain link adjacent to an alley that runs parallel to my house. Any old car driving by gets a clear view of my patio and sliding screen doors, and anything inside those screen doors when I move the curtain aside and let the sunlight in. 

It already felt like insufficient protection, as I babysit a couple of dogs who can reach the top of the railing when they’re on their hind legs, and little by little the fence becomes more damaged with each jump.

So one day when the gate finally broke, I thought I would be safe from potentially malicious people coming into my yard at least for a day or two, statistically speaking.

But statistics seem to always be at odds with Murphy’s Law, and mathematics would do me no favors when a group of wanderers looking to take advantage of someone found their way into my alley as the sun set across my yard.

A group of four people, led by a very large, burly Native man with a ponytail that went down to his hips, decided to let themselves into my yard and linger. It seemed like they were “casing the joint” rather than preparing to take action, but my husband went ahead and phoned for police in the other room, anyway.

At the time, I was also hosting my two younger brothers before taking them to the airport very early the next morning, and they were happily gaming away in my guest room.

Maybe I naively assume the best in everyone, but I couldn’t stand the building anxiety. I went outside to greet them.

Skipping the pleasantries, I went straight to, “Do you guys need something?”

The large Native man squared up to me, huffed, and pulled out a glock that was at the level of my chest after he bent his elbow upward to point it at me. He looked well-dressed. A button-down shirt underneath two layers of jackets and a thick leather on top of it all. He wore a bolo tie around his neck with a shimmering ornament.

Image created by author using Dall-E 2

If he had not shown me a weapon, I would have engaged with curiosity and reason. But he started with the trump card first. I know better than to make sudden movements or to contradict a man pointing a gun at my face. Panicking was also out of the question, because my 5'4" self ONLY had confidence on my side at that moment. 

Collecting myself after the initial shock, I sighed. “What do I have that you don’t?” To which he smirked, and said, “Your stuff.”

All right. Well, I guess I’m about to go through a lesson about how much I’m attached to “stuff”. I hoped my husband would get the heck off the phone and rescue me, but he did not.

So when this man pointed the gun toward my door and said, “Inside,” I obliged.

With his gun still out and pointed at me, the four people walked into my house like they were welcomed guests. 

There was an element of showiness in their whole charade, as the leader man stood just inside the sliding doors of my patio, gun still pointed, taking a deep look around. The other two companions followed suit and settled in behind my dinner table about a foot away. One of them was a light-skinned man, as average a build as you can get, wearing only a gray Nike t-shirt, a red baseball cap facing backwards, and khaki pants. 

The other was a very tall man, also Native, I surmise, who seemed… dirty. Dirty like mechanics can be. He was wearing dark denim jeans, a button-down shirt with an embroidered nametag peeking out from underneath his leather, the leather much too big for him, and with an embroidered pattern of bright colors down the sides of the zipper.

Image created by author using Dall-E 2

The person who walked in last was a big female companion. I mean, big. Not someone who I guessed would be participating in robberies out of survival or lack of essential resources like food-big.

This woman was also dark-skinned, wearing a long-sleeved, tight pink crocheted dress and white sweatpants underneath, that were dirty from either earth or oil, in a streak down the left leg. Her dress was immaculately clean, though. Straight out of Macy’s, it seemed.

The four amigos.

Image created by author using Dall-E 2

Almost immediately after stepping foot in my house, she snapped, “Get some food started. Something heavy.” 

“I have some potatoes? That’s kinda it.”

She nodded without looking me in the eye and began to walk around and around my breakfast bar, opening all the cabinets in my tiny kitchen. I grabbed my bag of potatoes and put them on the breakfast bar before digging out my biggest pot and filling it with water.

I could be lashing out right now, but I figure there must be something missing for these people, and maybe kindness in a situation where they were not kind to me will help alter the course of how this goes. 

Meanwhile the two extra men, baseball cap and mechanic guy, told my husband to accompany them downstairs and show them “what kinda stuff we got.”

This lady began bossing me around like I’d just married her son and needed to learn the way of the in-laws. “You’re forgetting salt. You need to salt them first. Cut them up smaller. But do some big ones, too.” The leader man chuckled a few times at my obvious annoyance. “Salt the pot now, not the potatoes. You have to use a lid.” Wow, lady. Why don’t you just make them if you’re the expert? 

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After the potatoes were chopped, salted, and boiling, the leader who had been standing around getting a kick out of the potato-making situation ordered me to head upstairs and collect all the electronics. He didn’t accompany me, though. 

My brothers had the door of the guest room closed and didn’t hear a peep of anyone speaking downstairs. So when I opened the door to the guest room (the first door as you reach the top of the stairs) and poked my head inside, without even looking up from the television my littlest brother cheerily gushes, “Hey Sis! What’s up?”

“Well, we’re being robbed at gunpoint. They want all the electronics in the house.”

Without taking eyes off the game, they both sat for a second and my older brother asked, “…who is?”

“Some fuckers who walked into the backyard, and I made the mistake of asking what they want, and they pulled out a gun and demanded all the electronics in the house.” 

Silence except for the click-click of controllers.

I continued. “I think it’s best to just do what they say. Police should hopefully be on their way.”

Click click click click. 

…

“…Go do your room first.” 

I chuckled. Fair.

Okay. My room. I can part with the computer. I can part with the phone. I can part with the video game consoles. What I cannot and will not part with, is my external hard drive. That is a treasure chest of a whole life’s worth of music projects, art, writings, important documents, photos of my favorite life moments… ain’t happenin’. So I de-sheeted my bed, unzipped the mattress, stuffed the hard drive inside, and continued to gather my electronics.

A strange perception shift occurred to me on my way back downstairs with my computer, phone, Nintendo DS, Game Cube, and all their charging cables wrapped neatly together and stuffed into a Wal Mart bag. I felt a sense of… generously giving. Sure, it’s my stuff, and I bought it all, but I long to be free of “stuff” anyway, but don’t have the psychological discipline to execute.

I placed my electronics on the kitchen table.

“What else?” The leader man asked. I responded, “The boys in the other room know you’re here and what you asked. Let me check on potatoes and I’ll go bug them.”

“Boys?”

“Yes.”

“How many boys?”

“Three.”

He made a face. Maybe hesitation, maybe nerves, maybe surprise. His eyes squinted. I didn’t break eye contact. Was I bluffing? I believe he gathered that I was not.

Still not breaking eye contact until I knew the breakfast bar was near, I walked the few feet into the kitchen and stirred the potatoes.

I could feel his eyes still on me, feel his brain assessing and making calculations. For all he knew, I’d just told “the boys” to arm up and bide their time for an ambush when I give the signal. 

I stirred the potatoes a final time and followed up with, “Are you in a rush or are you being leisurely?” I was going to finish with, “ ’cause I can go rush them,” but there was no need. He waved me off knowing exactly my train of thought and said, “Don’t worry about them.” Lucky boys.

How strange it was to be receiving… generosity? Mercy? Caution? Any sort of softness from this man who threatened his way into my home. I’ll take it. Perhaps my whole kindness schtick was paying off.

There was silence for a few minutes as I drained and seasoned the potatoes. The whole night was starting to feel like good old-fashioned hosting dinner. If I’m the only one relinquishing expensive stuff, I’ll call that a win. I’m probably the least attached to stuff out of all of us.

The three men returned from downstairs with items that didn’t occur to me as valuable, but that the backwards cap guy and the mechanic guy deemed so. A very old desktop monitor and CPU which had been sitting dead in the basement for years, vintage aluminum signage that I got from the Pawn Stars store in Vegas, some crystal wine glasses, a record player, the controllers of a PS4 (the actual PS4 was currently in use with a different set of controllers upstairs). 

My husband has a way of making everyone feel comfortable, probably even while being robbed, and I surmised that’s why their load seemed light and why they didn’t pester him for his electronics. Or, perhaps they just forgot, or knew they didn’t have enough hands to carry it all away.

Image created by author using Dall-E 2. (Dall-E is not so good at “items”)

They set down their haul on the dinner table as I started to pull out dishes and serve. I served the four intruders first, and there was a small bowl left over. I asked my husband if he “would like some, my love,” while the leader man watched us and paid close attention to how we spoke to each other. 

We were no threat. We were also not worthy of violence or maliciousness, nor were we scared, NOR had police arrived after 25 minutes or so, meaning the leader man and his underlings showed no disrespect or threatening behavior toward us (apart from the whole, threatening their way into my house at gunpoint part). It took about four minutes max for the group to scarf down their potatoes, and then it was time for them to make their exit. 

The leader man ordered his companions to gather up what was on the table, and to be careful with the computers. I realized the gun was nowhere to be seen. I also realized he was not helping to carry any of the goods. How nice to be at the top of the food chain, I suppose.

He squared up to me just as he did when he first arrived in my backyard, and with a gurgle in his throat, said to me, “I thank you for showing us respect. This is a time of great need for my family. You are good people.”

I nodded, and thanked him for the acknowledgement.

He turned around and left. And then the four of them were gone, outta my yard and life as quickly as they’d trespassed into it. 

My husband and I stood there staring out the patio doors, watching them make their way back across the broken fence, even dropping the Wal Mart bag with all the chargers at one point.

“Well that was lucky,” he scoffed, finally breaking the silence. “I never got to call the police. My phone was dead.”