Holland Over and Under
None of the prisoners seemed evil. Many made rash and ill-informed decisions. Some younger ones stumbled into The System on trails cut by their families generations ago, families ruled by dissention and intimidation, absence, cutoff, and chaos. Love and the true ability to care for each other were shoved out of the frame of those families from substance abuse, mental health issues, poverty, new faces on the block in new colors issues, challenges that only breed contempt from the established classes, who regard them as enemy-others, classes that as far as the new families know, seem to have their sh*t together and lead well-ordered and productive lives.
That was their victimless crime, Not Having a Plan B, Falsely Imagining You’ve Run out of Options, Lack of Education, the crime against your basic humanity, one that breeds for generations, according to the system. High Tides and Green Grass were beyond their feeble reach. They became marginalized, then Outsiders, and later and irrevocably, Outlaws, Rogues, and Mavericks. That was The Immutable Law of the Concrete Jungle.
Billy and his crew carried heat and had a shootout with the cops. To intimidate the manager/gentleman in charge of the safe, they carried a beautiful shotgun, obtained from an associates’ robbery of a house in Pacific Palisades, a rare Holland and Holland over and under. The silver scrollwork on the side was chased with sweeping meadows of Edelweiss, and the stock was hand-checkered rosewood from Brazil, graced by the image of a mighty Black Forest stag in all his wild-animal glory.
“It was so beautiful and threatening we never had to use it. At least until the night were confronted by the LAPD. Some passing patrol car saw us through a window.”
“Just like that?”
“They called in the whole militia and surrounded the store.”
He took out his regulation handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. I had one too, but wore it tied around my neck like Yves Montand in Wages of Fear just to be different from the other prisoners.
“It was sacrilege, cutting off that barrel,” he sniffed, while his chestnut eyes grew misty “You should have seen the scrollwork. But we had to make it fit under my coat.”
I shook my head, “I don’t like it when vandals deface art. Vandalism cost the city millions every year.”
“I cost me my third strike and seven years. That’s what pissed them off. It wasn’t the money. It was the threat of bodily harm.”
“That makes sense. Their job is to protect and serve.”
“That’s true, and there’s the rub.”
©StevenHunley2019
https://youtu.be/cq6jquFrb08 Shotgun Junior Walker
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