A Handful of Evidence
by Billy J. Bourg


Triple Oaks had always been a quiet town. Children played in the streets, doors were left unlocked and windows were left open at night. It was a happy town that didn't know the meaning of violent crime and where everyone knew your  name.

That cold December morning was no different from any other December morning  in Triple Oaks. Amid the bustling, last minute Christmas shoppers, Derrick  Neils picked his way across Main Street. Had he known what awaited him on the other side of the street, he wouldn't have crossed. Heck, he wouldn't have even  gotten out of bed that morning. Of course, he should have expected something. Town rumor had it he had been fooling around with Jerry Winston's wife, and the whisper was that Jerry Winston hadn't always been law-abiding. And in a town  like Triple Oaks, town rumor is gospel and you're guilty even if proven innocent.

I had heard the rumor just the day before at Billy's Barber Shop and, from the talk of it, it seemed I was the last to know. "I swear on my sister's eyes,"  Billy the Barber had said. "It's gospel. Heard it told they were seen at the  Triple Oaks Motel three nights of last week."

Derrick whistled Jingle-Bells and sidestepped a group of jostling boys as he sprang onto the busy sidewalk. He flashed a row of bright whites in the  direction of a young lady who sauntered by. He casually looked back around and he turned to instant ice. When I saw his tanning-bed gold turn to ash, I knew  something was about to happen. Of course, I wasn't prepared for the deafening  explosion that followed.

I think everyone on the street jumped at least a little, and some of us more than a little. The front of Derrick's coat flapped violently. A second shot  rang out and the coat flapped again. Derrick stared unbelieving at the crimson  pool that started to form on the front of his jacket. The town seemed frozen in time. We all stared as Derrick took a half step backward. Confusion and fear  etching deep lines in his face, he collapsed to the ground. He shook  violently, blood oozing from his mouth, and, after several moments, finally lay still.

The crowd was too thick for anyone to see who had fired the shot. When the realization of what had transpired settled into the minds of the unsuspecting  townspeople, several women screamed and a child started crying. That seemed to  have a thawing effect on the other townspeople. As though stabbed with cattle  prods, the entire crowd bolted. Like a herd of stampeding buffalo, we roared  down Main Street. I was toward the back of
the human stampede and the faster I  ran, the faster they ran.

The children and women continued to scream as we roared toward the hardware  shop, the doors of which stood wide open and inviting. Just as the front of the  stampede reached the doors and gushed inside, I caught a reflection in the  broad shop windows of three sheriff's deputies in hot pursuit. Their guns were  drawn and their faces tense. The human stampede bottlenecked at the door and it gave the deputies the precious time they
needed to overtake the crowd.

Skidding to a stop, the deputies leveled their guns at the crowd. With fingers whitening around the triggers of their service revolvers, they screamed, almost in unison, "Jerry Winston, drop the gun!" At that very moment, I caught my own reflection in the store window. It was with great horror that I realized the gun was still in my hand….

End