Joe was a guy. Joe was a guy who meant what he said. If Joe said he was going to have a beer, he had a beer. If Joe said he was going to walk his dog, he walked his dog. If Joe said he was going to shoot you in the balls, well…

Many years ago, I met Joe at the gun range. I had just moved to the area and was looking for a place to practice my favorite hobby—shooting guns. About six months earlier, I had visited the range and run into a guy who, over twenty years later, I now count as one of my best friends. Jim convinced me this was the club to join, so I applied for membership, got signed up, and then promptly sat at home doing very little over the winter. In late April, I decided to go up to the club and see what was going on. There was a note in the club newsletter that there was a new pistol “combat league” forming up, so I went up there on the day and got to know the guys.

The head of this ragtag group was Roy, a retired police officer who had been doing various kinds of competitive handgun shooting for decades, who wanted to set up a low-pressure, easygoing league and pass along some of his knowledge while having some fun. One of the other members was a long-time acquaintance of Roy’s, Joe.

On the day of our first match, Roy took Jim aside and said to him quietly:

“Jimmy, I need you to carry hot during the match today.”

This was a breach of general match etiquette, not to mention safety protocol.

“Roy, what do you mean? This is a cold range during matches.”

“Jimmy, Joe’s shooting the match today, and I need you to watch him. If he gets angry and goes nuts, I’m gonna need you to put him down.”

Roy had known Joe for many years, and evidently understood that when he was in stressful situations, Joe had a tendency to…get angry and do strange things.

That day, all went well, and Joe didn’t pop his top, but afterward, Jim and I were chatting with Roy about what he had asked Jim to do.

“Jimmy, you don’t understand. Joe, sometimes he gets angry and once he gets going, there’s no stopping him. Let me tell you a story about him.” Roy opened the cooler, grabbed a beer for each of us, and we settled down at the picnic table and listened.

“You see, this one time, Joey, he was walking around downtown at night a few summers ago. Don’t ask me why, but you know he doesn’t have a lot of money, so he just walks around for something to do—better than watching TV, I guess.”

Roy took a pull from his beer and paused.

“Well, you know Joe always carries that snubbie with him when he walks. And that night, he was walking down in a rough area—not the smartest idea, but hey, a man’s free to take a walk, right?

So he’s walking around, and it’s still hot out, and just got dark, and there’s these kids on the front porch and they start teasing him—they know he works for the social services, mowing old ladies’ lawns and stuff—and they start teasing him and then they follow him. Well, old Joe, after about a block, he stops in his tracks and turns around and faces these kids. And he says ‘you better back off,’ or something like that. And they keep teasing him. And he says ‘Back off now!’ And finally, he pulls out his snubbie and he points it at the ground in front of them. And they keep mouthing off, so he fucking shoots the ground in front of them! And the bullet splatters on the concrete and cuts the one kid’s leg up.

Well, I get a call from the town police saying they’ve got Joey in their cell, and he asked for me. So I drive all the way to town and talk to Joe. And he tells me this story about these big young men chasing him and attacking, and I talk to the cops for him, and eventually, somehow, it all goes away. I was a retired cop, and they figured my word was good. Somehow, the DA never charged him—maybe they thought he was doing a service keeping that neighborhood in line or something—and I thought I’d done a favor for a friend, and that’d be the end of it.

Well, that wasn’t the end, and sometimes I really wish I’d never done him that favor.”

Roy had finished his beer, and as the afternoon shadows got longer, he reached and grabbed another out of the cooler. This story wasn’t over.