By Paul M. Summitt

I’ve been working as a newspaperman for almost thirty years now. Started off as a grunt in the Corps and got transferred to PAO. That’s the public affairs office for those of you with no military background. After the war or police action or whatever they’re calling it now, I got out and managed to get me a job as a cub reporter with this paper I still work for. It’s a small paper, on the edge of the city, but it’s a pretty good paper. Oh, I know, the information super highway and all that. Yes, the small paper is a dying breed. But it’s still a pretty good paper. People are going to miss it when it's gone.

As I said, I’ve been here for a while. Long enough now that the editor lets me write an occasional column on things that annoy me. And I’ve got the police beat. Been doing it long enough that all the local law enforcement types, city police, sheriff’s department, they all know me by my first name.

Just about nothing gets my goat anymore. Just about nothing. Oh all right, I’ll admit it. Those TV airheads they call reporters still get me going. Damn kids can’t write themselves out of a brown paper bag. What do they do in college anyway?

And those things they call live shots from the scene. How can you cover a story when you don’t take the time to find out what happened? How can you cover a story when you don’t have the slightest idea about what’s going on? The aftermath is not the story. But that seems to be all we viewers get from the evening news. Aftermath, with no explanation of what led up to the event, no explanation of the why’s things happened. As if the viewer can watch the aftermath and know that that’s all there was. Nothing came before it. Nothing came after it. Nothing’s all the viewer really gets.

This whole thing started one evening about ten o’clock. I don’t like to watch the late news. You usually get an even more watered down version of what was on the six. But that seems to be the only time I can sit down and see what stories the station stole from the newspaper. I mean I’ve watched some nights where they didn’t even rewrite the story. Just read it on the air as if it was theirs. But that night, this particular story that set me off was a live shot. Straight from the scene. No script, just the airhead trying to ad lib her way though the aftermath of what appeared to be a foiled robbery. The robber had a shotgun and had tried to rob the convenience store. Cops had had to kill the would be robber.

And here was this airhead trying to ad lib her way through the live shot.

"Yes, Pamela. The scene here is pretty gruesome."

Great opening line, you dumb ass-airhead. You really told the public something they needed to know there, didn’t you?

"Police here say that forty-seven year old Andrew Nathan Trumann walked into the convenience store behind me with a shotgun."

Seems to me that there was a comedian that had a bit about all assassins and criminals have three names. Who was that guy?

"Police arrived before Trumann could finish and he let the clerk leave. Then Trumann tried to shoot his way out."

Then the airhead back at the station asked another dumb question.

"Do we know anything about Andrew Nathan Trumann?"

"Yes, Pamela. Out sources tell us that Trumann was an ex-Marine Vietnam veteran who taught chemistry at the local high school."

That tears it. Give the public something to worry about their kids' high school teachers. And another thing, haven’t we vets caught enough crap about us being psychotic? Especially us Marines? I know of seven homeless Vietnam vets here in town that never cause any trouble. And what about all of the vets that are pillars of the community? Are they all psychos? Seems as if TV always does what that comedian said. They blame it on Marine Corps training. There in that couple of sentences the airhead had my attention.

I was mad!

I reached for the phone and dialed up the station. I was going to give those airheads a piece of my mind. I was going to tell them off. Didn’t they know that those few sentences had nothing to do with what happened? How could Marine Corps training and being a vet cause a man to be able to teach for almost twenty years and then suddenly walk into a convenience store with a shotgun and go nuts?

I hung up the phone without finishing dialing. I stared at the television set. He was a teacher. He didn’t go nuts. He let the clerk go. He waited on the cops.

I grabbed the remote and shut off the set as I headed for the door. Something was wrong here. I grabbed my coat and felt for my reporter’s notebook in the pocket as I closed the door to the apartment behind me. There was something terribly wrong with what the airhead had said.

What I’m going to tell you now is what I pieced together at the scene and during interviews with family members, friends, and other teachers. I think that this is what happened. I'm pretty sure that it may be pretty damn close anyway.

He was Andy to his friends and co-workers, Andrew Nathan when he did something that his mother didn’t appreciate, and Mr. Trumann to his students. He was well liked at school and loved at home according to all of the friends and family interviews. So why did it happen?

The police received a call at about nine-thirty-four that night that a man with a shotgun was going into the convenience store. The first car arrived at the scene at about nine-forty. The clerk, a little red-haired girl named Angela, came walking out about a minute later as more cars arrived. The officer in charge, a friend of mine by the name of Bill Freemont, got on the loud speaker and told the man inside to drop the shotgun and walk out with his hands over his head. Andy didn’t drop the shotgun and walked out of the store. He was warned twice and then Bill tried to shoot Andy in the leg. The shot almost knocked Andy down but it didn’t. Andy turned and raised the shotgun toward Bill. Bill and three other patrol officers fired back before Andy could fire the shotgun. Andy died at the scene.

When I got to the scene, Bill was standing off to the side. Internal Affairs had already taken his pistol and were talking to the other officers involved. I walked over to Bill and offered him a cigarette.

Bill was a nice guy in his late thirties. He was Mormon and a survivalist. I’d been to his house. He and his wife had a storeroom full of canned goods for the upcoming turmoil that they knew was going to knock civilization down to its knees.

Now, I tell you this because this background information is unimportant. Bill’s being Mormon and a survivalist had nothing to do with why he shot Andy. Bill shot Andy because Andy was raising a shotgun toward him and Bill wanted to live to play with his kids again the next day. But me being in the news business, these little things add to the background of the story. Fleshes out the facts, you know. Guess those airheads aren't the only ones who aren't Joe Friday.

"Figured you’d get here sooner or later," Bill said as he accepted the offered cigarette.

"What happened?" I asked offering a light.

"Crazy tried to aim a shotgun at me." He was shaking as he lit his cigarette off my lighter. "I had to shoot him."

"You OK?" I asked out of genuine concern.

"Yea, just shook. I ain’t never had to kill a man before." He tried to manage a weak smile to show he was all right but I could tell it was tearing him apart. I remember the first time I was shot at. I remember having to shoot at a man. To kill a man. It’s not a good feeling no matter what the movies say. It makes you sick. Sick inside. A sickness that never goes away. And that sickness changes you. Forever.

"You say he was crazy?"

Bill turned around and looked the other way.

"Yea, he must’ve been. I-A just told me a minute ago that the guy didn’t even have any shells in the shotgun. You gotta be crazy to aim an unloaded gun at a cop, don’t you?" Bill was fighting to keep from crying. He was now sick. He’s been changed. Forever.

Andy didn’t even have any shells in the shotgun. What was this guy doing?

Angela walked into Andy’s chemistry classroom and looked around for him. He was sitting over at his desk reading the assignment for the next week, familiarizing himself with the material he’d need to cover in the lectures this week before the experiments.

Angela reached behind her and quietly pulled the door closed. She was wearing the tight halter-top with the low V-neck and a short skirt. The halter-top was cut low enough to let the boys look down her cleavage but still wonder. The skirt was short in a similar way. Angela walked over toward Andy’s desk.

"Mr. Trumann?"

Andy looked up and saw here walking up to his desk.

"Yes, Angela? What can I do for you?"

Angela smiled, looked around back at the door, and then back at Andy.

"I just wanted to talk to you about my chemistry grade, Mr. Trumann." She put her arms behind her back, tightening up the material of the halter-top and making her breasts strain at the material. Her nipples were hard and standing through the halter-top material as she thought about what she was doing.

Andy didn’t fail to notice. A tightness in his groin let him know how long it had been since he had had any release. Andy cleared his throat.

"Well, if you study hard, I think you’ve got a very good chance of making a reasonable grade from this class."

Angela raised her arms over her head and stretched, raising the bottom of the halter-top so that the lower portion of her breasts showed.

"Oh, I was wondering if there was anything else that I might be able to do to improve my grade, you know?"

Andy strained to pull his eyes off her pert young breasts and look at her face.

"No, I think studying is going to be your best chance." He gulped as his eyes strayed down again to her breasts. "Yes, study hard and you’ll pass."

Disappointed, Angela lowered her arms and crossed them, covering them from his view.

"Oh." She turned and started to leave. Then over her shoulder said, "Well, if I fail then, it’s gonna be your fault."

I walked over to where Angela stood watching the coroner’s crew pick up Andy’s body.

"Miss, could I talk to you for a moment?"

Angela turned and looked at me with the biggest, widest brown eyes I think I’ve ever seen on a little girl. She was about eighteen, right out of high school, about five foot eight, maybe a hundred pounds with young perky breasts that hadn’t seen much handling yet. Right out of high school and right into a great, high paying job in an all-night convenience store. Don’t you love it that the economy’s pickin’ up and unemployment’s going down? She would probably end up marrying some grease monkey, have’n kids, getting a divorce, and then spend the rest of her life wondering why.

Angela told me that Mr. Trumann had been her chemistry teacher just the past semester. She’d liked him. He gave her a "C-" in the course. He gave her a "C-." She never stopped to consider that maybe she earned a "C-" and he didn’t give her anything.

"Mr. Trumann just walked in with the shotgun and told me everything was going to be alright. For me not to get worried. As soon as the police car arrived, he told me to go out to the officers. He said nothing was going to happen to me."

Angela talked non-stop. Typical excitable teenager. Then again, she’d just watched her teacher be shot down in the street. As she talked I thought about the lost potential of youth. I thought about the perky young breasts on the girls I had dated in high school, such a long, long time ago and the sagging middle-aged breasts of the women those girls had become. I thought of myself and the other young boys that had tried to handle those perky young breasts. How many of us were dead, died in war, died in cars, died in drug induced euphoria, died in loneliness. Lost potential. Lost people.

"Damn!" Andy voiced as he walked into the teacher’s lounge.

Brian turned and watched as Andy threw the papers he was holding at the trashcan. The throw missed and the papers fell on the floor around the plastic can.

"What’s the matter, Andy?" Brian watched Andy’s buns as Andy walked on past and to the coffee machine.

Andy reached into his pocket searching for change for the machine.

"Oh, this damn administration. I put in a request for new glassware in the lab and they sent me a letter saying for me to use what I’ve already got. It’s awful hard to get proper results from chipped, cracked, and broken glassware. Why can’t they understand that? How can I teach these kids what they need to know about chemistry under these conditions?

He finally found thirty cents and dropped the two coins into the machine and slammed the coffee black button.

Brian watched Andy’s ass for a moment and then got up from the easy chair he was sitting in and turned toward Andy. Slowly, he placed his hands on his hips and cocked his head slightly to one side.

"Well, like I’ve said before, you’re welcome to use my shoulder if you want to spend some time with me."

Andy closed his eyes and leaned his head forward into the coffee machine. His cup dropped down and began to fill with coffee.

"Brian, like I’ve said before, I like you as a co-worker, but that’s it. I’m not interested in what you’re offering. Please accept that and leave me alone."

The cup finished filling and Andy reached down and pulled the hot cup out. He turned and looked at Brian as he sipped at the hot coffee.

Brian glared at him and then started out of the room.

"Well, it’s your loss."

I found out later from the dispatcher that the call on the man with the shotgun had come in from a pay phone just across the parking lot from the convenience store. I listened to the tape. It was a male voice. Police said it must have been some passerby who didn’t want to be involved.

I got a copy of the tape and played it for one of Andy’s co-workers, a civics teacher by the name of Brian. Brian, a young man in his late twenties, looked a little feminine with his long blond hair and his slight build. If he was gay, what difference does that make concerning Andy? Were they lovers? No, they weren’t. Just co-workers, not even friends. Brian told me that Andy was a good-natured guy most of the time. Oh, he’d get frustrated with the administration of the school like everybody else. Brian said sometimes it seemed as if Andy took it more personally than the other teachers did when things didn’t go the way Andy wanted them to. Brian laughed and said Andy acted like somebody who needed to get laid every now and then. But he was married. That couldn’t be it. Married people didn’t need to get laid. They were married.

I played the tape of the 911 call for Brian. Brian said the voice on the tape was Andy’s.

So what was going on here? Andy called the police before he entered the convenience store. He was nice to Angela and even let her walk out when the first police arrived. He waited until there were at least four police officers on the scene before he walked out acting as if the shotgun he carried was fully loaded. Andy died at the scene.

It was beginning to look as if Andy had committed suicide. But why?

Andy sat in the examination room waiting. Dr. Michaels finally opened the door and waddled in.

"OK, Mr. Trumann, what seems to be the matter?"

"Like I told the nurse, I think I’m having chest pains. Since my dad died from a heart attack, I thought I’d better have it checked out."

Dr. Michaels looked over the medical chart on Andy and smiled as he looked up.

"Face it, Mr. Trumann. You’re just getting older. Test results are negative. You’re just not the man you used to be, that’s all there is to it."

I talked with his doctor. Doctor Michaels was a general practitioner. He stood about five foot six and weighed in about two hundred pounds. He looked through Andy’s medical records while I was standing there. No, no serious disease. Best of health. Beginning to show the signs of his forty-seven years, you know, aching joints, slight chest pains, muscle strain, but otherwise, best of health.

Andy sat down at the kitchen table with a spoon, a container of cottage cheese, and a glass of iced tea. He was hungry. It had been a long day. He pulled the top off the package of cottage cheese and dipped his spoon in. Barbara hadn’t been home when he got there. She didn’t like him eating straight from the container. He smiled as he opened his mouth and slid the spoon of cottage cheese in. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. He pulled the spoon out of his mouth and stuck it back into the container.

Just then he heard the back door open and Barbara walk in.

"Shit!" he said in a low voice with a mouthful of cottage cheese.

Barbara walked in carrying a bag from the bookstore.

"Great!" thought Andy. "She’s bought more of those damn romances."

Andy kept his head down and kept right on eating. Barbara stood at the other end of the table, glaring at him.

"You know I don’t like people eating straight out of the containers. Why do you do it? Just to make me mad?"

Andy shook his head slowly and looked up.

"Your right dear, I guess I just forgot. I’ll put it up."

Andy reached over and picked up the lid to the cottage cheese and put it back on the container. He liked the spoon and then took a long drink of the cold iced tea.

"Is that the iced tea for tonight?"

Andy stood up and turned away from her as he closed his eyes and counted to ten.

"Yes, Barb, I’m sorry. I should have checked with you before I poured myself a glass."

"It’s just that I work hard to make our money stretch each month and the food budget goes to hell when you and Matt just eat and drink anything you want whenever you want."

"I know honey, I should have checked."

"It’s just that you don’t make a whole lot of money, you know."

"And you don’t make a damn cent of our money, do you? But you sure know how to spend it, don’t you?" Andy thought as he turned to ask what she wanted him to make for supper.

I checked on his financial condition. No major problems there. I said no MAJOR problems. He was a teacher, for Christ’s sake.

Teachers are among the most under appreciated and under paid people in this country. Oh, I know, we blame them for the failure of our kids in school, but it’s not their fault completely. It’s the intellectuals at the university level and the administrators and all the red tape that screwed up education. Not the teachers. They ought to fire all the intellectuals and administrators and split their salaries between the teachers. Then maybe education would improve.

But, like I said, no major financial problems. It seemed Andy deposited his check electronically every month into he and his wife’s joint checking account. Apparently, his wife, Barbara, carried the checkbook. Except for the house payment, utilities, and normal monthly bills, Barbara wrote most of the checks. Normal for a family guy. I guess.

Andy sat at the kitchen table typing on his little laptop computer. He’d bought it used, two hundred dollars. It was just an old Tandy laptop with built in word processor. Had an old 8088 CPU and 640K memory but it was enough to make him feel like he was writing.

Barb had of course griped that they could have used that money for something else. He never sold anything of his writing anyway.

Matt walked up and just stood there, staring at Andy while he typed. Finally, Andy stopped typing and looked up.

"Yes?"

"Why didn’t you tell me Mom was in jail?"

Andy closed his eyes and sat back.

"How’d you find out?"

Matt walked forward and leaned over one of the other kitchen table chairs.

"Grandma."

Andy reached over and saved his work to the floppy disk, escaped out of the word processor, ejected the disk, and turned off the laptop.

"She didn’t have any right to tell you."

"You know how much she hates Mom. How long have you known?"

Andy let out a long breath and looked down at the table.

"A couple of weeks."

"Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?" Matt glared at Andy.

"I was trying to find the right time," Andy looked up at Matt. "She was pulled over for DUI and they ran her license. Turned out she had a couple of hot check warrants out for her."

Matt shoved the chair forward, slamming it against the table.

"It’s your fault! You were supposed to take care of her."

I checked with his family to see if anything had been bothering him lately. His teenage son Matt said that he and his father had been arguing about his grades recently but otherwise, no big deal. Seemed Andy was concerned that Matt wasn’t applying himself to his studies. Matt was a typical teenage male. Interested in comic books and girls. Not much worried about the future and what his grades had to do with that future.

Matt was Andy’s son from a previous marriage. Seemed Matt had told Andy that if Andy didn’t get off his back about the grades he’d go live with his mother. Andy told him he’d help him pack.

Andy lay in the bed watching as Barbara took off her clothes so she could put on her pajamas. The light on the nightstand on her side of the bed was all that was on. He watched as she took off the blouse revealing her breasts trapped tight in the white bra. She unbuttoned the waist of her jeans and unzipped them, pushing them down, and stepped out of them. She reached behind her to unsnap the bra as she noticed Andy watching her.

"Want something?" she smiled slightly.

The bra fell away as her breasts burst loose from their all day confinement, the nipples standing erect.

Andy smiled as she grabbed the waistband of her panties and, bending over, pushed them to the ground.

"Yea, why don’t you bring those things over here and give me a bust in the mouth?"

She stood up straight and looked at him for a moment, all her womanhood displayed for Andy to view. Then she shook her head and reached for her pajama top.

"No, I don’t feel like it. Besides that, you put in the garden today. I don’t think you’re up to it."

His wife, Barbara, an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties, kept saying that there were no problems. There was no reason for him to have done this. It must have been Vietnam. It must have been the Marine Corps. They’d been very happy the past eight years.

"Did Andy have any close friends? Maybe someone he served with or went to high school with? Someone that maybe he talks to every now and then?"

"I was his best friend. A wife and husband are supposed to be their own very best friends. That’s what makes a marriage work."

"Yes, I know. But was there a male friend who maybe he went to high school or college or served in the Marine Corps with?"

Turned out there was this guy named Peter that had been in Vietnam with Andy. Peter was a longhaired guitar player in some half-baked rock and blues band. Barbara said he was an alcoholic. She said every now and then Peter would call long distance collect or drop into town when the group was playing at one of the local bars. Andy would talk on the phone for an hour or more with Peter. Barbara never knew what they talked about. She didn’t like that. Peter was a bad influence on Andy. Andy had bought a motorcycle last year after seeing Peter had one during a visit. She’d made him get rid of it. He was just going to hurt himself on it.

She grudgingly gave me Peter’s agent’s number. I put in a call and asked the agent to have Peter call me. Collect.

Barbara went on to tell me that Andy had just put in their garden a few days earlier. It was late, but with the rain and all, you know, Andy pushed himself so hard all the time. He’d strained his back putting in the tomato plants and the cantaloupes. Andy hated cantaloupe. Barbara said he had put in the cantaloupe just for her. They loved their garden every year. The garden that Andy planted and Andy hoed and Andy harvested and Barbara ate. It was their garden and they liked it so very much. Why would he do this right after planting the garden? Who was going to take care of it and harvest it now?

"Mom, we’ve got to talk."

Andy’s mother, Wilma, put down her sewing and turned to face Andy.

"What about?"

"Did you tell Matt about his mother?"

Wilma returned to her sewing and smiled.

"Of course, I did. Someone had to."

Andy walked across the room and stood in front of his mother.

"I was going to, Mom! It was my place to do it! Not yours!"

Wilma stopped sewing and looked up at him again.

"Oh, come off it, Andy. You’d have never gotten around to it. You don’t like to deal with things like that. You’re nothing like your father."

Andy’s elderly mother, Wilma, kept asking me if I went to school with Andy. Andy had been such a good boy. He could’ve been a doctor if he’d just applied himself. He didn’t have to be a teacher. He could have been anything he’d wanted. Andy had been such a big disappointment to his father. Andy had wanted to be a writer. His father thought writers were pansies.

"His father died back in ‘85, you know. He was such a good man. Worked everyday of his life. He’d been in the war, too. The real one, you know, W-W-Two. Not that little one you boys lost. Yes, Andy was such a good boy but a terrible disappointment to his father. Did you know him in school?"

Maybe I did know him in school. Or maybe in the Corps. Or in the ‘Nam. Maybe he was me and hundreds of other young boys like us that grew up to be men who were trying to fill the imaginary shoes that our fathers once thought they wore.

I checked with his co-workers and his friends to see if anything was going on at work or in his personal life that his family might not know about. One of his co-workers, Carl the girl’s basketball coach, told me that Andy complained about how Barbara wasn’t interested in sex anymore. No vaginal. No anal. No oral. No Nuttin'! Not even a hand job.

Carl had laughed and told him he ought to try one of the basketball players. They were inexperienced but enthusiastic. Carl said Andy had said no. Andy wasn’t interested in that type of relationship. Besides, he did love his wife. He guessed he’d just wait. Maybe she’d get interested again someday.

"When did that conversation take place?" I asked Carl.

I was talking with Carl at the last official spring practice of the girl’s basketball team. Coach Carl turned from watching his girls bounce up and down the court and looked at me, thinking.

"Oh, I guess about four or five months ago. Back at the beginning of the semester."

David Abernathy, the high school principal, told me that Andy had complained about the lack of materials to properly teach chemistry all year.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. Seems like that’s all he ever did. Bitch about the lack of test tubes and chemicals."

"Maybe he just wanted to do his job right?"

"Oh, jeez, the only thing those kids ever learned in that chemistry class was to make stink bombs. They stunk up the whole school with those things. Don’t you know these kids don’t care about learning anything."

It’s good to know our school administrators have so much faith in the next generation. It’s also enlightening to know how confident they are concerning the teaching abilities of the teachers that work for them. I wonder what real value administrators are to the educational system.

Peter called me that night. Barbara may have been right. He sounded about half lit.

"Yea, you wanted to talk to me about Andy?"

"Yes, I’m sorry about your friend."

"Like they say, shit happens."

"How long had you known him?"

"We went through boot together, back in ‘67. Ended up in the ‘Nam in the same grunt unit. Spent a lot o’time in the bush together. Got wounded together. Twice. Andy was good people. His son’s middle name is Peter. Matthew Peter Trumann. The little selfish bastard. Takes after his mother a lot. Andy said he named the boy after me ‘cause I’d been such a good friend. I told him bullshit. Some friend. I let him marry that bitch. That’s worse than anything we went through in country."

"How many tours did you guys do?"

"Just one, that was enough. We were dumb but not stupid. We got the hell outta there just as soon as we could."

"Anything happen over there that might have caused this?"

"Hey man, were you there?"

"Force Recon, ‘68."

"Then you know it don’t mean nothin’. You get over it. You have to. Andy was just like the rest of us. Better’n some. All he wanted to do was get by. His biggest problem was bein’ responsible but not havin’ any authority. You know the old saying, I’m not allowed to drive the train, the whistle I can’t blow, I'm not allowed to designate how fast this train will go. I'm not allowed to shovel coal or even to clang the bell, but let the damn thing just the tracks and see who catches hell. That’s the way Andy’s life was. All the responsibility and no authority. The rest of us are used to it. Just sort of let it wash over us. Drink, play with the women, do drugs, anything to keep from thinkin’. Andy couldn’t do that. He was a failure as far as he was concerned. A failure for his father. A failure for his first wife. A failure for his son, Matt. A failure in his job. And a failure to that bitch, Barbara. She never let him forget it. No matter how much he made, no matter what he did, she just was never satisfied."

"I’m told he said he loved her."

"He didn’t love her. He just didn’t want to fail again. That’s all she was to him, another potential failure."

Peter didn’t paint the same rosy picture that Andy’s family and friends had painted. But then, the paint seemed to have been cracking and flaking on some of the pictures the others had been painting anyway. Maybe all of them were correct or maybe none of them were. Maybe Peter was transferring his own failures onto his friend Andy who he envied. I don’t know.

Andy looked at the shotgun for a few minutes and then stood up and carried it to the car. He drove down to the convenience store and parked in the parking lot next to the pay phone.

He sat there for a few minutes and then got out and walked over to the phone. He dropped a quarter into the slot and punched 911.

"Yes, listen, there’s a man with a shotgun walking into the convenience store at Fourth and Drucker. Hurry and send some officers."

Andy hung up the phone quickly. He turned and looked at the convenience store for a moment and then, grabbing the shotgun from the car seat, walked across the parking lot and into the store.

Angela was behind the counter. Andy looked at her for a moment. Maybe he should have taken her up on her offer. Angel turned and saw Andy with the shotgun.

"Mr. Trumann! What’re you doing with that?"

"Calm down, Angela. The police are on their way and you can leave as soon as they get here."

"But what’s going on?" Angela backed away from the counter.

"Nothing for you to worry about, honey. Now come on out here where you can get out the door as soon as they arrive."

Andy noticed the revolving blue lights in the mirror as the first patrol car pulled up into the parking lot in front of the convenience store.

"O.K.," he motioned her toward the door. "Get out. Everything’s going to be OK for you now."

Angela started for the door and stopped just as she was about to push the door open. She turned back and looked at Andy.

"Mr. Trumann?"

Andy sighed and looked at her.

"Yes, Angela?"

"Thanks for the C in chemistry this year."

Andy shook his head.

"You’re welcome, Angela. Now get out there to those officers so you’ll be safe."

"Yes, Sir."

Angela pushed the door open and ran out to the side of the patrol car. The officer pulled her down behind the car as another patrol car pulled up.

"It’s time," thought Andy. He took a big breath and lifted the shotgun up in front of his chest. Slowly he walked toward the door and pushed the door open.

"OK, hold it right there!" yelled one of the officers. "Drop the shotgun and put your hands over your head."

Andy looked out at the revolving lights and the police who had gathered at his call. The patrol cars’ headlights and spotlights were aimed at the door where he stood. It was hard to see in the glare.

"Finally," he thought, "someone is finally doing like I asked."

Andy stepped toward where he thought the voice had come from. Suddenly, Andy felt himself slammed back, his leg on fire. He almost fell, but caught himself. He looked down at his leg, a relatively small hole on the front side, a gaping, gory wound on the back.

"God," he thought, "it hurts more than I remember."

He staggered a moment and then righted himself and looked out at where the bullet had come from.

"No, I didn’t come this far for you to just wound me!" he thought.

He raised the shotgun, aiming it toward where he thought the voice had come from.

The first bullet caught him in the neck, knocking him back and the shotgun from his hands.

"Good," he thought, "that one should finish me." He looked down at the blood flowing onto his chest from the wound to his juggler vein. He didn’t really feel the rest of the bullets as the plowed into his chest covering him with his own blood. He looked up toward where the bullets were coming from and managed to speak one last time as a bullet hit him in the head.

"Thank you," he said quietly as he fell lifeless to the ground.

I think Andy did commit suicide. I think he was just tired of not living up to his potential. Our society is placing exceptionally strong conflicting requirements on men today. We’re suppose to be sensitive to the needs of others yet still be the one who takes care of the car when it breaks down and defends the honor of women when infringed. I think Andy just couldn’t take the conflict anymore. He couldn’t take feeling like a failure anymore.

A man needs to feel needed for more than fixing the car and bringing in the check. He needs to feel like some of what he works for is his. I don’t think Andy was getting any of these feelings anymore. I think his family failed him.

Now, I don’t expect my editor will let you read this column. It's not politically correct so I figure he’s going to say no. The loss is that you, the reader, are never going to know more than what the TV airheads tell you.

And maybe that’s all you need to know about Andy. He was a teacher. He was a former Marine. He was a Vietnam veteran. He was a father. He was a man.

Whether he believed it or not.

For more information concerning this work and others by Paul M. Summitt, Contact psummitt@summittnewmedia.com