Justin's outbursts of violence were not always directed at friends,
children, or strangers – sometimes he would assault the dead. At a
fairly young age Justin was allowed to graduate from a bb gun and
move up and on to a much larger bb gun, a shotgun. I think he was
about 12 when we went walking with his younger brother out and about
to shoot at stuff. Shooting at stuff was a Santaquin pastime that is
exactly what it sounds like and what you would call it when you asked
your parents permission to go.
A conversation may go like this:
“Hey
mom? Justin and Kurt and going shooting at stuff can I go with them?”
“Only if you be safe and don't shoot birds or cats.”
“Okay.”
Simpler times.
On this trip out to shoot at stuff we had indeed shot at generic
small birds known in the Santaquin dialect as 'Tweety Birds'. Tweety
birds were the type that my mom would threaten to make me eat if she
had found that I had killed one. I never had to eat one but the
threat was sufficient to keep my attempts to kill one under wraps. It
occurs to me that Atticus Finch may have been disappointed in our
youthful predilection towards killing harmless things. It seems odd
to me know to recall but it seems like I never intended to kill a
bird I just wanted to shoot it. That seems to my adult mind to be an
untenable piece of logic but that is how I felt. Excitement over the
hunt and the opportunity to affect something at a distance with my
power and then almost instant shame for having hurt an innocent
creature. Maybe trying to sort out those types of feeling is why
growing up is such a challenge. Back to the random shooting. We were
walking up a road that fed a small canyon up the road from our houses
and we smelled something amazingly foul. It was the most unpleasant
sensations of smell I had ever had but its reign at the top of my
olfactory aversions was extremely short lived. It was about to be
supplanted so massively that it would pale in comparison. We looked
over the side of the road and there was a magnificently dead and
bloated road-killed elk that had skin that was stretched to the
bursting point by the gasses of decomposition. Before we knew what
was happening and before we could stop him, Justin had leveled the
shotgun and shot the side of the elk, bursting its juicy remains out
of their skin containment system in a frothy mess. The smell went
from nearly unbearable to vomit inducing in less time then it took to
realize what he had done. I don't know if we all puked but I
definitely did and we were all dry heaving as we beat our retreat
down the canyon road. The air was so hot and the breeze just enough
to waft the smell with out dispersing it that it seemed like forever
before we were out of nose-shot of the horrible situation. I have
seen many people make really stupid impulsive decisions but I think
that still ranks up there with the best of the worst in my mind.
