CARICATURE
OF IMMORTALITY
BILL & JERRY
(about 1970)
We didn’t have a race
problem in *****, Oklahoma. We had a crime problem.
Bill and Jerry were
friends.
Bill had opened a
restaurant on Seran Drive. He put it in the old used-to-be Dairy Queen across
from the Fire Station. Someone kept breaking in. Several times they took his
money. Other times, they took food from the freezer. They tore things up a
little, such as turning over tables and breaking a few things.
He was going broke.
With each break-in, he was getting more frustrated. The police told Bill there
was nothing they could do. There were no fingerprints and no clues. The
perpetrator would have to be caught red-handed.
He considered the
police to be inept. Twice in the last ten years, the entire Wewoka Police
Department was raked out due to corruption and drugs so he started his own
investigation and began interrogating each customer.
Jerry came in every
day. Like most of his customers, he was tired of hearing Bill complain about
his losses. He had teased him about many things over the years and he thought
he’d have a little fun with Bill. After all, they’d been friends for fifteen
years.
“Man, you know I did
all that,” Jerry told Bill one day. “I’m sorry man, I’ll put it back.”
He was only kidding.
He would have too, to
make sure his friend succeeded in business. Bill, however, was in no mood to be
teased. Jerry didn’t know that Bill had already been pushed to the point of no
return. He would not have listened to any explanation.
Bill watched Jerry
finish his breakfast and then waited for him to leave.
When he did, Bill
reached under the counter for his double-barreled shotgun. As Jerry crossed the
street toward the Fire Station, Bill quietly stepped out the door and took aim.
Before Jerry got to the middle of the street, Bill had shot his friend in the
back with both barrels. Jerry screamed once and fell dead.
Jerry was only trying
to help Bill. I knew the feeling all too well. I was only trying to help
Debbie. We both got shot with both barrels.
We didn’t have racial
problems in Wewoka at that time. We had a crime problem. Bill, being white, was
sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the cold blooded murder
of a black man. This was before there was a classification of “hate crime.”
Apparently Jerry didn’t believe Bill when he threatened to kill the person
responsible for the thefts.
Trouble was, Bill
didn’t hate Jerry; quite the opposite. Sometimes, a person is pushed so far he
can’t think straight. Too many times, the color of the skin overshadows all
reasoning.
This was the beginning
of our racial problems in Wewoka.
***
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