GET a GUN
A few of my friends are fearful for me. And, friend or not, everyone I talk to has asked if I am frightened out here by myself in the woods with no phone or power. They ask me how I’ll get help if I am in an emergency, and then they ask me if I have a gun. Perhaps they are right and I should not be out here without a phone. Or a gun. Is a gun more useful than a phone in this setting? Maybe.
Am I frightened for myself? At times I am. Mostly in the first weeks I am just busy so I do not think about it during the day, but in the evening, as it gets dark outside, I can feel my fear come in on me. I always have been scared at night so sometimes it's hard for me to discern sensible “I should be afraid right now” fear from my usual level of “someone could come get me (even though it's highly unlikely)”, fear.
When I was little I had this fear that someone would come in the back door and put small bombs in our gumboots in the mudroom. I have no idea where that fear came from. How do images get into one's mind and then expand? I wondered then if it was perhaps a past life. I mean, I have no solid evidence of ever being alive before this life but I also have no idea how bombs, specifically someone planting bombs in my boots at the back door, came into my head. What I do know for absolute certain is that the fear was paralyzing at night. I liked it when it rained as it seemed to me that people would not be out putting bombs into gumboots in the rain. Fog, however, freaked me out as one couldn't see through it to see the men coming across the field to plant the bombs, and also, fog does weird things to sound, strange noises travel through fog. These noises made me fairly certain that strange men were creeping across the back paddock unnoticed in the fog. Coming with those little bombs, they looked like minute capsules in my active imagination.
I also thought that someone might come out from under the bed, or come into the room, and lay on me, hold me down, and I wouldn't be able to fight back. I decided that if my arms were under the blanket when they lay on me I'd have no ability to fight, so I never slept with my arms under the blankets. At least with my arms free, I figured, I could punch them or scratch them or something. I still find it uncomfortable to sleep with my arms under the blanket, even when cold. It’s one of the reasons I like layers of blankets, so I can have my arms semi covered but not completely under the blankets.
Generally, here in Vermont, I was feeling fairly confident about my level of safety from others (especially bomb wielding gum boot stuffers). I'd hired this locally born and bred guy who was probably in his 60’s to give me advice about cutting down some trees and some excavation projects, he owned a general landscaping business and had snow plowed the drive for me one time. One day when we were walking on my land assessing trees I said “sooooo, a lot of people have been saying I should get a gun cos I might not be safe here, how safe do you think I am?” I chuckled softly to indicate that I thought I was fairly safe, you know in that, tell me I'm being silly and all the people I know are silly, kinda way. Maybe a woman alone in the woods should not be posing questions like this to a man...you know exposing one's vulnerability or perhaps alternately, putting thoughts into someone's mind, but hey one has to trust that not everyone is a crazy killer I guess?
In response to my question, he says “ it's safe out here” I’m ready to take that. Drop the subject and then, he says, “there’s only been one murder”! One murder is one more than I’d really like to know happened anywhere near here. I laugh, nervously this time, “One murder?”
The MA border is about a mile down the hill from my land, Charlemont is the small town just across that border. It's one of those struggling, left behind, not sure what people do for work towns. Nestled in some beautiful natural resources. A few years back, two young guys from Charlemont decided to go up the hill, across into Vermont, and do some hunting. They're out in the woods in the semi-twilight.
At the same time, or just before these two scramble into the woods, a man and his wife who live in the same wooded area have an argument, you know the kind…where one says to the other ”I respectfully disagree with your learned opinion on this matter and wish you'd give me a moment alone to contemplate my thoughts” or perhaps maybe not quite that. And the man picks up a bucket and says “of course darling, I shall go out for a bit and leave you in peace and go gathering blueberries” Well, however it went down in terms of politeness, the man leaves the house in a strop and heads to the woods to look for berries. He’s out there, down behind bushes bent over, and, as is common in these parts, he has quite a lot of unruly hair and is burly. He's dressed in dark clothes.
A ways off in the same woods these two young guys are working themselves up into a bit of a nervous lather, as they’ve just realized that they're actually out in the woods and there could be bears or other dangerous wild things around, maybe Sasquatch. Off to their right they hear a rustling noise and see a dark foreboding shape looming and scrabbling behind some bushes, one freaks out and says “it's a bear!” and shoots a round of pellets into the bush. They hear a grunt and something falls down so they feel safe enough to go check it out. Walking behind the bush they see that it’s not a bear they have hit but a man. He's clearly badly wounded. He's lying on the ground and when he sees them he manages to gasp “help me…” but the chicken-shit-fucking-stupid-scared-shitless young idiots bolt and run down the hill to their car and speed off back down to MA.
The wife, back at the house, starts to get worried. I mean having a hissy fit and walking off into the woods is relatively normal for her husband, but not coming back for dinner is not. Around 11pm she calls the police. They come up and start searching the area and eventually find his body behind the bushes. He's got one bullet wound to the chest and has bled out on the ground.
The police take the wife in for questioning, she's the only suspect they have at the moment. The contentious nature of their relationship is quite well known in the area so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that she was the one to shoot him. It's on the local news. Finally, after three days of being a guilt ridden chicken shit idiot, one of the young guys comes up from MA and confesses to what happened. The wife is released to go home and grieve.
The guy telling me the story goes on to say that the woman actually worked in the hardware store in town and that several months later some guy from New York is in the store buying a bright orange jacket and hat. He comes to the counter to pay. He says, “I guess I need this gear...I hear people out here get shot at!” , the counter person, unfortunately, is the wife of the man shot in the woods. If I had been her, I may have pummeled him to the ground and stuffed his orange hat in his mouth then smothered him with his orange vest.
Anyway, this story doesn't really do much to calm me. I imagine some young dumb kids out for a spin with beers, seeing my driveway into the woods, hearing the myth that there's a cabin tucked somewhere down by a brook they decide to take a drive down my driveway because it’s dark and they’re like “I wonder if that goes to that cabin?”. Me, sitting alone in the dark, hearing their truck coming down the hill in the middle of the night, loud voices and stupidity.
I also think about sitting in the living room at night, reading by the fire, and looking up and seeing a face in the window. I’d definitely die on the spot if that happened. No need to kill me. The person at the window would probably freak out seeing me die from fright and run off and no-one would find me for days. Possibly a little chewed up by mice or ants. Although, there might be some question for a bit on the autopsy table as to whether my liver gave out from drinking too much before my heart gave out from fear. I can hear the Dr saying “gosh I'm not sure, I mean her liver is pretty well done for...but no, no...the actual cause of death is fear”
To alleviate some fear and anxiety I decide that tomorrow I shall attempt to find out about getting a phone line. There is evidence that there was a phone connection a long time ago, there are cut down broken cords running along the driveway and an old connector box on the outside of the house, so fingers crossed it shall not be a huge challenge to get one again. It'd be good to be able to call someone from here, I mean if one is going to die from fright it'd be nice to be able to at least croak some last fearful word to someone. Actually, all silliness aside, it'd be good to have a phone for emergency situations other than dying from fright, things like falling and breaking a leg, it could be helpful to be able to call an ambulance if that happens.
I have been much more cautious and considerate of some of the activities I undertake here alone. I started to build a platform around a tree that cantilevered out over the banking and brook. After I'd put down the first two support beams I had to contemplate how to place the third beam. I went and got the tall rickety ladder from behind the house and walked it down to the bottom of the banking by the brook, I leaned it up against the tree and got two rungs up and then I thought; “OK, Alison, is this sensible? You've got a bad ladder, planted in some squishy banking, leaning against a slippery tree, over a rock filled brook and you're planning on climbing this ladder to then use an electric drill to drill a hole and then bolt a beam onto a tree about 20’ above the ground. If you fall you will at best break an arm. Nope, nope, nothing about this is sensible.” And so, I took the ladder down and walked it back behind the house and sat for a moment thinking of another solution to the beam on the tree.
I went down into Turners Falls and stopped at the sports shop to look into getting a rifle. I was thinking maybe an air gun, just something that looks like a real big boy gun but can't actually kill a human. I was all ready to buy the one they had and then the store guy said “we don't actually have any pellets for that gun right now” Uhm, is this how Western MA manages gun control? I'm reminded of one of my favorite scenes in a Simpson episode in which Homer goes into a store and up to the gun sales section and spends some time with the sales person choosing a gun, he's paid for it and ready to take it when the sales rep says to him “come back in seven days when we've finished you're background check” and Homer yells, “seven days? But I’m angry NOW!” I want to say to the sales man in this small sports store, “I’m frightened NOW!” Instead I ask if he has any bear spray. I buy a big and small bear spray, the big one to be used against those bastards who may run across my yard and the small one to be used against those bastards who may make it up to my room.
This purchase does make me feel safer. I ponder some of the other steps I could take to make myself feel safer so that I might actually sleep a whole night. I consider what I am afraid of. What I know is that I do not want someone to be able to come into my room and get me while I’m sleeping, I'd at least like a chance of defending myself and getting away. I know I can't really make downstairs “bulletproof” so to speak as the windows are very easy to open or break and climb through. However, my little room upstairs I can make more secure. I have a horror of waking with someone in my room, or on me, at least if I can hear them trying to open the locked door I can die of fright with some forewarning, as opposed to waking up with them on me and then dying immediately, so I put a bolt on my bedroom door.
I have the spray by my bed so if they get inside the room I can spray the fuckers. I also pop out the screen of the little square window that's by my bed and make a rope ladder to drop down from the roof. I put a pair of old sneakers and a sweater, a water bottle, a snack bar and an LED flashlight into a waterproof tub in the woods up behind the cabin and figure if I got out of the bedroom and into the woods I can grab that stuff and then just run off down or up the road to the next house that I know people are living in.
I also have an alternative plan if I am not in my room locked away close to my escape route. If I am downstairs, or on the porch and someone comes down the drive and is looking dangerous or just fucking stupid, there’s sometimes not much difference. The plan is to go out onto the porch and yell as loud as I can “Fuck OFF!” and keep yelling fuck off. This plan occurred to me when I was thinking about some times in the past when I have felt threatened. I was working at a small art college in Manchester, NH, one of the classes I taught did not finish until 9:40pm. My car was parked in a school parking lot two blocks away from the building I taught in.
I was fine walking there, the streets are well lit, but as I entered the parking lot a man came out from behind the dumpster at the side of the building and said “hey lady, you got any money?” It was fairly clear instantly that the guy was old and drunk and probably not much of a threat, but still he scared the fucking shit out of me and so I yelled “ are you fucking kidding me?! It's fucking dark and you're hiding behind a bin and you leap out and scare the fucking shit out of me, FUCK OFF!” He said “sorry, sorry I didn't mean to scare you I just wanted some money” I did not calm down, instead I yelled “go the fuck away, Jesus!” I leapt into my car and drove away.
Anyway, in Vermont, I imagine it'll mostly be joy riders and so all my safety plans in place, I lock my bedroom door, make sure my bear spray is close by, and snuggle down for the first good sleep for a while.