He was shooting from on top of the school with the gun BENJY aUKAmp used to keep back at the bench in the tree grove in the corn field behind the school. BENJY WAS A JUNKIE Who'd been on the stuff from before junior high school, noone knew his history really, this was the early 1970's and everyone was afraid of hi,m, at the sa,me time he was a legend because allkinds of stories circulated about him. LIKE EVERYONE KNOWING HE KEPT THIS GUN HIDDA=EN BACK at the bench, but everryone bing afraid to go near it because it was Benjy's gun andd also because it was a gun, a handgun ans everyone knew Benjy had gotten it tio shoot somebody and that's why it was hidden up there, guns weren't hat special everyone went smallgame hunting with shotguns or deer hunting where I grew up but handguns that Benjy Aukamp got and hid were real specialbecause there was no question that it involved shooting a person and just knowing it was there, yea you could sneak up and dig it up anytime but noone would noone was gonna touch that gun. You stayed on the good side of Benjy like you did a snake that was poisonous, he had no real friends, looking back, I know he was on heroin because he was always on the nod, I wouldn't have been able to tell thsat at 13 , but I knew he was seriouly into heavy fucked up materes this didmn't have nothing to do with reefer, it had to do with stuff I was really scared about, but already was pssing into the underground world of the 70's into, I was into black Sabbath for instance, And I remembered the guy who got put on death row on our neighborhood for killing a50 year old printer and his 17 year old girl friend by tying them up and literally kicking them to death and stabbing them over and over and over, him an some friends had come t rob the guy after hours , but this guy evidently knew the printer would still be there, he told all the other people who were there for the robbery to wait outside where the safe was, he went in alone, duct taped the two at knife point and then killed them without any witnesses , just the three in that room, and they couldn't scream because there was ducy tape over their mouths, and blood in her hair and two really messy dead bodies and nobody ever knrw his motive foir doing this, he was 21 when he killed these two, quiet had an aura of menance about him, was a leader cause everyone was afraid of him, but in thise days that just meany everyone followed him, and parents had no idea that any of this even existed, theyt were busy building patios and buying boats and realizing the early stagews of the American dream, because the economy was expanding and even working men could afford thingsa. Its just that there was a dark undercurrent of nihilism and dread , I lived in, a shivering thing, I lived in alone in, exposed too, my parents couldn't protect me, they were too sheltered maybe I didn;'t want them too, everry factory town has its really dark sshit you come directy in contact with and your too young and its too much more overpowering and it gets right through to you, maybe it addicts you or violates you, I don't know, I never left it. Saw the world through its filter forever after. Pointless violence, I always had to live in a place where i'd always be afraid, I couldn't live in a safe place. I remember that's when the Manson killings happened and I had to sneak around reading Helter Skelter because m psrents wouldn't let me and I wanted to watch the T>V mvie so bad and couldn't, it was thre most popular things for kids there was, that movie. Everyone wanted to know more about manson. I don't know how many times I read that book, a lot I know that. It scared me, that's why I liked it. It scared me like my life, only more, it seemrd like the ultimate fix wheras my life was just nibbling around the edges. It definitely was the precursor to Columbine. Figure out the first sentence in thios piece yourself. That's why I write noir andlived the way I do.
Birth of a noir writer; Title