Authors: Harry N. MacLean
The big Buick and the green Dodge pickup with the white camper top sat a few feet beyond the Bowenkamp drive. Both vehicles were empty.
"Where're they at?" asked Evelyn, glancing nervously up and down the street.
"I have no idea," responded Lois anxiously. She worried about Bo, alone in the house.
Then McElroy and Trena appeared, walking down the street, approaching the Bowenkamps' house from the north. They swaggered as they passed the house, walking slowly and glancing from side to side, as if daring Lois or Evelyn, or anyone, to say or do anything.
"We're going to have to get some help," Lois said. She went into Evelyn's house and called her parents, then crossed the street to her own house. A few minutes later, her parents pulled up, parked a few feet north of the drive, and went inside. The four of them sat at the kitchen table and looked out the window, watching as McElroy lifted the hood on the Dodge pickup and stuck his head in the engine compartment. His huge belly flattened against the fender. After a minute or two, he emerged and stood with Trena, looking at the house, looking at the truck, then looking up and down the street.
Lois called the highway patrol, and a few minutes later McElroy dropped the hood on his pickup and drove away. Although the cops knew McElroy's truck had the most sophisticated communication equipment available, the patrol and the sheriff always broadcast their plans, giving McElroy plenty of warning.
Trooper Cash and Deputy Sheriff Johnson showed up within twenty minutes, and Lois explained what had happened. This time, she was a little more emphatic and antagonistic. "Now, is there anything you can do?" she asked testily.
Cash and Johnson responded that as long as McElroy stayed on public property, there was not a darn thing they could do.
"What about the time McElroy had an open knife in my store," Lois asked.
Nothing they could do about that, either, the officers said. If they pushed it, they would get him all riled up, with little chance of a successful prosecution.
Finally, the two officers left, Russ Johnson saying he would cruise the streets for a while and submit a written report later. Lois never found out whether he cruised the streets, but she did learn that no report of the incident was ever filed.
Not more than an hour had passed when McElroy showed up again in the green Dodge with Trena at his side. He parked in exactly the same spot as before, and up went the hood. Car trouble again. About forty-five minutes later, just as night fell, they left.
This time, Lois did not bother to call the patrol. She was beginning to understand that, as far as the law was concerned, she and Bo would be left to deal with Ken McElroy by themselves. She was also developing a bitter appreciation of McElroy's cunning. He is smart, she thought. He knows just what he can get away with. Lois sensed that McElroy had no fear of the law; taunting the lawmen seemed to be part of the fun.
Evelyn began keeping detailed notes of every incident. She found it strange that McElroy had focused his anger, or whatever it was, not on her, the person who had waited on his children, but on the Bowenkamps.
For his part, McElroy made light of harassing Bo. To his friends, Ken seemed to be enjoying the whole thing tremendously. He would laugh about scaring the old man and say he needed to be taught a lesson. The one thing he didn't laugh about was Lois. "The real problem," he would declare, "was that old bitch Bowenkamp." Whatever happened was her fault, "How could a woman be the boss of a man?" he would ask. "How could a man let a woman be the boss?"
One evening a few days after McElroy parked outside the Bowenkamp house, Cheryl Brown realized that, like it or not, she had become a part of what was happening to her parents. As she was driving home from town, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and recognized McElroy's green Dodge. She could make out a large form behind the wheel. As she slowed, the Dodge slowed, staying about ten yards behind her. When she turned into her drive, the Dodge slowed almost to a stop, but when she got to the house and looked back, the truck was gone.
McElroy let almost a full month pass before visiting the Bowenkamps again, just long enough for them to begin to relax and think maybe the trouble was over. On May 29, Bo and Lois arrived home from the store a few minutes after six and ate a light supper. The evening was bright and airy, with only a soft breeze from the south, and Bo and Lois decided to work outside awhile. They were pulling grass and weeds from the cracks in the sidewalk in front of the house when the green Dodge appeared from the south, heading toward them. The truck stopped a few feet away. Lois looked up and saw Ken and Trena in the cab, a hound in the back, and guns in the rear window. McElroy stared at Lois for a few seconds, then
got out of the truck, put on a pair of gloves, raised the hood, and began fooling around in the engine compartment. Trena watched every move the Bowenkamps made. Loud enough for them to hear, Lois said to Bo, "Maybe if we just ignore them, they'll take the hint and go away."
They didn't.
When Bo and Lois finished their chores, they sat on the porch outside their kitchen. Still, McElroy and Trena stayed. As night began to fall, Bo and Lois went inside the house and watched through the window. McElroy walked around his truck, thumped the side, and said something to the hound, which started barking. McElroy waited for the dog to stop, then he set it barking and howling again. He did this three or four times, then got in his truck and drove away. Well, thought Lois, at least it's over for tonight.
About forty-five minutes later, the green Dodge reappeared, moving slowly along the dark street until it reached the driveway.
BOOM! BOOM!
The reports shattered the evening stillness like cannon fire. Lois looked out the window and saw a large figure standing at the front of the truck, holding a shotgun, its barrel pointed to the sky. She turned off all the lights in the house, locked the doors, and went back to the window. Bo had gone to bed before the shooting and he stayed there, figuring he couldn't do much about it anyway. Across the street, the Sumys turned on their rear porch light. After a few minutes, the gunman got into the Dodge and left. Lois recognized Trena in the passenger seat as the truck passed by.
Lois kept watch by the window, thinking McElroy might be back. Sure enough, thirty minutes later, the Dodge crept alongside the house to the same parking spot.
BOOM!
This time, McElroy fired only once, but the explosion seemed closer and louder than before, and the sound rattled around inside the house.
After a few minutes of silence, the truck pulled slowly away.
Guns were part of everyday life in Skidmore. Probably half the pickups passing through town had gun racks in the rear window, and about half of those regularly carried rifles or shotguns. Kids grew up with guns, learning to shoot with .22s and hunting pheasant, deer, and raccoons in the fields and timber. A rural rite of passage occurred when a boy received his own shotgun or deer rifle for his thirteenth birthday. But the use of guns against fellow human beings was no more acceptable here than it was anywhere else. Males bragged about guns and 'scopes and steel-jacketed ammunition, about who was the best shot and how far away last fall's deer was when it fell, but pulling guns or discharging them in public or within the city limits was uncommon.
Word of the shooting spread throughout the community with dawn's light. The gunfire was the first indication that the candy incident might result in somebody getting hurt, and it was the focus of conversation at the cafe. McElroy's brazenness set the men on edge. Shooting at a farmer on a country road was one thing, but firing a shotgun over a house in town was another. As the day passed and nothing happened-no word of an investigation or an arrest, no police cars in town-the sense of McElroy's immunity from the law seemed confirmed.
For Bo and Lois, the gunfire began the transformation of anxiety into fear. McElroy was no longer simply an annoyance, he was a menace.
But the Bowenkamps hadn't given up completely on the law. Although Lois didn't call the cops that evening for fear of provoking McElroy, who was undoubtedly monitoring the police bands, she and Evelyn went to the sheriff's office in Maryville the next morning to report the incident. They spoke with Sheriff Roger Cronk, who said he would file a written report with the county prosecutor's office and see what happened. Sheriff Cronk told Lois she might be able to get a restraining order, but it would expire in thirty days. He promised nothing and, as far as the two women could tell, did nothing. His only advice was for Evelyn and Lois to "watch McElroy."
Legal remedies did exist. In addition to a local ordinance against discharging firearms within the city limit, the crime of assault in Missouri included discharging a weapon with the intent to put another in fear of bodily harm. Yet McElroy was neither charged nor arrested. He was not interviewed, nor were any formal statements taken from the witnesses. At a minimum, say veteran rural lawmen from the area, McElroy should have been rousted. Two or three cops should have gone to his farm the next day and told him that life would be hard for him if he hassled the Bowenkamps again. That was what the cops would have done to anyone else, and it was what they should have done to him. The cops knew it, McElroy knew it, and the community knew it.
Two days later, McElroy came again. Bo arrived home from work in the evening to find an empty McElroy pickup parked by his drive. Trena and Tammy were strutting up and down the street in front of the house, swaggering and acting tough, as if nobody could touch them. They did not speak to Bo or Lois or each other. They just kept walking back and forth in front of the house. At about seven o'clock, McElroy drove up in a second pickup and parked only a few yards from the drive. The barrel of a shotgun poked out the driver's window and exploded. BOOM! BOOM! Both pickups drove away immediately.
By ten o'clock, Bo had been in bed for two hours. Lois joined him and was just dozing off, when she heard another explosion, followed by the sound of wood cracking and splinters flying. My God, she thought, he's shooting into the house! She made her way through the darkened rooms and peeked out the kitchen window. The Sumys had turned off their lights, and the street was dark.
Lois could see McElroy standing at the front of his pickup beyond the cedar tree, facing the Bowenkamp house. A shotgun rested on his hip, the barrel angled up over the roof. He climbed in his truck, backed it up four or five feet, then got out. He stepped forward, holding the shotgun in front of him. BOOM! The sound faded and the night fell silent. BOOM! The shotgun roared again. Shaking, Lois waited for the sound of wood splintering or glass shattering, but heard nothing.
After a minute or two, McElroy cranked up his truck, revving the engine, until finally it reached a full roar. He held it there for a few seconds, then dropped it to a low, rumbling idle. He did this several times, until finally he clunked the gearshift into first and drove off.
Bo remained in bed, and Lois stayed frozen at the window for a few minutes, wondering whether he would come again, and whether next time he would fire into the house. Around midnight, sensing that the siege was over for the night, she went to bed.
In the morning Lois found the place in the tree where the pellets had chewed up the wood. She and Bo had never owned a gun, but after this incident Lois bought a 20-gauge shotgun, and after learning how to load and fire it, put it in her bedroom closet.
Lois didn't bother to call the highway patrol or the sheriff's office. For her last hope, her last line of defense, she turned to David Dunbar, who had now been marshal for six weeks. She called and asked him to come to the store. When he arrived, she took him to the back. "Did Russ Johnson tell you anything about Ken McElroy?" she asked.
"No," he replied, "the only thing Russ ever said was to kind of watch him, that he was a rough character."
"Well, David," she said, "we're having big problems with him. I know you have a family, and we've tried to keep you out of it, because I don't want him camped on your doorstep. But," she bore down on the words, "it's come to the point where one of these nights we're going to have to have some help."
"You know I don't have any police background," Dunbar said. "I've hunted a little, and practiced with my pistol, but that's it for my shooting experience."
"Well," said Lois, "we don't have any choice-we have to depend on you."
"I'll do my job," Dunbar said.
The thought of Lois going around town saying "Dunbar won't do his job" and the knowledge that the townspeople had knocked Russ Johnson for being afraid of McElroy made Dunbar decide he had better do something.
One evening, in late June, Dunbar spotted McElroy parked in front of the Bowenkamps' house. He drove up alongside the driver's window and said, "What are you doing here?"
"Just sitting here," McElroy replied, friendly enough.
"Have you been shooting your shotgun near the house?"