Authors: Harry N. MacLean
"Could be, but you know," McElroy grinned, "we're getting real close to July Fourth, and maybe it could have been firecrackers."
Dunbar shook his head and drove on.
The next night, after dark, Dunbar was sitting in his driveway fooling around with his kids. Hearing a low rumble, he looked up and saw three pickups creeping by at about three miles an hour. A goddamn caravan, he thought. McElroy was driving the first truck, the green Dodge. A woman followed in the red Chevy, and another woman brought up the rear in another Chevy. The trio drove with their lights off and maintained a distance of about five yards between vehicles. They circled once and were gone.
It's true, David realized, what Lois said and everyone else in town believed: If you stick your neck out, if you try to help somebody that McElroy is after, then he turns on you. Dunbar felt a twinge of sympathy for Lois and a burst of anger toward the town. Why had McElroy gotten away with it for so long? Why hadn't somebody stood up to him before?
If the townspeople were concerned about the shooting, they did little to help the Bowenkamps. Aside from the Sumys, no one called and offered support, no one stopped by to see how they were doing, and no one offered to keep an eye on their house or to check in on them periodically. Occasionally, a friend would call to warn that McElroy was in town, but most people kept their distance. Business began to drop off at the B & B Grocery.
Although Lois had grown up in the area, she and Bo had not moved to Skidmore until 1972, which made them outsiders to some degree. And, while everybody in Skidmore liked Bo, many people found Lois a bit prickly, and some folks thought she was reaping what she had sown. After all, why on earth would a rational person refuse to sell Ken McElroy a pack of cigarettes?
As they had in the past, most people simply ignored McElroy's misdeeds, hoping he would settle down. At the same time, faint tremors of fear rippled through town. Only a few of the residents had actually met Ken McElroy, but everyone knew who he was, and that he was a mean, unpredictable, and dangerous man. They understood that you could offend him without knowing it, and once your name was on his list, it never came off.
As McElroy waged his campaign of harassment against the Bowenkamps and met no resistance from the lawmen who were paid to keep the peace, the townspeople began to realize that the community was standing alone, and that anyone who tried to do something about McElroy would stand alone, as well.
During this period, Ken McElroy spent a lot of time visiting friends in the small towns nearby. He sat and drank beer and played with the children, picking them up by their feet and telling them their ears were going to fall off. Over and over, he listed his grievances against Bo and talked about going back to straighten him out. "I go into town and see him regularly, just to check up on him," McElroy would say, laughing. "He needs to know I'm there all the time."
McElroy didn't laugh about Lois Bowenkamp. "She is a real mouthy lady," he would say. "She has the biggest mouth in northwest Missouri." Then he would smile and say, "The only thing wrong with Lois, beside her big mouth, is that I won't take her out. She wants to get personal with me, and I won't do it."
On the evening of June 27, shortly after getting home from the store, Bo went outside to do some yard work. He was watering flowers beside the house when McElroy pulled up in the Buick and parked in his usual spot by the drive, only a few feet away. Bo kept on watering the flowers and paid no attention to him, while Lois watched from the window. McElroy sat and stared at Bo through the car window for about thirty minutes, then started the car and slowly drove away. As he passed the house, McElroy stared long and hard at the window where Lois stood.
Bo's seventieth birthday, July 8, 1980, dawned hot and muggy. The dew lingered in the fields until the sun finally climbed over the trees and burned the moisture from the stalks and leaves. By midmorning the sun ruled the hazy sky, scorching the air and baking the earth. The south winds rose and swirled clouds of dust inside the tractor cabs, covering the farmers' skin with a sticky brown film.
In midafternoon, the air conditioner built into the wall at the rear of the B & B Grocery broke down. Bo called the electrician, who said he couldn't make it until early evening.
About the same time, Ken McElroy stopped in Birt Johnson's service station and ran into Eldon Everhart, whom McElroy had known since they were kids. McElroy began talking about Bo Bowenkamp.
"That old man needs a lesson taught to him," McElroy said. "I know he's an old man, but he still needs a lesson taught to him."
Red Smith had been tending bar at the D & G off and on since he had come to Skidmore a couple of years earlier. In his early fifties, Red was short and slight and had light orange hair speckled with gray. He was soft-spoken and easygoing and had few ambitions other than making it to the next day with a full belly, a roof over his head, and a few beers in the refrigerator. He did whatever work was available: driving a combine, hauling corn to the elevator, or tending bar.
On July 8, Ken McElroy spent a good part of the afternoon in the tavern drinking beer. To Red, who stayed out of his way and minded his own business, McElroy seemed almost calm, keeping to himself at the end of the bar. This was, in fact, one of the few times in the last month or so that McElroy hadn't been going on about what he was going to do to the old man.
Outside the tavern, four teenage boys were standing around and sitting on the fenders of various vehicles, passing the time with talk of cars and girls and jobs, hoping that something still might happen to interrupt the boredom of the small-town summer. Earlier, they had noticed McElroy's green Chevy pickup parked in front of the tavern. Now, they watched as McElroy left the tavern, got into the truck, and moved to the other side of the street, where he had a clear view of the rear of the grocery store.
Every year the whole family gathered on the Bowenkamp lawn after dinner to celebrate Bo's birthday with cake and ice cream and gifts. But not this year-such a gathering would have been an open invitation to trouble, so Bo and Lois closed the store at the usual time and ate a light supper alone. At about 7:30, Bo drove back to the store to meet the electrician. After bringing the stepladder out onto the loading dock so the electrician could get to the air conditioner, Bo began collecting cardboard boxes. He intended to cut them into pieces to put over the slats of the dock, so the parts could be set there without falling through to the ground. But first, he rested in his chair on the dock.
Earlier in the day, Bo had also noticed McElroy's green Chevy parked in front of the tavern. Now, the pickup was parked across the street in front of the post office, and Bo could see McElroy sitting alone in the truck, watching him. McElroy must have sat there for half an hour, while Bo waited for the electrician.
Bo was getting ready to start cutting up the boxes with an old butcher knife when he saw the green Chevy pull away from the post office. The truck headed up the hill, and Bo thought, Well, maybe it's over for the night. But McElroy circled the block, came in from behind, and pulled up alongside the loading dock, leaving just enough room to open his door.
McElroy got out of the truck and closed the door.
"Have you called the police?" he asked, looking up at Bo, who had put down his knife and come out onto the loading dock.
"No, I haven't," said Bo. "I don't have no reason to call the police."
"Are you mad at me?" said McElroy.
"No," said Bo. "I'm not mad at you."
Bo looked at McElroy, his T-shirt, slacks, and polished boots. Suddenly, something in him flared. "This is private property, you know." He looked McElroy in the eye. "And we want you off it."
McElroy flushed. "Nobody tells me what to do," he replied in a low, taut voice.
He turned away from Bo and walked over to the drive beside the tavern where the four boys lounged in clear view of the loading dock. Handing the boys a $5 bill, McElroy told them to go inside the tavern and get something to drink. Then he turned and walked back to the loading dock.
Bo had stepped back into the store to retrieve the knife and finish cutting up the cardboard boxes. When he turned around, he found himself staring into both barrels of McElroy's shotgun.
Is he just bluffing? Bo thought. Or is he really going to shoot? Sensing the answer, Bo jerked to his right. At the same moment, he heard the boom of the shotgun and felt a searing pain in the left side of his neck. He crumpled to the floor.
When the teenagers came into the tavern, they found Red Smith sitting on the customers' side of the bar and, behind it, Greg Clement, one of the two owners. One of the boys said that Ken McElroy had given them five dollars to get something to drink. Another one, John, said, "I think Ken's about to thump ol' Bo." An instant later a shotgun boomed only a few yards away, and the sound reverberated inside the tin building. Greg yelled for Red to lock the doors, and Red, figuring that McElroy might come in the rear door, rushed to lock it first. He then locked the front door and sat down. Stillness reigned in the bar for a few minutes, as if people feared that the sound of their voices might draw the malevolence inside.
Finally, Steve Day, another of the boys, started for the back door. Somebody yelled, "I wouldn't go out there if I was you, boy!" Steve unlocked the back door and stepped into the drive. Looking around, he noticed one of the doors on the loading dock move slightly.
Steve rushed up the stairs and stopped short at the sight of Bo lying on his back two or three feet inside the door. Blood gushed from two gaping holes in his neck, and his shirt and the floor around his head were drenched a deep red. He wasn't moving, but his mouth was open slightly. Steve knelt by his head, and the old man whispered, "Get help!"
Steve raced back to the bar and pounded on the back door, which had been locked again. "The old man's been shot!" he yelled. Finally, the door opened, and he went in and told what he had seen. Greg Clement called an ambulance, and Steve and John took off looking for the marshal.
The two boys found Dunbar at his friend Larry Rowlett's liquor store, along with Jim Jones, Rowlett's brother-in-law. Breathless, John blurted out the story. Rowlett and Jones took off for the grocery store. Dunbar got in his car, checked his pistol in the glove compartment, and drove over. Because only a few minutes had passed since the shooting, he thought McElroy might still be in the store somewhere. Envisioning a Starsky-and-Hutch-style Shootout, Dunbar drew his gun, crouched slightly, and entered through the front door. He walked slowly up and down the aisles, but found nobody. He returned to his car, radioed Maryville to report the shooting and then looked for Bo.
Meanwhile Jones and Rowlett climbed the stairs and found Bo lying in a pool of blood, like a dying bird. The air was stifling. Jones whipped off his T-shirt, and Rowlett helped him apply it to Bo's neck as a compress to stop the bleeding. Bo was gurgling and mumbling, but the only words they could make out were "I'm dying. I know I'm dying." Bo kept trying to get up, saying he wanted to go, but Jones and Rowlett held him down and tried to keep him calm.
When Dunbar reached the back of the store, blood was still pumping from Bo's neck into a trickle that ran across the floor and collected in a small puddle. Bo tried to talk, but he was swallowing blood and could make only gurgling noises. He was trying to tell Dunbar who shot him, and Dunbar reassured him he knew who did it. He told Bo not to talk.
Lois and Evelyn Sumy were sitting on the Bowenkamps' porch drinking coffee and enjoying the summer evening. About 8:30 Evelyn called her husband, Ronnie, to tell him they were moving to the north porch, where the air was cooler. Ronnie had his scanner on and he had heard the calls for the ambulance and police assistance at the grocery store. He asked where Bo was. When Evelyn told him, he said, "You better get up there. I think he's been shot."
When Lois and Evelyn arrived at the store, Russ Johnson was sitting in his patrol car in the driveway talking to one of the boys.
"What happened?" Lois asked, as she approached his door.
"Bo's been hurt," Johnson replied.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"He's been shot."
"If the law had done its job," Lois said bitterly, "this wouldn't have happened."
At the top of the stairs, Lois could see Bo lying inside the door, covered with blood. Jim Jones was kneeling at his head, dipping his fingers in a glass of water and bathing Bo's head. Larry Rowlett was pressing the T-shirt to his neck and trying to keep him quiet. Seeing Lois, Jim turned to Bo and said, "She's here, Bo, she's here."
Although Bo was barely conscious, he was making sounds, repeating the same word over and over. Jim thought he was saying his wife's name, "Loie, Loie." But Lois understood what he was really saying: "McElroy, McElroy."
The repairman was at the store when Lois and Evelyn arrived. The cops told him to leave, but Evelyn pleaded that he be allowed to stay and repair the air conditioner, which he did.