"He Brought a Knife..to a gun fight."

'HE BROUGHT A KNIFE'

An 'Experience' Short Story





I was buying investment houses in Detroit and had just gone looking on Beresford in Highland Park. It was late afternoon and in August the urban canyons were holding the heat, to say nothing of the mugginess from the surrounding waters that all of Michigan is blessed with.

I aimed myself West on McNichols ('MACK-nick-uh-lus' in Detroit-speak), headed back to my office, and soon stopped at a party store. I chose this particular location because previous experience had taught me that the off-street parking was particularly easy for in-'n'-out.

I locked the car and went in to buy a Coke. In fact I bought two Cokes since I was thirsty enough to drain one bottle while waiting to pay, and had to go back for another one. Then holding this other in hand I went out to where I'd left the car in the shade, powered all the windows in the Lincoln to the 'down' position and used the air conditioning to blow the heated air out of the car.

I sat back in the seat, eased 'My Little Friend' from where it was making its presence felt inside my belt and just behind my left hip (I'm left handed) and after fastening the seatbelt I pulled up to the sidewalk from which position I could look both ways to watch for oncoming cars.

To my left the closest traffic was more than a block away, so since I was going to the right I pulled into the street---and after I was committed I realized the car approaching was doing so at what must have been at least eighty miles an hour! Since I was using all the available pavement he had an almighty handful of driving to do to get slowed before running into me.

Please understand that this contretemps was created by his excessive speed on a city street. My 'flash picture', from between the parked cars, gave me no reasonable opportunity to judge that his velocity was so far beyond the expected. I proceeded west.

Through my open windows I could hear a hullabaloo behind me and my rear-view made clear that the car in question was filled with the sort of denizen you might expect from the location, all with ball caps backwards or at least with the bills cocked-off at haphazard angles.

As I got to the red light at Hamilton, the street widened to offer a left turn lane and the following Impala screeched up along side of me, coming so close that there was only a couple of inches between our outside rear-view mirrors.

The vituperation coming from the occupants of the Chevy was voluminous enough that it could likely be heard for several blocks; most substantially coming from the just-past-teenage kid in the 'shotgun' seat. He'd leaned out of his window so far that his head was actually into the Lincoln. He screeched, 'You what-brayd cock-suckah, ahm gonna cut youah mutha-fuckin ayess!" And in furtherance thereof, he was waving some sort of fancy knife. There was enough of him inserted through my window frame that he was struggling as he tried to get his knife-hand in position, and his face was within a foot-or-so of my own.

'Little Friend', my Colt Combat Commander .45 pistol, was very readily available to my left hand. I jammed it into his face, and although I'd like to tell you I did it on purpose, it was actually happenstance that the National Match barrel, extending from the Commander-length slide, went right up his nose.

Although all such actions take place within a few short seconds, I retained enough presence of mind to be able to throw out a favorite bromide, ''You've brought a knife to a gun fight, you dumb shit!" I'd rammed the pistol against him hard enough that his head hit the top of my window opening as I pushed him away from me.



The gang-banger driver turned left through the red light and sped away, abandoning the knife and the lonely diddy-bop cap, both left laying in the street and leaving me to take a deep breath and reach for a Kleenex to wipe off the muzzle of 'Little Friend'.



"Life in The D".