Rules of Engagement
Rules of Engagement
Karl Warren, a former soldier and police officer seeking peace in Idaho, spots a potential threat to his beloved chickens. As anxiety grips him, memories of a deadly police standoff, where he was forced to shoot an armed soldier, surge to the surface.
Will his fear and guilt paralyze him, putting his flock at risk, or can he summon the courage to act?
It was only a .22 rifle, but with the right weapon and the right round, a person could take care of all manner of unfriendly creatures running around a farm.
Though I wasn’t the best shot, with a good scope, any menace within 100 yards or so would be dead or at least know their presence wasn’t welcome. I knew this because my parcel on the outskirts of Westwood was large enough for me to plink away with my varmint gun without a single complaint. Hell, the nearest neighbors, the Powells, were a mile down the road. I used a handful of tree stumps down the way from my barn as my targets, but I’d never dream of harming a living thing unless it was a threat. I had the rifle only to safeguard my girls, my chickens, not to fend off armed invaders.
I’d become more protective of these girls than I ever thought I could be. Though I grew up in semi-rural Missouri, I wasn’t a farm kid, and my family raised nothing more than a couple of dogs over the years. Chickens were something my friend Sanchez, the chief of Westwood PD, foisted on me. Even though they had a rooster, Big Red, as their sovereign, they were MY girls, and they became stand-ins for all the people I couldn’t save while on the job. I even named a few of them as such.
There was Cassandra, a tiny white bantam named after a little girl who thought the pain of life was too great to bear, so she ended it herself. I had a vibrant and loud Rhode Island Red named Mandy, after a vibrant and loud restaurant server. A stalker killed her, a stalker no one, us cops included, took seriously until it was too late. Swimmer was an odd-looking mixed breed with a crooked leg. She was named after a young guy whose swim team teammates bullied him so relentlessly because of his physical imperfections that he thought it best to steal his stepfather’s gun and kill himself. I got to help clean up that mess. I can’t change the past — but I can do what I can to save my chickens. So far, I’ve done a better job of protecting them than humans.
My time is open, and my responsibilities are few. I wake, drink cheap coffee on my porch, work to rehabilitate my twenty acres from a hay field back into a prairie, and tend to my flock. Since leaving the department, that’s been my life — that and some drinking.
The danger is different here. I don’t have bullies, stalkers, addicts, or pedophiles. I have crows, hawks, barn cats, and the worst of them all: coyotes. So far, I’ve been lucky not to lose a bird, but the threat has always been there.
Big Red knew there was danger around. Maybe he saw him, maybe he smelled him — if chickens do that. The big fella, also a Rhode Island Red, did what he was supposed to do. He alerted all the girls, who were straying a little too far afield, and started corralling them back toward the barn.
I was lucky to be outside in the garden, so I saw and heard him react. Since we’ve been having these scares, I've kept my .22 close at hand, outside with me, so I can grab it when I need it. I reached for it and took aim. I scanned the woods for a few moments but saw nothing.
I moved from the never-used goat pen back to the coop door. A group of the smaller bantam hens let out nervous clucks and started flitting through the wooden coop door, even though it was an hour before it was time for them to be corralled into their pen. Big Red was in the field with about ten of the girls, on watch as always, but they were twenty yards from the wood line. He tried to herd them back toward the barn. The long grasses and shrubs had built up near the woods, and I always worried when my flock wandered close.
The area was home to rabbits and opossums, but I knew it also provided cover for feral cats and coyotes. I regretted not burning the entire strip of brush between my field and the neighbor’s. It gave the predators a place to hide and blocked my clear field of fire.
Why didn’t I just go over and scare off whatever was out there? Why couldn’t I make enough human noise and leave enough scent by peeing to warn any four-legged trespasser that this was unsafe land for their kind? Why didn’t I do more than wait to kill something? Watching through the scope made the scene feel unreal, like a video I could observe without emotion or investment.
I may not be the best shot in the world, but at this distance, about 50 yards, with a firm firing position, I’d have great odds of hitting what I aimed at. I was standing, with my left hand leaning on a fence post and my rifle stock resting on my left thumb. Since I only had about a ten-yard-wide strip of wood to cover, the lateral range was nothing.
The girls in the field returned to pecking and scratching among the grasses and late-summer wildflowers, but Big Red remained alert. He knew something was up and that something was in the woods. Through the scope, I could see the signs of his distress: the extra upright tilt of his head, his quick head movements, and a firm gaze. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t just hurry the girls back home, but I was too busy watching and waiting to see what might happen next. Did I want something bad to happen? Or was I afraid to pull the trigger again?
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He was a mechanized infantryman. Never one of my favorites to begin with, but that’s my prejudice. This particular soldier was apparently a serial abuser, though we didn’t know his history at the time. We knew only that he was drunk, had a gun, and had his wife. I wasn’t on patrol, but they dispatched me to assist because I was on duty, nearby, working an investigation, and armed.
I was the first responder to their home and cocked it up pretty badly. I came in too hot, made too many demands on the guy, and made a mess of an already tense situation. Maybe I could have backed out and waited for the special response team, but with the wife present and in danger, I couldn’t just leave. I committed myself. The patrol supervisor arrived next on the scene and helped de-escalate as best he could, but the soldier was a fucking mess, out of his mind with alcohol and anger. We were in a no-bullshit showdown.
The wheatgrass and sagebrush moved as if something other than the wind were at work. I adjusted my aim and waited. Though I didn’t see the creature, I assumed it was a coyote. I could imagine its brown, black, and gray fur bunching up, ready to pounce on one of my girls. Whichever one it went after, Big Red would probably throw himself at the wild dog and make himself a target. That’s how “chicken” chickens are. They’re far braver than that slander suggests. The wind blew my memories back to the past.
One could say things had escalated poorly. Sergeant Davis kept talking to the infantryman in a casual-as-one-can-be voice, even as the soldier waved a pistol. Davis kept his hands in front of him so anyone could see he wasn’t holding anything. His job was to communicate with the guy. My job was to cover him. I was twelve feet away, with a good angle. I thought he should have drawn his weapon, but he was senior to me. What did I know?
His name was Corporal Jeffrey Pennington, and there was no calming him down. Sergeant Davis would get the man’s ravings under control for a brief moment or two, but then his demons would swirl with the booze and give him another reason to be angry and hateful toward the world. I waited, weapon at the ready. He waved his pistol around and held onto his wife’s belt, keeping her between us. Though I had a clean shot now and then, he hadn’t yet pointed his weapon at any of us. He talked a good game, but our limitations were clear: we can’t shoot unless there is imminent danger. There wasn’t yet. Just a lot of anger, alcohol, and a gun being waved around.
The grass and brush provided excellent concealment, but I could still shoot through them if I wanted. I could only see his back, but I had a good enough sense of where his head and heart would be that I felt I could shoot and take him out — but he hadn’t pointed the gun yet. He was just waiting and watching, weighing the odds of rushing into the field.
Maybe he had picked up a human scent. Maybe it was too early and too bright. Maybe he knew the chickens could put up a fight he wasn’t prepared for. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t violating the rules of engagement yet. He just sat there in the brush and the grass, sniffing the air, weighing the odds.
Maybe Pennington weighed the odds, too. Maybe he thought he could lash out with his anger and his gun and still be victorious. Maybe he thought he could kill his wife, and then we would solve his problem for him by killing him. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The coyote sank a little, and its rear end hiked up as if preparing for a rush. In the field, Big Red upped his game, squawking more and flapping his wings. The hens took heed and scrambled back home, more out of fear of Big Red than anything else.
“Fuck you and fuck her!” Pennington screamed at Davis. “My life is fucked! You can’t help me.”
We both noticed that Pennington was escalating and that his gun was moving closer to his wife’s head. Davis’s pleading had become just noise to the drunk soldier, and we both knew time was short. Davis didn’t drop his hands, but with the hand closer to me, his left, he curled his last three fingers, leaving only the thumb and forefinger, forming a pistol. We all knew this sign as a “go” sign, and it was the last thing I wanted to see. It meant I was free to shoot whenever I had a clear line of sight.
I never killed animals when I was younger. We weren’t a hunting or fishing family. I might have killed ants, cockroaches, and flies around the house as a kid, but I wasn’t one to pull butterflies’ wings off or swat at bees. Mother instilled this in me. She saved all her pent-up compassion for others and, despite the self-harm in her last few years, never killed spiders or bugs that wandered into our seemingly respectable home. Instead, she trapped and released them outside. I recall my brothers, before their untimely deaths, trapping and torturing a house mouse. When Mother found out, she raised holy hell for a week. Had Father been around, she’d have left it to him, but she had to handle discipline herself — so no video games for a week, though, of course, she relented after a few days.
The punishment, or at least the threat of it, worked, but what carried more weight was her delight every time she saw a butterfly or a moth. She marveled at them. For bees, she said, those clunky bugs had no business flying their fat bodies on such delicate, tiny wings. Every year at the state fair in Sedalia, she would drag me around to every animal in the exhibits — chickens, rabbits, and goats especially — and tell me everything she knew from her childhood as a 4-H kid. It wasn’t just the stick of punishment but the carrot of her love and amazement with these creatures, too. Her appreciation became infectious, and I never intentionally harmed any animal — even humans.
I couldn’t see the coyote’s head anymore; only its back and tail were twitching. It must have been doing that little dance that dogs and cats do before they attack. I should have shot.
Its tail twitched again, then stilled. Even in the waning light of the golden hour, I could see it through the scope. I could still have dropped the weapon and run out there, making noise, whooping and hollering. Instead, I waited, looking through the scope, finger on the trigger. Davis wasn’t there to give me the signal. I had to make the call.
I took my shot. The recoil from my service weapon, a Beretta 9mm, was minimal, allowing me to send one more round at Pennington’s head before he separated from his wife and collapsed. I expected a scream from the wife, but she stayed put until Davis pulled her toward him, all without a sound. My training activated, and I stepped in to kick the pistol away from his lifeless body.
I pushed the smell of blood from my mind, exhaled, and slowly squeezed the trigger. The crack of the rifle echoed off the low clouds and the nearby mountains. Big Red and the gang barely flinched, but I couldn’t see the wild dog’s tail. Did I get him? Was he lying in a heap, bleeding out, thinking of his family? Did I kill it outright, and was its breath and warmth leaving it as I stood here?
The chickens parted from my path as I made my way through the tall grass toward the treeline and hedgerows, where my bullet had gone. The wild roses had withered, but the ninebark grew full and flush, plenty of space for a varmint to hide and to cover his escape. No blood splatters. No nothing. He had vanished unseen. I’d need to be satisfied that he’d gotten the scare of his life, or so I told myself. At least by not killing him, I might rest a little easier tonight, easier than that night many years ago.