Finally, the 911 operator came on. I gave her my address and told her what had happened. She asked if I knew what kind of gun was used, and I made a guess—a handgun for sure because I knew what my grandfather’s hunting rifles and shotguns sounded like and it wasn’t that, and possibly a .45 for the bigger explosion instead of the pop of a nine-millimeter. Ross’s buddy, a former Marine, had taken us target shooting once on a camping trip and I had been prepared to hate the collection of handguns he laid out, had even planned on using the experience as the basis for an antigun essay, but then discovered that I was an excellent shot, and preferred the stronger kick and noise of the .45. I have felt shamefully thrilled around guns ever since, a weird mix of a gun control supporter’s revulsion and an enthusiast’s attraction I can’t quite sort out.
The cops were there within minutes. The ceiling in my still-dark house flashed red-white-blue, red-white-blue. They blocked either end of the street and spent the next two and a half hours walking around with their Maglites looking for bullet casings. They inspected every little bit of trash in the gutters, and then they walked through my yard and Hip-Hop’s yard, flashing their lights along the outside walls and the windows and behind the bushes.
I didn’t go outside. I closed my curtains and kept my lights off and I stood at the very edge of my living room window in the corner where I could see through a half-inch space between the curtain and the wall. I made sure no light touched me, but I made sure I had an unobstructed view. I wanted to help, I wanted to know what had happened, but I also didn’t want to tell anyone that Ross was deployed, that I was alone and would be for the next five months.
There was a party in progress at Hip-Hop’s that night and everyone spilled out onto the front lawn. He gestured wildly and darted around between cops and a little knot of partygoers gathered off to one side, smoking and texting and arguing with each other. Every time a cop approached the front door, Hip-Hop headed him off. A girl with a ponytail screamed at someone on her phone and then stomped out to the street, where one of the cops had found a bullet hole in the back window of her car. The hole was small and neat. A few of my other neighbors came out to stand awkwardly in the street, talking to cops with notepads. José, a small-engine mechanic who lived next door to me and worked out of his backyard, and Mr. Enriquez, who tended a large menagerie of concrete yard animals, came out to talk, but Hip-Hop hovered within earshot and the conversations were short.
Eventually, another cop found a bullet casing in the front yard and a halfhearted cheer went up in the crowd. The cop marked the spot by picking up a child’s orange sand bucket from the flower bed and turning it upside down over the casing. Four bullet holes were found and noted: two in Hip-Hop’s kitchen wall, one through the wall in his living room, and one in the back window of the car parked out front. I bit through the last of my fingernails and went to bed, feeling my way in the dark.
I wondered if this brush with danger and the law would chasten Hip-Hop. Maybe things would quiet down. The night after the shooting, Hip-Hop and his buddies were up welding something until dawn, the lightning stutter of spark-light flashing around the edges of the closed garage door, and then an epic party started that lasted for three days. Everyone parked only on my side of the street, and trucks raced up and down the block, letting their after-market mufflers rattle all the car alarms awake. Stella and I agreed that if anything felt wrong when I came home from work at night, I could go spend the night at her house, a place she and Jake had bought that was only a couple of miles from me, but in a nicer neighborhood.
I thought of The Wire’s plot lines of retribution, how Avon Barksdale spent days “tooling up” and organizing a hit back when a competing drug network murdered two of his corner boys, knowing his credibility and reputation were at stake if he let it slide. I kept telling myself this situation was different, it was no big deal, this was rural California, for God’s sake, not Baltimore, but I also stopped sleeping.
I didn’t want to e-mail all of this to Ross and worry him if there was nothing he could do. But when I had gone by the police station later to ask about the shooting and give a description of the car I saw, I had asked the cop if he thought things would quiet down. He’d simply said, “There are other places to live.” For the first time, I considered base living.
Naval Air Station Lemoore shares a zip code with Lemoore proper, but for noise abatement reasons, the base sits about ten miles to the west of town. The Navy leases the surrounding fields to farmers who grow tomatoes and alfalfa and cotton. “Main Side” is where all of the housing and administrative offices are located, as well as the commissary and the Navy Exchange, the gym, the hospital, two elementary schools, and a bunch of different community centers. “Ops Side” is for the airstrips, the hangars, the weapons bunkers, and the shooting ranges. Both sides are guarded by checkpoints where you must stop and show ID, which I did on the morning I went and spoke to Ross’s commanding officer’s wife at her house on base. She had access on the special phone line only skippers are allowed, and I wanted Ross’s advice on whether I should break the lease and move somewhere else. The skipper passed the message on to Ross, who called me back the next day.
“I think you should move on base.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I hedged. “But the cops know about this guy now. He’ll be on their radar.”