Give a Boy a Gun Read online

  — Dustin Williams

  Tenth Grade

  We moved to Middletown at the end of ninth grade, so tenth grade was my first year here. It’s so different from my old school. You expect it to be different, but what surprised me was the way it was different. It’s just a lot more rigid here. It’s like, are you in the popular crowd or not? There was a popular crowd at my old school, too, but they were still nice to most people. They didn’t act like if you weren’t one of them you didn’t deserve to exist.

  I remember coming home after the first week and telling my mom I didn’t like it. Some of the kids just weren’t nice at all. They’d push and curse in the hall, and it didn’t seem like any of the teachers really went out of their way to stop it. Mom said to lie low. I’ve always been pretty good at making friends, and she knew I’d find some at Middletown High. She said I only had three years to go. I remember thinking it sounded like an eternity.

  —Chelsea Baker, a transfer student to Middletown High School

  “There has never . . . been a cohort of kids that is so little affected by adult guidance and so attuned to a peer world. . . . We have removed grown-up wisdom and allowed [children] to drift into a self-constructed, highly relativistic world of friendship and peers.’”

  —Prof. William Damon, Stanford University, New York Times, 10/3/99

  One thing I don’t think a lot of people on the outside realize is how incredibly hard a football team trains. The hours of practice on the weekdays and weekends. Learning forty or fifty plays in your playbook, plus each week studying the films of the team you’re facing that Friday night. On top of that you’ve got schoolwork. And the weight and strength training you have to do on your own just to survive out there. The pressure is huge, and to be honest, there are guys who . . . well, the only way they have to blow off steam is fighting.

  — Dustin Williams

  I always felt Brendan and I had a special connection, even after the point, around the beginning of tenth grade, when we didn’t talk much anymore. Maybe it went back to seventh grade, when we were both new. Maybe it was because we were both quote, unquote “outcasts.” Anyway, you know how Brendan always seemed to attract trouble. There was just something about him. Every slight, real or imagined, made his fur go up. And he couldn’t back down. I mean, it wasn’t like he was trying to prove how tough he was. I really think there was something in him. He was helpless to resist it. Even when he was scared silly, he had to stand up to it.

  —Emily Kirsch

  A lot of what they’re saying about the football players is a load of crap. So what if we wore our jerseys to school on game days? All we were doing was trying to get some school spirit going. I’ve got news for you. You’re out there on the field banging heads with some 220-pound lineman for four quarters, you need some support from the stands. But it wasn’t like it was a rule. If you didn’t want to have school spirit, that was your business. But some of those guys went further than that. It was like they wanted to destroy school spirit.

  — Sam Flach

  It’s important that you look at this realistically. The issue of school spirit is certainly a factor in the tensions between these two groups of kids, but you have to believe it’s been blown out of proportion. You’re not going to have cheerleaders for the chess team. You’re not going to fill the bleachers with fans who cheer when a kid from Middletown takes his opponent’s rook. Even the chess players don’t want that. Of course we want to produce scholars and we take pride in our National Honor Society members. But that’s a matter of school pride, and it’s different from school spirit.

  — Dick Flanagan

  Approximately 750,000 deaths by firearms have occurred in this country since 1960.

  When you’re with someone a lot, they can change, but it’s gradual, so you’re not always aware of it. I think that’s what happened to all of us, but more to Brendan. Looking back on it, I realize he just got weirder and more and more twisted. It was like he stopped caring. He’d do whatever he wanted.

  There was one night when Gary wasn’t around. I think maybe he had to go see some psychologist with his mom. Brendan called up and wanted to go out. I’m older than most of the kids in my grade and I have a license, so I usually drive. Anyway, I supplied the car and Brendan supplied the booze. It was probably screwdrivers. We went up to the park and drank for a while and talked. I can’t remember now what we talked about, but with Brendan it was usually about how much he hated school and town and blah, blah, blah. Sometimes when I had a good buzz going, I could just tune him out.

  After a while Brendan wanted to get in the car again. We drove out of the park, and I thought we’d head back toward town, but he wanted to go the other way. The other way is basically nowhere. Just dark roads and farms and hills, but by then I was pretty trashed and couldn’t have cared less.

  We’re driving along this road way out in the country, and it’s a pretty cool night, so I’m kind of surprised when Brendan rolls down the window.

  I guess I was sort of aware that he took something out of his jacket. When I heard the bang, I thought one of the tires had blown out or Brendan had thrown a firecracker out of the window. That’s what it sounded like. Not really loud or anything. Then we came to the railroad crossing. The red lights were blinking and the gates were coming down, and out of the corner of my eye there’s a bright flash and I hear Bang! Bang! Only it’s louder because we’re stopped, and then there’s the sound of glass shattering. That’s when I realized Brendan was shooting at things.

  Five percent of students say they’ve seen another student with a gun in school.

  Bang! Bang! He shot out the other light. You know the smell of burned gunpowder? Then he looked across the seat at me and smiled. I was beyond caring. The railroad gates went up, and we kept driving. Brendan kept shooting. Mostly at signs. Then he opened the glove compartment so he had light while he put more bullets in the clip, or whatever they call it. The gun looked bigger and squarer than the one he’d showed us that time in the park.

  I never said a word. I didn’t tell him to stop. I didn’t turn around and go back to town. To be honest, I just didn’t care. I actually thought it was a little cool. Like we were a couple of outlaws on the run in Natural Born Killers.

  After a while it was late and we did head back to town. By the time we got to Brendan’s, just about every house on his street was dark. Everyone was asleep. Brendan and I sat for a while in the car. You could still smell the gunpowder. I realized that since we’d started driving, he’d hardly said a word.

  Twelve percent of students say they know another student who has brought a gun to school.

  He looked across the seat at me again. I hope this doesn’t sound sick, but it was a really sexy moment. I mean, he really was an outlaw and dangerous and unpredictable, and I happen to find that extremely attractive. I think he knew that. He started to move toward me, and I’m thinking, This is my boyfriend’s best friend. I dont believe this. But I really don’t think he cared. I really don’t.

  Anyway, I know this will sound weird after everything I’ve just said, but I wouldn’t let him touch me. I still don’t know why. I think maybe it was that dark thing inside him. He could be sexy and attractive, but it was too scary.

  —Allison Findley

  The school I came from had the same crowds as Middletown. There were athletes and brains and preppies and rah-rah girls and stoners. There were cliques, but they weren’t that big of a deal. Sometimes I felt like the real power of a clique was only in the minds of those kids who wished they were in it. If you didn’t care, you just went along with your life. At least, at my old school.

  — Chelsea Baker

  In ninth grade we might have done some drinking once or twice a month and smoked some pot or hash now and then. By tenth grade we were smashed every Friday and Saturday night. We were getting high in school. A couple of times we dropped acid in eighth period so we’d have a nice buzz going by the time school was over. Oh, and I’m not just
talking about Brendan, Allison, Gary, and me. This was a lot of kids. Athletes, too.

  — Ryan Clancy

  I’m not so far from being a teenager myself, and I can tell you that there’s a huge amount of denial among parents. Anyone who insists that “my kid isn’t drinking, my kid isn’t smoking pot, my kid isn’t having sex.” Maybe they’re right. But look at the statistics and you’ll know they can’t all be right.

  — F. Douglas Ellin

  Of the male youths who say it would be easy to obtain a gun, most say they can get a gun within twenty-four hours.

  TerminX: Ever C a dead person?

  Blkchokr: In a casket

  TerminX: What was it like?

  Blkchokr: It was my grandma. Not a lot different than when she was alive.

  Dayzd: LOL.

  Rebooto: You can go C my grandparents, Trm. They’re almost dead.

  TerminX: I mean it.

  Dayzd: What?

  TerminX: A dead person. Spark gone. Lifeless flesh.

  Blkchokr: I don’t want 2 talk about this.

  TerminX: Y?

  Blkchokr: So what’s tomorrow’s weather supposed 2 B?

  TerminX: Scares U?

  Blkchokr: Bothers me.

  Dayzd: I can C it.

  Rebooto: What’s 2 C?

  Dayzd: Eternal peace.

  Rebooto: Eternal nothingness.

  TerminX: Same difference.

  Blkchokr: I’m outahere.

  Dayzd: Later, Blk.

  Rebooto: Bye, Blk.

  TerminX: Imagine death.

  Dayzd: No pain.

  Rebooto: No gain.

  TerminX: Insane.

  Everything seemed to get more extreme [in tenth grade]. The battle lines became more clearly drawn, you know? I think a lot of things contributed to it. The Middletown Marauders went to the states that fall. It was the furthest a team from Middletown had gone in twenty-five years, and we were feeling pretty full of ourselves. We deserved it, considering how hard we’d worked. But it was kind of like Brendan and Gary were on a campaign to belittle what we’d done. Make it seem as if what we’d accomplished was meaningless and that we were basically just a bunch of dumb jocks with no future. They never said it in words. It was all done with looks and smirks and sniggers. But the football players heard them loud and clear.

  —Dustin Williams

  The weird thing is this year I actually started to make friends with some of the quote, unquote “popular” girls. I’m not really sure why. I think maybe it happened because I don’t judge people and they were sick of being in a crowd where they were judged all the time. Like, how cool is your car and how many free minutes do you get on your cell phone? I mean, who cares?

  But sometimes they forget. Like the whole judgment thing is so ingrained in them they can’t help it. I have a friend who has lots of piercings and he wears black all the time and he likes heavy metal. I was with him one day in the hall, and my “popular” friends gave me these looks. I saw them later and they were like, “How could you talk to him? How could you even acknowledge his presence?” They just couldn’t shake it.

  —Emily Kirsch

  Our school puts a significant emphasis on sports. I’m in the English department, and you can imagine how it feels when you hear that they’ve hired a private plane for $25,000 to take the team to a game. Do you have any idea how many classroom sets of Guterson, Shakespeare, and Lowry that would buy? But you also have to understand that a lot of these boys would be lost without athletics. They are simply never going to be scholars. This is the playing field where they’ve chosen to compete, and unfortunately it’s a lot more expensive than an English classroom. These boys are not studious; many of them will not go to college. A great season here may be the highlight of their life. But even if it isn’t, the lessons they learn about work and discipline on the team will serve them well in whatever they do. It just may be that for these boys those lessons are more important than Shakespeare’s sonnets.

  — Dick Flanagan

  At my old school you didn’t have this feeling that one crowd was so totally in power and better than all the rest. It was great if you were a super soccer player, but it was pretty cool if you could make your own movie, or draw or act or play the guitar really well. And it was just dumb to put someone down because they got good grades. But here, it’s like the only thing that matters is sports. You get straight A’s and people dump on you. It doesn’t make sense.

  —Chelsea Baker

  Running a school is like running a business. I know this may sound crass, but you’re producing a product. In our case, that product is a high school senior who is prepared to go on in the world and be successful in the community. So, in a way, you can say that we have to produce a product that the community approves of, that they will buy into. Sure, I would love to be Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver and produce a bunch of kids who value calculus over athletics, but if that’s not what the community wants, I’ll be out of a job.

  —Allen Curry

  Being on the football team made you special, and some guys definitely took advantage of that. They’d be late for class or curse right in front of a teacher, even in front of an administrator, and nothing serious would happen. Some of these guys acted like they ruled the school. It affected the way a lot of kids looked at us, especially the younger kids. It was like, “Hey, if I make the team, I can get away with that stuff too.” Be honest, deep down inside, who doesn’t want to be in the spotlight? Who doesn’t want to see their picture in the Middletown Reporter? It was a real temptation, and if you wanted to take advantage of it, you could have a great life. Believe me, it was a lot harder not to get a swelled head than to let yourself have one.

  — Dustin Williams

  They talked about guns and they talked about bombs. Gary and I were in McDonald’s once and someone left a newspaper on the table, and there was something about bombing an abortion clinic in it. So Gary’s like, “How do they do it?”

  And I’m like, “How do they do what?”

  And he says, “Make those bombs.”

  So I go, “Maybe they go to bomb school.”

  A couple of days later he said he wanted to go to the public library. And I’m like, “What for?”

  And he’s like, “I want to look at some books, maybe go on-line.”

  And I’m like, “You can do that at home.”

  In 1990 the Colt firearms company was on the brink of going out of business. One of the reasons was that federal officials had banned the production of the company’s AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. Hundreds of jobs would be lost if the company closed. The state of Connecticut used state pension funds to purchase 47 percent of the company and save it from going bankrupt. Colt used the money to market a new, slightly modified version of the assault rifle, now called the Sporter.

  But he says he has to do it at the library. I think he said something about not wanting anyone to trace it back to his computer. He could be a little strange.

  We’re in the library, and I’m over by the magazines, looking at all these stupid pictures of skinny, perfect girls with perfect hair and skin. It makes you wonder why all the rest of us don’t just crawl in some hole and do the world a favor and die. Anyway, Gary comes by with this big grin on his face, and I go, “What?”

  And he’s like, “Not here. Outside.”

  We get outside and he starts laughing, like, “You can’t believe this, Allison. I found everything I need to know.”

  “Need to know about what?” I ask.

  And he goes, “About making a bomb. Right in the good old library.”

  I’m not sure which he thought was cooler: the fact that he found the information, or the fact that he found it in the library.

  —Allison Findley

  “It is the wisdom and judgment of the [Connecticut State] General Assembly that the Sporter is an assault rifle—it’s just the AR-15 with a different name.”

  —Rep. Robert Godfrey

  Eve
ryone’s painting this picture of Brendan being the leader and Gary following, but there’s another side to it. Especially where those pipe bombs are concerned. Brendan wasn’t mechanical. I mean, he just wasn’t interested in that kind of thing. But Gary loved building stuff. He really had a talent for it. I remember going to his house for a birthday party and seeing what he’d done with LEGOs. He’d made LEGO robots and programmed them with his computer, so if they walked into something, they could turn around and go in another direction. It was pretty awesome. You hear the police reports about how well constructed and intricate those pipe bombs were. I guarantee you, that was Gary’s work.

  —Ryan Clancy

  “We say we want to regulate assault guns; then we go out and buy an assault gun factory. . . . The whole darn thing is so hypocritical it’s hard to imagine.”

  —Rep. David Oliver Thorp

  I had to take him to the hardware store and over the state line, where they sell fireworks. When we got to the [fireworks] stand, that was probably about the most excited I’d ever seen him. He wanted to know which ones had the most gunpowder. They told him, and those were the ones he bought.

  —Allison Findley

  Brendan and Gary had this big announcement they wanted to make. They were going to announce it on Saturday. So Allison drives up and Gary’s in the front seat and Brendan’s in the back, and we just take off. Listening to music, smoking, cruising. We probably drive for more than an hour and a half, until we’re way out in the middle of nowhere. Then we go down some dirt road, and we’re at this cabin. I thought Gary said it was his uncle’s, but anyway, no one’s around.

  So Gary opens the trunk and takes out this green duffel bag and all these big sheets of colored paper, like the kind you do school projects on. And we all go tromping off into the woods. The thing is I have no idea what’s going on. I’m like, “So what are we doing today? An art project?” And they’re not telling me. It’s an announcement, you know? I’m supposed to wait.