My love Kelly, my friend George, me along with a few other drunks, dopers and derelicts have been camping on some BLM land in the southern Sierras. We’re on a hill overlooking a very pretty river for the past couple of weeks and other than the usual lunacy it's been a fairly mellow time. About the only excitement is when Jess Nichols comes by, who is not only totally insane but totally weird too. You see, no one knows if Jess is a Jessica or a Jesse.
He/She stands about 5'6", is fairly rotund and has a medium voice. He/She always wears work boots, bib overalls covered by a poncho, a big bandanna around his/her throat and a big floppy hat covered with roach clips because Jess loves to smoke pot. He/She rides a small motorcycle and is always well armed. He/She is always talking about shooting people but as far as I or anyone else knows, never has. We even asked his/her best friend Jack, a dope dealing gun runner who's known Jess for years about Jess's gender but he don't know either and nobody is ever going to ask Jess.
Whereever Jess goes folks deal with him/her as fast as possible so he/she can be on his/her way. When Jess enters a store the first employee to see him/her yells out, “Jess Nichols is in the store.” The manager comes running to give Jess personalized service. No waiting in line for Jess Nichols. Of all the people that we know up here only Jack and George can get along with Jess for more than five minutes.
The first time that I met him/her/it I had just walked into George’s trailer and had not even sat down or said one word when Jess says, "Now here's a real asshole who thinks that he knows it all but really don't know shit! Do ya boy?"
George laughs and I had to agree.
He/She had me pegged pretty well, but then he/she says, "And if ya mess with me, boy. I'll shoot yer goddamn nuts off." He then pulls out his/her pistol and points it at me, which I though was extremely rude. So like most other folks I always avoid Jess except when we all smoke grass together. That seems to mellow him/her out a bit, which exactly what we were doing when all the shooting started.
It was right across the road from us but in the trees so we couldn't see what was happening. It went on for two or three hours until George and Jess had had enough and went to investigate. George with his 30-30 and Jess with his/her long barreled .38.
They came back later to report that two guys in their 50's with their wives were practicing their quick draws and marksmanship for the up coming Frontier Days contest so there was nothing to worry about. However, we should stay away since they were practicing their drinking too, and some of their shots were going pretty wide. The shooting went on until sundown.
Next morning, Sunday, the shooting started up again bright and early and went on until about 3 p.m. when all of a sudden it stopped. We thought that they were probably out of ammo. Then one of their pick ups goes racing out of there and 20 minutes later the place is swarming with every kind of cop car, there's sheriff, CHP., Forest Circus and BLM Rangers, and even the paramedics show up.
We go and ask a cop, what's the haps?
The cops tells us that there's been a little accident then tried to shine us on, but Jess is not content with this flimsy explanation. He/She starts ragging on the cop who knows him/her so the cop gives us the skinny.
The men had spent all Saturday drinking and shooting while the women had just spent it drinking. That night they had a big argument, the wives were bored but the men just told them tough shit! This morning the men had been drinking and shooting while the women were drinking and getting more and more pissed about being neglected. Then just a little while ago, one of the wives get up, walks over to the target area and screams at the men, "I am sick of this shit! So if you're going to shoot something then shoot me, goddamn it!"
Her husband promptly drew and fired, hitting her right between the eyes, dead center, a perfect shot. He'd killed his wife of over 30 years in an instant and will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. The fastest gun in the west.
Jess Nichols nods his/her head saying, "Just goes to show, guns don't kill people, people kill people." He/She hops on his/her bike and is gone.