The Night Burglar

                                            The Night Burglar

by

Austin Mitchell

          I  was in  Wilson Chung’s bar in Nelson that evening having  a drink with some of my friends.

          “Me soon have to lock up the bar. Man send threat  come give me,” Wilson said to us.

          I and my friends, Alwyn and Bully looked at each other. It was just eight

o’clock.Wilson normally didn’t close his shop or bar until ten o’clock on a Saturday night.

              “Wilson, are you afraid of Mendy? He can’t do you anything. It was you who shot him and let them catch him and put him a prison,” Jeff Bulla, a villager remarked.

              I was drinking rum and milk. My friends were drinking stouts.

             “I know that you have your gun well oiled and waiting on him, Mister Chung,”Dorcas Rivers, another villager said.

            “Me hear that a him and six more a them broke out a prison. Him say him a go make him friend them kill me.”

            We left the bar to go for our girls and head to the dance. Even at the dance, we heard the rumors. It was even being said that Mendy was at the dance, but I never saw him.

            The next weekend we were back at Wilson’s bar drinking. He was now wearing a holstered gun.

            “Mister Chung, you don’t think that you are tempting gunmen to come and take away your gun from you. Most people who have guns don’t make anybody know,” I remarked.

            Several people in the bar included my friends nodded in agreement with me.

            “Duncan, if Mendy attack me, me ready for him. Me no fraid a him. Me draw me gun and shoot him.”

            “He is around the place. I saw him last night, he and about four men. They were down at Tenny’s place,” Jeff Bulla told us.

            “You told the police about them?” Wilson asked.

            “Are you mad, Mister Chung?  They know that I saw them down there,” Jeff replied.

            Two men walked into the bar, they were strangers to us. I saw  the look of recognition on Jeff’s face.

            Both men ordered beers and Wilson served them before going  back to sit on a stool. I looked over at Wilson and I could see that he was primed for action. I couldn’t tell if the men were armed  as they wore their shirts out of their pants.  Wlson’s hands were near his gun butt.

         Just as the two men finished their beers and were going to order again, a villager, Dave Reddy ran into the bar.

               “Mister Chung, they just shoot your brother, sir.”

            “What you say, Reddy, them shoot Jackson. Him no dead?”

                    “No sir, is in his leg and his shoulder he got the bullet them. They’ve gone with him to the hospital.”

          “You sure bout what you a say, Reddy?” Wilson asked.

         “I’m  sure about it sir.”

        “You know a who shoot him?”

         Reddy was about to speak when the two strangers caught his attention.

       “No sir.”

      “Me a go lock up the bar and go down there,” he told us.

      “But we are not finished drinking yet, Mister Chung,” one of the men replied.

      “Them just shoot me brother and me have to go look for him.”

                                                ***

       We went down to Goffe Springs in Wilson’s van.

       “It was Mendy who shot Jackson. I can swear I saw him shoot at Mister  Chung. He shot after me too, but I dived behind a tree,” Hustay Willis, Jackson’s yard man, told us.

           I wondered if Hustay wasn’t afraid of Mendy’s spies and wasn’t putting himself in a shooting gallery for Mendy’s men.

The police came and said that they were looking for Mendy but hadn’t found him. The told us that if we saw him we were to report at the station.

Wilson said that he would go to Linstead in the morning to look for Jackson. We all returned to Nelson in Wilson’s van.

The next week I saw Wilson and he told me that the doctor’s said that Jackson would pull through.

Jackson came out of hospital and was doing okay. He got better in a couple of weeks. Mendy and his cronies were still around. Several of us thought that the police were afraid of them. They must know that they were escaped convicts so why didn’t they try to arrest them.

Then a series of armed robberies hit the nearby communities.  Then police came into our communities looking for Mendy but he and his men had disaapeared.

About two months later I was in Wilson’s bar, when Mendy and his men came in.    

Immediately Wilson went for his gun. I dived for the floor as I wasn’t armed. My two friends ran out of the bar. I heard Wilson cry out that he had been hit. He fell to the floor and Mendy and his men ran out of the bar.

Wilson was taken to hospital the same night. People were speculating that he wouldn’t live but I wasn’t so sure. Along with the police we launched a manhunt for Mendy and his men but didn’t find them.

Wilson never made it and died a week later. His eighteen year old son, Chunkee, swore to get Mendy.

Chunkee was  now wearing Wilson’s gun. I wondered what was happening. Why didn’t the police take away the gun from Chunkee? I knew that he knew how to used it because I had seen him and his father practising on the range. But if Wilson had been no match for Mendy and his men, I didn’t expect Chunkee to stand up to them.

Then Mendy and a man named Cassius formed a partnership. Cassius would go around and collect from all the business places. Both Jackson and Chunkee refused to pay up and were threatened.

Chunkee and Mendy nearly shot it out at a dance which Chunkee kept. Mendy wanted Chunkee to give him the proceeds of the dance. Chunkee refused and told him that he wasn’t afraid of him or Cassius.

Then one night two of Mendy’s men tried to rob Chunkee. In the ensuing shootout one of the robbers was killed and the other wounded. The next week Mendy and Cassius launched a fierce attack on Chunkee. It was a good thing that Jackson was there. Cassius was killed and two more of Mendy’s men badly injured.

That night we learned that Mendy and his two remaining cronies had run out of bullets. We set off after them through the bushes with Chunkee and Jackson leading us. It was near daylight before we came upon their hideout. But Mendy was ready to fight. It seemed that he had resupplied himself with ammunition.

But after a fierce fight we managed to capture him and his cronies. Mendy and his cronies received life for Wison’s murder. At the last time of checking, Chunkee was still wearing his father’s gun. The End. Please visit the Austin G Mitchell pages at Amazon for a look at my books.