Some people may find this story to be shocking or will be outraged by it. I’m not a religious person, but by confessing it here, I’m hoping it will ease my conscience some. I’m not a professional writer, so please excuse the grammar or improper formatting in advance.
Let me provide some short background. I’m 31 and still live with my parents on a small beef cattle farm in the Midwest. Every year in the fall, my parents take off for a week and visit my aunt and uncle out of state. I’m an only child, and I take care of the place while they are gone. It was a year ago today that the events I’m about to describe occurred.
I have been diagnosed as Bi-Polar, and some of you may know that when people with my disorder are off their meds, they can act pretty flaky. If I’m off the meds for a couple of days, my moods go up and down with no rhyme or reason. I also have anger and impulsive behavior issues, which is why I still live at home.
My parents were gone for a few days, and it was a Friday about 8 in the morning. I had just finished chores and had the whole day ahead of me till evening feeding. Hadn’t been able to find my meds since mom left, but didn’t look too hard for them either. I had been having some bad thoughts though, and was thinking about acting on them.
Our farm is about 15 miles from a fairly large town of about 150,000 people. It has the normal stuff going on of a town that size, including some homeless people and vagrants that hang around begging from people during the day, and sleeping in the rescue mission at night. This was the area I was headed for this morning. I knew that the shelter normally boots them out around 8 – 8:30 so there are normally some people headed for city center on foot around this time of day.
I drove around and finally spotted a likely prospect. He had a straggly beard and hair, mismatched clothes, and of course a backpack with a bedroll blanket tied to it. I slowed down next to him and said “ hey, would you or any of your friends around here be interested in tearing down some sheetrock for a couple hours? I’ll pay $50, supply the tools, and buy lunch”. He replied “Yeah, but I’d want the lunch and $30 up front”. I said “it’s a deal, hop on in. Is burger king okay? “Sure is” he replied.
So I fished $30 from my wallet and gave it to him, then we got lunch. We drove to my house and I parked by the machine shed. I said “the stuff we need is in there. You can leave your pack in the truck”. So we went in and I grabbed a flat shovel from near the door and pointed to a wheelbarrow by the far wall. “Can you get the barrow?” “sure,” he replied. I followed him as he reached for the barrow. With the shovel in my left hand, I reached in my pocket and pulled out a can of bear repellent pepper spray. As he turned the barrow around, I let him have it right in the face with the spray. He immediately dropped the barrow, put his hands to his eyes, and screamed. “Fuck, Fuck!” I tossed the pepper spray on the floor and with both hands swung the shovel at his right knee like swinging a baseball bat. He went down screaming; now holding his knee. I brought the shovel back again and this time brought it down hard on his left hand. He howled again. I then bashed his left shoulder, then his right shoulder.
Satisfied he was fairly incapacitated I grabbed a Ziploc bag that I had prepared earlier from a shelf.