" C r u e l ? "

Rupell described his own personae as that of a big dumb, farm boy. His appearance did not belie that idea. He had brown hair that already seemed insufficient for his large square head at only twenty years of age.

He had a pleasant face , with a ready smile and large brown eyes,but few would call him handsome.

When he walked his six - one frame carried his 185 Lb.s in a loping gait, that was reminiscent of a young farmer walking across the freshly plowed furrows of a corn field...

Generally he was well groomed compared to his peers , and he allowed as how he never had a
dental cavity yet... That was a marvel to those of us who had half of our teeth filled twice already.
His choice of civilian clothing spoke of his innate thrift. Although his shirts and winter clothing seemed perhaps pre- Air Force, it was the pants . John's Trousers were usually of the kind that a car mechanic, or janitor would seem normal in.

John was of third generation Russian and German stock. He actually was very perceptive and wholly brighter than he looked. He developed a plan to attend college while in The Air Force...

He had gotten himself assigned to straight night shifts on The Medicine Floor. So then he could catch a bus in the morning to attend some classes in Saint Louis, and be back in time to catch some Z's, before the 11 to 7 shift...

Well , it didn't work out... Maybe he was falling asleep on the job , or maybe he just couldn't handle it,but he was all bummed out.

I knew he had a gun in his room, but I didn't know he had three firearms and ammunition in his locker.
As I recall , it was a Monday morning in early April. Spring was still not up yet in the southern mid west, but there was no wind and the overcast was very high. The word " Crisp" comes to mind in terms of the weather outside...
Having worked the eve shift over the weekend I had Monday off. Too late for breakfast , I slid down the hall to the pool room to see if MacIntyre who had been my roommate for a time was there. He had the worst smelling feet of all time, he also had a very serviceable Mercury coup,which would comfortably transport us to the Diner.

Sure enough Yule," don't call me Yuki" was running the table all by himself. As I strolled into the room , I could plainly hear the strains of Tex Ritter's Album " Blood on the Saddle" wafting from John's room which was adjacent. Just then Paul Salms and Steve"The Bug" Friedman came in the other door.

Steve's nickname was short for Jitterbug which accolade he had earned in part because of his age nineteen, and partly because he could only seem to tell the truth on pay days. Certainly we all embellished our truths , but Steve embellished his lies...

When John opened his door,we all slouched in and we saw that he was cleaning his guns . On his bed he had some kind of a single shot 22 Cal. Rifle, and on his Table/Desk he
had a 45 Cal. Automatic, as well as a 38 Cal. pistol.
I hadn't seen so many guns at one time since Basic Training. The Bug was most interested in the rifle strangely enough, and he asked John some questions about it.
Yule said " Hey! Why don't we all go shoot some guns!!" And we were off ! All except for Paul, who had a Dental Appointment. It turned out that Yule had bought some kind of " Cuban Revolutionary Carbine ", the week before. He had purchased it from a large hardware store in Saint Louis at a very low price. Yule claimed the store got twenty five
cases of them, and all were packed in the usual preservative gun grease, which was very
hard to get off...

Yule drove us to a wooded area, that kind of stood out as unusual in the surrounding sea of fallow , flat fields. He parked just off of the old humped back road,near a cement bridge. The bridge spanned a fair sized stream, that passed through the woodland.
You could tell that the stream overflowed it's banks during winter storms. There were patches of icy puddles here and there, where the leafless sycamore trees still shaded the ground
with their black,marching trunks.

Thanks to John we brought some paper targets , and some cans and bottles we picked up along the road with us. The stream was a couple of feet deep and slow moving , so we tossed our collected refuse in and blazed away! Yule opined " We are really gettin our enjoys now! " And he was right !! We were all having fun! Then John put some of his paper targets up on trees, and we were all surprised at what a good shot I was... With a rifle that is.

Johns 45 Cal. Ammo was of the Military kind . Full metal jacket. He said" I want to see what these expensive things look like after they hit something..." Obviously those that went towards the cold water were gone,and digging one out of a frozen tree was an unlikely option...
So John made a serious mistake . Very clever John shot the 45 into the puddle of ice he was standing on. Now the Ice was only about two or three inches deep. And , I bet John thought the bullet would go right through it and stop in the soft earth underneath? Well John forgot to remember that the earth underneath was frozen as hard as the Devils heart...

Our group of fools stood in a sort of circle , peering down at the ice,trying to see where the bullet penetrated for what seemed like thirty seconds. Then just as some of our temporary gunshot deafness was beginning to dissipate , we heard and saw the bullet clatter on the ice!!! It had ricocheted straight up ! And so had fallen back to earth without noticeably
arcing. If it had traveled skyward at ten or fifteen degrees off the perpendicular , one of us would probably be dead, or in a great deal of pain...
Everyone calculated that immediately , except maybe for the Bug. However it was left unsaid as John picked up the spent bullet he prized.

Yule , John , and I decided it was light up time, and we thought aloud about getting some lunch. It was then that we began to speculate on what Steve was up to.

Steve was from Philadelphia Pa. I think he was Jewish from the North East , but he claimed to be Italian from south Philly. Whatever! He was a total city boy in any case and I felt he had never handled a weapon until Basic training.
Now we saw him stalking through the trees,
eyes focused on high in the renewed quiet of our small forest de jour. We heard the report of the rifle, and it seemed singular compared to our recent community din. As we approached Steve's ground , he called out " I got em ! I got em!! " He was pointing to a bird on the ground , not much bigger than a Robbin and kind of dark in color.
It seems, Steve was a better shot than me after all... But then I was only aiming at targets.....

As a woman might say" The poor thing!" It wasn't dead. No, it was flopping around at Steve's feet. We all stared at the pitiful creature with a broken wing ,that had just fallen a hundred feet to the merciless ground.

No one wanted to see the suffering continue , but John was the first to act.
He picked up a fallen branch, and attempted to club it out of it's misery. As we watched silently, I could see it was not having the intended effect.

To this day, I can't bare to see any of God's innocent creatures suffer. So, I gently staid John's hand , and moved him aside. Raising my brogan shod right foot above the bird, I brought it down smartly on the birds head!

John said " Man your cruel !!! "