"Crossbow"

"I need you to go to my house."

My mother was recovering from surgery at the home of my aunt and grandmother. I was visiting her and upon walking in, instantly recognized the concern in her voice. I'd heard it somewhere near a thousand times.

"Okay“. Why?"

Your sister called. xxxx is drunk and walking around the neighborhood."

xxxx was a longtime family friend. xxxx had a problem and would often require both his family and ours to intervene. Requesting this wasn't enough to justify my mother's concern. I knew there was more

"He has a crossbow."

"What the fuck? He has a fucking crossbow?"

"Yes. Can you go and get it away from him?"

"This is some favor, Mom"

The thing is. She knew I'd go. I knew I'd go. The wildcard here was xxxx and his crossbow.

My cousin, Doug was home for Christmas and privy to this conversation. I looked at him.

"Your ass is coming"

"Yeah...Okay."

Our family copes by laughing at those things that would scar normal people. We laugh to keep from crying. It's a trait my mother passed to her children by leading through example. Life is hard and often sad and sometimes to get through it, you have to take humor where ever you might happen upon it

"I need some clothes since you'll be by my house."

"What do you need?"

"My robe, a t-shirt, my sweat pants, some underwear..."

"Jesus Ma..."

"Oh just my thong..."

I winced noticeably as she laughed at me.

"You know, sometimes xxxx ends up at my house when he drinks"

"That's great mom. I have to go to your house to retrieve your underwear..."

"Thong..."

I paused, "Where there may or may not be a drunk man who may or may not have a crossbow?"

"Can you pick up some Ruby Red Squirt?"

This was fucking pointless.

As we drove to disarm this man and pick up my mother's undergarments, the mood in my car was understandably tense. Doug and I barely said a word, only briefly summarizing the task at hand.

"Fucking Crossbow?"

"Yeah, the absolute BEST ending here is an arrest”, Doug correctly observed.

The worst possible endings were obvious and too numerous to mention.

We rounded the corner and instantly saw a crowd had gathered. I sucked in my breath sharply and heard my cousin swear quietly, almost to himself. The tension was palpable. I literally had to make myself press the gas pedal, preparing myself for the flashing sirens and yellow tape that would cause a group of fifteen people to gather in the middle of a neighborhood on a Tuesday afternoon.

We approached and I was planning how I was going to deliver whatever this terrible news was to family and friends and the crowd of onlookers simultaneously scattered like a flock of dirty pigeons.

There was nothing there. They seemingly just congregated for reasons I still can't understand and then parted as I drove by.

"What the fuck?" was all I could muster

We pulled into the driveway of my mom's house and I opened the door. I was about to get out of the car when Doug said, almost to himself,

"I hope he isn't wandering around in there with that crossbow."

The absurdity of that statement and the mounting tension of the situation were perfectly summarized. I pressed my head against the steering wheel and began to laugh uncontrollably.

Doug and I built up our courage and entered my mom's house. There was an eerie silence in the house.

Undoubtedly, you have entered a dwelling and have been struck with an ominous feeling that someone is in the house with you.

Imagine that feeling and then imagine that person having a crossbow. The burst of laughter between my cousin and I seemed a very distant memory.
We tiptoed through the house looking left and right. It must have looked like a scene from a war movie.

We were combat weary soldiers walking cautiously through a rice-paddy scanning the fields for certain death. Of course, Doug and I weren't carrying M-16's and it wasn't Charlie who threatened us but xxxx and his crossbow

It struck me then.
What were we doing here? This was above and beyond the call of being neighborly. XXXX was on his own.

"Fuck this. Let’s get her clothes and get the fuck out of here."

I moved quickly. I grabbed my mom's robe and sweat suit in one quick motion and opened the drawer for that last item.

My desire to get the hell out of there should have been paramount to anything else and right up to that moment it was.

Forgetting the fact that a drunken man with a crossbow might happen upon us, I reached into my mom's underwear drawer and pulled out a pair and in one quick motion, threw it over my shoulder with the goal of hitting my cousin in the face with his aunt's unmentionables.

Doug bent backwards at the waist at almost 90 degrees as the underwear sailed within an inch of his nose. Dressed in a black coat,He looked strikingly similar to Keanu Reeves's slow motion contortion as he avoided the gunfire of Agent Smith in "The Matrix”.

"Come on man, what the fuck?!"

We both erupted into laughter again. Two idiots, standing in the middle of an old lady's room throwing her underwear at each other while a man with a crossbow lurked somewhere nearby.

We never crossed paths with xxxx or, more importantly, his crossbow.

I tell people the ending of the story and it's always met with disappointment.

"That's it? kind of anti-climactic"

The alternate and exciting climax is my cousin or me being shot with a crossbow.