A new kind of gift
I have been blessed to bring many gifts to the reservations…food, clothing, blankets, supplies, and crafts. But never before have I needed to bring cinder blocks to women in a chipboard shed for protection from AK-47 firepower!
Unfortunately this time it was different. A short, middle-aged woman and her daughter were once living next door to a drug house and made the mistake of calling the cops after being threatened and assaulted. The police examined their minor wounds and told them: “Unless you get shot or stabbed, we aren’t arresting anyone”.
This led to years-long, fruitless appeals to housing and law enforcement that finally forced the two to flee from their neighbors. They found that living in the countryside of the reservation in their car was preferable, and thankfully, after a few wintery weeks, a concerned relative offered them a shed.
But it wasn’t enough. One of the former druggie neighbors moved to the countryside after hooking-up with a girl in a gang infested home a scant 200 yards from the shed where the women had sought refuge. He spotted them, and proceeded to turn the other gang members against them…after all they were Cop Snitches!
So now as I hurry to beat the setting Arizona sun, two warning lights are flashing through my mind. The women’s peaceful evening nights are being crashed by the sound of gunshots that are coming nearer and nearer their abode…I want to erect a barricade inside a corner of the shed with these interlocking cinderblocks, before dark when they will need them, and I want to be out of the area before darkness for the same reason!
After quickly assembling the low, barricaded cubicle I turn to the watchful two…”If you hear shots and hustle to this corner, you can sit down inside and call for help or just wait for the shooting to stop.”
They thank me, and I hurry off into the long shadows of the evening. I know that with the coming of Summer, the shed will be transformed
into an oven. Insulation and air conditioning will become a huge need. But for tonight, at least, the fear of death by a bullet tearing
through the thin wall has been lessened.
