Retired Bus Driver's Harrowing Night of Fear An Excerpt from the Novel "A Dancing Bear"

It was at approximately this moment that Jack Durack conceived his intention to shoot his visitor dead. He had long been a firm believer in a man's right to defend himself with deadly force in his own home, or if necessary on his own front doorstep. And if this individual did not deserve to have deadly force applied to him, Jack Durack did not know what individual did. For starters, he had knocked on Durack's door in the dead of night while wearing a balaclava. Then he had identified himself -- falsely, in Durack's view -- as an escaped psychopath. Then he had asked for a cigarette when he was already smoking one. Out in his back shed, Jack Durack kept a number of fully loaded and carefully maintained firearms with which to shoot dead individuals of precisely this kind. The only trick was getting the individual to stay put on the doorstep somehow while he went back and got one, and returned to the front door with it, and shot the individual dead in the chest with it at point-blank range.

Withdrawing his unshaken hand, the individual tried a new approach. He asked Jack Durack if he had the time. Jack Durack declined to furnish an answer. He had already observed that the individual was wearing, was in fact looking at even now, an apparently functioning wrist-watch. Durack's intention to shoot him dead at point-blank range firmed. The only trick was getting him to stay put somehow while he adjourned to the back shed.

The individual now proceeded to offer a third story. He stated that his vehicle had run out of petrol just down the road, and asked if he might telephone for help from the interior of Durack's house. Durack replied that this would not be necessary, as he happened to have some petrol and a siphon out in his back shed. The individual replied that his vehicle required premium petrol and therefore he had better come in and make the phone call anyway. Durack retorted that the petrol out in his back shed was premium. The individual shifted from foot to foot and said he would just as soon come in and use the phone anyway, if that was okay with the old man.

But Jack Durack, sixty-seven, adamantly stood his ground. By now he had become aware of suspicious occurrences out on his nature strip. A fiery red dot kept glowing intermittently through his hedge, suggesting that a cigarette was being smoked by someone crouching on the other side of it. Furthermore, a strange grunting noise could be heard emanating from the same area, akin to the sound of an inebriated young male choking on withheld laughter.

On this basis Jack Durack formed the view that a second individual was present out on his nature strip, hiding behind his hedge. He resolved to gun down this individual too. He resolved to shoot him dead through the hedge as soon as he'd finished shooting the first individual dead at point-blank range in the chest on the doorstep. He planned to excuse himself from the front door very soon and hasten back to his cache of fully loaded firearms. He would return not only with a loaded double-barrelled shotgun but also with a substantial number of additional shells, in case one or both individuals failed to die instantly as a result of taking one barrel each to the chest area.

Now the individual on the doorstep made a series of crude attempts to lure Jack Durack out onto the nature strip. He asked if Durack would prefer to continue the conversation out under a streetlight. Durack cannily declined. Then the individual offered to show Durack where his broken-down automobile was. Durack provisionally agreed to accompany him to it, stipulating that he would first need to obtain his reading glasses from his back shed. The individual replied to the effect that he happened to have a spare pair out in his car. Durack said okay, but in order to get all the way out there he would need to go and fetch his walking stick. The individual offered to carry him out there. As this exchange proceeded, further bursts of stifled male laughter could distinctly be heard issuing from the hedge area.

By now the individual on the doorstep had started to behave in a decidedly erratic fashion. He was repeatedly seen to be looking at his wristwatch, making a further mockery of his earlier claim not to have the time. He appeared increasingly agitated. Jack Durack decided that the application of deadly force to the individual's chest area could be put off no longer.