Here’s the thing: I don’t want to mess around so much where guns are involved. I’ve seen the things at work. I’ve seen the way they change people. Guns are an off-switch for the living and anybody who dabbles with ‘The Private Lot’ is risking that long dark. Myself included.
I kennel Hector for this misadventure and the woman at the counter helps me download an app for livestreaming his activities. Nothing makes me feel old like fumbling around with phone technology, worrying about software compatibilities and apologizing for my cracked screen.
A few hours pass before I’m nervously forcing down a burger a few miles east of ‘The Private Lot’ and the only thing that calms me is watching Hector chew lettuce in his rented bed. It’s late autumn and the sun sets before I’m through. I pull a dark sweater over my head and change pants in the restaurant’s bathroom, switching from jeans to a pair of loose khakis in mucky brown.
“Going out to ‘The Private Lot’?” The cashier’s question catches me off guard. She hands me my change before I decide whether to lie. “Have fun out there.”
‘In 2018, Randall Harrison Sr. declared, apropos of nothing, that his forested half-acre and the cabin at its center were off-limits and that trespassers would be shot on sight. In a full-page classified, he detailed the process by which he had demarcated the land, having erected fences and posted signs, fulfilling and exceeding the qualities of property suggested by castle doctrine. He posted proof of ownership and specific GPS coordinates to be used in determining where his property began and, thus, where one should avoid. He claimed to have alerted the sheriff of all of this, though the department refused to comment.
Gun shots were heard in the area just three days later. Harrison Sr. reported having fired upon, and missed, three men in the forest. Two days later, another round of gunfire was reported neared the interstate-facing property line. Harrison Sr. reported another group- ‘at least five, this time.’ After a week of relative peace, Harrison Sr. posted a new classified, reiterating the security of his border.
Shots were fired nearly every night following for three weeks. A photo was taken of Harrison Sr. as he perused the supermarket about 15 days into these events. It is the portrait of a man on his last leg. Not long after, footage of ‘The Private Lot’ during these nightly ‘raids’ began to appear on the internet. Working backward, the pattern of events began when an anonymous user uploaded a photo of Harrison Sr.’s initial classified posting. A group of people, some of whom opposed the castle doctrine and others for whom no real motivation was necessary, decided to make a dangerous game of breaching ‘The Private Lot’s’ borders as often as possible and in increasingly dramatic ways.
Randall Harrison Sr. has not had a peaceful night, since.’
I expect to park a ways down the road from ‘The Private Lot’ for secrecy’s sake, to walk in quietly through the woods. What I don’t expect is having to park a ways down the road for the sheer overflow of traffic that has occurred. ‘The Private Lot’ has no parking area, per se, but a nearby trailhead has already filled up by the time I arrive, just an hour after twilight. Everyone there is dressed like me, with a hodgepodge tactical-hiker aesthetic in mind, but nobody seems particularly stealth-minded in action. A group of men laugh and clap shoulders near an ATV. Two women smoke pot in the back of a flatbed truck.
A group of guys waves me over on the way in. They’re sweaty, covered in mud and black paint. The shortest of them extends a hand.
“I’m Tom.” he says. “You looking for a group?”
“I was sort of thinking I’d go in alone.” I tell him. “Like, uh, in terms of infiltrating or whatever… seemed like a crowd would draw fire.”
“You’re coming with us.” He hands me a beer and a flashlight. “Let’s head back in, boys.”
We don’t sneak through Randall Harrison Sr.’s forest. We run. The men ahead of me are shouting and laughing and I hang back, guiltily thinking that maybe they’ll fall first to a gunshot or beartrap and I’ll save them, obviously, if I can, but no way in hell am I taking the first hit and probably no way in hell am I sticking around to save them, realistically.
It’s dark but they seem to know the trail and as we move through the forest I begin to recognize the trail myself, its trees spray-painted sickly psychedelic and its ground trampled to earth, littered with beer cans and cigarette butts. Lights ahead suggest Harrison Sr.’s cabin and the men do stop, then, at the forest’s edge, and all around I hear other people like us shaking in the brush. Just as I’m ready to ask what happens next, Randall Harrison Sr. himself cracks the front door and a renewed hush falls. Thinking the coast is clear, he steps onto his porch and lights a cigarette.
The crowd emerges from the trees all at once, screaming and cursing and shining lights in the man’s eyes. He startles and tries to cover his face. He reaches downward and I see the pistol on his belt and I shout “GUN” but nobody’s listening. He gropes for the door handle instead and stumbles back into the house. From the window we can see him cursing and stomping and holding his head, pulling at his hair. The crowd shouts and jeers for a few minutes more and disperses with the sweaty buzz of a mosh pit. I crack the beer and lose myself among strangers, feeling guilty and guilty for feeling that way.
-traveler
