Read More: A brief Q&A with Timothy O’Leary
I was crouched half-mast, watching my bird dog Belle nudge a sharp-tail out of a patch of tubey buffalo grass, when Dick Cheney shot me in the face. If you know anything about shotguns, the fact I’m alive to tell this story borders on a miracle. Lucky for me the Vice-President was shooting small—an ancient 20-gauge packed with bird shot, supposedly a gun Gerald Ford gave Dick in 1974 for running his Presidential campaign.
Jesus, if I have to hear that story one more time.
If he’d been using a grownup’s gun, a 12 or 16-gauge, it would’ve been closed-coffin. At the very least I’d be sucking dinner through a straw while watching cartoons from a chrome wheelchair. Fortunate the Vice-President couldn’t hit a barn door from thirty feet. He favors himself quite the sportsman, but after hunting and fishing with the guy for thirty years I can tell you there’s a lot of legend in Cheneyville. Fact is, Dick rattles easy. A real jumpy guy. When those wings whistle and a grouse goes vertical he does a little Halliburton two-step, all excited like he just got to invade another Arab country. A man that understands hunting plants himself, calmly leading the bird.
Ironically, his shitty hunting skills saved my life. I only took the tail-end of the load, though to this day I’ve no clue what he was shooting at. What I can say is that getting shot in the face is a life changing experience. I’d turned my head a touch when I heard the blast, and next thing I know I’m lifted off my feet and tipped over, pellets burrowing a quarter inch into my face and neck like big iron ticks.
The scalp is a big bleeder, and when there’s that much blood you can’t tell how hurt you are. I mean, nick your leg with a chainsaw and you can at least see if it’s still attached. But good luck figuring out a head wound. I lay there, wondering if this was it, one eye, blind with blood, the one I lost that day. Through the other I could see him bent at the waist, staring down on me, even whiter than normal. Corpse white, that artificial ticker maybe not pumping all the way to his brain. The sun at his back, his sweaty bald head and glasses reflecting light, there was this eerie halo around him, like some kind of warped angel. I thought, “If I’m dead and Cheney’s here, something’s gone terribly, terribly wrong.”
“Henry? For God’s sake Henry, are you alright?”
And that was the last time I ever saw Dick Cheney.
Next thing I know he’s whisked away by a couple Secret Service guys, Lurch and Larry I liked to call them. You’d have thought it was Dick that’d been shot, men yelling into their sleeves, “Angler out, Angler out.” Angler, his code name. Jesus, we don’t have anglers in the West, we have fishermen. But Dick has to be all Isaac Walton, or act like a British lord making a big ta-do. Cheney, man of the land, slayer of fish. Hell, when he casts a fly it’s more apt to end up in the back of someone’s head than a rainbow’s mouth. If Dick’s in the boat, de-barb those hooks and duck for cover!
Big black Escalades tore through my field, and like magic men surrounded Dick, shoving him like a sleeping bag head-first into the back. And me? I’m left lying in the dirt, blood piddling down my face, Belle whimpering as she circled me. I reached up to feel the lead pellets lodged in my skull before holding out a limp hand to comfort her, Belle sniffing hard to see if she smelled death.
Finally, a couple more of the big boys hoisted me up and laid me flat in the back of a four-wheeler, me yelling, “Don’t forget Belle,” and off we went, bouncing up and down on hard carpet, tearing up even more of my wheat. I smelled iron, unsure if it’s blood or just the normal odor of a government rig; the pungent bouquet of bullshit. Once we hit the highway they lit up the siren and it’s off to the hospital in Jackson Hole, shock and awe all the way, everything around pulling to the side, this being one instance when I appreciated executive power.
For the next hour they tweezed pellets out of my noggin and neck. Cleaned out my eye socket to someday fit me with a glass peeper. When I awoke, my wife Cindy was bedside, angry and worried, rocking in her seat, fists balled as if she’s preparing to mount a horse that don’t particularly want to be ridden.
“I told you not to go. Man’s a menace. But no, you’re a big shot. Hunting with the Vice President. Big goddamn deal. See what that gets you? Your head near blown off, and damn near blind.”
Cindy-speak for, “Oh my God, how are you feeling?” And me thinking it’s a good thing Dick didn’t kill me, because the next image in my mind is Cindy beating Cheney to death with that leather-strapped sawed-off pool cue she keeps under the front car seat. “Just in case I run into someone lacking manners,”ishow she explains the weapon.
A few minutes later some other pencil-neck crept into my room. I’d seen him a couple times hovering around Dick. Pure Washington, but “westernized” in a leather vest and shiny black shit-kickers.
“Mr. Thomas,” he said, and shakes his head with fake concern. “I’m Lawrence Hovey. I work for the Vice President. How are you? I’m so happy to see you awake and looking so good under the circumstances.” He smiled like a man that just farted and plans to blame the dog.
I eyed him, with what was left of me, and grunted. “Where’s Dick?”
“The Vice President was called back to Washington. An emergency. But he wanted me to check in on you, make sure you’re comfortable and have everything you need. We did some background on the surgeon here, a real top-notch fellow, as good as you could get anywhere in the country.”
I didn’t mention what little comfort that was for a man with an empty crater in his head. Instead, I pondered myself with an eye patch, like Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou.
“So, Mr. Thomas, as you can imagine this is a pretty sensitive situation. The press and all. If they get wind of a hunting accident they’ll have a field day. The Vice President has to deal with them on a daily basis. The personal intrusions, the insults, all part of his job. But you certainly didn’t sign up for that, did you? It’s important we have a discussion on the best way to handle this. You know, to protect you and your family. The press can be very disruptive.”
Cindy poked at him with her long index finger, the “finger of truth” I call it, and with the power to cut through bullshit. “Disruptive?” she yelled. “Know what’s disruptive? Being blind. Walking around with a white cane and a dog to lead you to the bathroom. Making your living with a tin cup and a dancing monkey as your partner. That’s disruptive.”
I appreciated Cindy’s flair for drama, but clearly I was only half blind and didn’t require any assistance from an animal. Turning towards Hovey I said, “You don’t need to worry. I’m not talking to the press,” which sounded like “Snu dan’t ned to voory,” my lips still rubbery from the anesthesia.
Fact is, if I wanted to tell tales about Dick Cheney, I’d have a lot more to talk about than his lack of field-sport skills. Dick and I, we’d been acquainted most of my life. We met at Natrona High School in Casper in the 50’s. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we shared a love of beer, which sometimes brings men together. After we graduated the government offered me a vacation abroad, all expenses paid, as in “C’mon kid, see the world, beginning with Vietnam.” And Dick, well, he had a real aversion to uniforms, racked up five deferments, and became one of the most legendary draft dodgers in Wyoming history.
I went off to Texas for boot camp then shipped overseas, first time I’d ever been outside of Wyoming. I didn’t follow politics much; at that age it was all ice-cold brew and girls. I just knew my Dad and Granddad had served their time in the big wars, and if the country needed me it was my duty to show up. Most of us in Wyoming felt that way, which is why I couldn’t figure Dick out.
The Army tended to regard country boys as pack mules, finding us jobs we’d be doing at home, primarily walking across fields shooting at stuff. But in Vietnam stuff tended to shoot back, which kind of changed the whole experience. There were a lot of adjustments. In Wyoming it sometimes might hit 100 degrees, but never with 100% humidity, and you don’t have seven-foot long snakes that can swallow a good-sized dog. Or little kids that will accept a Hershey or Mounds bar with one hand and shoot your nuts off with the other.
I did, however, learn a few useful skills. I can now rig a bicycle seat with a tiny bit of C4 so it blows your ass thirty feet skyward. I got real good at stuffing a grenade down a rabbit hole while running full-tilt. My marksmanship improved. I can pretty much plant one dead center in the brain bucket from two hundred yards. Or at least I could until Cheney shot out my sighting eye.
Of course, I’m no longer defending the war. When I got out and took the time to educate myself about the political hi-jinx and economic motivations, I developed a different perspective. I’m still proud of those of us that did the job. The army—the working grunts—ain’t about politics. It’s about getting done what needs to be done, following orders, and if you’re lucky, surviving.
But Cheney managed to avoid the good and bad of that life experience. Instead of boot camp he opted for Yale, where he promptly flunked out. Twice. Don’t get me wrong. Cheney never struck me so much as a dumb man as he did the overly-confident sort, a guy with an amazingly high opinion of himself. My guess is that he just thought he knew better than all those professors.
I ran into him when I was home on leave, Dick spending histime trying to talk yet another college into keeping him out of harm’s way. We ended up hoisting a few, Dick real curious about military life, and full of questions about Nam. He’s decided it was about the last place he wanted to be, and if the military came breathing down his neck he’d join the Coast Guard.
“The Coast Guard? Dick, you’ve never been near a body of water you couldn’t swim across while holding a can of Bud. What the hell do you know about boats and the ocean?”
“All I need to know is that any coast I’d be guarding would be seven thousand miles from Vietnam. Hell, maybe they’ll put me down south protecting Malibu Beach. Keep watch over all those girls in bikinis. The kind of duty I might enjoy.” Dick has a way of saying things, no matter how stupid, with such confidence that you almost want to believe him.
We were in his Dad’s pickup, three sheets to the wind, headed to our fourth watering hole when Dick drove into a ditch, taking out twenty feet of fence and awarding him the first of his two DUIs. Me? I ended up in the hospital, ten stitches in my forehead. It occurs to me now that the scars on my face are a map of Cheney’s screw-ups.
I lost track of him for quite a few years, and next thing I heard he’s a big shot in Washington, working first for some Congressman, and then as an assistant to President Ford. Pretty amazing to everyone who knew him back home. We all figured it must not be all that tough to become a success in Washington.
After my honorable discharge I married Cindy, who’d always been the one and only for me, and we worked my dad’s spread until he died. Then we sold his tired place, moved to Jackson Hole, and managed to buy a lot of land in the valley when it was just another nothing Wyoming town. Twenty years later the Richie Riches start moving in from everywhere, building fake multi-million dollar ranches and hunting lodges, a lot of them oil men that would visit now and then to see their money bubble out of the ground. Followed by the Hollywood-types. They could hide on a thousand acres, still find a good steak, and there was no income tax. “C’mon out to the ranch and we’ll go fly fishing or go skiing,” they’d say to their fancy friends.
During tourist season the streets filled with “cityidiots” buying two hundred dollar Stetsons, and silver-tipped Tony Llamas. And suddenly I’m selling ground to these knuckleheads for fifty, even a hundred times what I paid for it, and I wake up one day an average guy with a good bit of coin. Until then our biggest dream had been to make the bank payments, and maybe have enough left over to drive to Denver every couple years to see the Broncos play, this “rich” thing a total surprise.
Which is about the time I hooked up again with Cheney. He was running for Congress, comes to town for a fundraiser, and of course hits me up for a donation. Then Dick wants to shoot birds or an elk, maybe bring some of his big donors out to “his good friend Henry’s” spread to catch some cutthroat. Make him appear a man of the land. A real American.
Okay, Cindy doesn’t lie. I fell for it. I was pretend friends with Cheney. Me. Mr. Big Shot. I admit I loved going into town and have the boys ask, “How’s your buddy the Congressman?” I’m not the kind of guy would ever ask for anything, but somehow it made me feel important just knowing I could. Not proud of that, but it’s a fact.
To make it worse, Cheney kept working his way through Washington like a nasty strain of flu. Next thing you know he’s Secretary of Defense. Right, the guy who avoided the Army like a grungy toilet seat. The way I see it, if you’re put in charge of sending men to war, you ought to damn well have been there yourself, seen firsthand what human carnage looks like up close. Taking in a Rambo flick won’t do.
After that he’s a Bush fixture, so we weren’t surprised when he got named Vice President under Junior. Once a year or so I’d get the call: “Vice President Cheney is scheduled in Jackson and he’d like to come out to your place,” more an order than a request.
It had nothing to do with friendship. We never engaged in heartfelt discussions, just two guys getting older discussing all they had learned. No deep thinking from Dick, who tended to focus on his own paranoia, infused with a lot of hate. Cheney was like a turn-of-the–century aristocrat, Baron Baldy Von Uptight, he and his old white men cronies, living in the old days while the rest of the world moved on. Though we were waving the same flag, Dick’s America sure looked a lot different than mine.
But I wasn’t about to tell that story, that we were really just using each other. I have no desire to be seen wearing an eye patch in People Magazine or sitting across from Larry King. OK, I might like to sit with that Katie Couric. She’s got some firecracker in her. But no interest in the press. Not my style.
In other words, I never said a thing.
And guess who else never said a thing, Dick Cheney. You might’ve thought he’d call and apologize. Send over a nice bottle of scotch with a card, “Sorry I can’t shoot straight, keep an eye out for me.” Hell, I’d of laughed over that.
About a year later I saw he did it again. Apparently too embarrassed to hunt in Wyoming, Dick travelled to Texas and shot someone else in the face. Naturally, I’m interested. Dick’s hunting with an old fellow named Harry Whittington, and it’s pretty much a repeat performance, only way rougher for Harry. He’s also hit in the chest, and while he’s in the hospital has a heart attack and a lung collapses. Harry took a bigger load, around 200 pellets, and to this day some of the metal is still inside him, too close to vitals to yank out. Your body has a way of cleaning itself up, sometimes working shrapnel to the surface. I think about poor Harry, sitting at breakfast, when he feels a BB bubble-up, a bloody little thing popping out of his chest while he sips his coffee, just to remind him of Dick.
The sad thing? Harry barely knew Cheney. He’d donated a few bucks, was asked to go hunting, and next thing he’s in the hospital and they’re putting paddles to him. Then the press converges, hounding him for weeks. Cheney’s people made a half-assed attempt to blame Harry, as if he’d jumped in front of a man firing a shotgun. But from what I could tell Harry’s a straight shooter, not saying much, not blaming anyone. Just acting the southern gentleman. But one thing that particularly caught my attention. When the press asked him if Dick ever apologized, Harry smiled and changed the subject.
And I couldn’t help but feel guilty. If I’d come forward when Dick shot me, maybe Harry would’ve thought twice about going hunting with the guy. The idea haunted me, until I just decided we had to talk, one Cheney survivor to another. So I call down to his law office in Austin. It’s tough to get through. I’m sure he’s tired of people bringing up the subject, so I leave him a voice mail. A couple days later he calls back, and I can tell he’s skeptical, but we talk, and after a while get comfortable, discovering we’ve got more in common than the fact Dick Cheney shot us. Harry seemed the kind of man I’d appreciate sitting down and having a drink with, his head screwed on straight. Certainly a conservative type, but we share the belief that America also stands for a level playing field. It didn’t devolve into a Cheney bitch session, but it did occur to us that hanging around with him was dangerous to our health, and maybe dangerous for other reasons too. When you stand behind a man people naturally assume you also stand for him, and I suspect we both saw a different kind of America than Dick.
We discussed living on the land, driving down dirt roads, thinking what a wonder that God put us in such a place. And here’s what you learn when you live in the country: Part of being a good neighbor is warning people about dangerous situations, and yes, keeping an eye out for each other. When I’m driving and come across a herd of elk crossing the road, or see a patch of black ice, I flash my lights to warn oncoming cars. When my neighbors are safe, I’m safe.
Subscribers can read all our publications by logging in. |
___________________________________
Timothy O’Leary is the author of Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face, and Other Tales of Men in Pain (Unsolicited Press), and Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels (Zephor Press). His stories and essays have been published in dozens of publications, and he’s been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, won the Aestas Short Story Award, was a finalist for the Mississippi Review Prize, and The Lascaux Prize. He graduated from the University of Montana, and received his MFA from Pacific University. More information can be found at timothyolearylit.com
Read More: A brief Q&A with Timothy O’Leary