Memphis

23 minutes Average Response Time, Sometimes as high as 30.

We couldn’t believe it had worked. Gathered around a great big bonfire, in a little patch of woods where nobody would find us, we counted out the winnings.
”That makes six-thousand, seven hundred and change.” Martin said. The flames flickered shadows across his pale, severe features. He was laying out bills on a stump nearby, while Lawrence, Riley and I looked on. “Not a terrible paycheck.”

”Really, what’s good is this stuff,” Lawrence was hefting an assortment of gold chains of varying styles and weights. “I bet these are worth a few grand each. Gotta melt them down, though.” We would do that later, I had a propane crucible in my garage that would work. They were probably not pure gold and I imagined a few of them were fake, but we could figure that out later. We moved back to the fire after dividing the cash four ways, still coming down from the adrenaline rush of what had happened earlier. I could tell Riley was gearing up to tell a story, like we hadn’t all been there. At least this one would probably be interesting, not just the same old being stuck in traffic on the 40 looking for a refrigerator part at 6pm gripes. We had just done something new.

My name is Charles. I’m not going to give you a last name, for reasons that might be obvious to you the reader by now, but I will say some other things. I am 26 years old, I am White, I am approximately 6’1” on a Tinder profile that I no longer check. I was born and raised in West Tennessee and so were all my friends. My parents had unremarkable jobs but they did read books. My father would read and reread those big Civil War books that every dad seems to read. I always preferred science-fiction. “At least he’s reading.” I used to have a job that made good money for the Memphis area, but I no longer have that job. My best friends in the world are Larry (Lawrence), Riley and Martin, who are all from around here too. We all got into the same things at the same time. Firearms training, prepping, survivalism. Riley’s parents died (of old age, they were old when they had him) and he inherited some land outside of town where we would go to train and shoot guns. We were competitive, shooting for real, shooting fast, shooting longer distances, getting better. Larry got really into milsurp, and we always knew what the best shit was. Jackets, backpacks, combat harnesses, plate carriers with real level 4 armor. We set ourselves up as hobbyists but we were getting better than we realized. When we took a few courses given by a local ex-SpecOps guy, we learned to clear rooms, to handle malfunctions. It was fun to develop skills and get good at something. To improve day by day.

I’m not sure whose idea it was. We knew that drug dealers in Memphis were idiots. We had all gone to public school, we had met these people and wasted more time in school prison with them than any of us were happy acknowledging. Someone brought up how people on forums would point to shootings by ratio of killed to wounded. “That one was joggers. They can’t shoot!” It seemed bizarre. Weren’t these men who were living by the sword? We knew what these fellows were like, they weren’t doing this as a hobby or for sport, it was their lifestyle to carry guns and use them to kill others. It was ridiculous, absurd! If the police had a mind to, they could kill every single one of these people in two weeks of serious effort. The Mayor was on TV now. “The systemic racism of the police forces is out of control, and I have today ordered that…” Police can’t do anything, they’re hemorrhaging officers. Riley’s cousin joined and quit MPD in under 2 years. “Get out man, they’re gonna crucify everybody.” That’s what an oldhead told him, sitting in his car looking the other way whatever happened. Three years to retirement. Can’t lose three decades of my life for nothing. I told Riley I thought that the pension fund would probably be confiscated before it paid him a dime, and Riley agreed. Police were a spent force in the city of Memphis.

“But these people are poor, oppressed,” Not really, not the dealers. Those guys, the gangsters, the drug sellers, they were making big money. They would buy gold chains to have on their person; if they got locked up, the chain would be given back as possessions when they got back out. Pawn shops would give them maybe fourteen grand for that, better than a wallet or cash for portable value. I saw them walking around, I saw deals happen, cash and drugs changing hands. I noticed houses where drugs and addicts went in with cash and left later without it. We would drive around Memphis, every part of it. We learned about parts of the city our parents never wanted us to know about and what happened where. There were places where there would be large sums, guarded by men who spent their time smoking and drinking, who never learned to run a weapon.

We put it together one night, around another bonfire. These people had money, they weren’t anywhere cops would be a problem, they were manifestly evil. And we had the ability to do something about it. There was an available opportunity. We looked round at one another, around that fire that seemed to blot out the witness stars and leave us alone on earth, shrouded in night. It became something to take seriously. We drew up plans. We left our cellphones at home, never brought anything with a mic near the bonfires or the garages where the planning occurred. We picked a place, developed an idea of what to do. We didn’t worry about innocents, who might be inside. Not as important as some other details. What time, what sort of entry and exit, how do we get there, how do we leave? There would be cell phone footage, what sort of car do we arrive and leave in? We bought a van from a junkyard, an old Ford E-150 that had probably been a contractor’s or a plumber’s. Bill of sale, didn’t register or title it. Who cares. Lawrence could weld a little bit and do auto body work. We thinned a little bit of paint and applied it with rollers, put fake plates on it. All in it cost less than 3 grand. Disposable.

We chose a night, and we did it. The target was a house in a bad neighborhood. Not a place anyone wanted to be at night. We had scoped it out a little bit earlier, checked on things. The guys who ran this spot had money and gold chains and drugs and guns in there, but we knew where all the entrances and exits were. We geared up, checked each other’s setups and our own. Faces covered completely, everything we needed on us, we rolled out in the van.

Tannerite on the front door, then a shot from the sidewalk to pop it. We tossed a little joke thing into the living room right after we blew the door. Tannerite makes a gender reveal device that produces copious amounts of colored smoke when you set it off. It went off in the middle of three guys and immediately filled the house with pink smoke. We moved straight in and got to work. Anyone with valuables on their person was in the crosshairs. We owned the place immediately, they had no idea what was happening. Two guys managed to get shots off, they both missed. House was cleared in under three minutes. There was cash, which we took, plus weapons and several large gold chains, which we removed from their former owners in a hurry. Hopped back in the vehicle and drove out of there. Left it somewhere, got in another car and went back to Riley’s little patch of dirt for our bonfire.

I monitored the news for a couple weeks after that happened. We figured there would be a big report. Cops, city officials. “White supremacist vigilantes strike innocent drug dealers,” that sort of thing, but something weirder happened. Nothing was published at all. There was not a single mention of it besides a passing local news story on a shootout in the ghetto. Just something that happens, how unfortunate. It was a little bit unnerving, but I suppose that’s just how it goes. I never got a knock on the door from anyone. I’ll never forget the thrill of it though. We still talk about it, at the bonfire, when the cell phones are left at home and the embers are low. We melted the chains down, sold the gold to online gold buyers. It was a fair bit of money, split four ways it still helped out a lot. I think it’s likely that we could do it again. Nothing has changed. Other candidate houses are still there, still transacting, money is still easily collected by a group of friends who know what they’re doing.

Whenever I think to myself, “That’s something that could be profitably done,” the first thing that people tell you to ask yourself is “Why is nobody else doing this right now?” We’re taught to think about niches, why they haven’t been filled yet. It seems very strange to me that some rednecks from Memphis are the first men to have considered this particular niche. Are there groups of friends out there right now, learning to do what they find fun and learning to do something about their cities, their homes? Are they actually doing what we did, and media is silent? How many times have trap houses in the hood been left the way we left ours that night, with bodies cooling on stained couches and pink smoke settling slowly on untouched fentanyl? We pulled twenty-five grand out of that house and it was an adventure, not paper-pushing or bureaucracy. For a moment we were completely untouchable and in the zone in a way that defies real explanation.

We might do it again soon, the way bonfire talks have been going lately.