A Frightening Summer Ride and a Childhood Misunderstanding

The Campbell’s Island Bridge is approached via the road that goes by the Illinois State Hospital at Watertown, Illinois. Campbell’s Island itself is just off the shore in the Mississippi River. In my memory, it is small and heavily wooded. It had, then, about a dozen typical nondescript Illinois river houses on a road that made a neat loop around it. Harry and Bessie Means lived there for a while before they took over managing (and living at) Camp Mansur, the Boy Scout Camp. I must have been eight and Bob seven years old or so when the following incident happened. I swear this is true. It was one of those insufferably muggy Midwestern summer nights. Dad said, “Come on boys. Were going for a ride. (I don’t believe he ever told Mom just where we were going when we took off on an outing. She’d just tell him to be back at certain time for meals.) He put his .22 rifle in the back seat with a box of shells and we all sat up front as we always did on our never-ending outings. We seldom knew where we were going or when we would come back. But that night we were off to Campbell’s Island. We crossed the short bridge and drove up the dark, tree-lined dirt road to the Means’ place. Daddy told us to stay in the car, which he never did before, and grabbed his gun just as Harry came out onto the porch in an agitated state. We had a peaceful life, so behavior like this was really strange to us, and we instantly got the heebie-jeebies. Bobby told me to go listen at the screendoor, which was up a pretty long flight of outside steps. Up I went, but I was afraid to go to the top for fear of being caught in the porch light, which was intensely bright. And there, faintly, I heard Daddy say they had to shoot him. I panicked and ran back to the car and told Bobby they were going to shoot a man and dump him in the river. We were petrified and rolled up the windows and sat in the stiflingly hot car. Through a dark space between the house and the garage, we thought we saw Daddy and Harry go out a side door, and head toward the ink-black river. There was a distant report of a rifle. The droning racket of the crickets stopped, then after a moment, resumed. We saw Daddy and Harry come back directly and go into the house. Daddy came back out to the car a little later with a strong smell of whiskey on his breath. He asked us why the windows were rolled up. I didn’t know what to say or feel. I accepted that Daddy had killed someone and that is was for a good reason and never said anything about it. A long time later, I overheard Harry Means talking about the time he had to put down his hunting dog, and that Daddy had helped him. I never told this story to anyone until I was an adult because it made me feel so stupid.