The McNutter Brothers

I’m going to tell you a story that might just save your life. Harvey McNutter and his brother Bob were internet pranksters. They liked to film themselves trying to free the lobsters at Red Lobster or racing shopping carts down the aisles at Home Depot. Not my kind of humor, but they had a following. Harvey was the oldest, a bald preppy in novelty socks. Bob was the youngest, a metalhead with long black hair.

But let’s back up a second. As you may or may not know, there is a fish tank in the middle of every Bass Pro Shop in the country. It’s the size of a small swimming pool, but it’s cut in a cross section and affixed with a large piece of glass so you can see the fish swimming inside. Maybe you’re supposed to test out rods and reels in the tank, but I think it’s more for show cause I never saw anyone fishing it. Then again, I’m not much of an angler myself. I much prefer the bourbon-soaked thrill of a bear hunt, where death is at stake.

Anyway, Bob and Harvey went to the Bass Pro Shop to violate a sacred code that we have in our country. I’m going to articulate this code slowly because I want to make sure you understand. Never, under any circumstance, should one harm other people’s property in the United States of America. Property is the most sacred thing in our society. If we are to have a civil and orderly existence, citizens must respect this sacred code. It is the Christian and American thing to do. And yet, these two human dingleberries decided to ignore the pillars of polite society. Harvey bet Bob he wouldn’t cannonball into the Bass Pro Shop fish tank. Bob didn’t blink. He ran inside, removed his clothes, and climbed up the fake rocks near the fake pond and did a cannonball into the water, causing a mini tidal wave which soaked an old man in a wheelchair and a young mother with a stroller and child. Bob was so rotund and the splash so large he drained nearly half the water, killing a few small catfish in the process. Harvey filmed it for their prank channel.

They ran back to the parking lot and drove away. However, they deeply underestimated the police response time. The Bass Pro Shop had a blue-chip security system and one of the cashiers hit the button. I was on my police motorcycle doing ninety up the interstate, splitting lanes to catch up. I caught them on the other side of Outback Steakhouse and slowed them at the Hooters parking lot. What I didn’t know at the time was that Harvey was driving. Bob, the more tender brother, would’ve likely stopped the car. He would’ve tried to safely end things. But Harvey was enraged. Harvey felt, I would later learn, that the government was invading his sovereignty.

Property is the most sacred thing in our society. If we are to have a civil and orderly existence, citizens must respect this sacred code.

So Bob and Harvey were hitting excess of one hundred miles per hour, treating I-40 like the Daytona 500. I should mention here that their car, a 1987 yellow El Camino, was their father’s and he had rebuilt it from scratch and given it to the brothers as a joint Christmas present. Eddie Wayne McNutter, honestly God bless that man. I knew him in passing at the Elks Lodge, and he seemed a decent citizen cursed with demon progeny and an enlarged prostate. But that’s a story for another day.

We cornered the El Camino near an overpass, and they seemed to be pulling over. Bob put his hands in the air. We approached the car with guns drawn. We knew they had little regard for property, but we soon learned they had little regard for human life. Bob put his hands up in the air, out the passenger side window.

Get out the car, I said.

I don’t recognize your authority, he said. 

So I came around to the front of the car and began to beat out the glass trying to get Harvey to open the door. He sped away, nearly destroying my left boot, and took off down the highway. I followed in close pursuit. It was only then that I was alerted to the fact that there might be some kind of weapon in the car. Bob took out what I thought was a handgun, but was in reality bear spray. He sprayed out the window indiscriminately in my general direction. The hot pepper chemicals blinded me, nearly taking me off the road into a ditch. I was able to recover with the use of my right eye, but my depth perception was damaged. As the brothers tried to exit near the old Dairy Queen, I ran up beside them. I looked directly at Harvey with my good eye and told him to pull over.

Get this, boys and girls. Harvey flashed a smile. A real ear-to-ear grin. What else could I do? I removed my service revolver and pointed at his tires. Shot thrice, but missed. He smiled again, so I put two rounds into the car. Both missed, but it enraged Bob, who was working the bear spray again, this time from the sunroof.

Pull over or I will be forced to shoot again, I said.

Bob had his head out of the sunroof spraying me with the bear spray trying to blind me when suddenly Harvey pulled some kind of Dukes of Hazzard move. He slammed the breaks and turned on a dime down an old gravel road. Problem was when he made such an abrupt move that Bob fell back into the cab with the bear spray still spraying and filled the El Camino with a chemical cloud. Harvey was blinded and turned into a ditch, then tried to correct his mistake and the car went into a gator roll landing upright near a chicken coop. By this time there were more than five units on the scene, and I’m not going to sugarcoat this: it got pretty ugly. We shouted to the brothers to put their hands in the air. Neither of them moved. Bob was still holding the bear spray, and I gave him another verbal warning to drop it. He didn’t move. We later found out this was because Bob was deceased, but at the time how were we to know he didn’t pose a threat? We dragged Harvey out of the car and told him to get on the ground, which he did, and we told him to put his hands behind his back, which he didn’t. So we beat the living hell out of him. There’s footage online if you’re interested.

Anyway, where was I?

After spending a few days in the hospital, Harvey was remanded to the custody of the Bucksnort County Jail. His father refused to post bond on account of him wrecking the car and killing his brother in a negligent manner. So there he was, sitting with the other bozos in county lockup waiting for something to happen. Since I had been on the scene and had taken such an interest in the case, I spoke to my supervisor about being involved in the questioning. I’m not a detective, though I have watched crime procedurals all my life, so I knew the basics. My supervisor told me in no uncertain terms not to question Harvey in county lockup. This had nothing to do with my inexperience but rather the fact that there was no need to get Harvey to confess because a half dozen policemen had witnessed his reckless crimes and it was on body cam. However, I didn’t see the harm in questioning him for future generations of criminology students. I wanted to know how the criminal mind worked. I called over to the jail and spoke to Levi, an old hunting buddy of mine, who happened to be the officer on duty that night. I told him I was investigating the McNutter case, and he congratulated me on getting promoted. I told him I hadn’t gotten promoted but wanted to interview Harvey for educational purposes. He shrugged and said okay.

I went to a little room on the second floor of the jailhouse and asked Levi to bring Harvey in. There was little formality. I had expected there would be signing of papers or something, but they just brought him in like he was being dropped off at school. His handcuffs were the only thing that was distinguishing us as cop and criminal. I was in my civvies and he was too. I never found out why he wasn’t in standard-issue orange. He was wearing the same T-shirt and jeans as the day of his arrest. Harvey was balding and did himself no favors by shaving his head. It made him seem even more bald than he actually was. Kind of extra bald, if you will. I could tell he was on a little bit of a sedative because both eyes were a bit droopy and his mouth kinda hung loose like a nervous dog’s mouth. I asked him if he wanted a Diet Coke or a snack or if he needed to use the bathroom, which I’d seen on many episodes of Blue Bloods and NCIS. Build rapport and all that. Harvey said he was fine and didn’t want anything but to go back to sleep, but I said, How about we talk a minute?

He looked at me and kind of squinted.

Don’t I know you, he asked.

We’ve not been formally introduced, I said. I’m Officer Bone.

Oh, I know you, he said. Fucking fascist.

I kept my cool. It’s part of the job to remain stoic in the face of insults.

You destroyed property, I said. Why?

Anarchy, he said. It’s what I believe.

You believe in chaos, I asked.

I’m talking about the political philosophy of anarchism, he said.

For a few seconds I thought he was trying to prank me. He began to talk of a Frenchman named Proudhon. Get this, the Proudhon Frenchman thought there should be no government, like no government at all, which I told Harvey was insane.

So who is going to stop crime, I asked.

The police don’t work for the people, he said. They work for power. 

He looked at me right in my eyes. For a long time. For too long, frankly.

You killed my brother, he said.

He’s dead because of your recklessness, I said. 

He leaned back in his chair.

How much do you make a year, he asked.

I don’t see how that’s relevant, I said.

Let’s just say $45,000 a year, he said.

It was less, but I let him keep talking.

You know how much the CEO of Bass Pro Shop makes a year, he asked.

I have no idea, I said.

Google it, he said.

I took out my phone and searched for the answer.

1.8 million, I said.

He shook his head.

So you risked your life for $45,000 a year, he asked. All to catch the guys who spilled a little water?

I could tell Harvey had spent a long time thinking about such concepts.

Why did you run, I asked.

My brother’s dead, he said. And he shouldn’t be.

I’ll admit it. I felt bad for him. And I was having half a thought or two about anarchy. I’d always thought it meant the devil. You know, the capital A with a circle around it like you’d see spray painted on an overpass or water tower. But what Harvey was saying did make a fair bit of sense. 

Alright, I asked. How would we reorganize society then?

He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his bald head like he’d been waiting years for someone to ask him that question.

It doesn’t happen overnight, he said. Things change one person at a time.

I looked outside at the trees. We were on the second floor, and there was a breeze coming in from an open window. I noticed for the first time the way trees swayed with the wind and not against it.

I’m sorry about your brother, I said.

Thanks, he said.

And I mean it, boys and girls. There was something moving in me that I didn’t fully understand. I started to see that perhaps I was flat wrong about a lot of things. Number one was my wife of sixteen years, Leeanne. I realized how wrong I’d been in the way that I treated her. Always insisting that I make all the decisions when in fact she was just as capable if not more capable than I when it came to things like the hot water heater or choice of restaurant. And yet, I insisted on my own way and wouldn’t let her add anything to the conversation. But after Harvey spoke, I began to see clearly why she slept with the youth minister from First Presbyterian on many, many occasions against my wishes.

Also, I’d always thought that I was put on God’s earth to protect and serve as a member of law enforcement. I believed there was an evil element of the human population dedicated to crime. To me, these people woke each morning with mayhem in their blood. They wanted to corrupt all civilization and cheat their way through life and destroy property. These people had to be stopped in my mind. It was my calling to stop them. I’d decided that the McNutter brothers were such folks. Void of all morals. There was one simple remedy. They had to be killed before all hell broke loose. Before they ripped asunder the very fabric of society.

But I looked in Harvey’s eyes across the table and saw something quite different. Not a moralless monster but a sad sack of a human. He was making me see that my life as an officer was backward. I reached out to him and he took me by hand.

How about a cup of coffee, I asked.

That sounds nice, he said.

I reached over and undid his handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and looked at me.

I’ll be right back, I said.

I left Harvey and walked down the hall toward the break room. In my mind I made a plan to call Leeanne that night. I wanted to invite her, and maybe her youth minister boyfriend, out for a meal at Olive Garden to bury the hatchet. Also, for the first time in my life, I thought about quitting the police department. I had no hard plans at that point, but the idea of laying down my badge did cross my mind. In the break room the coffee pot was empty, so I made a fresh pot. Levi came in and sat down at the table and looked out the window to the parking lot at two geese walking by. Something startled them, and as they took off in the air, one of them shat on my car. 

Wildlife, Levi said. Majestic.

He asked me to top off his coffee and I did. I was about to ask him if he took cream and sugar when he said, Hey isn’t that Harvey McNutter running across the parking lot?

Indeed it was.

As I watched him run into the woods I’ll admit I was happy for him. I began to tell Levi what had happened.

Harvey was telling me about freedom, I said. He was making a lot of sense.

I thought you were supposed to be interrogating him, Levi said.

I was, but somehow as I was interrogating him about his crimes he started to interrogate my soul.

We sat and sipped our coffee and hit the alarm and they called out the dogs. Harvey was caught an hour later after stealing a car and wrecking it into the side of Cracker Barrel. In addition to his criminality, he was a terrible driver. They charged him with all sorts of things, and now he lives in a maximum-security prison.

Somehow as I was interrogating him about his crimes he started to interrogate my soul.

Harvey McNutter taught me a lesson, and it might just save your life someday. No matter how nice a person is, or how intelligent they sound, you have to stick to your beliefs. The devil comes in many forms. That day he came to me as a prankster in the form of Harvey. He threw around a lot of big words and confused me. In the end, I know that all we have is our lord and savior Jesus H. Christ and the glory and freedoms of all Americans. If called upon, we must die for those things.

After letting Harvey escape, the sheriff and I came to an understanding that I shouldn’t work at the Bucksnort County Sheriff’s Department anymore. One of the hardest days of my life. But in the end a blessing in disguise. I did end up reaching out to my ex-wife Leeanne. She and her youth pastor boyfriend were not interested in breaking bread with me at Olive Garden, but I was able to finally close that chapter in my life. Of course, the final and most important thing that Harvey gave me was a second chance. I realized that I have much more to offer in this world than I thought. I hope to one day return to some branch of the service or another police force, but until then I’m fulfilling my dream of becoming a motivational speaker at elementary schools like this one. 

Remember, boys and girls, reach for the stars but keep your feet on the ground. Eat three square meals a day with all the four food groups, drink eight glasses of water, and get eight hours of sleep. Don’t swallow your gum because it stays in your belly for seven years, and fiddling with yourself will make you go blind. No matter the question, Jesus is the answer, and America is the greatest country in the history of the world, amen. God bless you. God bless our troops. And God bless the United States of America.