My father, Henry James Hit, was born in 1929 in the interrogation room of the Center Texas Police Department. His father, Keith Hit, was a private detective, and his mother, Dorothy Hit, was a receptionist for the Center Police. Being the stubborn woman she was, and with money being very tight, she refused to stop working until the last few weeks of her third trimester. With pregnancy never being exact as far as timing goes, she went into labor a good 3 weeks early, barley getting the time to get reclined on the table of the interrogation room before it was time to start pushing. My father was born pretty quickly, wrapped in newspaper, and eventually he and my grandmother were taken to the hospital for examination.

Dad grew up in Center, Texas, the typical curious kid with a preference of being the only cop in the group of robbers during playtime. In school, he was always being told to put away his spy magazines and comic books, and once television came to be, the only shows he would get into were cop shows, or The Lone Ranger. He had a dream to be a law man from the time we was 5 years old, since the family had spawned many generations of police officers, rangers, detectives, and FBI agents. My dad wanted to follow in those same footsteps, which he did by becoming a police officer, and then a detective, and finally became a Texas Ranger in 1968.

He married my mother, Esther Timberlake, in 1953. Mom grew up just outside Center, Texas. Her family was strong in the Cherokee Nation, and she always told me stories of the great triumphs and tribulations of the Cherokee. She felt it was important that we all remembered that we were of a noble heritage, each of us kids being half-breed. I remember coming home very upset from school when I was 9 years old, after having been teased and picked on by classmates for being half Cherokee. Mom always told me that those kids just didn’t understand, and that I needed to hold my head up high, remember who I was, and to embrace life with all the passion and spirit of my ancestors. Mom was also a writer, and was constantly working on something. She wrote many stories and eventually wrote a novel. It was never published, mostly because she was afraid of rejection, even though she never actually admitted to that. She always said it wasn’t that important, and merely a release for her.

Dad, too, was always telling me stories about the latest criminal he’d scuffled with or arrested, and I was always fascinated and curious about Dad’s job, but I didn’t quite have the same interest in it. I was more interested in music, which wasn’t exactly following in my father’s footsteps, and wasn’t exactly what he would have liked me to be into. Still, he was very supportive and stood right by me as I started playing actual professional gigs with a band when I was 13 years old. He used to tell his fellow rangers, "That’s my son…..the future rock ‘n’ roll star!" When my sister Cherokee was born in 1965, and then my baby brother Brandon in 1968, Dad had new hopes for one of his kids to follow in his footsteps. Since it turned out that Cherokee’s forte was more in the realm of psychology and social sciences, the hope was placed on Brandon. Luckily, Brandon had the same curious and investigative spirit as Dad, and began to make plans to be a police officer. So, Dad was now the husband of a talented novelist, and the proud father of 1 professional drummer, 1 budding psychologist, and 1 aspiring policeman.

In 1972, something happened that changed my father’s life to a great degree. Though his career in law enforcement had put him in many dangerous situations in the past, and he’d been shot at, beat on, nearly run down by automobiles, and ambushed by various thugs and lowlifes. He’d certainly managed to gain a lot of enemies in the criminal community. But, nothing prepared him for having to fight for the life of his son, and what happened when I was 17 shook him to his core. I had been playing small professional gigs with various bands in East Texas, not really being a specific member of any one band, so I more or less was revered in our little community and called a "child prodigy" (which I hate that term, really. I was just a kid good at beating on things with sticks). I went from rock bands to country bands to blues bands, so I was always busy, and people always seemed to know where I was going to be playing. Unfortunately, this proved to be an almost deadly disadvantage for me. Not only would my Dad’s life change, but so would mine.

About 15 years prior, Dad had captured a man named Robert Calan, who had murdered his wife and son before going on a killing spree throughout East Texas. He killed a total of 9 people before my Dad finally caught up to him. At first, Dad had tried to reason with him and get him to surrender, which almost happened. But Calan decided it was better for him to fight it out. My Dad was not one to shoot for the hell of shooting, and before firing on a suspect, he would try to get them to surrender their weapons and come peacefully. If they didn’t and attacked him, he always did what he had to do, even if it meant killing a suspect. Fighting it out with Calan was not what my Dad had wanted to do, but had no choice in the matter when Calan charged him with his bare hands. The two men slugged it out for a long time, and according to others who witnessed it, it almost seemed like it was becoming a contest. My Dad later told me, "Either I was gonna beat the livin’ tar outta dat boy, or he was gonna whoop up all on me until it was over and done!"

Fortunately, Dad got the upper hand, and Calan was arrested. Before Calan was shoved into the cruiser, he told my dad to watch his back., which Dad took with a grain of salt since he was used to that kind of last ditch threat from a perp who was going down. What he didn’t know was that Calan was very serious, and in the course of the 13 years he was incarcerated, he plotted revenge against my Dad, although he managed to make himself look like a model prisoner. He managed to get paroled for good behavior in 1970, and moved to Henderson, Texas, where he continued to make plans to get even with my father for the day he was captured.

It was February of 1972 when it all went down. I had just got my driver’s license a year before, and with the 1967 Olds my grandfather gave to me for my 17^th birthday, I was a traveling fool. I drove everywhere, to gigs, state fairs, sporting events, barbecues, hunting and fishing trips, and just cruised trying to look cool. I thought I was a big fish in a little pond, and felt like I could take care of myself. My dad told me no one would dare mess with me because I was his son, and the Hit Family men were strong. I believed him, too.

I had a gig I was playing with some friends of mine in Henderson. It wasn’t a paying gig, just one for fun. As was the custom around "us rock ‘n’ roll types" (as termed by one of my friends), I smoked. So, I stepped outside of the building to have a cigarette, and to chat with a couple buddies who had also stepped out to smoke. We stood there trying to look cool, talk cool, act cool, and probably looked more like a bunch of punk kids with long hair, shabby bell-bottoms, and pimply faces. I ended up outside by myself when my buddies finished their cigarettes and other substances, but I stayed out there for a bit longer, just enjoying the quiet. I had no idea that I was never going to make it back in the building, and I didn’t even have time enough to fight off the attack because it came so swiftly.

I had turned around to go back inside, putting my hand on the door handle, and I suddenly was jerked back by the hair and thrown on the ground. I was stunned when I hit the pavement, and while I lay there, someone jumped on top of me, hitting me in the face and head several times. When I tried to cry out for help, a hand clamped down over my mouth, and I saw a face I’d only seen in pictures my father had kept in his scrapbook. I knew it was Robert Calan, although at the time I didn’t remember his name, but I just knew he was a murderer, and that he’d once beaten on my dad. Totally frightened, I struggled as hard as I could and tried to make a ton of noise, so someone would hear and run outside to help me. But no one did. I managed to get in a blow to Calan’s head, which knocked him off of me, and I tried to get to my feet to run. I was still quite dazed and never really made it to my feet. Instead I began to crawl away from him, now screaming for help, but got no farther than a few feet before Calan grabbed me and yanked me to my feet by the hair again, crushing me against him and silencing me with his hand. He dragged me to a beat up van with an open door, and nothing I did could stop him. Once he got me inside the van, he slammed me down onto the floor of it, stunning me again. It took no time at all for him to tie my hands behind my back, bind my feet together, and tape my mouth shut with duct tape. When my head finally cleared, the van was careening down the road, and Calan was laughing the sickest laugh I’d ever heard. There are times to this day I still hear it in my sleep, and it causes me to wake up with a panicked start, trying to get it out of my head before I go insane.

What followed the abduction was 2 days of horror for me, where Calan took out his anger and bitterness on me physically, mentally, and emotionally. He kept me bound with my arms above my head, a gag pushed into my mouth that became more saturated with my own blood with each beating. He called my father repeatedly, only staying on a mere few seconds to laugh into the phone and scream, "Where’s your boy, Ranger Hit?! I got yer boy! Come find yer boy, Ranger Hit!!!" 

He took pictures of me with a Polaroid camera after he’d beat me up, and send them to my mother with sick notes he typed on an old typewriter. He threatened to kill me in those notes, and demanded that Dad meet him to pick up my body. My family was devastated, and my father livid. He and other fellow rangers made finding Calan and rescuing me their top priority. Other law enforcement officers joined the hunt, and it wasn’t long before the FBI became involved. Finally, Calan made a mistake that proved to be a fatal one for him. He called my father again, and this time the call was more than the screaming and taunting he’d done before. He began to tell my father that he’d already killed me, that my blood was soaking into the ground, and now everyone in Henderson was going to taste my blood and his revenge. He repeated it over and over, until my father began screaming back at him. Calan began screaming the same taunts he’d screamed in previous calls, and then slammed down the phone. What he didn’t realized is that he’d stayed on the phone just long enough to allow that call to be traced, and the law was now on its way to the house. When the cars showed up, and the reinforcements and sharp shooters were in place, my father stood in the middle of the street with his hands in the air, calling out to Calan to come out. I remember Calan, cutting me down, encircling my neck with one arm, almost choking me, and dragging me out of the house to the front porch. I was battered, bleeding, exhausted, and fighting unconsciousness, but I heard every word my father and Calan said to each other, and I still remember it:

CALAN: So whatcha gonna do NOW, Ranger Hit? You found her boy, but he’s dead….I killed him inside! Your boy ain’t no more in the head, Ranger!

DAD: Calan….let my son go….please. This fight’s not his. It’s us. You and me.

CALAN: YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE TO MAKE IT RIGHT WITH ME! You kicked me down….that ain’t right!

DAD: You CHOSE to fight, Calan…..I gave you a chance to surrender, to make it easy. And ya came back at me. You got what you deserved, Calan. You paid your time, too. It’s done. Why do you want to make my son pay for something he had nothing to do with?

CALAN: ‘Cause I want you to cry, Ranger…..I wanna hear you beg for him. I wanna see you down in the dirt with your hands reachin’ out for him. I wanna hear you scream when I break his neck and make him an angel!

DAD: Like your wife did before you shot her and yer baby in the head?

CALAN: (Silence. He began to tremble)

DAD: You had no control then, Calan……but you have control now. You can end this. You can make right what went wrong.

CALAN: <In a sing-song voice> Too late, Ranger Hit…..Too late! < His voice turned cold. I felt his breath in my ear>Too late for me, too late for you…..and now it’s too late for your boy…."

 

Just after he said this, one of the sharp shooters fired, catching Calan in the shoulder. Calan let go of me to grab his injured shoulder, and I fell to the ground. I just lay there, and hear Calan scream obscenities at my father, and then I heard the sounds of a struggle. Soon, I felt hands touching me, and a voice comforting me as I lay there. I heard my father let out the most enraged and primal scream, followed by a gunshot. After that, it was silent for a very long time. I knew the officer who had run to my side after I fell to the ground was still there, because I could still feel his hand on my head, but I couldn’t summon the strength to open my eyes. I was so afraid that scream and the gunshot meant Dad had been shot. I tried to call his name, which only came out as a whisper. I called twice more. Finally, I felt someone pick me up and turn me over, cradling me. I heard my father’s tearful voice say, "I gotcha, son….I gotcha…"

Dad had fought with Calan again, coming to blows just as they had done years before, but this time, my father had forgotten he was still wearing his gun. Calan grabbed it from the holster and the two fought for supremacy over the weapon. My father had forced Calan’s hand down, screaming as he did so, and Calan tried to push back, but inadvertently pulled the trigger, while the barrel of the gun was pushing into his chest. Calan was dead before he hit the ground.

I was hospitalized for 2 weeks, and even after I was released to go home, it took me a very long time before I was able to leave the house and become more social. I was haunted with nightmares, and so was my father. I remember him beginning a nightly ritual that continued up until the time I moved to Los Angeles in 1979. He would open the door to my room, stand there for a moment, tap his hand over his heart, then say, "I gotcha, son….I gotcha…."

My dad continued to be a Texas Ranger until 1985, when he retired. He enjoyed retirement completely, even though he still couldn’t keep himself away from the station and visited his former colleagues frequently. He was diagnosed with prostrate cancer in 1993, and underwent every treatment in the book to battle it, but it was of no help. My father passed away in 1995, joining my grandparents in heaven, who had both passed away only 4 years prior. At the funeral, as I stood looking at Dad’s casket, I put one hand on it’s polished surface and the other on my chest. Tapping my hand over my heart, I said, "I gotcha, Dad……I gotcha."