(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (44 page)

I stepped quietly, crunching dried hay, and when that notorious outlaw came swinging down the rope with a knife in his mouth and a pistol in each hand, I shot his hat off to blind him, then shot him through both hands. Amos and I handcuffed the entire gang, locked them in the jail (where chances were good they'd attempt a jailbreak tomorrow), and walked to the saloon for some sweet tea.

We never suffered from lack of imagination. We could shoot the same outlaw ten times, and he'd always come back meaner and nastier-which was just fine with us. Bring them on; we could get more caps. The fight of good versus evil got us out of bed in the morning, and the promise of another shootout sped us through our chores and out into the fields, where we'd lasso rustlers, rescue fair maidens in distress, and warn the stagecoach that the bridge was out.

And if there was one thing in this life that we spent hours dreaming about, it was a Model 69 pump-action Winchester in .22 caliber. With that in my hands, not a squirrel, raccoon, or armadillo in Digger would be safe. I had cut the advertisement out of Field and Stream and pasted it on the wall next to my bed. Amos had too. But the gun had a price tag of $129, and I was at least two summers away from being able to afford it.

Amos and I walked up the steps of the saloon just as Papa came walking out the back door. Before he could blink, and before I had time to think, I beat him to the draw and blasted him with both six-shooters. And it was there, with smoke trailing out of both barrels, that it hit me. Caught up in the moment and the game we were playing, I had just violated cardinal rule number one: Never, absolutely never, point any gun, Play or not, at a real Person. Imagine all you want, but never in real life.

Papa stuffed his hand in the open side of his overalls, halfclosed one eye, chewed on his lip, and nodded us both inside. I dropped both guns out of fear of what was about to happen to my backside. He pointed to the kitchen table, where we unbuckled-No guns at the table-and then sat obediently. At minimum, he'd take my guns away for a few weeks, increase my chores, and tan my backside. At most, well ... I'd rather not go there.

He picked up the phone and dialed Mr. Carter, and the two talked in hushed tones for several minutes. Before he hung up, Papa said, "You'll make the call?" He waited a second. "Good. We'll meet you down there."

Nanny had been shelling peas on the front porch, but she poked her head in when Papa appeared. Papa shook his head and waved her off with his hand. She returned to the porch, and Papa walked to their room; slid his wallet, change, and truck keys off the dresser; and then pointed us to his old, beatup Dodge Power Wagon.

His failure to speak was a bad omen. My palms grew cold and clammy, and my stomach jumped up into my throat. The look of accusation and blame on Amos's face was almost more than I could handle.

We drove downtown in total silence. We had been warned. The time for talking was over, and I knew it. To make matters worse, my indiscretion was about to earn Amos a butt blistering too. The fact that he had not drawn would mean little to Mr. Carter. He was a part of it. The look on his face told me that idea had not been lost on him.

Papa parked the truck just off the town square and ushered us up the sidewalk and down another side street. At the first nondescript building on the right, he held the door and nodded us in. He still hadn't spoken a word, and his silence told me that I was in more trouble than I'd ever known in my entire life. In our house, guns-play or not were respected. And when I fired off both caps at Papa, I hadn't.

The building was painted battleship gray, and the inside was very cold. The receptionist wore a sweater, which was odd given the fact that it was the middle of summer, and the whole place smelled like bleach and something else. Mr. Carter was sitting in a chair reading a magazine with his glasses on the end of his nose. When we walked in, he nodded at Papa and didn't say a word to either one of us.

We were dead meat. When their heads were turned, Amos glared and mouthed, "Nice going, butt head!"

The receptionist led us down a long hallway to a room that was well lit and looked like a hospital operating room, but without all the doctors and nurses. A man in blue scrubs met us in the back. He had a flashlight strapped around his head, but his apron looked like a butcher's. I remember thinking that if he was a surgeon, he sure was messy. With his hands covered in bloody white rubber gloves, he led us to a metal table, where a spotted white sheet covered what looked like somebody sleeping. The person's head was covered; I could tell his mouth was open, and I remember thinking it must have been difficult for him to sleep without feeling smothered.

About then it hit me that he might not be sleeping. Amos and I walked around the end of the table, and our eyes grew as wide as Oreos. The man's feet were sticking out from under the sheet. They were grayish-blue, and while the left pointed straight up, the right had sort of flopped over to the right. On his left big toe, somebody had tied what looked like a luggage tag. We walked around the other end, and Mr. Carter nodded to Papa, who nodded to the "doctor."

He set me on one side and Amos on the other, not more than six inches from the man's shoulders. Then he pulled back the sheet. He looked at both of us and then at the man on the table. "This ... is what happens when you play with guns."

And I've never looked at one the same way since.

In the span of a millisecond, I learned that a firearm-no matter what kind-has one purpose: to kill. Period. No two ways about it. No matter what the movies teach you, and no matter how romantic the notion might be, if you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, at the end of the day that person is dead. You can't pause, rewind, and replay. The blue man on the table taught me that.

Papa and I drove back to the farm in quiet, listening to the rhythmic sound of a pebble lodged in the tire tread. Back at the house, Papa was pensive. He returned to his tractor, where he usually did his best thinking. I started on tomorrow's chores, and when I finished those, I did anything I could think of that was helpful and would look as though I was paying penance. The thought of the whipping I was still sure of getting was a great motivator, and when Papa finally parked the tractor at a little after four, I had that barn looking like a showroom. Problem was, if Papa noticed, he didn't let on.

He hopped off the tractor and disappeared inside the house, and I stood just outside the door, waiting for him to call my name. With my heart pounding like a war drum, I stood against the frame and waited. A few minutes later he walked out the back door, kissed Nanny-who was drying her hands on her clean white apron-and then loaded back into the truck.

I couldn't quite tell, but Nanny didn't seem to have an angry look on her face. She almost looked as if she were trying to hide a smile. I wanted to ask if I could stay with her, but Papa cranked the engine and waved me into the front seat. This was not making sense. If he wanted me to suffer, he'd done the trick.

I opened the door. "Papa?"

He looked at me, his sun-wrinkled eyes bending downward at the edges.

"If I'm gonna get a whippin', I'd just as soon get it over."

He looked out the windshield, and when he looked back, I saw that his eyes had watered up. He patted the seat, swallowed, and nodded. He wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning either. Papa had something on his mind, and whatever it was seemed more important to him at the moment than blistering me, so I climbed in.

We drove back to town, something we rarely did twice in the same day. We parked on the street in front of the hardware store, and Papa led me between the aisles filled with garden tools and bolt bins and finally to the far corner of the store. Mr. Steve, one of the four brothers who owned the place, was working behind the counter where they kept all the hunting and fishing stuff.

Papa leaned against the counter and extended his hand. "Steve. "

Mr. Steve switched his cigarette to the other hand, brushed a few ashes off his shirt, and extended his hand. "Mr. Styles." He nodded at me and smiled. "Dylan."

Papa pointed his nose at the wall. "I've come to pay you what remains."

I looked at Papa, the confusion in me growing.

Mr. Steve nodded, smiled at me again, then looked back at Papa. "Yes, sir, eight months is a long time on layaway." He turned, walked to the only rifle I'd ever cared anything about, and pulled the Model 69 Winchester off the wall. My eyes grew as wide as bowling balls.

Papa pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Mr. Steve, who punched the buttons on his cash register, pulled the handle, and stood back as the bottom drawer sprang open. He pulled out a single dollar, pulled the rifle off the wall, and slid the action downward, proving to both himself and Papa that it was unloaded. He handed it to Papa, who also checked it, and asked, "You want the box?"

Papa shook his head. "No." He looked at me and almost smiled. "It wouldn't last very long. Besides, we don't have very far to go." He hefted the rifle in his left hand, ever careful to keep the barrel down, then gently grabbed my left hand with his right, and we walked out while my teeth carved drag marks in the linoleum tiles.

Papa loaded me into the passenger's side and laid the rifle, barrel tip on the floor mat, next to me. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would explode. He walked around, climbed in, and cranked the engine. He pulled his white handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sweat beading across his forehead. He methodically refolded it and then turned toward me. His face had turned serious again.

I swallowed, looked at the rifle, and swallowed again-afraid to hope. I saw now that Papa intended to hang this thing on the wall, where it would sit for two years, reminding me daily of my indiscretion. I'd have preferred a spanking. "Papa?"

Papa shook his head and put his hand on my shoulder. He thought for a moment, then said, "Yup, you messed up today, but ... I did, too, when I was your age."

I almost smiled, then thought better of it. I wasn't out of the woods yet.

He lowered his voice. "I don't want to break the spirit of the kid in you; that's a precious thing." He took a deep breath. "But it's time we start making a man out of the boy I see before me."

That night, after we'd shot an entire box-fifty rounds-at more than our fair share of cans down at the river, Papa took me into the kitchen and laid the new rifle across the table. He sat me down and then laid down the law. His tone of voice told me that if I ever violated it, he'd take that rifle away for as long as I lived in this house.

"Never bring a loaded gun into the house."

"Yes, sir."

"Never point one at anybody-floor or ceiling only, unless you're shooting at a target and intend to pull the trigger."

"Yes, sir."

"Make sure of your target and what's behind your target. If you miss, what will you hit?"

I'd heard all this a hundred times before, but I wasn't about to interrupt him. "Yes, sir."

He sat back and patted the rifle, then pointed his finger at my face and inched his nose closer to mine. "Always, always, always treat a gun as if it's loaded, even when you know it's not."

"Yes, sir."

The kitchen smelled of Hoppe's solvent, Winchester oil, and Vicks mentholatum-Papa's choice of lip balm. Papa dipped the brass brush in the solvent, then ran it down the barrel, removing the gunpowder. Then he ran several quartersized, oiled white cloths down through the barrel until they came out looking as white as when they'd gone in. He brushed and oiled the action, the barrel, the trigger assembly, and finally the stock itself. Then he toweled it off so it wouldn't be too slick. When finished, the rifle lay on the table-clean, oiled, and empty. The thing that had filled my nights and days with dreams of heroes and grand deeds now lay on the table before me much like that man had.

Papa leaned forward. "You see that?"

"Yes, sir."

He paused, measuring his words. "By itself, that is harmless. Can't hurt a flea. The most dangerous thing about that ... is you." He gently grabbed my hand and placed it on the stock. "You understand?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Does it scare you?"

I nodded.

He set me on his lap and wrapped his arms around me. I needed that hug. "Don't fear it-respect it." He smiled. "That way, you'll live to be my age, and older."

Later that night, the world seemed a lot bigger than it had when I'd woken up that morning. We were all sitting on the front porch, listening to the whippoorwill. Nanny and Papa swayed on the front porch while I stretched out across the top step.

"Papa?" The smell of his pipe wafted around us and filtered into the woodwork.

"Yes."

"You think it's okay with God if we have guns?"

Papa clinched his teeth about his pipe, pulled his yellowhandled Case Trapper from his front pocket, opened it, and began scraping his fingernails. Over his shoulder, nailed to the wall of the house, was a wooden plaque with the Ten Commandments etched onto it. He thought several minutes, nodded, and said, "I have thought a lot about that, and I think the answer is yes."

Knowing that he could quote each one by heart, I said, "Why?"

He didn't flinch. "'Cause not all men are good."

AMOS'S AND MY CHILDHOOD FASCINATION WITH GUNS HAD been killed that day, and that man lying cold and still on the stainless steel table took more to his grave than he intended. When I think back on it, it was one of the best lessons I've ever learned.

Amos asked me if I still had Papa's Model 12, and then asked if I remembered how to use it. I did. And he knew that I did. His question spoke volumes that both of us understood yet neither of us needed to voice. It told me that Amos had thought about it ahead of time, weighed asking me against not asking me, and asked anyway. And that, more than anything else, told me he was scared.

I looked toward the house, imagined the Model 12 leaning against the back wall of my closet, and tried to digest our conversation. I sat on the top step, leaned back, and noticed the small package perched above me on the railing. I lifted it, untied the silver bow that lay shining in the moonlight, slid off the lid, and found a child's pacifier.