Bad Gun
Bad cause it’s cheap, cheap and bad. Saturday Night Special they call it,
Trash Gun. The slide. The bullet can get caught between the now
and the split second later, between the Here and the Hereafter.
Hard. A thick, flat, gun-shaped weight that gets harder
in your hand when you close your hand around it.
Raven,
say the letters pressed on the barrel. Raven Arms. GUNS says the shop
on Highland Boulevard. Bad cause she bought it and she wanted it,
and it maybe wanted her. No questions asked. A hundred thirty
bucks on her Visa card. Cause someone might want to kill
her and she might not want to let them. Ya never
know.
Might not suit her mood. Bad cause it slips into a bad hand. One day
she turns her key in the lock—the door’s already open. Uh oh.
Drawers burst and spilling, messier than usual—the wash
-and-wear, well-worn articles lie in their colors, just
a square empty space where the typewriter’d
been. Rug gone. Gun
flown.
Raven. Well. Days and weeks. Two months. They go by. Along comes
comes a police, one police. Knock knock. He sits in the discount
chive-colored chair came with the place: Single apartment
circa 1928, kitchen she’d painted heartbreak red, little
alcove, built-in dresser with drawers that open for a
thief.
In a plastic bag he holds a small cheap gun. Registered to her. Safe,
sound. Nice police, quiet, he looks at her with a quiet gaze. Bad
gun man pointed at his wife in a domestic dispute. That’s
what the police calls it, a “domestic dispute.” It’s not
legal to point a gun in a domestic dispute. It’s not
polite.
She signs a paper and he leaves the thing with her. First, she
was not a gun owner, then she was, then she wasn’t—now
she is again. Hmm. Like a fish-slippery bird it slid
toward a wrong hand, now it’s back. What kind
of hands are hers? Hmm. Bad gun because
it made her forget, made her forget to
ask.
Made her forget to think. Made her forget to think to ask.
Did he pull the trigger?