Growing up in a primarily military area with a former Marine as a father, you’d think I know a thing or two about guns. Of course you might think that I would stop putting my tampons in the same shopping bag as my leaky Windex after having my Playtex Lites activate in a pool of acidic blue not once, but twice, and you’d be wrong on both counts.
I’ve always been a little squeamish around guns, mainly because I was a one of those kids who took gun control very seriously when they would bring in a policeman into our elementary school to discuss how our heads would blow up if we so much as looked at a firearm, let alone handled one. “Don’t touch!” the policeman would say, showing us a poster of a seven-year-old contemplating whether to take their father’s pistol out of the top shelf of the closet, the implication of impending doom made evident by the caption He Thinks It’s a Toy – Do You? “If you see a gun, DON’T PICK IT UP! LEAVE THE AREA. TELL AN ADULT.”
Thus, at seven, I made a mental note to never touch guns. To be fair, I also made a mental note at seven that I hated, more than any human being in the world, Paul Silverman, whom I ended up making out with under the bleachers at a soccer game when I was fifteen, so all of that can really be taken with a grain of salt. If you’re reading this, Paul, I apologize for my hasty judgment. You were a fine kisser, if not a bit sweaty.
So when Brian, my favorite cop, asks whether or not I want to go shooting, I do what anyone who should conquer her fears does: I put it off. “Busy tonight,” I say. “Range closes at eight? Working ’til nine. Pity, that.”
One night, though, I was not so crafty. When Brian casually asks if I’d like to grab a bite to eat, I tell him sure. As soon as I say it, I realize my mistake. “That means we have enough time to go shooting!” he crows. Out of excuses, I conceded.
The scene? A quiet Monday, fresh puddles of shimmering, oily rainwater littering the parking lot of Bob’s Gun Shop. Brian struts in, his police-issued 9mm Glock strapped to his side, and me, shifty-eyed and agitated, in tow. The front room of the shop is filled with pistols and rifles and all sorts of things that I would never, EVER touch, let alone buy, but examining the various pieces through the glass counters are several strictly engrossed patrons, all male, seemingly over 50, with medium-length mustaches.
Brian motions for me to follow him onto the elevator. “Third floor,” he tells me, and when he puts his hand on my back to guide me in, I jump a little. He laughs at my nervousness. He pushes 3 and says, “They replaced the floor in the elevator – there used to be a hole where someone was playing around and shot through the floor.”
“Oh, God,” I whimpered. “What happened to them?”
“They were asked not to come back,” Brian said, walking through the open doors onto the third floor, and I thought how good it was to know that they take such strict precautionary measures here as to request someone not come back when they shoot off their grenade launcher in confined quarters.
We reach the counter where a red-faced chubby man with a navy Boston Red Sox hat lights up upon seeing Brian. “Hey, Buddy!” he bellows. “Haven’t seen you in ages!”
“Yeah, been busy,” Brian says, and I stay behind him. “How you been?”
“Great, great!” the green-hatted man says. “You’re out of the academy now, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, “just here showing her how to shoot.”
The green-hatted man looks me over, as I am, per my usual, overdressed for the occasion in gold high heels and a pink flower brooch. “Can’t believe you’ve never shot before,” he says, and I get a strong suspicion that he’s being facetious. “Here, you’ll want to sign this.” He hands me a piece of paper with a lengthy list of rules and safety tips. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to read it.”
He and Brian discuss Brian’s newfound career in policedom, and I go over some of the rules of engagement here at the range. If you exhibit any unsafe behavior at any time, you will yell, “Hold Fire!” At this time, firearms will be placed down IMMEDIATELY. It occurs to me that this place, not alike a militia state, is presumably governed by the people. That’s an awful lot of trust you have to put into the man at the range adjacent to you who also finds it necessary to put a sticker on his car that reads F. THE LEFT THESE COLORS DON’T RUN!!!! It also has a section where I fill out my name, address, and birth date, presumably so there is less information for the police to dig up when I die in a tragic firearm sneezing fit accident.
When I look up from my rule sheet, I come into the conversation just in time to hear the green-hatted man say, “You know, what people don’t understand is, you really gotta be the first line of defense before the Calvary arrives. Just the other day, I had a group of fuckin’ kids in playin’ around on the street, probably knocking over mailboxes, and I took my rifle out there and held them down until the police got there. Took the trooper fifteen minutes! I asked if he stopped for lunch before he came over.”
I imagined a group of seven-year-olds, breathless, watching with saucer-shaped eyes while a demented middle-aged gun shop employee stuck a rifle to their chest screaming, “Trying to knock off MY mailbox, you little shits? Wait until the Calvary arrives!”
“Well, she’s all yours,” the green-hatted man says, handing us goggles and ear protectors. “Here are your eyes and ears.”
“We get an hour,” Brian says, leading me through the door to the range. “Hey, we’re the only ones here. That’ll be easier for me to give you a lesson.”
Lesson one, I think. Never agree to go to a shooting range when you are too uncoordinated to even set your egg timer correctly.
“Alright,” says Brian, loading his Glock. “Let me show you what it looks like to fire first.” He stands with his legs apart, and with solid arms, fires off the first shot, which makes an awful, ear-splitting BAM! that makes me clutch my heart in the same dramatic way my father does when he opens up my mother’s Visa bill.
Lesson two, I think. Never go to a shooting range without a change of underwear.
“Okay, you want to try?”
“Nope,” I say. This was really no time for bravery.
“Just learn to hold it,” he says.
“Spread your legs,” he says. “Okay, now stick your butt out a little more. A little more. Perfect.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this, but Brian is the first guy that says it while I’m sober. I concur anyway, since he is holding a gun. “Now, just put your hands along the side.” He guides my fingers gently to where they need to be. “Just steady it. You’re fine.”
I have never held an object so powerful, and the thought of what it can do both frightens and fascinates me merely in a sociological way – I am standing in a building whose sole purpose is to sell objects that can, and in several cases will, change a life, be it through injury or ending it altogether, and is peculiarly marketed to those who are interested in controlling such a responsibility. I am not attracted to this kind of control. So when Brian says, “Do you think you can fire it?” I answer, quite honestly, “No.”
“You can,” he says. “We came all the way here and it’s in your hand. You can do it. I’m right here.”
I look up at Brian, who is smiling with one side of his mouth, the same way he did when he ordered from me at the bageldashery. He is the first person I can think of that became my friend at 6:30 in the morning. He and his partner walk into Yorgos, and he comes to my register. “Ham and egg. Everything bagel,” he says, shaking the sediments, harder than was really necessary, from the bottom of his apple juice bottle.
“What kind of cheese do you want?” I ask.
“Surprise me,” he answers, and peels his label off the Nantucket Nectar bottle as he smiles at me over his glasses. I like his answer, and at that moment, I decide that we’re going to be friends. I would have probably re-thought this notion had I known that our kinship would lead to me holding a Glock.
I give him cheddar. When I hand him his order, he says, “Thanks. See you tomorrow?”
“Yep,” I say, and he turns back to wave in the doorway, the sky still shady before the dawn as I watch him get in his squad car. I realize how funny it is to be doing cream cheese inventory one minute, my back to the door, not knowing that the next person to walk through it will soon teach me to handle a deadly weapon, because I’m too busy marking that we have seven tubs of blueberry. I like that feeling of bubbling unpredictability.
The weight of gun becomes apparent in my hand. My arms are shaking from the load. “I’m nervous,” I say.
“It’s good to be nervous,” Brian says gently.
We stand there, silent, motionless, for ten seconds, like a photograph. “You’ve got it,” he says.
For reasons I don’t understand – maybe just because my arms ached or I didn’t have the nerve to tell him no or because it was the only thing left to do – I fired. My eyes, as if on command, closed with the BOOM that went off in the grey firing range, and a casing expelled from the gun landed square in the petals of my flower brooch. Brian reached for me and brushed it out, and it hit the floor with an almost inaudible ping. “It only gets easier. You’re fine. You’re great.”
“I can’t do it again,” I say, putting the gun down on the table before me.
“We’re not leaving until you do at least three more rounds,” Brian laughs. “You have to get comfortable with it.”
“Let me watch you fire a few more,” I say, and Brian complies, steadying his stance and firing at the yellowed paper target. As he shoots the rounds off, I find that I still can’t get used to the noise. I’m thankful that we’re the only ones on the range. And then walks in three camouflage-clad men, clutching small brown bags of ammo and bottles of Mountain Dew. They look at me as though they are wondering whether they’ve mistakenly wandered into a Nine West, and continue on to the last shooting lane.
I brace myself to jump the same way I do when Brian fires his gun, but when the first man fires, the sound is so dulled from the distance between us, I barely notice. I become oddly comfortable, considering I’m in a room with strangers setting off lethal artillery a mere forty-five feet from my face. There’s an odd confidence we have in one another. I suspected it was, at least at some subconscious level, karmic. Kind of a, If you don’t use my asscheeks for target practice I won’t shoot your kneecaps off thing.
Brian motions for me to come forward. “Try again,” he says. He loads the gun and hands it to me. “It’s ready to fire. You just have to pull the trigger.”
“I hate this,” I say. “I wasn’t cut out for this.”
“I felt the same way the first time I went shooting.”
“Well, you’re a cop now.”
“So I got used to it. You will, too.”
I look at the target. I look at him.
“Fire,” he smiles. And I do.
“Good. Again.”
I fire again.
“Again.”
I comply. Each time I pull the trigger, I close my eyes upon hearing the impact, but keep my arms up and steady. My goggles are starting to fog. “I can’t see anything,” I tell him. He laughs and loosens them. I fire again. Each time, I’m less nervous, but the noise is still atrocious. When I finish the round, I put the gun on the table and he comes up and starts taking it apart.
“You wanna go get some dinner?” he asks, and I’m never happier to leave a room in my life. “You did great,” he says as he opens the door for me. I know he’s just being nice but I take the compliment anyway. Any argument, he might insist that I get more practice.
We go up to the counter to return our goggles and ear protectors, and the green-hatted man hands me a card that says: BOB’S GUN SHOP – Laura Watkins. “Here you go, darlin’,” he says. “We’ll see you soon.”
“What is this for?” I ask Brian as we step onto the elevator.
“It means you can come back again,” he says, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that you couldn’t get me to pick up another firearm even if there were a wildebeest charging at me. Well. Maybe if it was rabid.
We walk outside. I squint and look skyward while Brian continues to the car. It’s anyone’s guess what the sky could do next. Sunlight and ill-omened stratus clouds, skirmishing together in the heavens.
Brian sees that I’ve stopped following him. “What do you see?” he says. He puts one hand over his eyes and looks at me.
I almost answer him, but decide to keep it to myself. I walk towards him and we get into the car. He shrugs, doesn’t press. I take one last look at it in the sideview mirror when we pull away. There are patches of stone-gray clouds like tufts of smoke drifting above us, but through two of them you can see in a sunny clearing what appears to be a rainbow stretched from somewhere beyond to, I had every reason to believe, right over Bob’s Gun Shop.
