Guns and Bullets

After dinner we sat together as a family and watched a cowboy from a world I’d never known saunter into town, a gun slung low across each hipbone. I thought about the bullet I had wriggled from the woman’s skull. Had she been shot by a gunslinger, black hat pulled low over his eyes? USG4 2014 had been the marking on the bullet. Was it an identification number like the ones tattooed on each baby at birth? Could it be used to track the bullet to its owner?

There are no cowboys now. Maybe they’d never lived. And only police and soldiers are issued guns, guns they must return when their term of service ends.

“Dad, have you ever owned a gun?” I whispered.

“Shhhh.” Mom said.

I waited for the public service announcement and asked again.

Dad leaned over and spoke quietly. “I had a BB gun when I was a boy and my father and brother had hunting rifles. I shot my brother’s a few times -- just at targets. I was supposed to get my own the year they banned them.”

“What happened to the guns?”

“We had to turn them in when we moved to the safety net. That was one of the toughest things for your grandfather. Some of those guns had belonged to my grandfather. He hadn’t shot most of them in years, just kept them in a closet and run his hand over them now and then, remembering how Grandpa Bard had run his own hand down the barrel, keeping the gun polished and ready at all times.”

“Did the bullets have numbers on them?”

“I never noticed. Why do you ask?”

“Shhh.” Mom said. The show was back on.

“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered and turned my attention to the show.

By the time the show was over, Dad had fallen asleep in his chair. I kissed his forehead, gave Mom a gentle hug and went to bed.

All that happened yesterday. I’m writing about it now because I decided to keep my own journal and write down anything that might help someone reconstruct my own past someday. Maybe whoever finds my journal will be smart enough to figure out why two of my classmates just turned blue and dropped right in the middle of class. I don’t know if they’re dead or not. They quarantined the rest of us to the gym as soon as it happened. So that’s where I sit now, starting a journal in a notebook bought for writing notes in Algebra. I can always buy another notebook if I need one. So far everything has been review.

Trying out Names

When I got to my room, I was relieved to find the journal sitting on my desk next to my schoolbooks. I hoped Dad had found it, not Mom, but there was no changing it either way. At least I had it. I placed it carefully in my bottom desk drawer. I put on jeans and a t-shirt and left my room, closing the door tight behind me. By the time I got to the kitchen, Mom had already put dinner on the table.

“Did you get them all?” Dad asked.

“I hope so.” I sat in my usual chair and scooped au gratin potatoes onto my plate. Mom scowled as I picked up a crusty chicken breast with my hands the way I always did. I held up my hands.

“They’re clean. I just took a bath, remember?”

“You’re old enough to use a fork.”

“It’s fried chicken, Mom. Finger-lickin’ good.”

Mom just shook her head. I could see Dad grinning as he picked up a drumstick and took a bite.

“You two,” Mom sighed.

“Peas in a pod,” Dad said.

Mom rubbed her hand across the slight bulge just below her narrow waist. “Don’t listen to them, Providence. We don’t want you learning their bad manners.”

“Providence?” I asked.

“I know. It’s a little old fashioned, but your father picked it out.” Mom put her hand over Dad’s.

I looked over at Dad.

He nodded and grinned. “Nothing wrong with being old fashioned.”

“What if it’s a boy?” I asked.

Dad shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll change the name to Chance.”

“Or Fortune,” Mom said. “Because very few people in this world are fortunate enough to have a second child.”

“Fortune Bard?” I asked. “Think of the poor child’s future.”

Dad laughed. “You have a point, Mandy girl. Good thing we have some time to try out names.”

Running Scared

After finding the bullet in the woman’s skull, I clutched her journal against my chest and started running through the forest, trying to ignore the laughter of the crow I knew still followed me. My intention was to show the journal to my father, to take him to the house, to show him the skull, to ask him to tell me what had happened in the years before I was born, the years no one really talked about. But by the time I got to the house a million brown freckles crawled over my legs. My mother was the first to see them.

“Luke!” she called out. “Amanda’s legs! Look at Amanda’s legs!”

“Did you get into the chiggerweed again?” Dad looked up from the book he was reading.

I looked down and saw a swarm of moving dots. “Oh God, they’re bigger now.” I started brushing the dots off my legs.

“Don’t brush them on the floor!” My mother cried. “What if we all get them?”

By this time Dad had kneeled beside me and was helping me brush off my legs. “Bleach’ll kill them.”

Mom disappeared.

“Are they chiggers?” I asked. Now the tops of my legs were crawling too.

“Seed ticks,” Dad said. “They’ll itch, but they won’t blister like chiggers.”

“They’re everywhere,” I said.

“You’d better go take a bath.” Dad turned to Mom, who was pouring bleach into a steaming mop bucket. “Give her a cup of the bleach Julie.”

My mother and I both stopped what we were doing and stared at him. “Bleach?” we asked in unison.

Dad handed a measuring cup to Mom. “Put a cup of bleach in your bathwater. That’ll take care of them.”

“Use the old towels, not the new dark blue ones,” Mom said.

The tickling crawling feeling was everywhere now. I took the cup of bleach and hurried to the bathroom. I was soaking in the tub before I realized I no longer held the journal.