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.