Staring Down the Barrel

A few weeks after turning eighteen, I learned that one of my bowling alley coworkers had occasionally sold Oxy in the parking lot while I’d managed the lanes. Before someone could mistake me for an accomplice, I quit my job. Desperate for pocket money, I asked a friend if he might get me a shift at the Chicago civic center where he unloaded trucks. “There’s a gun show this weekend,” he told me. “One of the dealers is looking for an assistant. He’s cranky but pays in cash.” I knew little about guns but quickly accepted the position.

The dealer I worked for went by G.K. He wore wide tortoiseshell glasses, rarely smiled, and spoke with a southern drawl. Our first morning together, he grumbled instructions to me from his folding chair: “Space my rifles six inches apart, seven to a table. Get rid of dust. Only let buyers touch ’em.” He then retrieved an ivory-handled Colt revolver from a glass case he kept near his right arm; a $25,000 price tag dangled from the gun’s trigger guard. “Nobody but me handles this,” he said while running his right forefinger over the revolver’s fern-like engravings. After returning the gun to its case, G.K. crossed his arms over his ample stomach and sat silently. I had no chair, so when I finished arranging and cleaning the rifles, I stood and watched hundreds of severe men, some wearing camo and McCain-Palin ‘08 pins, roam through the maze of gun-covered tables. Unlike G.K.’s antiques, the other dealers' guns were primarily new and black-painted metal, capable of destruction.

Across the room, a stocky young man wearing tactical boots and black sport sunglasses lifted an AR-15—a military-style rifle popular among school shooters—from a table, then raised the scope to his right eye. I suspect some people would shake while holding such a deadly weapon, but that man’s hands and stance were steady. He looked poised, terrifying. Perhaps he hoped that gun might help him take down an eight-point buck, impress a girl, or prove his manhood to a detached father. Or maybe he'd been told that liberals wanted to end personal freedom and unleash violent chaos, that he was safest with a gun in his hands. Maybe he wanted to store that AR-15 under his bed, then sleep with his right arm hanging off the mattress, his fingers resting on the gun’s stock.

After fifteen silent minutes, G.K. leaned forward in his chair and asked me, “You a good shot?” I said that I was decent, that I’d gone hunting a few times with my buddies but only ever bagged a squirrel. That was a lie. I feared G.K.’s response to the truth: I’d never fired a gun. Before I worked at that show, the only gun I’d ever held was an antique flint-lock rifle that I’d inherited from my father after he’d committed suicide. To fire it, I’d have needed to ram black powder and a lead ball down the muzzle, then pull back on the heavy flint-loaded cock. I never tried that but sometimes pretended to shoot into a floor-length mirror. Despite my wiry frame and blonde surfer hairdo, that rifle made me look intimidating, and sometimes I wanted to intimidate.

Although I lived in a tidy and safe suburb, I was convinced—perhaps by news stories about the BTK killer or the few chapters I’d read of In Cold Blood—that some wicked person would learn that there was no father in my house, then break in and wreak havoc on my mom and sisters. Hoping to scare off an intruder before they reached the rest of my family, I’d recently started sleeping on a soft leather couch in the living room, the room nearest the front door. I stored that antique rifle beneath the couch, within arm’s reach. Most of the time, apart from toilet flushes and my little sister’s light steps on the floor above me, the house remained quiet throughout the night. But once, when I was curled beneath a blanket and near sleep, I heard a thud on one of the living room’s windows. Without hesitation, I unfurled, grabbed that rifle, sprang to my feet, burst through the front door, then pointed the long barrel into the cold darkness and yelled, “I’ll fuck you up, motherfucker!” As I posed with the gun, a yellow porch light hummed and a car passed in the distance, but the threat never revealed itself. After a few minutes, I walked back inside while repeatedly whispering, “There’s no one there. There’s no one there.” And there probably was no one there; a branch or bird may have hit the window. I eventually returned to the couch and fell asleep with that gun tucked under my right arm. I was prepared to appear violent, like so many other men.

~

G.K.’s cell phone rang. He answered harshly, “Who is this? No, don’t bring ’em all inside. I’ll come to your car.” He hung up, huffed, grabbed a manila envelope in which he kept a one-inch stack of hundred-dollar bills, then told me, “I gotta check out a collection. Watch my shit.” I never witnessed G.K. sell a gun, only buy. Most show-goers approached his inventory as they might a museum exhibit, arms behind their backs, necks craned forward. “Impressive,” they’d say. “Thanks for letting me look.” G.K. would either nod or respond, “Yep.” He seemed more interested in showing off than turning a profit.

While G.K. was in the parking lot, a boy, about nine years old, and his father approached the glass case that held that ivory-handled revolver. “That’s a real cowboy gun,” the boy said to his father.

“Like in the movies,” the father responded.

The boy then noticed the four tables of antique rifles. He ran over to a nineteenth-century Winchester carbine, then picked it up and aimed at a corner of the room; the gun looked almost as big as him. “Got ’em!” he said.

“You shooting birds?” the father asked as he crouched to meet his son’s eye line.

“Vultures!”

Now kneeling, the father noticed a price tag hanging from the gun: $7,000. He looked at me with wide eyes, then gently removed the gun from his son’s hands and placed it back on the table. “This stuff’s a little out of our range,” he said to his son while patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s go find a new shotgun.”

As soon as the father and son turned their backs, I wiped that Winchester down with a rag. I wasn’t supposed to let anyone touch those guns, but that man’s gentleness and his son’s confidence with that rifle had mesmerized me. When I was that boy’s age, in public my father sometimes gently rested his right hand on my shoulder or knelt to meet my gaze, seemed interested in my perspective and well-being, and maybe he was. But in private, he sometimes violated my body, and I didn’t know how to fight back or even if I should.

~

My father was a Methodist minister. One Sunday morning, shortly after my sixth birthday, I sat on a wooden pew and watched him deliver a sermon about Daniel, the prophetic lion tamer, my namesake. As usual, my father was wearing a dark blue suit that matched the circles around his eyes. He stepped to the podium, combed his light brown hair back with his fingers, grinned, and told the congregation, “Daniel of the Bible had wild dreams.” He then looked at me and said, “So does my Daniel. And he talks in his sleep.” My father explained that two weeks earlier, after I’d fallen asleep in our finished basement while watching a baseball game, he’d attempted to pick me up so he could move me to my bedroom, but as soon as he’d touched my body, I’d shouted, “Put me down, or I’ll shoot!” When my father finished telling that story, the whole congregation looked at me and laughed. But I remained straight-faced. I didn’t remember threatening my father that night and now worried he might misuse my slumbering body as he’d misused it awake.

I can’t recall the rest of my father’s sermon, but he could have described Daniel’s terrifying vision of the end times. “There will be a bloody battle between broken nations,” he might have said while holding his leather-bound Bible to his chest. “Dead bodies will rise from scorched earth. God will grant his followers eternal comfort and damn his enemies to shame.” My father may then have lifted his Bible over his head and said, “Daniel learned these details from a spirit with a face like lightning and eyes like fire. Although he was afraid, Daniel listened to the spirit’s important message.” After placing his Bible back on the podium, my father may have stretched his arms out in front of him, palms upward: “Like Daniel, we must listen to God when we are afraid.” The congregation would have nodded in agreement. I’d later fail to hear God while my father was terrorizing me.

After that service, a white-bearded man caught my gaze from across the sanctuary. He smiled and formed his fingers into pistols, then pretended to shoot me. I think he wanted me to shoot back.

~

G.K. returned without guns. “Waste of time,” he said while settling into his chair. “Anyone want to buy anything while I was out?” I shook my head no. “Good,” he responded.

“A few shows back my assistant messed up a deal cause he couldn’t speak English. I won’t hire any more beaners.” That comment stunned and discomforted me; I’d never known a person who openly used such bigoted language. An older, more assured version of myself might have confronted G.K. about his ignorance and hate, and maybe quit that job on the spot. But at that time, I wanted to please him—along with all men old enough to be my father—so I changed the subject.

“This show’s really hopping,” I said.

“Nah,” he replied, eyes forward; he never looked at me while speaking. “This is nothing compared to most out west, especially Arizona. Thousands of people at those shows.”

“You get down there often?” I asked, leaning toward him as if I were interested.

“I’ve lived near Phoenix for ten years. It’s cheap and hot.”

“Do you have any family there? Kids, grandkids?”

He quickly replied, “No family left. My son killed himself a few months ago.”

That intimate disclosure stunned me even more than his bigotry had. Was I the first person to ask about his family since the suicide? Did he consider me a trustworthy confidant because I was white, male, and submissive? Did I remind him of his son? Had G.K. taught him to load and shoot muskets? Had they collected guns and toured the country together? Had the son dusted these rifles? For a moment, I considered asking G.K. more about his son or even telling him that my father had committed suicide when I was twelve. Perhaps if I had, we’d have bonded and he’d have stopped looking away when speaking to me. But I worried that G.K. had only mentioned his son’s death to shock me into shutting up. So I said, “I’m sorry,” then stood silently.

As I looked out at the show, I wondered if G.K.’s son had shot himself, like half of all men who commit suicide. If so, did G.K. know the type of gun his son had used? Had he seen one for sale at this show, imagined its muzzle in his son’s mouth? How might I feel if confronted so directly with my father’s weapon of choice? I then envisioned the guns in that room transforming into ropes: nylon tied into a surgeon’s knot, polyester into a bowline, tall coils of two-inch manila, a frayed line rescued from the hull of a sunken ship, blue-dyed cotton cord, diamond braids, and—hanging from the tall ceiling—a noose made of ¾ inch sisal, for which I’d found a receipt in my father’s wallet after he’d died. I imagined walking up to that sisal rope and rubbing it against my neck, at first gently, then firmly enough to burn my skin, then harshly enough to tear it open. For a moment, I wanted to create that wound in real life, then pour hot water over it; I wanted to feel a sting.

That was not the first time I’d considered harming myself. Often, while or shortly after I’d thought about my father—and sometimes apart from a clear cause—I’d wanted to cut or bruise my skin, perhaps to assert control over my body and direct my attention outward, away from emotional distress. Sometimes I damaged myself with scissors or a punch; I’d mostly avoided my arms, neck, and face. That violence was my secret. Maybe G.K. sometimes reacted similarly to thoughts of his son, and beneath his short-sleeved dress shirt, bruises covered his chest and stomach. Perhaps in a moment of anguish, he’d held a gun to his head. Although I was not fond of G.K., I was worried about him. I probably should have been more worried about myself.

About thirty feet from me, a man with a thick white mustache climbed onto a table and shouted into a megaphone, “The election is only months away! If Obama wins, he’ll take our guns and shows like this won’t happen again!” The man then held a white two-gallon bucket over his head: “Show your support for McCain! Let’s fill this with twenties!” G.K. stood from his chair, then joined one hundred other men in a donation line, but I stayed behind the tables of rifles. I’d been raised in a conservative household and had endorsed a limited government and the right to bear arms. But in that moment, I wanted someone to take away the guns in the room, to protect us men from ourselves.