revolver (last part)

(You might be late! Here are parts one, two, three, four, and five.)

My father is missing part of one of his thumbs. Instead of a thumbnail, it ends in a rounded stump at the knuckle. He told me that he lost it when he was about sixteen, being careless while chopping wood. The story is never told in detail and when it is told it always changes a little. It’s a long time before I realize there’s a lie in there or at least an omission: I am very sure now that he did not lose the thumb because he was careless while he and his brother were chopping wood. I suspect that the truth is they were fucking around, maybe throwing the axe near each other, daring each other to be tough guys, and that went wrong.

I don’t really know why he would lie about that since the truth of it is probably the better lesson. So for the first time I think I see my father simply embarrassed by the truth. Ashamed.

He did tell me with some significant detail about the aftermath, though. They sewed the tip back on but it didn’t work. It turned black and smelled horrible within a few days and they had to go back to the surgeon and have it removed, debrided, sewed closed, and packed and bandaged. At sixteen he had to to re-learn how to tie his shoelaces. I spent a lot of time as a kid trying to tie my shoelaces without using my thumbs in case I too were to lose one of mine in an axe accident. To this day I tie my shoelaces without my thumbs, even though they both work fine. I have not had a lot of experiences with axes, mind you, so the risk has been very low.

The next time I see the revolver we are both somewhat older. He has it out on the bench again, the same bench, the same towels, but a new TV. He has reading glasses on. I’m not certain now that I lived there still — I may have been visiting shortly after moving out with my girlfriend and if so then I have brought over my new pellet gun, a .177 calibre revolver that takes six pellets at a time. I am disappointed with my purchase but it’s fine. It’s not what I really want and it’s mostly plastic and feels cheap, but dad grins his perfect false teeth grin when he sees it and gets some cheap sodas out of the fridge. He also gets me a beer, one of the ones I’ve brought over. He’s very generous with this — it would be a while before I realize that all he really wanted was a Miller or, to celebrate, a Heineken. My twee choices of stouts and cream ales could not possibly have impressed him but he says nothing about it, just drinks it with me, and thanks me for it. There’s a hint, though, that I’ve embarrassed myself a little: he calls me “young man”.

We set up the soda cans on a patio table in a makeshift range and shake them up. Then shoot them with the little pellet gun. They rupture hilariously, jets of cheap soday sprawling all over. My mother will be unimpressed with the waste, but neither of us see this as waste. This is just the price of fun, maybe 35 cents a shot, and it’s cheap. Neither of us, I realize, are having a lot of fun these days and this bright spot is worth a few dollars.

We don’t shoot that long, not like the old days when we would shoot for hours. We just kill a few cans and then laugh and put the air pistol away. I am so disappointed with it that I’m not sure I even bring it home with me (and if I did I never got it out again; it became one of those things that moves from home to home at the bottom of a box until one day you throw the box out). He gets out a couple more beers and brings the little .32 down from the cupboard.

“God, you still have that.”

“Mhm”. He unwraps the towel and starts taking the pistol apart. He puts the barrel in the bench vise and bends it over with a hammer.

I raise an eyebrow and drink my beer as he carefully does the exact opposite of what he’s programmed to do with a machine: he wrecks every single piece so it can never go back together. It’s not violent, he’s not in a rage. It’s quiet, efficient, deliberate, and calm. It’s purposeful. Each piece of the trigger group gets bent over. The hammer spring is bent backwards. The pin that holds the cylinder in place is bent over.

He can’t figure out how to wreck the cylinder. It’s too short to get any leverage on — it won’t bend. He wraps all the pieces in the towel and tapes it up with black electrician’s tape and throws that on the top of the trash.

“Why now?”

He looks at me and drags on his Player’s Filtered. “Just time.”

I look at him for a while. “Okay.”

We never talk about the revolver again. Within the year they have sold the place I grew up, the place where we shot cans and yucca plants, the place my uncles exposed themselves, the place with the cherry tree and the shitty tree fort, the place I buried a treasure trove of comic books and army men, the place we boiled stolen crabs in oil drums, the place I burned my heel stepping on a live coal, the place the bamboo spread its roots across the lawn, poking up spear-like shoots where we played. The place I got stung trying to kill a bee with a football. The place I found the thumbnail-sized green frog. The place with the pear tree. The place my father partially built, covered in blood from saw bites. The place with the French doors.

The place the revolver last sat intact, potent, exactly where I knew it was.

Their new place is strangely dead, holding no memories. The fireplace is electric. There’s no space in the back to shoot. My mother hires a gardener. My father owns only one car, and it’s not cheap.

The fridge in the “work shop” is enormous and the television is much, much better. I hardly visit at all any more.