Shoot him 'fore he run now
J. had a freezer full of
goose breasts riddled with shot. His family
owned property on Broad Creek with a duck
blind right against the water, where the
menfolk, clad in camouflage, would sit on
brisk fall mornings, guns poised. He showed
me the blind that first summer, took my hand
and led me through a tunnel of cornstalks
gone brown. We sat close on the austere
bench, hidden behind grass that had become
hoarse with whispering over the years. I am
sure he kissed me in that humid July air
because we did a lot of that then, sweet
lingering kisses in between fights and
sarcasm.
He’d told me that a former tenant of the
Sugar Shack, the house he and his brother
were renting from their grandmother on the
far side of the property, had keeled over one
afternoon in the back bedroom, dead from a
heart attack. By the time they found the
body, the man’s faithful dog had chewed off
half of his face. It probably started with
wake-up licks that progressed to nips and
then frantic biting. But J. was often full of
shit, and I’m not sure if he was just trying
to scare me. If so, it worked. I’d spend the
night there holding it, too nervous to walk
the ten feet to the bathroom, picturing the
gory scene, the spiritual remains of this
lonely person floating over the room.
One muddy November night, when lingering
kisses had turned into the fire of post-fight
sex, I realized I was on the edge. J. and I
had gone from chemical intensity to a kind of
in-between thing that wasn’t satisfying but
was just enough to keep me hooked. We’d spent
the evening at the bar, drinking and picking
at each other. By the time we shoveled into
the Sugar Shack driveway, my brain was
crackling. We had a fight about something
ridiculous or something deep-seated and
heavy, it doesn't really matter, and at some
point I grabbed a shotgun from the gun
cabinet.
As I write this, I can’t believe that I did
such a thing, so dramatic, so serious. Could
I be making this up? No. I was drunk and sad
and teetering on the edge of the abyss, so I
grabbed one of his (unloaded) shotguns and
pointed at my face. Maybe we struggled. All I
can remember is me stumbling in the shabby
living room of the Sugar Shack where it was
cold and damp. J. was lit from behind so that
his face was cragged in shadow. I was
hysterical with pent-up emotion, struggling
to keep hold of this unwieldy gun. Eventually
J. took it away and returned it to the
cabinet. We went to sleep. I woke up the next
morning barely able to move, felt around for
his sleeping form and remembered that he was
probably hunkered down in the duck blind with
his cousins.
I’m sure he chalked the night up to my
overgrown sense of drama, another mark
against me to go with my unfaithfulness and
love of alcohol. Thank god I've tossed aside
those crutches for the most part, though I
miss the drama sometimes. Drama sparks up the
night, shines a little light into the abyss.
Without it, you have only darkness, have to
bravely perch on the edge until the abyss
slowly creeps away. And that's where I seem
to be right now for reasons that are unclear
to me, dirging it out until the fog
lifts.
"Shoot him 'fore he run now," is a lyric to
the song "Shotgun," originally by Jr. Walker
and the All Stars. Click
here for a danceable,
levity-producing version from the
documentary Standing
in the Shadows of
Motown. It features some of
the original Motown sessions musicians and
the late Gerald Levert as singer.
Image from the Washington
College magazine.