Chapter
ARCHIE LIES FLAT on his back, his head turned to the right, his left hand outstretched, his fingers splayed over his grandfather’s Smith & Wesson .38/44 Outdoorsman. Bluing on metal, that looks almost black, attached to warm wood. The gun has a hard, carved handle with a checkered walnut diamond grip, polished from decades of use to a sheen, yet its ridges cut their shapes into his searching fingertips. Its cylinder juts out, the chambers creating the shape of a 3D S. A sight rises at the tip of the blue barrel, like a tidal wave facing back towards the gun’s holder.
And it’s loaded.
But not fully loaded.
Five of Pawpaw’s precious hand-rolled store of bullets rest in the old gun’s chambers; the remaining cache of bullets nestle in a box at the bottom of his cedar chest. Memories roll in like the waves of Lake Ontario onto the beach of his mind.
Pawpaw instructs Archie as he watches him chamber each hand-rolled round until he fills all but one chamber. “Be ready, son,” he tells Archie, “and be safe. This old thing is faithful but has no safety mechanism. So we put it in with the way we load her up. Some say it’s safer to be trained and ready than to rely on an empty chamber. I say both. You’re not likely to shoot by accident when you’re trained and in control, but you’re a kid, Archie, better to reduce the risk.”
Archie blinks his self back into the present. He remembers how his whole life up until then he knew Pawpaw chambered all six bullets and wonders what had decided him to increase the safety level. Archie never knew exactly why his grandfather had come around to a more modern sensibility when he’d first handed Archie his treasured Outdoorsman. Archie can hear Pawpaw as clearly as if he’s standing beside him, the musky scent of sweat overriding the smell of gun oil, as the gun weighs heavy and awkward in his small hands. “Self-control, gun control, is the ultimate safety, son. Don’t listen to those others who talk about safety, Archie. They think mechanisms and gizmos will keep them safe. No, it’s your brain,” he says, tapping his right temple as he bends his head to bore his blue eyes into Archie’s innocent brown ones. And then he glances at the weapon, enormous in Archie’s childish hands. Pawpaw frowns and glances back up at Archie’s open, trusting face. Suddenly, Pawpaw whips the weapon from his hands, flips open the case, removes one bullet, closes the case, and spins it so that the empty chamber faces the barrel. He gives the gun back to Archie to hold. “Get used to its weight and its size, son,” he instructs Archie as if he hasn’t interrupted Archie’s first lesson and contradicted what he’d just told him about safety. “Remember, son, your brain is the ultimate safety.”
Pawpaw vanishes in the sound of a distant police siren. Archie is back on his well-used rooming-house bed.
Your brain, Archie thinks. My brain, he remembers. My brain has kept me safe, will keep me safe. Yet Pawpaw’s—
No, he thrashes from side to side. I don’t want to remember, to think, to follow into the future where those memories and thoughts are taking me. Stop!
Archie’s sense of touch powers through his emotions to alert him to what his skin sensors are telling him. He is still touching the Smith & Wesson Outdoorsman. The cold metal of the gun under his fingertips overwhelms the grief of what he doesn’t want to remember. The gun’s battle-scarred metal soothes him, and his memories stop swapping the past for the present. The Outdoorsman lies there solid and reassuring; it speaks to him of history, of safety, of those days with Pawpaw when the man stood between him the boy and danger, when the man had taught him patiently, over and over, how to defend himself in the American way. The gun’s bluing imprisons the memories in the past. Yet the antique’s heft speaks them to him through his searching fingers.
Pawpaw had bought this gun…No, Pawpaw’s father had given it to Pawpaw on his eighteenth birthday. A present for becoming a man who’d proven his worth on the family ranch. Pawpaw was the youngest and wouldn’t inherit the ranch, but Pawpaw had told Archie that his daddy always said he had the best instinct for finding lost cattle and saving his father a bundle. In his great-grandfather’s family, the youngest had been a worthy son, an economic boon. Pulling your own weight was important. It was everything. And his grandfather always did, from the time he’d finished grade school. Maybe even before, Archie thinks, as the memory of the man who’d lived close by, two blocks south and two blocks west of his parents and himself and his twin brother, loomed into view like a mountain range coming closer when driving toward it. Archie remembers his grandfather as a man who loomed, whose face spoke of living under the sun, his emotions unbeknownst to any man, hidden like the desert. An individual. A New Mexican by choice, a Texan by birth. A real American.
Pawpaw had ranged the vast lands of Texas, riding his horse, his gun holstered on his hip. He was a man’s man, he often told Archie, a man who knew who he was and where he belonged right up until he left Texas to follow a woman to New Mexico.
“A woman will bring you down, lead you astray, be your nemesis,” Pawpaw had told him the last day he’d seen him, “a gun will not. A woman will beguile you, make you do things you don’t want to do, erase your manhood. But a gun will strengthen you. Don’t let any woman do that to you, son. Choose your gun wisely and keep it by your side.” Archie had listened politely; he’d learnt as a boy not to argue with his grandfather. It got a smack right across the face with an open hand. Archie involuntarily raises his free hand to touch his face, the memory of those smacks burning his unshaven skin. He cradles his right cheek in his right hand until the burning eases and all he remembers is Pawpaw’s guttural laugh, that rare laugh that erupted whenever their collie bounced and skittered as motes danced in the hot air of the sun scorching their backyard.
Archie strokes the gun, his fingertips telling him about its nicks and hardness, its history of use and—
Archie’s eyes shift to the digital clock’s glow to watch its steady light until the numeral on the far right moves forward by one. He wants to remember Pawpaw as he was, a big, rangy man with thick, grey hair, spiky like his own once blonde-now-black hair. But Pawpaw’s eyes were glacial blue. His are black in some lights, brown in others, as Sally had often said when she’d raise herself up on tip-toe to stare into his eyes.
Archie flips his head over to free himself from the memory.
He shoves the thoughts and feelings away as he retracts his hand from its home on the Outdoorsman. He doesn’t let his hand lie under the white sheet and sleeping bag for long as he stretches his arm out again and feels beside the gun for his iPhone. He touches its plastic-covered edge, and the outdated smartphone sails off the other side of the nightstand. He grits his teeth against the vulgar language that lusts to spill out. Pawpaw had taught him self-control even in language. A real man keeps quiet. He doesn’t display his emotions, not even anger or frustration. Archie yanks the sheet away from himself and slams his feet down on the floor, pain rocketing up his calves. He stands up, takes one step toward the window, and drops to his haunches. He feels around with tented fingers for his iPhone. His fingers land on the inside edge of the thick plastic cover. Like a projectile, the iPhone hurtles off of his fingers, slamming against the wall.
Archie lets out a yell. And bites his teeth together. He raises himself with the power of his abdominal muscles and thighs and stamps two steps over to the wall. He stares down at a slightly darker oblong in the oozing darkness at his feet.
Archie blinks as his jaw slackens.
The darkness solidifies. Archie snaps his mouth closed. He reaches down. Pain lances up his back, and he’s thankful for the distraction of the physical pain that obliterates his psychic pain. He grabs the iPhone firmly in his hand and steps backwards until his bed hits the back of his knees, knocking him off balance and onto the bed. He touches the Home button with his left forefinger and presses down slightly. The phone springs to life. It buzzes in his hand. Siri waits for her command.
“Text David, are you awake?”
“OK,” Siri chirps. “Here’s your message to David. David, are you awake. Shall I send it?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, your message is sent.”
Archie presses the Home button to dismiss Siri and stares down at the black screen, feeling the molecules in the air pressing in on him, pushing him down into his emotions and memories escalating out of his cranium. “Pick up. Pick up.” he whispers.
His iPhone pings a notification.
Relief floods Archie as he reads the first few lines of the message on his Lock Screen. With his left forefinger, he swipes the message right then presses down on the Home button briefly to unlock his iPhone and read the entire message.
“What’s up, man? You can’t sleep. Talk to me.”
Archie likes David, a man who texts and never wavers from relationship.
He texts back: “Pawpaw.”
“OK, man. That’s bad. Brains again?”
“Yeah.”
“You gotta talk to someone.”
“No.”
“Yes. And stop arguing with me, man. You know how it is. You know I’m right.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“A health professional, Archie.”
“Don’t use my name.”
“It’s not your real name, so what’s the biggie. We all agreed we won’t use your real name no more.”
“Yeah.”
Archie pauses, inhaling steadily and deeply, holding his breath in. David waits for him, doesn’t bother him with texts about where he is, where he’s gone, not like—
He controls his exhalation, feeling his heart slow to a softer rhythm. He’s being paranoid, he knows it. The logical part of his brain, the one Sir—his father—had taught him to use, fires messages at him. David can use his name, for his name is attached to his Apple account and to his phone number. There is nothing new anyone can gain from hacking into his messages, and besides, they’re using Signal. David had checked and triple-checked its security for him. He refused to quadruple-check the security protocols that the open source software uses to prevent NSA snooping into his messages. The VA can use his texts against him. That’s what one of the men waiting to see their counsellor two years ago had told him. That’s what they’d done to him. “Be careful,” his fellow veteran had told him, “you don’t know how they can twist your words, how they can make something innocent sound like you’re a terrorist or wife beater.” He’d found out later that that veteran had beaten his wife so badly she was in a coma in the intensive care unit of the local hospital; still, the man’s words made sense to him then and today. The logical part of his brain tries to speak sense to him: David isn’t giving away any new information by using your name in the texts.
Archie texts as he exhales: “Yeah. OK.”
“Glad to hear it, man! Can you sleep now?”
“No.”
“OK. What d’you need?”
“Company.”
“You got it. You know it, man, any time, any time.”
Archie smiles with his lips closed, and the skin around his eyes relaxes a mite. David knows how to write so that it sounds like he’s speaking, though Archie has forgotten how David speaks. Archie texts back rapidly with his thumbs: “I know. Thanks.”
“So whaddya want to talk about? The Mets?”
David knows how to rile me up, Archie grins to himself. The Mets! No, I’m a Blue Jays fan. I came to Toronto, and I’m all in. The Jays had won themselves a World Series, first time in over two decades, David and Andrew had told him. Nadine had blown a raspberry at their excitement, had told them real Canadians talk hockey. The men had groaned at her, and Andrew and David had argued through their blurring thumbs on phones over who was better, the Leafs or Canadiens. Archie still doesn’t understand this hockey stuff; he likes baseball, the leisurely pace of the game, the way you can jaw your way through the innings while sipping a cold beer. Archie texts David: “The Mets are losers. No way winning a pennant.”
David cheerfully argues with him, knowing that this will distract Archie until his sleepiness takes over, and he can sleep again. His plan works. Fifteen minutes into their conversation, Archie wiggles his butt backwards until his feet are elevated. Thirty minutes in, Archie slides around, shoves the pillow behind his back, and leans against the wall. Forty-five minutes in, Archie slips his legs underneath the top sheet and sleeping bag and over the next fifteen minutes, inch by inch, slouches down until he’s lying flat on his back, his arms elevated in the air with his iPhone above his head, its screen staring down at him, his thumbs slowing down.
David texts him: “Hey man, you, me, first home game at the Dome in April. Now, go sleep.”
“You got it,” Archie texts back then presses down on the power button. His iPhone clicks off as he places it carefully on his nightstand. He pulls his arm back, forgetting to stroke his grandfather’s gun, and turns on to his side, his back to the window, his body curled into himself.
Archie sleeps.