Karen Brennan
Down with Guns
Lou fell in love with one girl, then, almost immediately fell in love with another. The girls were as unlike as pie and cake, which is to say not dramatically unlike, each sugary, each to be enjoyed after the main course. But Anna—blond, big-boned, tough-mouthed—was richer fare: a blossom with whorls, a confection with a two- inch thick icing he could scoop with a finger. Bets, less glamorous, thin, cerebral, was elusive, which might have been her chief appeal.
He had not had a good record with women. He conceived of them improperly, his ex-wife told him more than once. We are people, she used to say. He doubted it. They were nothing like him. Down deep he distrusted them. One knew they were always up to something.
Nonetheless, he fell in love. On a Tuesday Anna came to call bearing a bouquet of some kind of white flower. He thought it odd. But here she was, quite beautiful with her big smile, thinking to please him.
Then, in the evening, Bets telephoned and breathed into the phone, hung up, called back, sighed and wept. When he comforted her, she quoted Shakespeare. He loved everything about her, he told his therapist. But he might have loved Anna more.
Between the forthright and the avoidant, there is no contest. In the woods little animals scurried into their dwellings. How simple their lives from a certain perspective!
Lou’s job was to take something out of a can then attach it to a knob, then send it down a long metal chute. He had no idea what happened next. He was not paid to know.
Bets’ little brother had shot himself in the leg with a gun he’d found in her night table drawer. She had never gotten over the shame; she lived with the shame and guilt every minute even though by now her brother had recovered from his wound and walked only with a slight limp, almost undetectable.
Anna herself owned a gun and once shot a home invader who was perusing her underwear drawer, holding her panties up to the light as if he were considering purchasing them. She shot him in the shoulder, though she’d meant to shoot him in the head.
Lou had no guilt whatsoever about shooting one or two bullies in his high school class. He would not be one of those who later shot himself; he would make it look accidental. It had been accidental, but he was glad it happened.
Although he never saw the final product, he was making guns, day after day, assembling some of their parts then sending them down a chute.
He was in love with two women, but not enough to propose marriage to either. Still, it plagued him. Two women. How would he choose? He considered asking them to hide in a dark room so he could grope around and the first one he touched, she would be it. Or she would be not it. He couldn’t decide. The easiest thing would be to shoot the first one that came through the door.
This is a story about guns. Everyone has one and no one is going to get rid of it.
Anna keeps hers in the night table drawer. If she knew Lou was cheating on her with Bets, she would shoot him, then Bets, then herself. She never knew she could be so wild about a person. I am crazy in love, she said out loud to herself in the car.
It is true to say that if Lou knew he was assembling guns, he would not be displeased. Nevertheless, he was indifferent to the final product of his industry. His shoving of cones or cogs into chutes with knobs, it was completely inconsequential to him what it was his labor amounted to. He wore headphones and listened to country music—I say country music because it is my least favorite music and I do not like Lou. You are supposed to like your fictional characters, but I have to say that I detest Lou. He’s a two-timer and generally without any kind of conscience. He couldn’t care less that he shot those two students—bam, bam, they both died. It had been an accident, but for Lou it was a lucky accident since he’d disliked both boys, who may or may not have been bullies.