Gun Church

Eighteen

When Jim showed up for our first run following my very tiring weekend, I was really happy to see him. I could feel the big smile on my face. Downstairs, I put my hand out to him.

“I’m glad we’re friends, Jim.”

“Me too, Kip.”

“Sorry I was cranky the other day.”

“Everybody gets a little weirded out after their first time in the chapel. It’s no big thing.”

“We’re okay, then?” I asked.

“We’re always okay. And thanks for the car. She was totally impressed.” His smile said what he no longer had to. Mission accomplished. He’d gotten laid.

Later that day, after class, it was back up into the woods as usual. As happy as I was for him, I still wasn’t pleased about having to get accustomed to a new sidearm. No matter. I needed Jim as a friend, as the man who would keep me on the inside. Until I stood across from Jim in the chapel, raised my weapon and fired, I’d told myself it was all about writing again, about McGuinn. That was no longer true. It may never have been true. If I never wrote another word, I would’ve been hooked. I was hooked. I wanted that rush again so badly I could taste it. So when Jim said pick another gun, I picked another gun.

It was definitely the.38. The feel was very different from the Beretta. The Beretta was small and sleek-a woman’s gun, Jim teased. It popped more than banged when you fired it. The.38 was no cannon, but it was a beast by comparison. Still, it fit comfortably in my hand and after only a few rounds I started to get a feel for it.

Things were going great and the tiny dose of bad blood between Jim and me seemed forgotten-forgotten until I asked if I could shoot the Beretta one last time for old times’ sake.

“I told you, you’re never going to see that gun again, so don’t ask about it!” It wasn’t a suggestion. It was the first time Jim’s tone was unmistakably belligerent.

“Christ, kid,” I said, using kid to tweak his nose, “you and your rules! Why not open up your own chapter of the NRA and leave it at that?”

For the hurt expression on his face, you’d have thought I’d just gut-shot him. His lips moved, but only wounded animal noises came out. Then realizing how stunned he must have looked to me, he turned away in embarrassment. Only after getting hold of himself did he face me. His expression was no longer stunned or wounded. I’d seen him angry once, when Vuchovich was holding us hostage. He was angrier now.

“Don’t ever say that again, Kip. We’re nothing like those gun queers.”

“Gun queers?”

“It’s the old-fashioned meaning of queer. It means like obsessed. We’re not like that. We don’t care about muzzle velocities and specs and shit like that. We’re not queer for the guns themselves, not like the Colonel.”

“Okay, but why hate the NRA? I mean, I’d think you would hate gun control advocates worse.”

“Gun control is a misnomer. They don’t want to control guns. They just don’t want you to have ’em. I understand that and, let’s be real, it is kind of hard to argue that we wouldn’t all be safer if no one had handguns. The NRA types, man, they’re the worst. They’re the real gun control advocates because they want to control what you do with your guns: how to hold them, how to carry them, when to clean them, when to use them, and on and on. They’re fascists. They couldn’t give two shits about the Constitution. For them, everything except the Second Amendment is the fine print. They’re just a bunch of gun queers.”

I held my palms upward in surrender. “Sorry.”

“All right,” he said, but he was still red-faced. “Just don’t ever say that. We’ve come a long way together, too long a way to screw it all up now. We’re both in the deep end of the pool, Kip, and there’s no going back now.”

I kept quiet. The kid needed to have his say if we were going to move on. Besides, I was trying to figure out if there was something I was missing. This was the second time in only a few days Jim had talked to me this way. After I went after Stan Petrovic and Jim tackled me, he had said a very similar kind of thing. You’regoingtofuckeverythingup. Youcan’tdothatnow. Youcan’tfuckitallupnow.

“No, Kip, I’m the one who should be sorry, not you. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that. Don’t be mad at me, please,” he said, his frightened inner child that he hid so well coming to the fore. “I just want you to like and understand me. I think sometimes I want that a little too much and I get worried is all.”

“Jim, you’re the best friend I’ve got in this world. Forget it. Let’s just shoot.”

And shoot we did, way longer than was normally the case. It was a race to see whether the sun would set before we ran out of ammo. I could tell Jim was getting bored, so I regaled him with some of my endless supply of stories. What I don’t think Jim realized was just how hooked I really was. He didn’t have to beg for my approval. By now, it was almost beside the point.