RAYMOND'S GOT A GUN by Jenois Harris
Raymond’s got a gun—a gift from his father on his twenty-fifth birthday—fifty years ago.
***
The sound of footsteps on the loose planks of the front porch startles Raymond from his afternoon nap. He gets out of bed, slips on a pair of his mom’s cast-off mules, and shuffles to the big picture window in the darkened living room. He peeks from the side of the faded window drape.
Someone is trying to force a flyer into the tattered screen door. He waits. When he hears footsteps retreating down the porch stairs, he darts out and snatches the flyer from the screen door.
He returns to his bedroom with flyer in hand. After locating his eyeglasses, he reads: “Neighborhood Crime Discussion Tonight. Come Meet your Neighbors. Find Out What You Can Do to Make Your Community A Safer Place to Live.”
Even though, it’s been almost forty years since Raymond returned home from college to live with his parents, he hasn’t met a single one of his neighbors. For all of those forty years he has been something of a recluse. Hiding in the house. Leery of going out except to take his mom to the grocery store or to her doctor’s appointments.
Raymond is going to that meeting tonight. His legitimacy to be at the meeting will not be questioned. With his Pillsbury Dough Boy body and combed-over salt and pepper grey hair giving him the appearance of a comfortable, elderly grandfather, he will be easily accepted.
He arrives at the meeting in time to join a group discussing the merits of the local Police Department’s Gun Buy Back Project. One man asks if he will get cash or a gift card for turning in his gun. He doesn’t want a gift card.
Lt. Manly, the Police Department’s Community liaison, explains that in previous years, in partnership with local merchants, gift cards were given to gun owners who surrendered their guns. He says for the current year, anyone who turns in a gun will receive one hundred dollars in cash for a handgun and two hundred dollars in cash for a rifle or an assault weapon.
Raymond tells the Lieutenant he is thinking about turning in the gun his late father gave him on his twenty-fifth birthday. He adds that the gun is really old.
Lt. Manly asks if the gun still works. Raymond says he doesn’t know if it works. He is not about to say “Yeah, it works. Just three days ago I took it to the Bay area and used it to shoot up two of my despicable former roommates.” Lt. Manly will not hear about that incident from Raymond’s mouth.
Nor will he hear anything from Raymond about the working girls he “disappeared.”
If any of the bodies are ever fished from the ocean where he dumped them when he lived in the Bay area, or if some are dug up from their graves where he buried them in the desert, and, if for some reason he were questioned by the police regarding the dead women, he just might expound on the subject. But only if he is asked, and then only if he is asked nicely. Mind you, he is not about to volunteer any information which just might deprive him of his freedom.
Anyway, for the most part that’s ancient history. Like the burglaries and rapes he committed in his early thirties. Ancient History.
How old is he now? Seventy-five next July? Sometimes it’s hard to remember. Seventy-five years old and his body is becoming a wreck. With his bad back he can’t be lifting dead bodies and throwing them in the ocean anymore. Dead bodies are heavy. And he definitely can’t be lugging bodies across the desert to bury them in graves that he can barely dig. The arm he injured while going over a fence when he committed his last burglary has been almost useless to him for years. His one good arm is acting like it is about to go any day now, too.
He has to find another way to appease his urges.
***
Lt. Manly gives Raymond a business card and tells him to contact him if he decides to turn in his gun. He tells Raymond that if he doesn’t have a permit to carry the gun on city streets, call him at the number on the card, and he will send someone out to pick it up.
When he adds that an authorized agency will run the gun through a computer system to see if it is stolen or has been used in a crime, Raymond laughs. Lt. Manly laughs too and puts a hand on Raymond’s shoulder. “Nothing to worry about, man,” the Lieutenant says jokingly. “It’s just protocol.”
Raymond leaves the meeting with a few more business cards and a couple of phone numbers. Next week he’ll go out with some of his newly found friends to put flyers in neighbors’ doors telling them about Neighborhood Crime Watch groups that are being formed in the community.
Raymond, with his urges, is off to new adventures.
And—Raymond’s got a gun.
