The Gun.
Late afternoon light slices to the dormer window
to your place on the floor next to a stack of comics.
Across from you is a boy who at 11 is three years older.
He's telling you to pull down your pants.
You tell him you don't want to.
His mother is out and you're alone in the house.
He has given you a Coke and let you smoke two of his mother's
nonfilter Pall Malls, and years later you
can still picture the red packet on the dark finish
of the phonograph.
You stand up and say you have to go home.
You live across the street and only see him in summer
when he returns from school.
As you step around the comics toward the stairs,
the boy gives you a shove, sends you stumbling back.
Wait, he says.
I want to show you something.
He goes to a drawer.
And when he turns around, you see
he is holding a small gun by the barrel.
You feel your breathing glass.
You ask if it is loaded and he says, sure it is.
And you say, show me.
He removes the clip, takes a bullet from his pocket.
See this, he says, then puts the bullet into the clip,
slides the clip into the butt of the gun with a snap.
The boy sits on the beds and pretends to study the gun.
He has a round fat face and black hair.
Take off your pants, he says.
Again you say you have to go home.
He stands up and points the gun at your legs.
Slowly, you unhook your cowboy belt,
undo the metal buttons of your jeans.
They slide down past your knees.
Pull down your underwear, he tells you.
You tell him you don't want to.
He points the gun to your head.
You crouch on the floor, cover your head of your hands.
You don't want him to see you cry.
You feel you're pulling yourself into yourself
and soon you'll be no bigger than a pebble.
You think back to the time you saw a friend's cocker
spaniel hit by a car and you remember
how its face-- you remember how its stomach was split open.
And you imagine your face split open and blood
and gray stuff escaping.
You've hardly ever thought of dying, seriously dying,
and as you grow more scared you have to go to the bathroom
more and more badly before you can stop yourself.
You feel yourself pissing into your underwear.
The boy with a gun sees the spreading pool of urine.
You baby, he shouts, you baby, you're disgusting.
You want to apologize but the words jumble
and choke in your throat.
Get out, the boy shouts.
You drag your pants up over your wet underwear
and run down the stairs.
As you slam out of his house, you
know you died up there among the comic books
and football pennants, died as sure as your friend's cocker
spaniel, as sure as if the boy had shot your face off,
shot the very piss out of you.
Standing in the street with urine soaking your pants,
you watch your neighbors pursuing
the orderly occupations of summer afternoon,
mowing the lawn, trimming a hedge.
Where is that sense of the world you woke with this morning?
Now it is smaller.
Now it has gone away.
[APPLAUSE]