At the gun show you say to me, You look good
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
by Elissa Field
At the gun show, you touch the museum-oiled blade of a katana just above the do not touch sign, and we stand in forced compliance under the hard gaze of the man who microfibers all trace of you away. Seven hundred years old, he chastises, the corrosion of your fingertips already eating through.
At the gun show, you pick up a Canik in desert bronze, put it down, it’s one you already own. I eye one under glass in diesel green, iridescent like rainbows on petrol. Laser embossed handgrips in swirls of vining flowers. I’d fired yours at the range. First time I heard a shot that close, I cried.
At the gun show, you say to me, You know you still turn me on.
At the gun show, you stand longer so we could ask, together, about the history of a rifle older than either of our families had been in the country. Browning, Springfield, Remington, Smith and Wesson, Thompson, ArmaLite, Enfield, Mauser. Colt, Beretta, Ruger, Sig Sauer, Walther, Heckler and Koch. All that history, hunting and wars and ego and crime and protection and sometimes love.
At the gun show, you say, Which one feels right in your hand? Try this one, you’d like the grip. You check chambers, every time, even when they tell you the gun is not loaded. Every time, you model to me safety on, chamber empty, barrel down. Every time. Gently, you push my head to safety when someone waves a barrel in my direction. Your voice drops low and sweet, almost a memory.
At the gun show, I think of the range. You made me practice two holds: teacup and overlap, made me try again and again the perfect grip, the proper lay of my finger away from the trigger, but ready to move. Load my own clip. Sweep my brass casings. At the gun show, you say, You shouldn’t walk the dog alone at night. At the gun show, I try to think why it would be so impossible for me to aim, and it comes out as a list of all the things already in my hands: phone, leash, purse, stroller, coffee, car keys, baby bottle; how once it had been your hand.
At the gun show, you ask a man passing, Hey, where’d you get that hot dog? Turn back, walking off, saying to me, I’ll be back, I need to eat.
At the gun show, I think about that time we’d walked down steps at an alligator farm and been in a cave, face to face with a seventeen-and-a-half-foot saltwater crocodile, its dagger claws, its gaping fangs longer than your hand. At the gun show, I think about the night we stood knee deep in surf, white linen shirt blowing back from your tan, and the entire world pressed around us.
At the gun show, you come back from wherever you had disappeared to, eating grilled Italian sausage with roasted peppers and onions on a roll from a paper shell. You talk with your mouth full about how gun safety starts with getting over the fear. At the gun show, I wonder about the beer cart being staged so close to the exit.
At the gun show, you model the best, proper place for concealed carry, explain the no zones: shooting crotch or kidney or bowel or femoral artery. You talk to Palmetto Customs while a man at the opposite booth holds up ceramic and titanium plates to me, laying slabs of tactical armor in my hands. Holds up charts with stab ratings and caliber ratings and carry weights. Sizes up my ribcage. Passes me his card for ordering with a discount online.
At the gun show, we don’t talk about how I folded up, puking, for an hour before you drove me to the hospital for our second son. We don’t talk about how you’d given our house back to the bank, how I work now three jobs to pay rent twice the cost of our house. At the gun show, you don’t check when your phone vibrates, not until we’re at the end of the row, and then you pocket it without returning the call.
At the gun show, I remember going out the churn of the Miami inlet on a boat piloted by your coked-up friend, pitchpoling in the crossroads of too many wakes. You: one hand on the rail, one on a Jack and Coke, your teeth shining, and I realized the open boat was the exact length of the crocodile in the tank.
At the gun show, you tell me where to stand when someone breaks into my empty house: not get trapped on the stairs, but wait at the top, let them step into the death funnel. Easy aim to kill. Tell me, I only want to keep you safe. At the gun show, you don’t say you remember how you used to lie in a plank atop me, muscles of your arms like rocks, saying, If the house fell down on top of us right now, this is what I’d do. This is how I would protect you.
Elissa Field writes literary noir in long and short fiction and is a Submissions Editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. Her unpublished novel is currently a Killer Claymore Finalist for Best Mystery, and a forthcoming story will be published as 3rd place in the Uncharted Cinematic Short Story Contest. Other publications include CRAFT, Conjunctions, Moon City, SmokeLong, Citron Review, monkeybicycle, Peatsmoke, BULL, and others, as well as anthologies including Ghost Parachute, Bath Flash Fiction, Fractured Lit and Bending Genres. She lives with her sons, cats and collie in a ridiculously cool historic house under an ancient mango tree. Find her on socials or at elissalaurenfield.com.
