Arms and the Boy

from Cold Coon & Collards:

Dad was on leave after his tour of duty at the Memphis Naval Air Station. In another week, he would be leaving my mother, sister, and me on the farm with Grandmother and Granddad, while he was off to his next duty station in the North Atlantic.

He handed me the single-shot .22 rifle. The Springfield bolt-action weighed more than expected, but I didn’t drop it.

I was pretty excited about my Daddy teaching me to shoot. I was only six, but he was going away for a year, and I would be living on the farm with my mother and grandparents. I think my father felt that it was his duty to instruct his son on how to handle weapons. He would be gone until I turned seven, and I think he wanted me to be able to defend the farm from vipers and polecats.

Although I missed the oil can target the first time I fired, after some coaching, I was soon able to send the Quaker State can spinning and jumping across the pasture. The gunsmoke tickled my nose. I liked the smell. Before I knew it, we had shot 50 rounds and the box was empty. I was hooked! By the time I was ten years old, I would regularly spend my 50¢ allowance on a box of .22 shorts, which would have to last me for a week.

My mother was thought to be the best shot in the family. Once while doing dishes, she spotted a cottontail hopping into the garden.

“Mark, go into the pantry and fetch my rifle, please,” she said, her eyes intent on the view through the open kitchen window.

Pow! she shot through the opened window above the sink full of dishes. I saw the rabbit flop twice and lie still, at the far end of the lettuce patch. Mother told me to go out and fetch it, and give it to Alec the hired hand. After work, he took the deceased cottontail home to his wife Loretta, who skinned it, dressed it, and put it in the stew pot.

Growing up around guns, I always thought of the things as farm equipment. When a polecat got into the henhouse at night, Granddad, or later, I, would go out with a lantern and a shotgun. If we didn’t shoot the predator, it would kill every last hen.

Over the years since I lived on the farm, I came to see a gun as sports equipment, like a ball and bat, or a rod and reel. I’ve been fortunate; I’ve never heard a shot fired in anger. It’s my prayer that I never do.

In the ‘seventies, long after Granddad died of cancer, Grandmother visited my house in Berkeley while returning to Little Rock from Hong Kong, where she had been visiting my parents who were employed as missionaries. She was still toting that shooting iron.

As she unpacked her traveling case, she laid the pearl-handled pistol on the nightstand.“Grandmother,” I asked, “have you ever had to use that thing?” The gray-haired woman paused, smiled at her grown grandson, and sat on the edge of the guest bed facing me.

“As a matter of fact, I have.” she answered.

Now I sat down.

If you would like to find out how grandmother used her shooting iron, please read Cold Coon & Collards, available in the store on this website.