Cherrywood Grip
an orchard history
before the cherries The almond trees flowered white all the way down the road a little pink remaining at the center bees entering every branch petals loosening into the irrigation water the ditches carrying them away by summer Fruit split open in the heat wasps drunk at the windfall cherry juice darkening the dust irrigation ticking through the orchards all night That small silver machinery keeping the sweetness alive he made us walk the orchards after the trees were cut turning over cherry limbs One after another sap dried black at the wounds ants moving through the sawdust until we found pieces without rot Without a split wood clean enough for the grip of his Colt .45 we carried the orchard home he shaped it himself sanded the cherrywood smooth worked oil into the grain the red deepening beneath his thumb crosshatched the grip by hand each small diamond Cut exactly he could build a cabinet repair a gun Cook anything gunsmith Carpenter Gourmet cook genius everywhere mercy Nowhere my mother's German Luger slept in her lingerie drawer black steel beneath the slips his cherrywood Colt among the underwear another .45 automatic in the bedside table with his dirty magazines beneath the mattress guns on my mother's side two or three on his the .45 automatic A .38 whatever else was sleeping there a pistol in the hand-tool box another beneath the couch a .22 pistol and two .22 rifles high inside the closet guns in every room where a child might need to become invisible at thirteen He taught me to reload molten lead poured into molds the metal shining before it hardened sweat running beneath my shirt from heat From him don't spill anything the press coming down the brass receiving primer Powder Bullet hollow points assembled by my own hands round after round made beneath his eye the cherrywood Colt was large beautiful in the wrong way the .45 automatic was the one we feared we had been made to fire it again and again at the gun range again and again out at the sand dunes we were so little the recoil entered both hands ran through both arms found the whole body he trained our sight front blade centered inside the rear notch the black bull's-eye beyond it both eyes open we were not allowed to close one over and over away from the gun range he built another inside heavy Daisy pellet rifles pellet handguns paper bull's-eyes the same corrections grip Stance Sight both eyes open over and over then he taught us how to shoot a body window Garage Door if anyone came through who did not belong shoot to kill if we fired too soon if half the body remained outside drag it in
make sure the dead belonged entirely to the house this was ordinary instruction since then I have thought about the eye how distance entered it as something to be struck how far those same eyes would travel how I learned to line them with kohl how they would spend years reading the undersides of leaves we knew its report knew the magazine stayed full of hollow points cartridge beneath cartridge fed upward through the grip some of them made by my thirteen-year-old hands and always the possibility of one already in the chamber later he pressed the automatic against my head my own hands somewhere inside it at supper he laid the automatic on the table beside the rice shoyu darkening the grains the sweet meat cooling under its glaze no talking no giggling no eye contact sometimes he entered wearing the ear protectors I know how this sounds it is also true forks lowered Quietly against the plates we understood what kind of sound he had already protected himself from many times I woke on the couch afternoon light caught in the almond trees the .45 automatic ten inches from my head look at him look at the gun slowly close the eyes as though nothing were happening don't react this was to stay alive one afternoon my mother My sister my brother and me were standing in the kitchen when the automatic went off in the back bedroom we knew its report the windows gave back a little of the sound my brother looked at me I looked at him is he dead? something almost merry passed between us
we were happy our mother had a look too or afterward we believed she did stay here She said she found him alive the magazine out he had cleaned the automatic hundreds of times this time one hollow point remained in the chamber through the bedroom wall through the outside wall into the neighbors' house afternoon entering through the new hole he would go on living for years we had been happy too soon my brother was fourteen his friend Alan Adams Was thirteen they reached beneath the mattress brought out the guns laid them across the bed the .45 automatic The .38 the others laid out in a row black metal on the bedspread Alan had not been raised around guns like we were he said cool lifted the automatic without meaning to brought the barrel level my brother sitting across from him on the edge of the bed directly in its line my brother struck the barrel down the automatic fired one round through the mattress then the hardwood floor cordite Splinters the whole room ringing my brother turned the mattress did something to the floor some criminal little miracle the children in that house were good at four years The hole kept quiet then he left and joined the Navy after the firing range closed mullein came up through the spent brass yellow flowers opening above everything fired and forgotten pokeweed darkened along the berm blackberries took the fence thorn by thorn bees entered the mullein birds carried off the black fruit by August every living thing fully loaded
See it in my mind. You know it so well. Leaves us all thinking
Remarkable. Intense. Palpable. Yearning for more of the story.