Sick tradition

My dad is dead and all I got was a gun.

No...

My dad is dead and I got THE GUN.

Not from a solicitor mind you…

My Uncle Jim, who two days after my fathers suicide, dropped a sticky bin-bag into my letterbox. 

“Hey Jim, whatcha doin” I say as he goes a jamming a bundle of black plastic through a too-narrow slit. 

He don’t say nothing, just looks up at me, squeals and goes a jamming that thing even faster; so fast the stupid bastard was gonna rock the post outta the damn ground.

I go on over, yelling at the dumb son of a bitch to stop throttling my god damn letterbox. Just as I’m about to grab a hold of his overalls the bag lands with a clunk and uncle Jim stumbles back into his truck.

I should have opened it there, outside.

Ripe road kill and wet pennies the smell was…Aughh fucking raw. With a hand over my mouth, I shifted the last folds of plastic back. In a sticky brown puddle, caked in a layer of chunky red film was my dads gun; splayed out on the kitchen table… while my kids ate breakfast.

Well needless to say I was gonna have some words with Jim.

Least he could have done was clean it.

At first I went a banging on his door, demanding he come out. Not a peep.

Well that’s Jim for you. Big, hairy, built like a goddamn Moose but as nervous a creature you’d ever meet.

So I coaxed him out with a case of beer. I cracked a can, took a seat on his porch and waited for him to come out…

He’d take my peace offering, then I’d kick his ass.

But ahhh hell, you shoulda seen him. Them big wet eyes of his… It would have been like beating up a stray dog.

I’d need to get drunk first.

Then I’d kick his ass.

For now we sat there, beers in hand, watching the sun go down over the porch.

“Why did you give me the gun Jim” I said

He shrugged

“Yer pa wanted you to have it”

“How did you get it?” I asked him “Cops were all over the house”

Jim cast them big wet eyes to the floor “I was with him”

“With him?” I leaned in “with him when he died?”

Jim was silent

I glared at the guy; 6 feet of old, farming, muscle and yet too scared to look me in the damn eye.

“Why were you with him Jim?” I growled “What were you doing with my dad when he died”

“Nothing” he whimpered “He just wanted me to pick up the gun was all”

My beer can crunched inside my fist. 

“Jim” I hissed through my teeth “did my dad, your brother tell you he was going to kill himself?”

Jim winced and bit his tongue. With his eyes closed, he responded with a single, weak nod.

“I could kill him,” I thought. “I could leap from my seat and drive the jagged can through his wet fucking cow eye”. Instead I sank into my chair and stared out over the porch.

“I’m sorry Brad” he sobbed “I tried, I really tried. In the end, getting you that gun was all I could do for him”.

“I didn’t want the fucking gun Jim!” I yelled “Why would I fucking want the fucking gun!?!”

“I don’t know!” he wailed, throwing up his hands “It's just what your dad said”

“Jim my dad had lost his shit” I respond “Why did you fucking listen to him!?”

Jim sniffled

“Because he’s my brother, I don’t know” . 

“That and..” he said taking a deep breath “It’s tradition I suppose”.

Jim threw back the last of his beer, all before immediately cracking open another and sinking it with a single gulp. It was like the words he wasn’t brave enough to speak would tumble out with a belch. 

“The revolver is a .45 Smith and Wesson, manufactured in 1891 and purchased by your great grandfather in 1892. It has been in our family for over a century and was once the centrepiece of the old family home. That until the home was lost by your great-grandfather in a game of cards and he uh… Shot himself in the barn”.

“Fuckin ay” I blurted

“After that…” Jim continued “the gun went down to your grandfather, my father who after divorcing my mother would also…”

“Wait no, Grandpa Willy had cancer?” I said. 

Jim shook his head.

“Your dad found him… Upstairs in his Sunday best… the gun was still smoking. From there  it went to him and well…”

I fell back into my seat. They always said how much I looked like my dad, just without a few freckles… Or the gaping hole in the side of the head.

I was delirious when I found him. That hole… If it weren’t for that I may have thought I was looking at my own reflection. “Thank god it wasn’t pills” I remember thinking. What a stupid thought…

I couldn’t get that image out of my head after that… 

Me… My brain splattered over the walls.

“What do you think he meant by giving it to me?” I asked “What was he really trying to say?”

“I don’t know” Jim said “I don’t really want to think about it”

He sighed and drained another can of beer.

“Maybe you can give it away or something”

“Jim, I can’t give it away” I started “My dad was found dead by gunshot with no weapon, do you know what that means? They will be treating the death suspiciously! If that gun turns up, after being in my home, with my fingerprints, I’ll be in deep shit! That's why dad wanted you to take the gun! So I’ll be forced to keep it!”

Jim’s eyes widened with realisation

“Damn” he belched “Oh Dear…”

I sat for a moment, my head in my hands. All the while Jim bounced his leg and bit his nails. 

“So Uhh” he stammered, casting his eyes to the floor “What do you… plan on doing with… with it?”

I looked up at Jim

“Are you serious?”

“Well now, I was just”-

“I’m not going to kill myself with if thats what you’re inferring” I snapped

“Oh no, no, no” he stutters “That ain’t what I was getting at, but you know…”

“You know?” I growled “You know ‘what’ Jim?”

“I mean you don’t plan on killing yourself now is all” he says “and it's just well, our family seeing as we have a history and-”

He caught my expression. Eyes wide, jaw on the floor.

“Aw hell” Jim sighed “I’m sorry Brad Boy, I was just worrying out loud was all. You pay me no mind”.

I blinked the shock out of my eyes and watched as Jim nervously cracked and drained another beer; the motion enacted with the ease of dragging a cigarette. The can fell from his hand and into the pile that had formed by his feet as he reached for another drink.

“Uncle Jim” I sighed “Do you believe in fate?”

“Huh” he scoffed, choking back beer

“Do you think that our lives are already made up?” I asked.

 “...and that there isn’t anything we can do about it?”

“Aw hell Brad” he whined “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Don’t you pay that any thought now, really. Your uncle was just speakin out his ass”

He looked up at me, catching my gaze a second before darting his eyes back to the floor.

“But I know what you’re talking about. I know how you’re feeling, believe me. I was the same when I lost my father”.

There were fun uncles but growing up, Jim was an uncle to be made fun of. Clumsy, tactless and generally inept, I had hardly seen him anything more than a clown. A clown with a rhinophyma red nose…  

Yet here, in this moment, side by side, nestled in our individual beer can nests, we could have been twins. An uncle, a brother, the lines were so blurry.

It was a passing feeling but I felt more like him than any human being on earth.

“Did you know it was going to happen with Grandpa?” I said “ Your father I mean” 

“Ehh not before hand” he rasped between gulps “afterwards though, I see now it couldn’t have gone any other way”.

“How so?” I asked

Jim took a long, deep breathe

“Ah well Pa was always a miserable bastard” he exhaled “He’d cut ya down my old man. You come home sayin you did well in school, well shit kid, don’t brag until you're a doctor. Made the team? Well quit while you’re ahead, you ain’t ever going to be part of the major league”

“Don’t bother with college, you’ll fail” I continued “Don’t date her, she’s a slut”

Jim snorted “Exactly. Ain’t nothing you could do that would impress that man. A fella that miserable… He was dead before he was even in the ground”.

“Sounds just like my old man” I chuckled 

“Yeah” Jim sighed “Yeah I suppose so”

“Why do you think they do it?” I asked “Bring us down, their own children”.

Jim looked down at the nest of beer cans; some fresh, a couple tinged with rust. Coming loose from the mound as Jim shifted in his seat, a couple of cans rolled off the porch with a percussive clutter. They landed in the too-tall grass, joining a number of other rusted husks, completing the lifecycle of a beer on Jim’s porch.

“Shit” he sighed with a shake of the head “It’s hard being miserable on your own”

“Well you manage-” I say reflexively, attempting the suck the words back in through my nose

Jim made eye contact again, hitting me with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow.

Both of us laughed.

“How come you ain’t never had kids then Jim?” I ask

“Telling you honestly Brad boy” he says with a gulp “You didn’t make things better for your dad… You made it worse. Just like me and my Pa…”

Jim inhaled another beer and continued

“It ain’tcha fault son. It was time for you to be your own man, you changed but your dad… Well he stayed the same”

He sighed

“It ain’t easy being sad on your own. Only thing worse would be to have company then lose it”

“Fuck you”, those were my parting words when I left home.

I rode the high from that like a wave, surfing my way across the country and into life. The swell never stopped, i kept riding; riding like I had electric in my fucking veins. 

And the wave grew… When I met Emily, when I found work, when we got married, when I held a child in my arms.

At the top of the world, racing across the country, he was so far behind me… Behind me and below. 

Then a gun fell into the mailbox… 

I fell… I washed up… I came back to that place but he was no longer there. I was alone.

“Can I ask you something Brad?” Jim asked “I ain’t never had kids, but why did you?”

“I don’t-” I stammered “I don’t know. It just felt like something I needed to dot”.

I looked up at Jim, his hair grey-auburn like my fathers, his eyes brown like mine. The nest of beer cans, the nicotine-glazed windows, the porch, scraggly and unkempt like Jim’s thick, oily beard.

“Am I doomed?” I asked “Is it like your father? Am I already dead?”

He looked right at me. Right into me... His eyes wide and wet like pools of liquid amber…

“I don’t know son” he says “Ain’t nothin kill you quicker then family”

I didn’t speak to Jim again. There weren’t any need.

He was family and well…

I won’t say I’m sorry. Sorry is for making amends.

Seeing as those are pointless now, instead I have regrets.

I regret pushing your mother away

I regret not trying to be better

Most of all I regret that I tried to bring you down with me…

It hurts to be alone but it kills to be with someone else.

After your mother, you were all I had…

My children, my reflection, me. Only we could understand each other.

One day I looked into the mirror and realised I no longer recognised the face looking back at me…

It was no longer me, it was you. You were looking back at me.

I was ready to clip your wings to make sure you never left the nest… 

After I had finished writing I would raise the gun to my temple and join the ‘family business’...

But I won't dare to ruin your lives anymore than I have.

This is no longer a suicide note.

It’s just a goodbye.

Perhaps Uncle Jim had the right idea. You can’t hurt anybody if you are all on your own. Tramps like us, we’ll never be happy but we won’t ever make our misery anyone else's problem. 

Perhaps happiness comes from our relationships but I know now, I wasn’t nearly ready for one. 

Maybe I will be one day. For now, I have my reflection to keep me company.

If I only ever did one good thing for you, it was tossing that damn gun into the sea. 

You, your children and your children’s children won’t ever set eyes on the thing, not unless they dredge the pacific.

There ain’t any advice I can give you. 

You are already miles ahead.

Just keep going.