Muddy Creek

My daddy had five bullets in his six shooter pistol until I was almost seventeen years of age. Just one bullet missing. One empty chamber. All six chambers in that gun used to be full, but ‘fore I was born my daddy had used one of them bullets on someone I’d never met. He liked to tell that story of the missing bullet. The story of a corrupt and evil sheriff in some town I couldn’t picture with a name that meant nothin to me. I wonder if that ‘old hound dog’ as my daddy called him, was really corrupt and really evil, or if he was just really white. My daddy never could tell the difference between bad folk and white folk. All white folks was evil to him. In Muddy Creek, if you wasn’t at least as dark as that dirty river in town then you had best get movin along to someplace else. It was written on the sign outside, so all folks knew ‘fore they ever came inside our town, that if you wasn’t of the darker persuasion, you wasn’t gonna have a restful day in Muddy Creek. You’d be stupid to be a white man and come inside. You’d be unlucky to lose your horse and whatever else you had in this world that you was dumb enough to bring. But if you was really in a sad state spiritually speaking, with the devil working his meanish bad luck on your shoulder, well then, you’d meet my daddy, and he’d introduce you to his six shooter with five bullets left, and then you’d never meet anyone ever again. 

That gun and them five bullets was the only things my daddy owned in this world that he really cared about other than me and mama. But he lost all of it: me, mama, and that gun, when he shot Marcus McCune five times in his face. 

I had never seen someone without a face or without the things that is supposed to be on a face, until I saw the boy I loved with nothing I recognized on him but his clothes and the sandy color of his hair.

My daddy never put bullets in that gun again, but I did, when I shot him in his face with all six rounds. Six. I used every penny and every quarter I had made in my seventeen years to buy those six bullets. Not one round less. I needed all six. Six was one more bullet than daddy put in my Marcus, and I hope it hurt one bullet more. I hope my daddy felt all six of them bullets rattling round in his face ‘fore he died. I needed it to hurt my daddy more, so that Marcus could feel okay about his passin’, and so that I could feel something other than hatred. 

I think Marcus must have smiled that day my daddy died, or at least felt a bit better, like when a wound starts to heal. I think he did. I think he does. I think he smiles at the memory now. But my hate ain’t gone nowhere. 

Mama was never worth much without daddy. Mommas and daddies tend to be that way. One is always a weaker grain, and they scatter in the river the moment they be left alone. Momma was the weak grain in my family, and she was beyond any reach after daddy died. She hung herself from the barn, and then the rope broke. The chickens ate good that day. Didn’t have to feed em for most of the week. We buried what was left of mama next to what was left of daddy. Uncle said it was good that they was together after passin on. Said a wife should be with her husband even in death. I don’t think that’s quite right. A wife and husband should be together in death if they loved each other in life. I don’t think my mama loved my daddy at all, though I guess I don’t know for certain. I thought I knew love, but I had not had Marcus for even a year. My love was less than a year old. Maybe I knew nothin about the way a love looks after a long bunch of battered years.

But I do not believe that is true.

If my mama had really loved my daddy, she would have shot me. And I would have abided her that bullet. I am not a forgiving woman, but I am one who is understanding when the definition is in my dictionary. Killing For Love could be the name of my book that has the details of every word I learned since I was a girl. I could teach it in school, and I would teach it well. And none in my class would find anything about dying for love in that dictionary of mine. Love is not weak, and love does not lay down to die. Love kills.

Though I am no longer a young girl, I still have my daddy’s six shooter, and I never put more than four bullets in it. For I have decided that anyone who crosses me, no matter how they have slighted me, none of them will ever hurt as much as my Marcus. They will hurt four bullets worth of pain only. And I do not aim for the face. I believe a woman or a man should be able to see their beloved’s face even after death. It is a memory that never leaves. Some folks don’t like that, but I think they need to chew on the thought, pretend it’s tobacco, tasty and hard to forget; a taste you miss when it’s gone. That is what it’s like living without the one you loved imprinted in your mind.

I can’t remember what Marcus looked like. I know he had dimples, and I know he had blue eyes. But mostly what I remember is his sandy hair and his clothes on the day he died. It is hard to live with my most vivid image of him being his dead faceless body. It paints my brain like dust in the throat. I can cough and cough; I can cough until I see blood. But that dust in the throat, the very one carried home from the mines, will never really leave. Nor will the face of your beloved when he is dead.

And that is my mercy. Four bullets and a forever memory of your favorite person. 

It is a greater gift than I have known and a lesser pain than I was given.