An American Romance

The .357 lay on a black velvet cushion inside the display case, its barrel catching the gleam of the fluorescent lights just so. A man with striking blue eyes peered through the glass. “Let me try this one,” he said.

The pawnshop owner waddled over and opened the case. He took the gun from the cushion and the gun hated the feeling of the owner’s hand, the sweaty palm, the calloused, nicotine-stained fingers, but when the owner handed the gun to the man, the gun felt warm, safe, and relaxed.

“Nice balance, eh?” the owner said.

The man didn’t reply. He aimed the gun at a poster on the wall commemorating the Detroit Red Wings ‘52 Stanley Cup win six years prior. He stared down the sight and the gun stared back. “How much?” the man asked.

“Eighty,” the owner said.

The gun could feel the man’s loosen his grip.

“New one’ll run ya double,” the owner said, “but that one’s like new. Got it from a gal few months back. Gun was her pop’s. Never been used, she said.”

It was true. The gun had never been shot. The previous owner purchased it from another pawnshop in Dearborn for home defense, but the gun lingered on a closet shelf alone, buried behind clothes, never taken out, touched, or even cleaned.

The man asked, “How much’s ammo?”

“Box’ll run ya five.”

The man stared down the sight once more. “I’ll take it.”

“Wanna cleaning kit?”

“Just the piece and the bullets.”

#

The man drove west on Michigan Avenue, the gun beside him on the bench seat. It scanned the light blue dashboard, the radio, the steering wheel. It looked at the man, at his veiny hands, thick wrists, sharp jawline, and wondered where he lived. It imagined a meager but charming house in a small neighborhood, a white picket fence, green grass, and pretty flowers.

The gun figured the man was probably ex-military or came from a family of outdoorsmen. It could tell by his grip. It could also tell the man held other guns in his life, that he worked with his hands, and he was married, having felt the wedding band on his finger. The gun wasn’t bothered by any of this. Most men that picked it up were married after all.

The man turned on the radio.

“—loudy skies tonight with a slight chance of snow. Tomorrow, we’re looking at a high of thirty-five with a low of twenty. Coming up later, we have a brand-new song from Mr. Nat King Cole, but now here’s a new song that shot straight to number one on the Billboard charts. Yes, it’s a hit that won’t quit. Here are the Teddy Bears with ‘To Know Him is to Love Him.’”

The song began. The rhythm was slow, soothing, and gentle, like a river of honey. The singer sounded angelic. The lyrics spoke of love and devotion, but as the song went on, the gun noticed they began to speak of heartbreak and loneliness. The melody, although the same, sounded sad now, and in that moment, the gun conjured an image of a pink satin pillow inside a shiny black coffin.

Even still, the gun decided it loved the song and it was happy to hear it. It was happy, too, to sit beside the man and ride wherever, whenever as long as it was with him.

#

The car stopped. A canopy of bare branches hung far above the windshield. The man shut off the engine. The gun watched the sweat rise on the man’s forehead.

The man set the gun in his lap, pinched its cylinder pin, tugged it, opened it, and reached over to the box of ammunition, opened the lid with two fingers, dug in, brought out a bullet and slipped it into the first chamber, from the tip, straight down to the primer, then slid in the second, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. The man thrust the chamber back into place and exhaled.

The gun lie in the man’s lap, content.

A moment passed before the man took the gun and stepped out of the car onto a gravel driveway. A small farmhouse lie in the distance. A red pickup sat parked a few feet in front of the man’s car.

The man proceeded up the driveway, ascended the porch, opened the front door and entered the house. The living room was decorated with very old furniture and a rug that was worn and faded. The man’s footfalls were as careful and quiet as a cat’s as he made his way through the living room, the kitchen, and the hallway.

Then: a moan, followed by, “God.”

A woman’s voice.

The end of the hallway. The gun saw two people in a bedroom, a blonde and another man with a sinewy physique, both naked on a bed.

The gun could feel the man’s pulse in his palm, in his thumb, fingertips, fingernails, beat, beat, beat.

The gun and the man entered the room. The gun felt each bullet inside itself wanting to burst forth. It sighted the people on the bed, and the gun knew what it had to do, what it wanted to do, what it should do, what it was made to do, what it needed to do.

The man placed his thumb on the hammer and pulled it back.

The woman and the other man heard the click and snapped their attention toward the doorway. The woman screamed. The other man leapt off the woman and wrapped the comforter around his midsection. The woman drew her legs close to her midsection. Her hands covered her breasts. The gun noticed then the features of both men were striking similar.

“How long?” the man asked. No one replied. The woman curled herself into the shape of an unborn child. The man’s brother took a step backward.

“Talk,” the man shouted.

“Th-three months,” the other man said.

The man lowered the gun. “Last Friday around noon, I left work. Sick as a dog. Had some kind of bug or something. Came home, saw the truck… And I knew. I knew.” The man looked down at the gun and the gun looked back. “Got back in my car, drove around rest of the day, feeling ill… I didn’t know what to do, whether we should all sit down and talk, or… I spent the whole weekend thinking about what could be done. But now…” The man looked at them. The gun looked at them. “I know exactly what to do.”

The brother said, “Wait,” but the man did not wait. He raised the gun, squeezed the trigger, and the gun spit the first bullet into the brother’s chest. The gun took a breath and spit the second bullet into the brother’s head above the bridge of his nose.

A red smear painted the wall. The brother crumpled to the floor.

The woman held her hands out to her husband and shouted, “Please,” over and over again, like a fervent prayer to a deaf god. The man aimed and the gun spat the third bullet into the woman’s head and she was dead by the time her body unfurled itself like a white flag. The man didn’t need to fire the fourth shot, but the gun begged him to. One more, the gun pleaded. One more. She deserves it. One more. For everything she did, everything she ruined, everything she destroyed. One more. One more. Please.

The man fired into her torso and the flesh rippled with the shot.

The gun wanted more, needed more. One more, the gun begged the man. Please. Please.

The fifth bullet struck her in the neck, the sixth ripped into her chest, and the gun looked upon what it had done and felt pride, because this, it thought, is why it was put on Earth, this was its purpose. It lingered too long in drawers, on shelves, under glass, was held too many times by too many men who never appreciated it, never knew what it could do, what it was meant for, but in that moment it bore witness to its own strength and saw the balance of life and death, and because it issued death it embraced life, and because the man allowed it to feel these things, it felt love for the man, and together, as they stood amongst their creation of blood and ruin, the gun drank deep of the sweet, sweet silence that lingered in the room.

#

Later, on the road, the man fumbled with the radio and the same song from earlier came from different station. The gun decided it had always loved the song as it had always loved the man.

An hour later, long after the song had ended and with countless miles put behind them, the car came to a stop. The man opened the door, grabbed the gun and the box of ammunition and stepped outside. The gun wondered where they…

A lake. They were at a lake.

The gun noticed how the dark gray of the water met the light gray of the sky and even though the two shades seemed to fade into one another, the gun, whose sight was perfect, saw the deep division. It also noticed that although it was near freezing, the water had not yet become ice.

The gun didn’t know why the man had come to such a place, but when the man stepped to the edge of the lake, it knew.

No, it thought. Please, don’t leave me here. I can be good. Please, don’t leave me.

The man dropped the gun onto the cold beach and the gritty sand was felt beneath its handle and barrel. The gun, helpless, watched the man open the box of ammunition and dig handfuls of bullets out and toss them into the lake. Afterward, the man ripped up the box and scattered the pieces to the wind.

No, don’t leave me. Not like this. Please, take me with you. I don’t want to be alone. Please!

But the man was finished with the gun. He picked it up and threw it out into the water. It sank and the warmth on the handle from where the man held it had already started to grow cold, and the lingering scent of the man and the grease and oil from his body had washed away as it struck the sandy bottom of the lake.

Please, it begged. Please.

But the man didn’t listen.

The gun was wrong about the man, as it was wrong about the man before him and the man before that. Days of anguish faded into months of regret, but after a short eternity beneath the waves, it, as it did in the bedroom, found its resolve.

It did not need that man, not that particular man, because, it knew, there would be another. It would not linger in the water forever, not with the strength it had, not with its power of death over life. Another would come, find it, hold it, see its beauty, feel its power, become tempted by it, fall for it, want it, and need it, and plunge headlong toward a life of bloody lust with it. When the time comes, I will be ready. But until that day, it would do the two other things it was so very good at.

It would sit and it would wait.

THE END

BIO: Mike McHone is a Derringer Award-winning, Anthony Award-nominated writer whose work has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Dark Yonder, Playboy, the AV Club, and numerous other outlets. He is the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Hugh Holton Award, has ranked twice on Ellery Queen's Annual Readers List, and was cited on the Distinguished List in 2024's Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. He currently lives in Detroit.