Too Late to be Good

Arielle Robbins Deakter

I was ten years old when I touched my first gun. It was shiny. I could see myself as a dark blot in its reflective body. This was my mother’s gun, in case of thieves. Even nowadays one couldn’t be careful enough, she said, when she showed me where in her closet it was hidden. We must protect ourselves now that your Papa is gone and Tim’s serving this fine country of ours, this last bit she said the opposite of how Avery O’Brien’s parents spoke. They were proud their daughter was the first girl from our small town to join the good fight. Mother thought Avery was stupid for going off to fight a man’s war. Don’t you ever do something like that. Your father would be turning over in his grave. Some things women can do and some things men can do, and that’s that. Mother heaved the case that housed the gun back onto the top shelf in her small closet. I was never allowed in there, and this brief admission into her world was a secret thrill.
My brother, Tim, the oldest of us three children, had a rifle for hunting and a revolver that was once Papa’s. Lee was supposed to inherit Papa’s shotgun, but Tim had told us, What use is saving a gun for a bastard cripple? Tim had no use for words, and they had no use for him. He used them as little as possible as though they had a mind of their own and might rise up against him. When I was five, Tim told me Papa died because he had a drinking problem. I had thought then of how I once saw Papa guzzle an entire pitcher of ice water and then my mother’s glass of lemonade, too. I knew better now.
Sometimes I tried to imagine what Papa must have looked like dead. I had seen a dead body once. My grandmother’s. She died in her sleep, and in her coffin, she looked like she was sleeping still. The mahogany casket was shaped like a chocolate bar, and she was its filling, a little treat for God.
Mother was scared of dying, and she was even more scared of Tim dying. That’s why she screamed at him and slapped him once across the mouth before he left for the war. That’s where the trouble started. It is in the good things people intend to do that an opening is left for the devil to squeeze himself in.
Not all of the families in our town were lucky enough to have at least one boy. And the war claimed most of the little we had. Arnie Hutchins was the first to do it, which shocked our town through and through. His wife bore him four girls in a row, the last of which exchanged the mother’s life for the baby’s own.

Did you hear? Arnie Hutchins took his two eldest hunting last weekend.
No, you must have heard wrong.
I didn’t hear nothing – I saw it through my own two eyes.

I had seen it, too, but nobody listened to me. The girls, Jan and Nellie, had ridden in the back of Arnie’s red Ford pick-up, their rifles pointed toward the sky like flags. They smiled at me when the truck passed me by. They sat near the outer edge of the truck’s bed and dangled their legs low across the dirt road. Between them lay two small brown sacks spotted with blood.

People talked, but nobody could much argue against Arnie. That’s how it went in our town. Arnie’s family had been among the first settlers here, and he sat on the town council. More often than not, when someone in town had a problem, they didn’t go to the sheriff, they went to Arnie.
A month later, it became public knowledge that Seth Downs went hunting with Arnie, and he brought his 12-year-old daughter along. My mother did not listen to gossip, but somehow this was different. She was angry.
“He has no business taking those girls out to hunt.”
“But Mama, you use a gun. Why can’t Arnie’s girls use them, too?”
She slapped me. “I won’t stand back talk in my house, young lady.” I quieted. I knew better than to reach up and touch my tender cheek where she could see me. She leaned back in her rocking chair. Her bedroom was on the east side of the house, and in the late afternoon, it was partially eclipsed by darkness. Now she tips in and out of the timid light, her eyes half closing, her hand in her lap. She had a headache. “Go on now and stop pestering me. Go take your brother for a walk.”
I touched my cheek as I walked through the hallway to Lee’s bedroom at the back of the house. His room had once been the dining room, but mother had to convert it since Lee could not get up the stairs real well.
Lee had been born too late to be good and too early to be healthy. Mother had him a year after Papa died, and he had been born small. Mother told us he came out early because he was eager to be a part of the greatest family on God’s green earth. Tim laughed at her and called her a name I cannot speak until I am old enough to know how to use it.
“Hey, Lee.” He did not respond. He sat in front of the window, his back to the door. His room smelled like medicine, a damp, sour fragrance that settled in your clothes and on your skin until you bathed it away. It was a smell that belonged to Lee, and because it was his, I loved it.
I looked out the window. The birch trees were the color of a fire just beginning to catch. From the outside, tree branches appeared to cover our house in bright, young flames. I remembered one autumn, when Lee was just a baby; Mother let me take him out on my own. This was in the early days, when Lee’s sluggish attempts to crawl were overlooked, thought of as just a late blooming. I held Lee in my arms and sat against the birch tree in the backyard. Those days we listened to the sounds in the forest behind our land.
“How about a walk?”
“Don’t want to walk today,” he whispered, after some time. He did not look at me. “I don’t really walk, you know. I sit in my wheelchair while you roll me around.”
I flinched and blushed. “You need to exercise every day until October. Winter’ll be here soon.” The daylight came through the leaves and made his sallow skin look warm and rosy.
“Is it September already?” He managed to roll his head to the side and look at me. When so much had failed in him, his eyes remained strong, and they stared out at me now. I could see my reflection in them, shadowy and crooked and tall. I looked beyond him at the blue wall where he kept his calendar. It was two months behind, stuck on July, a giant red circle had been drawn around July 4th, the date of our town fair, six months and one day after Lee’s surgery. We had bought the tickets ahead of time. Mother had worked two extra shifts to buy us the expensive, front-of-the-line passes so Lee would not have to wait out in the sun.
Lee loved rides more than Papa liked to drink. His favorite ride was called the Sky Screamer. It’s the closest you can get to flying, Lee had said after we saw a photo of it in the town paper. The photo was old – from last year’s fair. The ride’s giant single propeller held on one end, the town Mayor, and on the other end, his wife, and it appeared to scoop them toward the sky. This year, when the fair opened, the sky had been a perfect blue. Riders on the Sky Screamer could see the town and the placid land beyond it for miles around, or so I heard. We never did go to the fair.
Mother took Lee into the big city the day before to get what she called “an official bill of good health.” Mother had told me to eat alone that night and go to bed once the sun set because she was taking Lee to a celebratory dinner in the city. But they came home before the sun fell from the sky. They did not eat that night.
The doctor had done something terrible to Lee. He had shown Lee a picture of the truth, an X-Ray of Lee’s spine taken two weeks earlier. The doctor pointed at where the smoky white billow of Lee’s spinal column was clotted with tiny black spots. The doctor talked about other treatments: surgeries to excise more diseased bone, a harness that mimicked human movement, a wheelchair that could climb stairs. Mother asked the doctor if he thought she was made out of money, because unlike some fancy doctors she knew, she was not made of money. Shame on you for getting his hopes up.

I went on the walk alone. From our yard, I crossed a small stream to the outer forest. I thought about the games I used to play here and about Arnie Hutchins, who had been coming around a lot. One day, he’d shown up on our porch with a basket of orange persimmons from the tree in his front yard, to ask if he could use the forest for hunting. Though it was no longer Mother’s land, and that was public knowledge, he had still shown the courtesy to ask us permission; Mother managed to smile when he came by the second time. He visited once a week now, either before or after hunting. Sometimes he’d bring the girls along. I once overheard Mother tell Arnie how nice his girls looked, and how much help it must be that they could hunt.
I looked up at the gunmetal sky and smelled rain. First snow would be here soon. The trees had begun to shed their leaves, their branches bare and spindly. When I was younger, Tim had told me stories about the forest. A monster lives in that forest, he’d told me. Best not play around there. Children are its favorite meal. I was too old now for such fears. I closed one eye and cupped a hand around the other, looking through the opening. This was an old game. There, I’d shout, a deer! Pow! My shot would crack loud against the trees and bury itself in the deer’s soft pelt. Somehow, I would drag its body home on my own, and Mother would be so surprised she wouldn’t care that I’d gone hunting. She might even tell Arnie to take me to the woods like he does with his own girls.
A shrill cry erupted from the north, and I froze for a moment, the imagined noises of a hunt mixed with the sound of real anguish. I began to run, through the trees, past our home. I could see the country road swerve as I ran between the bodies of the birches. There stood Jan Hutchins, looking into the ditch that ran between forest and road. I came upon her and saw a horse writhing in the muddy ditch, its mouth twisted in agony. Fat, angry veins covered its thick neck. Its dark eyes had, in each glazed pupil, a spot of light. Arnie and Nellie Hutchins knelt beside the horse.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nellie’s horse hurt herself chasing game.” The horse whelped in pain. Nellie held the horse’s front ankle in her small hands. Arnie leaned in and talked to his daughter. The horse groaned and whinnied as her wound was searched. Arnie placed his rough hand on the mare’s forehead, quieting her, and then he saw me. He told me to get my mother and then run over to town and fetch the veterinarian, Joe Kinney.
As he talked, Nellie stood up, her back to us. She pulled something out of her waistband. A loud crack sounded, the horse sighed deeply then, and relaxed. I had never seen a large animal die before.
Arnie held his daughter. “It was the only thing to do,” he told her. “You love something you don’t let it suffer, not if you can help it.”

Mother and the veterinarian were out in the woods with the Hutchins and had been for some time. It was late afternoon and dark. I went to Mother’s room. I knew what had to be done. I listened all these years to people doing the wrong thing. Now, I am grown. I know what is best. I flipped on the light in the tiny closet and looked up at the shelves. Each shelf was lined with squares of neatly folded clothes. No boxes. I began rummaging through mother’s hung clothes, cautiously at first then quickly.
I found it towards the back of the closet, wedged between two boxes of old glassware. It looked more like a backgammon case, but when I lifted it, there was no mistaking the weight of what it actually held.

That night, the sky turned a bright red like cranberries in the winter thaw. The blue that followed was deep and powdery as though a strong wind could scatter what little light was left. My mother and Lee went to bed early; mother with a headache, Lee tired from the pain in his bones that worsened each day. I pulled the revolver case from my closet and set it on my bed. I thought God might understand.
I lifted the pistol, and the cylinder swung out and down. Mother taught me to release it gently otherwise you could bend the crane. Bullets lodged in the chamber waited to explode, the crane bent like a sick spine. I loaded the bullets into the chamber carefully, pointing each tip forward and down. Then I pushed the cylinder back in with a smooth click.

In all my dreams, I see him before me on that bed, in a room full of the scent of approaching death. His eyes are neither open nor closed, somewhere in between. I raise the gun to his head and release. There is not time for him to speak my name, but the muscles in his cheeks slacken, his body sags. The bedroom door is flung open, and there is mother, disheveled from sleep. She appears to glide slowly across the wood floor, the dark hallway behind her infinite, black. Yet I know she must be running. She bends over my brother and shakes him. She looks at me and down at the gun in my hands and weeps. She has a torn look on her face and a curse for God.
We haven’t kept a gun on our land since that night. Mother had told me to take the gun out in the woods. “Dismantle it, bury it, piece by piece,” she said. “Don’t come back til you’ve buried it all.”
The forest has a way of forgetting things. What was bare bark last spring, this fall is now covered in phosphorescent greens and oranges. I buried the gun deep in the earth. Sometimes when I think of it, I shiver. Even now, as I stand in the hot July sun. Somewhere in the distance the fair has opened for the day. I can see the children on rides almost fly. I can hear them scream with delight.