“Okay, let’s do it.”
He slapped his hand on the glass to confirm the deal. There was no going back now.
“Go to the girl at the front and tell her you need a test. When you’re done, come back and see me.”
Oh right, the test! I had already agreed to buy a .357 Magnum. The salesman was starting the paperwork. Failing the test and undoing our agreement was not an option. However, I had little capacity left to think clearly, let alone to quiet the mind and decipher test questions that I prayed were multiple choice. With the grace of a deer in headlights, I turned away from the glass and hobbled to the front of the store, where an employee was handing out tests like a hostess handing out menus.
“Hi, I need to — “
She placed a test in my hand and offered me a pen. “Come back when you’re done.”
I noticed the entrance of the shop for the first time: a waiting room with torn leather seats, not unlike an old man’s barbershop. Hunting and fishing magazines fanned out, covering a smeared glass coffee table. Every seat was occupied, and every inch of coffee table space was being used. Men were filling in multiple choice bubbles using the stucco walls as a surface. One pair that looked to be a father and son were taking turns using each other’s backs as desks, one standing in front of the other. I claimed about four inches of spare space and got to work, using my thigh to support the unsure scribbling of multiple choice bubbles.
The questions reminded me of a written drivers test; common-sense sentences cloaked in bureaucratic jargon, making it difficult to decipher what was being asked. I don’t remember thinking deeply about them. This wasn’t a quiet classroom where I could contemplate questions or skip a few and return when I was finished. This was pandemonium, and it had all happened so fast. I had been in the store for perhaps five minutes and had already “bought” a cannon of a pistol that was twice as much as I had considered spending. Failing the test would mean causing a scene. I answered the final question and took a few moments to look over my answers, but there was little point. My guesses were as good as they were going to be.
Thereafter, I returned to the gun hostess. She was still standing by the front, cool and collected, whereas I was a ghost-like pale. I held the little breath I had left while she reviewed my test and made red slashes. With her rubric, she scanned the answers with the speed of someone who’d done this thousands of times that week.
“Okay.” She paused. I froze. “You missed six, but you passed.”
I melted into a puddle on the floor. I was more excited that I wouldn’t be returning to my Nissan in shame. With slightly more pep in my step, I waited in line to return to my sales guy who was busy helping someone else. When they finished, he seemed to almost not remember me. This man was my whole world that day, yet I was one of hundreds that he was helping arm.
“Okay, I passed. What’s next?”
“Oh, right.” He slid the pistol case around and opened it, probably to remind himself which customer I was. I couldn’t look it in the eye. He presented paperwork to me, which he had already highlighted in some places.
“Okay, so we need your basic information here, here, and here. Sign here, initial here, and initial here.”
I gulped and began to timidly scribble my name, birth date, and address.
“No, not there!” I was a deer in headlights again. He pointed to my signature in a box that, now very clearly, said EMPLOYEES ONLY.
“Shit, I’m sorry.” He was aggravated because there was a significant number of fields that he had already filled out that he’d have to redo. But God bless this bandoliered salesman, the big teddy bear dropped his frustration in a single breath.
“It’s okay.” He pulled the old paperwork away and slid a new one underneath my clammy hand. He looked me in the eyes and calmly stated, “Slow down and take a deep breath.”
My own mother has composed me in the same manner, but not to such effect. My confidant then steadily walked me through the five or six pages of paperwork. The chaos of the store fell away around us as we focused on this single task together. When I finished, he moved me over to the register.
“Bullets. Which kind would you prefer?” This guy was a master of the second sale. I had already agreed to pay way more than I thought for a .357 Magnum that I didn’t plan on buying. Any objections or hesitations were long gone, and it was easy to add more products at this point. I had given in.
“Dude, I have no idea.”
“Okay, well I recommend this box of fifty for regular shooting, and this special one for home defense.”
“What’s the difference?” He was so thrilled that I asked.
“Well, if you have an intruder in your home and you pull the trigger, you are legally responsible for everything that bullet touches. These bullets here are designed to go through your target only and stop.”
“Uh…okay.”
“If you pull the trigger and hit your target, and the bullet goes through him and then through the wall and kills someone next door, you’ll go to jail. See what I mean?”
This rationale was so many steps ahead of anything I’d even considered until that point. “Okay, sure. I’ll take those. I’ll take silver bullets too, you know, for werewolves.”
He did not laugh.
He scanned the two boxes of bullets that were, of course, far more expensive than I had imagined. The total came to something exorbitant after tallying the pistol, bullets, test fee, background check fee, and taxes. It didn’t matter; there was no going back. I handed over my debit card and even gave him a tip — the only money I felt good about spending. With that, he closed the lid of the gun case and taped it shut. He quickly wrote VOLK, CODY on the tape and disappeared into the back room.
“Okay, until you clear the background check, your firearm will remain here. We’ll send you a text in ten to fifteen days when you can come pick it up. Bring your ID that day.”
“Okay, so that’s it?”
“Yes, sir, that’s it! Thanks for doing business with us. We’ll see you again in about two weeks!”
I thanked him sincerely for his help and left the store. My heart was pounding. Finally in the quiet of the car, I replayed the whole experience in disbelief. The drive home was completely autopilot. When I returned to my apartment, I went straight for the kitchen and poured a glass of wine, filling it to the brim. It was maybe 3:30 PM.
After one giant glass of red wine, I poured another and sipped it like an actual wine drinker. Then, I looked over the receipt, just to make sure the charges were correct. After another big sip, I checked the paperwork again to recall the name of the pistol I bought in the first place. Ruger GP-100 .357 Magnum. Nervously, I Googled the firearm and was relieved to read that I hadn’t been swindled; it was indeed a well-respected firearm, and by all accounts, a “tank of a gun.”
I poured a third glass of wine at perhaps 4:00 PM and sat in my apartment, oscillating between disbelief, excitement, apprehension, and buyer’s remorse. There was probably more wine poured, but who remembers?
Two weeks later, I went to retrieve my .357 Magnum gleaming in silver. I brought it home and stared at it for a while, as if it was a stray animal that I’d taken into my home and couldn’t predict its next move. As soon as I could, I took it to a range near my apartment. For the first time, I methodically slipped six brass bullets into the silver cylinder and carefully spun it back into the gun. Pointing downrange at the clown target I’d selected, I pulled the hammer back slowly until it clicked with the same sound I’ve heard in hundreds of westerns. I took a deep breath, pulled the trigger…and missed!
