The Second Coming

you do when you are born with a love of death and death-dealing and have no enemies?
    He had not looked at the shotgun or Lord Jim or Ivanhoe for twenty years.
    Fitting barrel into stock, he clicked it out straight and snapped on the forestock. The gun was shorter and heavier than he remembered, short as a carbine, both barrels cylinder-bore. God, no wonder they were good shots. How could you miss anything with a cannon full of birdshot? The metal was not rusty but the bluing had long since worn away to greasy steel. Only a faint design, fine as scrollwork on money, remained. He broke the breech and sighted at the windows through the barrels. White light from the cloud came spinning down the mirrored bore. There was a faint reek of gun oil and powder from the last shot. Who had cleaned the gun? the sheriff? I? I. On the rib between the barrels he read: W. W. Greener, 68 Haymarket, London. Best in all trials 1875-1888. The grip was worn smooth as a police pistol. The wood of the forestock had shrunk around the bone ornament like an old man’s muscle.
    He closed the breech, hefted the gun, sighted it again, pulled the two triggers, first one then the other, then both together. Again, he broke and closed the breech to cock the firing pins. Again he pulled both triggers.
    I’ll be damned. You can fire both barrels at once.
    Wait a minute. You shot the single. There were two singles. That left one shell for the other single.
    But you reloaded.
    Why? Why didn’t you wait for the second single and the second shot before reloading?
    But you reloaded, then swung around to track the second single, swung so far around and so intent on the tracking that you forgot I was there, didn’t see me through the post oak, and got me too.
    Then you reloaded again with one shell. Because one shell was all you needed.
    Wait a minute.
    There were four empty shells, three the guide had picked up and put on the quilt beside me in the Negro cabin, and one in the breech of the Greener. “Here yo bullets,” the guide said, not even knowing that spent shells are worthless.
    Wait a minute.
    Then you had to have fired both barrels at the second single.
    Why?
    You don’t unload two Super-X’s on one small quail.
    Wait a minute.
    There was no second single. If there had been, I’d remember, because I remember everything now. I’d have heard him get up before you shot, heard the sudden tiny thunder. I knew that all along. Why didn’t I know that I knew it?
    Then both barrels were for me, weren’t they?
    Well, I’ll be damned. No wonder the Greener spit fire and smoke like a cannon.
    So that was it.
    Will could not take his eyes from the shotgun. An electric shock seemed to pass into his body from the greasy metal clamped in both hands like an electrode. A violent prickling went up his back and into his hairline.
    His diaphragm contracted. He found that he had laughed.
    Well, I’ll be damned. Is it possible that I knew it all along and until this moment did not know that I knew it? Or did you miss me? Or am I killed and until this moment did not know it? Can you be only technically alive?
    Well, as you used to say, it’s a different ball game now, isn’t it?
    Hm. Why do I feel relieved, even dispensed, as if somehow I were now free to do what I am going to do?
    Smiling, he turned the carbine-length shotgun, swinging the muzzle toward him. Easily done: you can even put both thumbs on both triggers.
    Let me get it straight now.
    You shot the first single.
    Then you broke the breech, removed the one spent shell, and reloaded.
    Then you fired both barrels.
    Then you broke the breech, ejected the two, and reloaded, but with one shell.
    One shell for the single, two for me, one for you.
    Then how did you nearly miss me?
    You couldn’t miss a quail on the wing with one barrel at fifty feet. Yet you nearly missed me with both barrels at fifteen feet.
    What happened at the very last split second that you pulled up?
    Was it love or failure of love?
    And how did you miss yourself?
    Well, whatever the reason, you corrected it the next time, didn’t you? In the attic, in Mississippi. But why didn’t you take me with you then, if you knew something and were that sure you knew it?
    The sorrow in your eyes when I came over and sat beside you in Georgia—were you sorry you did it or sorry you didn’t?
    He was smiling down at the shotgun and shaking his head.
    Sorry you didn’t do it.