Notes from a small pond: Robbed

When I was 7, my Gramps let me hold a 1903 Colt .45 six-shooter revolver and shoot it at a line of Olympia beer cans he’d arranged on the branch of an oak tree somewhere out in the Ditchbanks. I hit five out of six. Gramps was ecstatic. The noise and the kick didn’t scare me at all. Missing the cans on the branch did. My dad was there. It was 1972.

A bunch of years later, on my 16th birthday, Gramps gave me that revolver, saying: “Don’t ever use it unless you’re gonna use it, except on cans.”

I understood. I never used it. Except on cans.

By the time 2005 arrived, my life was not my own. My house was robbed. Drug stuff. The Opioid Addiction Epidemic and everything it meant for everyone it hit.

A beloved son weeping on the floor. A Mother alongside, and Wife. Daughter, stricken and kept, holding herself together. Two younger sons spinning, not.

“Who has my guns!”

“Not sure, Dad!”

“My Gramp’s .45?!”

“I don’t know!”

“I think you know, have a clue, dammit!”

“They’ll kill me.”

“I’ll kill you. Who has it?”

“… I think it’s John Doe.”

I fantasized about knowing who he was, about bumping into him at a bar and inviting him into the parking lot. I dreamt about showing up at his Clean and Sober Meeting, drunk as a barrel full of monkeys and busting his face, forcing him to drink Hawaiian Punch until he is sick, his face in the toilet.

Eventually, I got over it. But being violated by a robbery is really a thing.

Then, in the summer of 2015, I got a call from the St. Louis County Sheriff. Another gun that had been stolen back in 2005 was a K-Mart .410 single shot. I honestly hadn’t noticed it was gone.

According to the deputy, the shotgun had been used in the commission of a felony and they were wondering if I wanted the gun back.

“Did it kill anyone?”

“Can’t say. But yes.”

“Who?”

“Can’t say.”

“Sure. I want it back. I paid $49 bucks for it in 1994. Sure. I’ll take it back. But not it if it killed someone.”

“I can’t say.”

Today that gun sits, with its barrel sawed off, under my bed for the messed-up and confused and addicted guy that comes looking for pawn-ables, willing to kill-or-be killed in the process.

Purdue Pharma. I pray you come to my bedroom.

My Grampa’s 1903 Colt 45

revolver — God Rest Ye.

Parnell Thill is a Cloquet-based author and marketing executive. Winner of a Minnesota Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest “Columnist of the Year” award in 2017, his book “Killing the Devil and Other Excellent Tricks” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local booksellers, the Pine Knot News office and at killingthedevil.com.