Grandma's Gun

Grandma’s Gun

Roland Mann

For as long as I knew her when she was alive, Grandma kept a shotgun propped up in one of the corners of the kitchen. The kitchen was pretty central to all the rooms in the house, so the gun was pretty easy to get to and get at. Grandma never made any attempt to hide it or to keep secret that she had it. You could see it the minute you walked through the front door.

She had eight kids of her own, all from one husband. She had two stepkids that were his when she married him. They were both pretty young. She was always "Mama" to all of them, even the stepkids. Granddaddy had married early and had his first kid when he was about seventeen. His first wife died during childbirth during the next one. A year later, he'd married Grandma.

Grandma was Myrtle Maybell McClusky. Well, that's what she was before she married Granddaddy. She became Myrtle Maybell McClesky. She always said that Granddaddy's family and her family had come from the same part of Ireland and that if you went back five or six generations, maybe more, that they were all kin anyway. So, she says Granddaddy was like her tenth cousin, removed by the ocean.

Granddaddy fought in World War II. He'd been involved in the action during the Battle of the Bulge and had helped liberate some concentration camps, scenes he said he'd never forget. He came through relatively unscathed and returned to the farm in the boothill of Missouri. They thought things would go back to normal, but he was called back up for Korea. Grandma was pregnant with Aunt Teeny then, and Granddaddy never returned from that war.

I never knew him personally.

She was pregnant and she had a housefull and she wasn't interested in marrying again. Claimed she had Granddaddy's extra rib and no amount of loneliness would change that. I used to wonder why Granddaddy had an extra rib and exactly where Grandma kept it.

Grandma could hunt and she could fish and she could farm. She had ten sets of hands to help her, but she managed to do it. They never went hungry. They didn't have many Sunday clothes, but they didn't wear rags, either.

By the time I'd come along enough to understand any of the world, she'd gotten pretty old. And it was a regular occasion for her to have a dozen or more grandkids in the house…all at the same time.

"Grandma," I'd said one time when it was just her six grandsons there, "is that shotgun loaded?"

"Why shore it is," she'd replied, "what good would an unloaded shotgun do me?" She was rocking away in one of the two rocking chairs on her front porch--hers. The other had once been Granddaddy's, but it was pretty much fair game now that he was gone. A couch swing hung from the ceiling, facing the front door and the rocking chairs on the other side of the front door. Three of my cousins sat there watching as I asked, me sitting in the other rocker. The youngest two boys sat on the steps.

She didn't even ask me which gun or let on like she didn't know what I meant. She knew exactly what I was asking and knew I knew what I was asking, so she answered with the truth, or the truth as she knew it.

"What do you do with it," asked R.E. after he spit about ten watermelon seeds over the rail and onto the ground. His dad, my uncle Davis, had brung us boys a bunch of watermelons, but we had to do a bunch of chores around the house helping Grandma out before we could eat any of them.

"I do whatever I please with it," she said, "why's you wanna know?"

"I'on't know," said R.E., "I jus wondered."

"I had that gun since I was nine," she said, her rocking slowing down a little as she stared out acrost the yard and into the cotton field in front of her.

"I kilt my first squirrel when I was ten and I kilt my first rabbit when I was eleven. I used my daddy's dog to help with the rabbits.

"Hit was the d'pression back then and weren't much food to go around. 'Course, I tell you boys that the d'pression didn't mean nothing to us'n here. We'uz poor before the d'pression, we'uz poor derin the d'pression and we'uz poor after the d'pression was done over. That's just pretty much the way it was around here for folks."

"You can hunt rabbits?" asked one of the boys, all of us now with bellies full of watermelon and staring acrost to the field trying to see what Grandma was seeing.

"Shore, boy, any woman round here worth anything could hunt. Had to if'n she wanted to be married. Ain't no man want a woman what cain't fire a gun.

"Rabbits is the funnest kind of hunting," she said. "Daddy had a dog named 'Dog' that I--"

"His name was 'Dog'?" one of her grandsons interrupted.

"Yep. Daddy said he had too many animals to be worrying about naming them all. Had about a dozen cats, all named 'Cat.' Cepting one, hit was named 'damn cat.'

"Now, dowan'cha want ta hear about that shotgun, or doint ya?" We all answered that we did, of course.

"I took Dog out to try and hunt up some rabbits one day when I was still young, before I'd had any babies. Hit was a good day, too, I'd done kilt two when Dog commenced ta hollering down over there by the creek."

Grandma nodded her head slightly in the direction of the creek which was off to the east, off to the right from our view on the porch. From Granddaddy's rocking chair I could see all my cousins look off in that direction, looking for and listening for the barking of Dog.

"I knew that Dog would holler until I got there so I weren't in no hurry to get there."

Now there was one thing about Grandma which I really never did want to tell nobody. Kids is kids, I guess, and I loved my Grandma, but she had a habit which made my stomach turn. It was during this point in her story that she turned to her habit.

"Jeffey," she said, stopping the rocking completely, "go get my pouch off the kitchen table. Cut that light off, too, I'm thinking I left hit on."

Jeffey climbed off the swing causing it to swing kinda whomperjawed with my other two cousins, who really didn't seem to notice. All of us, even Jeffey, knew what was coming and if we could have left, we would have. Only Tommy could have really left cause he lived just down the road, close enough to walk. But he w'ant gonna leave by hisself.

Jeffey came back with Grandma's pouch, a big hunk of chewing tobacco.

Grandma could chew with the best of them. She later taught me to chew and how to not swaller and how to spit and hit the spit-toon. But that still didn't mean I liked to see her do it -- she was my Grandma, after all. Grandma's teeth was all yelloing and she was missing several of her very front teeth. We kids was all too ashameta ask her so we didn't know how bad her teeth was till later on.

Grandma took a big plug of tobacco, stuffed the wad in her mouth, and lait the pouch on her lap. The spit-toon was beside her rocking chair, directly on her left hand side, in between the two rocking chairs. Every dozen rocks or so and she'd stop the rocker, lean to her left and spit out a big brown wad of spit. It was one of the nastiest things I'd ever seent.

"Woll," she said, still trying to work the tobacco around in her mouth and get it down to a size small enough to still carry on a story. "I 'ventuly got to the hollering Dog and what I fount weren't no rabbits a'toll. But I shot anyway and I'ont reckon I'm regretting hit."

"What was it Granny?"

"Granny?" She stopped rocking and looked down at Toby who'd asked her. "C'mere boy."

Toby got up from the steps and slowly walked to Grandma. Standing in front of her, he put his hands in his front pant's pockets. Grandma reached up and smacked Toby on the side of his head, enough to make his ear red. Toby had big ears anyway so they was probably just in the way of her hand smacking his head.

"Owwwww" he said, grabbing his ear and backing back down the steps to return to his seat.

She turned to me and asked, brown spittle drickling down her chin, "Why'd I do that?"

"Cause you ain't Granny, you're Grandma. Granny is your Grandmother and you ain't nothing like your Grandmother," is what I said, repeating it like Sunday school bible verses.

"S'right," she said, resuming her rocking, "Now you boys make sure'n always remember that."

"Now, y'all want to hear the rest of the story or don't'n ya?" We all agreed we did, and Grandma returned her stare back out acrost the cotton fields.

"I come up on the place where Dog was yapping and a carrying on only I didn't see no rabbit. What I did see and hear was some rustling down near the creek water and wondert what it was. My Daddy'd always tolt me that the creek was a place where outlaws went to get away from the law. They'd jump in the creek, move off one direction or t'other and end up several towns away and then skedaddle up north or som'eres else away from here.

"See I thought I'd done caught some robbers, so I tolt Dog to shut up and we creeped on down through the brush. Directly I heert two voices, one sounded like a boy.

"When I got to wherest I could see, I seen it was a man and a woman."

"Were they outlaws, Grandma?" Toby was trying to make up for his earlier mistake.

"Naw, weren't no outlaws. It was the school teacher, though. They'uz nekkid, too. You boys'r too young to understant just yet, but they'uz having a right good time."

"Were they swimmin?" asked Toby.

"Swimmin?" asked Grandma. She chuckled. "Ell, I guess y'all could say hit was kinda like swimmin."

Grandma rocked her slow steady rock as she gazed off at the cotton, a slight smile on her face as she remembered that day.

After several moments of silence, she got up from the rocker and hocked her tobacco wad over the porch onto the bushes.

"You boys clean up all this watermelon mess," she said, "make sure you sweep them seeds off."

"But Grandma," I objected.

"But nothing, y'all made the mess y'all clean it up. I done had my own kids and I didn't clean up after them neither."

"No, Grandma," I continued, "that's not it."

"What, then?"

"What happened? You didn't finish the story."

"Hit's finished," she said.

"What happened? Did you shoot them?"

"No, I didn't shoot the school teacher. What'I'm gonna go and do that for?"

"You boys really want to know what happened?" she said, pausing with the screen door opened a few inches. We all said we did.

"I give a warning shot to get their attention. The girl ended up to be my sister who was playing around there…and thas how I ended up with the shotgun ya asted about."

"I thought you was carrying the shotgun hunting?" one of my cousins said.

"Naw, I was carrying Daddy's gun. After I fount the school teacher, he gaved Daddy a shotgun and Daddy give it to me."

"Why do you leave it where it is," asked Jeffey, "why'ont you hang it up with the other guns?"

"I leave it there, or I did first, so the preacher could see hit ever time he come to visit us. See, the school teacher was his brother and the preacher was always comin'round trying to save somebody's soul, and I left thet gun there so he'd remember that something as small as a shotgun can even help to save some souls. Hits Jesus that saves souls, not preachers. I think he'd agree with me on't that."

It wasn't till later that I figured out what Aunt Theda, Grandma's sister, was doing with the school teacher and it wasn't till later on that I figured out just what it was that Grandma was leaving that gun there for. By that time she had died, though and the shotgun was soon moved to the rack over the door, where it is still to this day, in the house that I now own with my own wife and family.