I had never given much thought to guns. I grew up on Army posts, and was around big guns: our house shook from the activity at the firing ranges. But if we had a gun in the house I never saw it. I asked Dad once way after I was grown and gone. He was vague about it; said his gun was stolen on his first tour in Viet Nam and he never replaced it. He was an armor officer; I don't know if he was required to carry a side arm, so don't know if he was misrepresenting this or not.
Our extended family were all hunters. When we visited them there were rifles in their homes. They didn't lock them up and were pretty casual about it. Much later we lost two family members by guns. An uncle on one side of the family shot himself on the stair of his house. He was a stroke victim. Suicide, or did he just fall on the stair? Then we lost a cousin on the other side. His was suicide. He left a note.
Below the fold is a narrative about a child and an angry uncle. It is real. It happened in the late 70s when I was teaching in rural Alabama. I changed names and left out identifying detail. It is a story. Can't generalize it to anyone else. But it was the beginning of my awareness of gun violence not being an inner city/criminal franchise. It was when I started taking guns in the home seriously.
RJ squatted low on roof of the chicken coop. Using his right arm to keep his balance, he peered back at the house, waiting patiently. Big D would be out any minute. At lunch Big D had let it be known to all that it was time to rake the pine straw in the yard. RJ had plans of his own. Pine straw had also piled up on the roof of the chicken coop. RJ was going to hunker down, out of sight. The when Big D got in range, he would knock pine straw down on his uncle’s head. Big D would be furious. He would probably beat RJ’s butt. But it would be worth it. To see his face scrunch up, to see him looking around to see where the pine straw was coming from. It would be too funny. RJ couldn’t wait.
Big D shuffled into the yard, carrying a big rake and a box of trash bags. He was not a kind man. He was not a generous man or a gentle man. But he sure was hard working and neat and orderly. He did not like slovenly boys. Especially slovenly nephews. His sister Ida was little more than trash in his opinion. And now her two brats, RJ and Ella were living in his house as his kids. His good name was being stained by these slovenly, lazy, no count children. It was his job to train them up, to bring them discipline. Enough hard work and enough hard punishment and they would learn. He would see to it. He considered all this as he raked. The physical work helped him think more clearly. He saw what it would have to do.
Just then a pile of pine straw rained down on his head. He looked up to see RJ grinning like a possum. Rage built up in Big D. He could barely speak. “Boy,” he whispered, “Do that again and I will blow you off that roof with my shotgun.” 11 year old RJ grinned even bigger and threw another handful of pine straw onto his uncle’s head.
They didn’t let Big D out of jail for his nephew’s funeral. His wife Anna and niece Ella moved to Florida. I didn’t see Ella before she left. Her 8th grade special education classmates talked of nothing else for several weeks. “That boy was going to get killed sooner or later, just as well that it was family." “His uncle shouldn’t have been sent up. He was just trying to teach that boy something and his foot slipped.” “Ella going to go bad now. Just her and her Auntie. Ain’t nobody to keep her away from the bad boys. Someone gonna give her a baby and then leave her. Just like her momma.”
Four years later a 17 year old Ella reappeared in my classroom. She was back living with her mama. Big D was out of prison; he and Anna were still in Florida. Ella never talked to me about RJ and the pine straw. All she said was that Big D was too mean and that her mama needed someone to take care of her; she stayed sick all the time. I never had it confirmed, but I think she meant drugs or alcohol. By March of her junior year Ella was pregnant. I never saw her flirt with any boy, or even talk to any of the boys in her class. I assumed it was someone outside of school, probably one of her mama’s “friends” Not rape, just opportunism meets passivity. I was sure I would not see Ella again after school was out.
First day of school and there was Ella. I was surprised. She was not a kid who liked school. She didn’t hate it, just wasn’t engaged with classes, with friends, or with activities. She was one of those “just there” kids. The “just there” kids are big on disappearing. They don’t persevere under pressure. But here was Ella, just a month after giving birth, back in school. I told her how surprised I was to see her back. “You need to tell those girls, Mi' Holley,” she exhorted, “Tell them it ain’t what they think. Taking care of a baby is hard work. My momma said I had to stay home with my baby or go to school. I’d rather be in school.”