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From the The Tenement Series of non-fiction essays by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
The Revolver
Carrying a loaded
pistol is commonplace today, kids with firearms are a dime a dozen. They're
frisked for guns and knives before they can get in the school house. But when
me and Ernie were eleven it was different, the only guns we saw were on Saturday
afternoon at the movies slung low on the hips of people like Harry Carey and
Tom Mix. Neither of us could remember ever having seen a real live gun before.
Me and Ernie lived in a five-storey tenement. We were eleven years old -- Ernie
a month older. We used to scrounge for newspapers, bottles -- anything like
that, anything we could turn in for money. We were at the bottom of the dumbwaiter
stacking newspapers and I said to Ernie, "What's in the shoe box, Ernie?"
Ernie took the lid off the box and there it was -- a .45 caliber revolver and
two boxes of ammunition.
You know how it is when you hold your breath too long -- you get dizzy and you
see spots before your eyes. That's how me and Ernie felt on our knees in this
dark and dirty cellar, (they didn't call them basements in those days). The
revolver was gigantic! It was not an automatic, it was an honest to goodness
six-shooter, same as Harry Carey had, and it was too big and heavy for either
of us to hold in one hand. The bullets were as big as your thumb and when we
loaded it, it was even heavier. Our first thought was to sell it, but we couldn't
think of anyone to sell it to. Then we thought of taking it out to the dump
and shooting old cars -- that wouldn't work because we weren't strong enough
to pull the trigger -- hard as we tried. "We can give it to your mother,
she'll know what to do with it," Ernie said without
thinking. But even an eleven-year old knows by instinct that you don't hand
your mother a loaded revolver .... both of us had been spanked black and blue
for doing a lot less than that.
There we were, the three of us, me and Ernie, and the revolver, faced with an
adult decision which neither of us was prepared for. The thrill of it all soon
wore off and we wished we'd never found the damn thing. But there it was, we
were afraid to put it down -- it might take on a life of its own and blow us
away. Ernie, being a month older always made the decisions for both of us, even
though at times both of us knew he didn't have the brains to make them. I suggested
that we take the revolver to the police station, and that's what Ernie decided
we'd do. The police station was only a couple of blocks away and maybe they
might treat us like the heroes we thought we were.
Although Ernie was a month older than me and never let me forget it, he was
not only dumber but somewhat shorter as well, so I carried the revolver and
he carried the two boxes of ammunition. We climbed the stairs to the street
and started off on our mission. Pedestrians scattered -- somehow they could
sense this was not a toy gun we carried. Little boys carry toy guns bravely
and brandish them at every passer by, I carried this one in my two hands as
far from my body as I could.
Certain scenes of one's childhood are forever etched in the mind and they can
return in miraculous detail. I remember the two green lights that dimly illuminated
the front of the police station and the cops smoking on the stoop. They made
no attempt to intercept me as I carefully placed one foot in front of the other,
but they did take the ammunition from Ernie. "We found it -- we found it,
it's not ours," was all we could say. Together, me and Ernie entered the
precinct and walked up to the Sergeant's desk. I carried the revolver much the
same as a ring bearer carries a ring at a wedding.
Me and Ernie used to swear a lot, and the kids we ran around with could rip
off a string of low tide language that would stop Howard Stern, but never in
my life had I heard language exchanged between an adult and a kid of eleven
as I heard from Sergeant McNamara. Of all things he drew his own revolver! He
demanded, "put it down, Goddammit, put it down!" I gingerly laid it
on his blotter, and dumb with fear and panic me and Ernie tried to stammer out
an explanation. Our innocence and explanations proved fruitless, and a squad
of three policemen and Sergeant McNamara surrounded us. Me and Ernie didn't
understand much of what they said or did, but we knew we were in deep trouble
when the four of them bustled us out of the precinct and walked us home.
Back in the cellar
again, our parents were called down to verify the revolver was not their property.
Other people in the tenement were called down as well -- me and Ernie got lost
in the shuffle and in the ebb and flow of adult conversation we were left to
ourselves.
When it was over, Ernie got a licking and so did I. It was pretty plain to us
that we had made the wrong decision. If we had taken the revolver out to the
dump we might have enjoyed some of its awesome power, we might have gotten a
pretty penny from some street hoodlum who really knew how to use it. But now
we were under suspicion by our family and the police -- confined to quarters.
It was a lesson we never forgot and from then on whenever offered the option
of right or wrong, we always took a third alternative.
©Harry
Buschman 1995
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