The BB gun

Until my parents took it away, my older brothers shared a BB gun. I'm not sure who really owned the gun. It didn't seem to matter. They got to use the gun, I didn't. The BB gun was the most wonderful toy any of us had, with the possible exception of the model train set, which we had to get special permission to use. My dad’s attitude toward the train set seemed to be, “Some day, son, this will all be yours.” With the BB gun my brothers would roam the woods and imagine that they were fighting World War II again.

One Ohio winter day my brother David got Alice Marie and I to go into the woods with him. James and Richard were waiting for us, up in some trees. David said, "We're going to shoot at you with the BB gun while we are in the trees, so don't run away." I started to back away.

"Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me! I don't want to die!"

"You aren't going to get hurt. You've got on those big, heavy sheepskin coats and shouldn't feel a thing." I didn't believe him. "Here, I'll demonstrate on James. You aren't scared, are you James?" James looked a little skeptical to me, but he didn't want to say he was scared.

"Nah, I'm not scared. Go ahead and shoot. Just don't miss my coat." That last part was a disturbing thought. James climbed down from the tree, and David took a shot. I could see a sudden indentation in the coat. James looked relieved. "I felt only a little ping. Now it is your turn, Tink." I looked around me. Alice was looking up to me.

"Okay," I said, "just don't miss."

"Oh, I never miss," said David. "Just hold still." David then climbed a tree and took aim. I stood there with my back turned toward him. I clenched my teeth, and braced myself for the firing squad. "Of course," he added, "I've never shot down from a tree branch before. This should make it interesting."

My brain struggled. Should I make a run for it and risk getting hit in the head or legs? I decided to run. But before my body could move a muscle, I heard a "Blam!" and felt a slight tap on my back. It didn't hurt at all! Alice was looking up to me with her little fists in her mouth, holding back a scream. "That didn't hurt a bit! It felt good! You try it Alice." So with no fear at all, Alice turned her back and they shot her.

"That felt good!" she said.

One of the fun things that the boys discovered you could do with the BB gun was to shoot the bottom of old green coke bottles they found in the woods. The BB would knock out a cone shaped piece of glass that we called a "diamond." My brothers felt rich walking around with a pocket full of diamonds. James actually let me shoot once and collect my own diamond. It was a favorite possession. My mother threw away our diamonds when she found them.

Once James and I were walking across the frozen ground that we called the "field." In the summer the field was a one-acre garden. Suddenly James threw himself on the ground, gasping with pain. He rolled over on his shoulder, put his hands on his back, and seemed to run in circles with his shoulder on the hard, cold ground. I couldn't understand what was the matter with him. "James! James! What's wrong? What's the matter?" He didn't answer. His face was screwed up in pain, and he was trying to catch his breath to scream. I felt so sorry for him, but there didn't seem to be anything that I could do.

Suddenly David came running up to where we were. He was carrying the BB gun. "Wow!" he said, all excited. "Did you see that? What a shot! I was clear across the field, and up in a tree. I bet nobody else could have made such a shot." He looked at James writhe on the frozen field. "I'm probably the best marksman in the whole world!"

"You shot me!" James choked out. You could tell it was extremely difficult for him to talk. "You shot me! Right at the base of my spine! I think I'm paralyzed!"

"Pull down your pants and let me see," ordered David.

Still shaking with pain, James gingerly pulled down his pants enough to reveal a large ugly red welt an inch or two below the bottom of his sheepskin coat. It was centered on his tail bone. David poked the sore with his finger, and James convulsed with pain. "You're not paralyzed. Look at that," he said. "Right in the middle. I forgot to adjust for the drop in elevation with distance, but other than that it was a perfect shot!"

"I'm telling on you," James said when he could catch his breath again.

David was worried now. "Hey, I'm sorry. It's not my fault that I forgot to adjust for the drop over the distance. You've got to admit that it was a perfect shot."

Very slowly James got up from the ground. I put my arm around him to help him up. He could hardly walk, and he leaned heavily on me all the way to the house.

"If you tell on me, I'll tell Mom and Dad that you use to shoot at Tink and Alice Marie, also." James kept struggling to get home. "You'll be in as much trouble as I will, James."

"I'm telling on you," James said again. Suddenly David switched tactics.

"Let me help you home. I didn't mean to do anything. It was an accident."

"Don't touch me," said James.

Mom and Dad took away the BB gun, and never again would they allow any of us to have another one. That doesn't mean that no one ever had a BB gun again. Several years later, after we had moved to Virginia and had a new home, David bought a BB pistol. He used to keep it hidden in the dog house. We all got to use it once or twice, after we had promised not to tell Mom and Dad. But James used to always say that the reason it hurt for him to sit still after that was because David had broken off the end of his tail bone. And David would say, "But you’ve got to admit, it was a great shot. Dead center. And from up in a tree, too."