It was mid-summer in North Carolina, I was six, had just started kindergarten at Allen Jay Elementary on the southern side of High Point. Our house was snuggled in the woods, about fifty feet from Triangle Lake Rd and the rusted tin mailbox labeled with our house number chipping off the side. Typical, that's the only word I can use to describe the house, typical white siding, typical black shutters, a typical three-set of stairs leading to the front door, typical screened-in side porch, just typical. The inside dressed with wall-to-wall carpeting, outdated white wallpaper, a black floor television with a seemingly constant hum of 90s sitcoms like Seinfeld or Friends. A normal, mid-nineties, 3 bedroom, one-bath household.
I was an only child, and when my mom was busy cleaning the kitchen or outside enjoying the shade that the oak trees canopy provided, it was just me, young and curious about everything, because at six there's a lot of things you don't know. I would wander about the house like an archaeologist in some ash-covered lost civilization on some strange Mediterranean island just waiting to discover something life-changing, perspective-altering, something powerful.
One weekend day, my mom left, bravely, to the store, I had not woken up yet, so she assumed nothing could go wrong, me asleep, doors locked, Dad at work only seven miles away, everything was secure. The quiet before the storm, not two minutes after she pulled the Ford Bronco out of the gravel driveway, I woke up.
After rubbing the eye gunk off my face and throwing my arms up in a big stretch, I tossed the Sesame Street blanket off and stepped onto the clay colored carpet. I walked out of my door into the quiet house, down the hall, past the office, past the bathroom and into the kitchen. The kitchen and the bathroom were the only places that weren't tucked under the clay carpet. They both had white-square patterned vinyl floors, typical. No one was home but me, that little archaeologist.
Gold, the color of extravagance, success, divinity, also the color of the office doorknob. I held that doorknob in my tiny six year-old hand and debated going in, to me it was like a dark unexplored cave. Traps and tripwires could be beyond the door, the only way to know would be to try and open it and that's what I did. I turned the doorknob. Anxiety turned my stomach. I left the white door cracked open, just enough to peer into, but not quite enough to see into.
I became too afraid and instead skited off down the hallway onto the black leather recliner. I clicked on the television, and it erupted with a bang, so I nervously held the volume button down on the remote control. Now, instead of Seinfeld or Friends, I could glare at Nickelodeon.
The office was the only thing on my mind, not Apocalypse Now on channel 21, not Dirty Harry on channel 24, not military technology on channel 25, the only thing I could focus on was the fact that the office door was slightly open. I had to dig deeper, to go deeper into that dark cave.
Peering through the crack in the door I could see a mighty mess, papers, photographs, and knickknacks strewn about everywhere. So I pushed the door all the way open. No tripwires, no falling boulders, no alarms, nothing, just quiet. A yellow glow of an aged light bulb and the aftermath of an explosion of papers laid stagnant before my eyes. California Grape figurines sprinkled the floor, along with film canisters, photographs of people I mildly recognized, and fake dog poo. The mess wasn't what interested me.
The white desk sat in the corner, staring me down with it's black handles on two drawers, inviting me to look inside. A taut rope seemed to leash me to the desk drawers and pulled me closer. The office had no wallpaper, just white walls with black scuff marks scarred on.
I opened the top drawer, just some folders with more papers organized and labeled with things like “Auto,” and “Health.” So I gently urged the drawer shut, as if it was made of glass and not old composite wood. I wrapped my fingers around the cold, black aluminum handle of the bottom drawer and pulled that one open.
It was power, not in electricity terms or physics terms, but authority and control. Power cold in my hands. A black handle against the steel, laden with inscriptions. Butterflies don't quite compare to the anxiety, I had bald eagles flapping in my stomach, I had pterodactyls smacking their wings against the walls of my stomach; I had found my treasure.
All the toddler years of fumbling around, smacking pots, and unrolling entire rolls of toilet paper was stealing gum compared to this grand larceny. A gold stripe from the grimy yellow light raced it's way from the hammer to the tip of the barrel, and died into the black abyss of the inside of the barrel. No light found its way into that black hole, just dormant black air.
My little heart raced and I could feel my hands get that clammy, hot, pre-sweat stickiness, so I knew that it was time to put the gun back. Like baby Jesus himself, I cradled the gun with both hands flat, careful not to tap the silver half-moon of a trigger. Silently and with more care than a nuclear physicist I laid the gun back into the cradle of a drawer. I wrapped my hands against the black aluminum handle again and gently urged the off-white drawer shut. I stood still a statue in the midst of a nervous sweat, for an eternity of seconds I could only think of the gun, the power, the danger, and the fact that I was all alone.
I backed out of the room, the deep purple Grapes watching my every move. The faces in the photographs, the stabbing blue eyes, watching, stalking me as I backed away. I kept my dark brown eyes on the drawer, thinking that it would open and the gun would fire at any moment. Step after step, over orange and green golf tees, over tiny mountains of colored pencils, red, yellow, blue, all tangled into a rainbow knot.
I kept backing out until I hit the flower-print wallpaper of the hallway, then I ran off again to the television. I could not stray my thoughts from the revolver, I could still feel the cold blue steel in my palms. I figured a nap may help so I tucked myself between the Sesame Street blanket in my bedroom. Not two minutes after I had laid down, my mother came in fresh from the store and worried. The oven could've been on from breakfast earlier, someone could've broken in, or a tree could've fallen on our tucked away house.
She burst into my room, gasping, I could only smile. She smiled back, and a look of relief on her face. “Right where I left you, you're such a good kid” she remarked in a complimenting, soothed voice. The power a child has over their mother is unmatched, as it was at that moment, us smiling at each other, and that's when I realized how strong that power was.
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