Left Handed Shotgun

 

a left-handed shotgun

a twelve gauge

a Brownington

or maybe a Remington

I don’t remember

 

a beautiful gun

a gift from his grandfather

for his Sixteenth birthday

 

a high school friend of my son

he told me he had been hunting grouse in the area

and asked if he could leave the gun at my house

because he couldn’t take it where he was going

and he didn’t want to keep it in his truck

 

months went by

and he never returned

to retrieve the gun

 

I wasn’t sure how to get ahold of him

and hadn’t heard anything about him

until I read his obituary

another tragic overdose

 

within the obituary

I found his mother’s name

she was living in a nearby town

 

a few weeks later I brought the gun to her

she said she had never seen it before

and that his grandfather

died when he was twelve years old

she said he had been involved

in a lot of questionable things in the past several months

and maybe I should get rid of the gun

 

it is a beautiful gun

at the bottom of a deep lake