a night kitchen

Six rifles, six shotguns: I grew up with them. They remained unremembered until a year ago when the pond by the house was drained. The bottom of the pond was lined with a couple of inches of lead shot.

Six rifles and six shotguns in the den, not far from the TV and the fireplace. Their stocks were of the same wood that lined the walls and the floor. All the wood shined.

I touched one once, proving to my father at thirteen that I would never be able to shoot skeet one winter Sunday at the skeet range that he and my uncle had built around the pond. The clay pigeons whizzed past faster than I could aim the gun and I emptied two shells’ worth of shot in the direction of the water. The rest of my Sundays were spent inside.

The house is gone and the pond drained, the layer of lead shot and a few empty shotgun shells there for everyone to see, And now it has been a year, and the lead shot hauled away and contained. And now I remember the Sundays and the guns and my father who has been gone one more year.