Anne Brisden

I drank it.

I stuck my head in the pantry.

Came out with half a bottle of vanilla essence.

And down that as well.

Abraham had kept a shotgun all his life.

He'd never fired it, as far as I knew.

But he liked to keep hold of it.

claiming that one day he might be called upon to protect the righteous from the sinners, black and white.

The gun wasn't hard to find.

I crawled under his old double bed, mine and Carol's bed, and searched around until I found the loose floorboard.

I fished around some more until I felt a cold steel at the barrel.

I knew the gun was loaded without having to cock it.

I was ready to shoot myself right there in the house.

But thinking about the mess it would make, about Carol or somebody else finding me with half my head caked to the ceiling, I stood up and walked onto the front veranda.

I looked out across the hills behind the town and then back at the lonely house.

I couldn't abandon it this way.

Driving out of town, I held the gun between my knees with the barrel scratching at my throat.

If it had gone off then and there, I'd have died happy.

Would have saved me from testing my courage.

Between the belting rain, a dirty windshield, fucked wiper blades and the pills and grog, I was driving on a prayer.