My husband placed the ladder for me. He is a dope at fixing things, but strong. I wouldn’t let him go up on the roof to fix it; he is ungainly and heavy, and I am sure-footed and light. I am also fantastic at fixing things, and he is not.
Whenever he tries to fix something, it looks like Homer Simpson’s spice rack: As in, barely recognizable as being whatever it is supposed to be. He also broke his back right after he got out of High School, in a car accident. He was told that by the time he was fifty, he would be in a wheelchair. So far, so good— he is still walking. But if he fell off a roof, the weak place in his spine might shatter. It just wasn’t worth it to let him up on the roof. Roof repairs were in my wheelhouse. I forbad him try.
Our ladder is the heaviest, sturdiest type of ladder—solid— I myself can barely lift it. In fact, when I use a ladder, use an old rickety wooden one, one that I can lift. But the wooden one isn’t quite tall enough to get you up on the roof. Plus, it’s rickety.
It was a little late to get on the temporary roof repair, but it was still morning-- at least, it was still before noon. Barely. As I climbed the ladder up to the roof, I went over my dilemma: should I buy a gun, or not? It seemed imperative that I do so, and soon. But was doing so, in my situation, really wise?
Trump’s Homeland Security was rounding up Mexican nationals and putting them in cages in the desert. As declared non-citizens, they had no recourse; even when they were actually real American citizens who were born here.
We have seen this before.
It was growing impossible to get a passport; hard to prove you were a citizen, even if you had your original birth certificate. Trump’s party took as Gospel that the former President was not a citizen! Apparently, your birth certificate was valid only if you were White—and a member of the right party.
Now with the pandemic, borders were closed. Americans weren’t allowed into Mexico or Canada—our closest neighbors and allies. Because the government had only considered ways to profit off the suffering—not prevent or ameliorate it. Now we were trapped here, unable to flee.
How long before they started rounding up Jewish people?
Seriously?
How long before they started rounding up homosexuals?
And always the important question: What was I going to do about it? Stand there like a mouse, acquiesce because I was frightened of joining the Mexicans and Jews in the camps? Was I going to let the police, along with the Federal Government, round up my neighbors?
Just ignore the sound of doors being kicked in, and keep my head down?
Yeah.
Not going to happen. Not this time.
#
Obviously, I needed to become more of a threat. Not just a sheep to be rounded up, or a rat, who only cares about their own personal safety.
So I went and took a firearms lesson from a former co-worker, who had always been into guns and gun ownership.
I didn’t expect to do well with target practice, though I knew I had the guts to fire a gun. I have always been grimly analytical, cold-blooded even. It always disgusted me a bit when, in movies, for some reason the good guy can’t seem to pull the trigger.
I could pull the trigger if necessary. I would have no compunction whatsoever about blowing a Nazi’s brains out. I am quite sure that I would enjoy it, if they were truly a Nazi. Not just a propagandized sheep themselves. Even then, If they were a threat to the rest of us, and were propagandized sheep: still gotta die, I just wouldn’t ENJOY killing them. More like a chore, but necessary. Buh Bye.
Surprisingly, I was a natural shot with a handgun. I didn’t lack nerve, and was expecting the recoil. I got the bulls-eye nine out of ten times, right off the bat. My teacher was impressed, didn’t expect it from a lady. Ladies don’t usually like killing things.
#
But now that I had tried it, and tried a range of different guns, I found I wanted my own gun. You are just clearly going to develop a better shooting relationship with your instrument if you have your own gun. And that was what was on my mind today: not just whether to buy a gun, but where to hide it when I had it.
The problem was my husband. For, although I am calm and analytical, my husband is not. The dude is impulsive and dramatic— the kind to blow out their brains to make a statement. You know, for effect. And jealous? When we got married, he broke my antique wooden bed into pieces because I had slept in it with other men, before our marriage.
In other words, he’s kind of a wild card. Not the kind of guy who should be able to lay his hands on a gun, and especially not as fine a gun as I was intending to purchase. A Glock 19. It fit in my hand like the velvet muzzle of a favorite horse, like the handshake of a lifelong friend. It’s the kind of gun that leaves a crater rather than a wound in a human being; especially if you’re shooting it with hollow-point bullets. It fit my hands best, though, of the twenty or so guns I tried at my first lesson.
I have very large hands for a woman— slender and feminine, but larger than most men’s hands. The lady’s revolvers I looked at were dwarfed by them. They seemed like Barbie Doll guns in comparison.
No, it was the Glock 19 for me. But clearly I needed to keep it secret— in a gun safe that I only knew the combination— and that gun safe itself had to be hidden well.
There was an additional reason for circumspection.
I was having an affair.
#
He didn’t know. I am smarter than he is. But these things usually come out.
The fact is, it was always statistically more likely I would be killed with my own gun. And the odds of that go up astronomically when you figured in my secret, and his insane jealously and impulsiveness.
Oh, he would regret killing me, and cry like a baby five minutes afterward— if not seconds later. But he would act without thinking, as usual. I had to figure that in.
In the meantime, the roof still needed fixing. The roofers were supposed to come weeks ago. But construction hadn’t slowed down during the pandemic shutdown— rather was going apace! As a minor job, I had to wait until my roofer didn’t have a bigger, more lucrative contract.
That was why I was up here today, nailing a tarp over the worst of the leaking places. The last big rain, so much water had come in it had filled a huge bucket in one place, shorting out our internet service. We couldn’t risk that happening again-- we had to have internet.
I went over my reasoning once more. It seemed like an insoluble problem. On the one hand, I needed to be ready to resist the rightwing and protect the weak. Therefore: I need a glock.
On the other hand, I don’t wish to be greeted with a bullet in the face, because my husband has rifled through my belongings or my sent emails while I was at the store.
Also, what good is a gun if you can’t lay your hands on it quickly? If I got a gun, it needed to be hidden somewhere close by, but safe.
I thought about all these things as I nailed down the tarp. The sun was climbing in the sky, and the temperature was climbing too. It had been about ninety when I came up the ladder, but the metal roof was reflecting the heat back at me tenfold. Sweat was dripping off my face so quickly I couldn’t wipe it away before it stung my eyes. I had to exert myself to stay in position as I nailed the tarp down, crouching on the ridge line of the roof, my thighs—my guilty thighs-- straining, and absorbing the burning heat of the metal.
It must be a hundred and two by now, I thought.
Christ! Why had we decided to do this in the afternoon? Clearly it would have been easier in the early morning, before the roof heated up under the sun—
My face felt like it as glowing red like a lightbulb. Suddenly, I was so weak all over that I wasn’t certain I could get from the apex to the flat.
I grew nauseated. Christ, I thought. I am getting heat exhaustion from being up here! It really IS hot!
Sliding down the slant, on my butt, sort of like a spider, I got to the flat part of the roof—over the bathroom—but there was no shade there either - only the blazing sun on the metal. Did I have the strength left to get down the ladder, even? I had fallen to my knees, then onto my back. I felt the metal burning my skin through my shirt, but I couldn’t do anything about it— not now. If I could just catch my breath— maybe I could cry out and my husband would hear me— but I lacked the wind, or the strength, to make a sound.
I rolled over and began to vomit. This wasn’t heat exhaustion anymore—it was heat stroke. A person could DIE from this kind of heat, up on a metal roof on a Texas summer day.
I knew I had to get down that ladder. Get out of the sun, off the hot metal—
I semi-crawled, semi-rolled, through my own vomit toward the ladder.
When I got there, I saw my husband. Watching me.
Unsmiling.
The ladder was on the ground beside him.
It turned out he didn’t need a gun.
great story!