Two Boys, Summer, and a Gun - NOVELLA (Sample Chapter)

I've been working on writing a Novella over the past few months about two young boys who discover a gun, and what they do with it. Here it is, enjoy!

Chapter 3

Morning seemed to come too quickly for me, but as soon as I got up and got dressed, I came out to the kitchen to find that Dad had made breakfast. Dad likes to pride himself good at everything he does, and one of these things is cooking. He makes the most delicious omelets, of which my palette was already used to.

Velveeta cheese, bacon pieces, and jalapenos ooze from the sides as I cut into it with my fork. Oddly, my Dad was reading a newspaper at breakfast. He never read the newspaper, claiming that anything they were spinning was of no consequence to him.

“Can you taste the thyme? I added thyme to the eggs,” Dad says behind his paper.

“Is that what I’m tasting?” I say, taking more care with this bite. Surely enough, there it is; that almost sweet spice with the greeny flavor.

“You ready for some hard work in the garden?”

“Yeah,” I continue to eat.

“I’ll do the tilling and you can just rake the weeds out, sound fair?

“Mhmm.”

And that was what we set out to do. The work is hard, but easier every year, and I didn’t spend the whole time raking. My Dad had me set some soil to the side so he could test it later after it dried. Then, about halfway through, my father and I switch. My Dad forgot his gloves.

He walks over to me, sucking wind through his teeth as he moves one of the open blisters.

“I think we need to switch, Son,” he says.

I feel a smile stretch across my face and lift my hands, showing him my gloves. He looks at me, his mouth crinkling, eyebrows narrowed as if to say, very clever.

Having my gloves on, I didn’t get the blisters like my Dad, but by time we were finished, my hands were raw. It was a little after four o’clock.

After my Dad and I get everything back into the shed and close it up. He turns to me, “So what are you gonna do now?”

Just then Auggie approaches us in front of the shed.

“Hey y’all! What doin’?” he says in a seemingly better mood than yesterday.

My Dad cuts across me, still wiping his hands, “Well I’m about to go to the grow store, get some things for the garden. You two wanna come with me?”

I look over at Auggie, then back to Dad, “I think we’re gonna hang out around here, maybe go to our spot.”

“Mhmm,” he says then throws his hands up, “Alright, alright. You boys stay out of trouble,” he said as he shrugs his shoulders, “I’ll be back later tonight.”

The two of us watch my Dad pull away, trying to act casual as we hang out at an old rotted picnic table at the end of the row of trailers. When my Dad’s car disappears from sight, we both look at one another, excited.

“So where’s Kyle?” I ask, wanting to cover the bases.

“He’s been gone all day, lit out early this morning, don’t know where…”

“And my Dad is gone… Sounds good enough to me, we doing this?”

“Yup,” he replies chipper, and we head off.

This was an adventure, and me and Auggie love adventure. Whether it was going down to the trestle over the creek with the large fence, going to the spot to play toy guns, or sneaking into Mervis Steel for some copper. The trailer was now just one more place for adventure.

The trailer stood before us, half burnt away, just the back bedroom in tact. We walk up to the place where just the bottom two feet of the door still stand.

The inside of the trailer holds puddles of water from the night before. Firemen have to drench these places to be sure there aren’t residual flames or smoldering embers. Water damage often racks up to be as high as the fire damage repairs.

The back side of the trailer was gone more-so than the front and it felt open, exposed as we stood inside. Right from the start we head for the room to our left. There isn’t much to look at in the burnt mess we stand in.

The bedroom is leaking, part of the ceiling burnt away, so the inside was still lit pretty well. The mattress that lay on the floor had caught fire briefly and was put out and Auggie moves to it.

“C’mon, help me lift it, lets see if there’s anything underneath.”

I move to the bed and we lift together. The mattress soaked in water, it turns out to be much heavier than we anticipate and the two of us heave. Struggling to hold up the mattress, Auggie looks under the bed. Underneath is a sopping wet adult magazine. Auggie goes to kick it out from under the bed and his shoe rips the soggy pages, revealing a blurry and smeared image of fake breasts in the back cover. You can just barely ake them out, the pages were more bloated with water than it originally looked, mashed under the mattress.

“Shit!” Auggie curses, shaking his head at his luck. We drop the mattress.

Auggie begins looking at the posters on the wall.

“Y’know, I’ve never been in here till now,” says Auggie as he steps on the mattress and goes to the posters on the wall.

My curiosity gets the better of me and I look around on my own. I move to the closet and slide it open, a bunch of button up shirts and pants.

“This one’s dry, I’m taking it,” Auggie says behind me, pulling a poster off the wall and rolling it up. He sticks it in his back pocket and moves to the small dresser. He opens the drawers quickly, they sound empty.

I look as far around the door as I can along the rack, nothing cool. At my feet at the back of the closet is a pair of rubber boot and an old pair of sneakers, and in the corner sits a grey tin lockbox. For a moment it doesn’t register and I look up top. Empty… Wait a minute! I lean down and pick it up, the closet floor still dry.

As soon as I picked it up I knew there was something in it, it was heavy, maybe eight pounds. My first guess was books until I heard the rattle of metal on metal. Auggie hears the rattle and comes to me.

“What is it? What’d ya find?” Auggie glances over my shoulder at it. “A lockbox! And it has a lock on it!”

“Do you think your brother knows Kyle had a lockbox?”

“Don’t matter now, so long as we don’t get caught with it,”

“But it could be their money inside,”

Auggie grabs the box out of my hand and shakes it a little. “It don’t sound like money, maybe some change I suppose,”

“Well, are we taking it with us?”

“Yeah, let’s open it,”

“Alright, let’s take it and a few tools out to the spot in the field,”

“Good idea. Oh! And if we don’t want my brother to know we been in here, I better leave the poster behind,” Auggie says as he takes the poster out of his back pocket and places it in a drawer.

When we stop by my Dad’s shed, we grab some pliers and Auggie insists on a wire hanger, I didn’t argue with him.

We head out to the spot quickly. The spot is a clearing in the field next to the trailer park. In the middle of the clearing is an old tree where a milk crate and our radio sit.

When we get there, we both go right to work. I pull the antenna out on the radio and find our station and Auggie gets to work on the lock. It only takes him a few minutes. He had used the coat hanger to push out the bar that worked as a hinge for the lockbox, and the pliers to pull it out.

“Well, that was easy, shall we see what our prize is?” Auggie says rubbing his hands together.

The two of us surround the lockbox we have sitting on the ground in the clearing.

“You found it, you open it,” Auggie says, struggling with his anticipation and urge to do it himself.

I grab the lid and lift, the lock working as the new hinge. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, much like seeing the lockbox in the first place, it didn’t register. A black revolver sit in the bottom of the lockbox. It registered when I saw the bullets laying precariously in the bottom. I was in shock until Auggie reacted.

“Woah! A gun! Holy crap!”

As soon as Auggie uttered those words, a gun, my heart began racing. I could feel it in my ears and the rest of the world seemed to fade a little, I realized I was suddenly racked with paranoia.

Auggie picks it up, a look of astonishment on his face.

“Wow, it’s heavier than I thought,”

“Auggie, please, put it down,”

Auggie adopts a look of honest innocence, “It’s not loaded,” and he opens the cylinder with ease, like he’d done it a million times.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m just not comfortable with this,” I say, feeling my face flush, scared of the prospect of confrontation.

“Why not, doesn’t your Dad have a gun?” Auggie remarks calmly.

“Put it down, Auggie!” I yell, panicking.

Auggie’s eyes widen, shocked, “Okay, okay, sheesh!” Auggie says putting it back in the lockbox. After a moment, Auggie looks up, hesitant to speak. He decides against it.

Panic running through my mind, I decide we need to hide it.

“We need to hide it, we can’t get caught with this,” I point at the box, not wanting near it at the moment. “Close the box, we need to hide it.”

Auggie closes the box quickly and I scoop it up, tucking it under my arm, the shift of the gun when gravity takes effect startles me. I begin to march back towards the trailer park. All I could think at the moment was; Distance… We can’t have this right now. My Dad would kill me… We can not play with it!

“Cal, where are we gonna put it?” he says following me, pleading.

“I don’t know yet, we just can’t have it on us, not right now,”

“Uh, okay… What about the hollowed out tree behind my house?”

“No…” I think for a second. Where was I gonna put it? I correct myself, “Yeah… Yeah, that should work…”

I pace fast, the lockbox in my arms, my heart still beating hard. When I got to the small strip of trees we would cross through to get to the park, Auggie stops me.

“Hey, wait, we can’t just go walking in there with a lockbox, what if my brother is home?”

I search my mind for a solution, biting my lower lip. Auggie snaps his fingers and takes his T-shirt off, a plain white T.

“Wrap it in this and we’ll go straight to the tree with it.”

I wrap the lockbox and walk on with it like a sack. When we get to the tree I place it in the hole. The trunk is what remains of a tall sycamore that had been struck by lighting when I was just a baby. The inside is hollowed out now and its still about six feet tall, four feet deep. Auggie looks around cautiously before we walk away from it.

We walk down the lane together.

“Are you okay?” He asks, truly concerned.

I sigh, “Yeah, I’m sorry. And yes, my Dad has a gun, yes I’ve shot his, but this is different. We both know we shouldn’t have this,”

Auggie, looking right into my eyes, “Other kids shouldn’t have it, but we’re talking about us; what are we gonna do with it?”

“That’s my point exactly, we can’t legally own it,”

“Look,” Auggie says desperate, “let’s just hold onto it for a few more days, sit and think on it, and then we’ll decide what to do with it,”

“You promise you won’t touch it? We’ve got to deal with this thing together,”

“I promise… I understand, this is serious,”

My eyes widen, “Like a heart attack,”

“Or a gun,”

“Exactly…”

The two of us move down to the old picnic table and have a seat. We both just sit there for a time in silence, both of us thinking. I was still trying to digest what we’d just found, and how enormous it was that we had one. I was excited but still unbelievably paranoid, like it was going to hall off and shoot all by itself… Or like we’d get caught with it…

When my Dad pulls up in the car what seems like forever later, he slows to a stop. He rolls down the window.

“Hey Cal, I got us some sandwiches, why don’t you hop in,”

I turn to Auggie, “Gotta go, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I gave him a look as I walked away, one that I hope said, I’ll be disappointed if you touch that gun.

Just shortly after finishing eating with my Dad, we watched Jeopardy and I went straight to my room to lay down. And that’s all I did, just lay there… It was 3:43am when I last looked at the clock before drifting off.

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