Oh shoot... where'd I put the bullets?

Oh Shoot...Where'd I Put The Bullets?
By Raven Smith
2022

We’ve been on the run for about a year now. But can I truly say “on the run” when we’re not considered outlaws? At least not to the town people or the sheriff. I’ve been running around with good O’ Benji Hall across the barren fields of grain and grit. I’m not too sure if you’d call him good either. Well, he’s good to me! Been protecting me since he found me alone as a youngin. A few loose teeth and a tattered gown on the floor of a leaning shack were my origins.

We fled town after Benji smoked a fella in the public eye of russian roulette. The towns folk claimed it was fair and square, but that unlucky fella’s wife saw me hiding in the bushes pulling my trigger just a second quicker. I know ‘cause I witnessed her tears mature to rage. She knew something wasn't right. His barrel wasn’t even hot. But fair and square seems a little over rated to me. Doing things that way took too long. Wasted time no one has. Anyone could die anyday right? One day you're chewing tobacco by fire lit laugher, slapping knees and spitting whisky. The next, you’re face down with a bullet in your back on the driest dirt ground in the west.

It's never really been fair and square for us though you know. This hot blazing sun soaking in, keeping our skin crisp. You either take or be bare here. Die of thirst or lack of ambition. All anyone else has ever done has taken, but now we’re the villains huh? ‘Cause we’ve learned the unspoken, always broken rules of your game. A game I lost such a long time ago. Yet, there’s really four sides to every story if you ask me. Each resisting side, the view of the bystander, and the real truth from God’s eyes.

A melanated cowboy wins a shoot out. This mixed crowd finds peace in the fair draw. There’s foul play in this fight. A girl in the bushes, a justified lover hunting for vengeance. They’ll be wanted even if they’re right. Sun bleached paper faces posted on wood posts. Who’s the villain here? The justice system is too baked to acknowledge the bad corn in its stock. Pale wife says we’re dried up through sunburnt cheeks and cracked lips …I say her husband. Maybe she is for sticking by him.

I know something they don't speak about. I’ve traveled through time to know. Sifted through blood memory. My mother and grandmother knew her husband pretty well. Familiar through massacre. I knew he wasn't innocent. I know he killed a woman once. I know he killed a few… my adolescent eyes peeking through dust and debris from his destruction. Forever haunted by a silver haired ghost, with sunburnt cheeks, covered in the blood memory of my elders. Certain things in life are inescapable no matter how much you run from them or drown them out. A shadow still remains…

It's very rare to find an abandoned barn on a journey, a place you’re sure you can come back to, a place no one else could find. Right behind the mountains, we took that risk and stayed for months. Sniffing the atmosphere and dried grass, we enjoyed the stillness of the country. The lack of worry that came from being displaced from large townships. We didn't need a sheriff here. It was up to us, yet it was peaceful. Until Amelia Black spotted the head of a rifle between angry eyes and sunburnt cheeks in the bushes…

We are all bad here. Bad for shooting and bad for bystanding. Nothing ever changes if no one ever speaks up. So much death we’re desensitized. It's been war ever since and we can't remember what it was like before. If there was a before at all. Maybe if we could just hide all bullets in the world it would stop. Violence has been forever. Hopefully it won’t last..