Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [4]
Mostly, I remember playing by myself, with my own toys. I liked guns and Western scenarios, just like my brothers—though they all forbade me to touch any of their fancy-ass silver-plated pistols that I envied so much. But more than guns, I liked castles. I had a fine model set of King Arthur’s castle, complete with a drawbridge and turrets. But I didn’t like—in fact threw away—the cheap plastic figurines of knights that came with the package. I had seen a much nicer-looking set of metal knights and horses, in fearsome-looking action positions, made by a ritzy English company called Britains. They were hand-painted, they were gorgeous, and they were expensive, and I more or less made my mother buy them for me. If my brothers could have their pearl-handled six-guns, I could have my ornate knights. I loved placing those knights inside the castle walls, pulling up the drawbridge, keeping them in the fortress where no harm could come to them. I never let my brothers touch my cavaliers in armor—not that they wanted to.
IT’S POSSIBLE MY BROTHERS and I may have played together more than I recall, but only a few incidents involving the four of us stick out in my mind. One time, we were all in the backyard of our home in Portland, Oregon, and my brothers were tossing darts at a board they had hung on a tree. I loved watching them and I wanted to throw the darts too, but they weren’t about to have a clumsy little kid cluttering up their sport. Of course, I persisted. Pouted, probably. Finally one of them—Gary, if I remember right—relented. “Okay,” he said, “if you want to play darts, we’ll play darts. Here’s how we do it.” He took me over and stood me in front of the target. “We see who can get their darts closest to you.”
I should have run, but I didn’t. I was glad to be included. Gary tossed the first dart, and it landed about six inches from my foot. Frank Jr. lobbed another, and it hit a couple inches closer. Gaylen tossed his, and it ended up maybe less than an inch from one of my feet. I was starting to feel less like I wanted to be included. The next dart—tossed by Gary—did the trick. It hit my right shoe, went through the top, through the toenail of my big toe, and stuck upright. My brothers looked panicked, and I started to cry. My mother came outside, saw the dart sticking out of my foot, the sheepish look on my brothers’ faces, and was not pleased.
Later, I took a revenge of sorts. On a beautiful summer afternoon, Gary was sitting on our front porch with a couple of his girlfriends, and my brother Frank was there too, with a girl. Again, I wanted to be included, and again I was told to go away. I went to the side of the house, got one end of the long garden hose, dragged it to the front porch. I handed the nozzle to Gary, who was sweet-talking a honey-blond-haired young woman, and said: “Here, hold this. I’ll be right back.” He wasn’t paying much attention to what I said. He sat there, holding the hose, talking to the girls.
I ran to the back and turned the hose faucet on full blast. As I’d hoped, the spray got Gary right in the face—hard—and soaked his clothes. I could hear his howl in the backyard, and I could hear the girls’ laughter. I ran and hid in some brier bushes behind our house, and I didn’t come back for hours. When I did, Gary was still looking dour. “I’ll never forgive you,” he said.
I STUDY THOSE PICTURES of my brothers. I have more hard feelings about those photos than any other items in our family scrapbook. I look at the three of them, their guns pointed at the camera, and I can feel the world they shared together, the world they belonged in. It isn’t the toughness of their stance—their romance as little boy outlaws—that calls out to me. Instead, what strikes me about these photos is how much my brothers smiled when they were together—how happy they seemed in that world of theirs. I don’t remember people in my family smiling that much when I was a child, but then, there’s a lot about those years I don’t remember that well. Those smiles are like