Heartbeat

JJ and I went down to get beers. When we got back, Eric and Maggie had just arrived. Dave had laid out his new equipment on the couch, mostly tight pouches of black metal and vinyl. He was bursting to show everyone. We stood around, Beth and I on the couch against the window, Eric, Maggie, JJ and Anne standing with their backs to the TV. Dave faced us, his back to the kitchen. The small room felt crowded.

First there was a baton, which telescoped out into a vicious steel implement. Then the handcuffs. The beers were on the table. Everybody was joking around. Dave was smiling, but also in his teaching mode, narrating, trying to maintain control. JJ wanted to know if the handcuffs were comfortable. Maggie said to ask Beth, Dave’s new wife. Then there was the radio, on a special special agent frequency, the earpiece which we had all expected him to be wearing from the beginning. Dave explained that because of the earpiece, most people assumed they were secret service, and they didn’t mind. Nobody ever guessed their agency, and they liked it that way.

Dave showed us his badge and its case. He showed us the small pin badges which were color coded and which the agents wore on their lapels to be easily identified by other agents. Eric asked what would happen if Dave gave one away. Dave said he’d lose his job. It was a real badge. He didn’t say, “the physical symbol of my authority,” but that’s what I was thinking, and silently assessed him as if he had uttered the words.

Dave held up a plastic baggie which contained a few bullets and some chunks of metal, which he said were exploded bullets. He presented us with dummy bullets with little orange rubber tips, hollow nose bullets, long machine gun bullets. The jokes were endless as we passed the bullets around. Everybody was laughing about everything. Dave asserted more attempt to control us. He spoke over our laughing, warned us he wouldn’t show us his gun if we didn’t settle down. We were eager to see the gun, so we did.

He slid a hard plastic case off the couch, and removed a strange looking object. We could tell it was a gun but there was a blue plastic cord–like a bicycle lock–running through the barrel and the handle. A combination lock filled the space where the trigger hung. Dave explained that this was the safest storage for a gun, as the blue cord was evidence that the gun was unloaded and the lock prevented the gun from being fired. He said there were four rules of firearms, which he asked Beth to recite. She started strong.

First, assume a gun is always loaded. Second, never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to destroy. Third, keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. And fourth. . . Beth stammered. Fourth. . . Dave stepped in for her. Fourth, know your target and what is behind it. And moreover, Dave said, these four rules safeguard one another. If one isn’t followed, the others still prevent accidents. He discussed the various permutations and implications. Then he started to remove the locks.

Wait, I said. I only want to touch it when the locks are still on it. He handed it to me, and I passed it around. The jokes were funnier than ever. Everybody was laughing. More beers were opened. When the gun went around the circle and came back to Dave, he produced a small silver key from a black drawstring bag and removed the blue lock. Then he dialed the three digit combination on the trigger lock. The gun was free.

Dave had earlier shown us the magazines, each of which held thirteen bullets. Now he explained the interplay between the slide, the mechanism on top of the gun which acted to cock the hammer of the gun, as well as serving as the channel by which a bullet travels from the magazine to the chamber. Dave demonstrated that the chamber was empty. We all looked, played peek-a-boo as we peered in. He removed all of the bullets from the magazine and showed us how the magazine fit inside the handle. The magazine was spring loaded. Like a Pez dispenser, someone said. The jokes became funnier, and went on and on. A Pez dispenser for assassins, someone else said. Everyone was still dressed in their suits, joking around. Dave glared. He slid a dummy bullet into the chamber to show us what a chamber looked like when it was loaded. He pulled the slide back, which cocked the hammer, so the gun was ready to fire. Because the dummy bullet was rubber and contained no gunpowder, the gun could not fire it. It would only click as the hammer came down on its impotent shell.

Dave demonstrated. Click. He put the other two dummies in the empty magazine and showed us how the spring loaded magazine pushed the bullets into the chamber. There were questions about why the trigger had two positions. He showed us. He handed me the gun with the dummy bullet in it–I checked–and told me to point the gun at the floor and pull the trigger, first position first, and then again in the second position. I did. A click, and another. The black metal in my hand felt more dense than it looked.

Dave strapped on his belt and showed how each of his tools slipped into place. He put the gun in its holster and attached yet another badge adjacent to the gun on his belt. People are comforted by a badge, he explained. If someone sees me wearing a gun under my jacket and doesn’t see that I’m law enforcement, they might get nervous. He showed us how the two magazines fit into a case which clipped onto his belt. He gathered the bullets from the table and loaded them into the magazines. He put the magazines into their leather case and snapped it shut. He pointed out how the gun was on his left side, right under his hand, and the magazines were on his right side, for instantaneous loading. With speed and surety which confirmed the weeks of training he had just undergone, his left hand unclipped the gun from the holster, while his right hand pulled a magazine from the other side. His actions gained momentum; his body snapped into a stance of alertness, half turned towards the kitchen, away from us.

I saw what was happening. The room shrunk.

Wait, I interjected. There are real bullets in there.

Dave did not pause. In a single hand-arm-shoulder motion which his training had molded into a swift, choreographed procedure, his right hand flew up to slam the magazine into the handle and his left hand swung his weapon towards the kitchen.

There was a ringing explosion I could feel spreading through my chest, and all the lights went out. In the sudden dark, I heard nothing but my heartbeat clogging up my ears.