Cowboys

We were supposed to be unarmed security guards, just a couple fellas watching over things, but Ernie carried a gun anyway. He showed it to me my first night working at the museum. We were about to make our rounds when for no reason he said, "Hey, Shelton, I wanna show you somethin," hoisted his foot on top of the front desk, and drew the gun from a holster strapped to one of his swollen ankles. He presented it to me on his palm, like it was a pet mouse he kept in his pocket. The scratched gray revolver was almost as small, the kind the cornerboys in D.C. would've called a better-than-nothin.

"My brother Ralph," Ernie said, "he's a bail bondsman, ya know. His wife, my sister-in-law, she's black. Myra's her name. Yep." He rocked forward and back on his heels.

"Good to know." I nodded, my eyebrows raised, hoping to god he didn't think all us black folks knew each other.

Ernie was all right, though, despite his faults. I mean, I guess I liked him at the time. You could say we had things in common. He was divorced and Sylvie had left me. Like two stray dogs, we could smell how lost and alone the other was.

Ernie said he used to be a cop, talked so much about "collaring perps" and "walking a beat" that it sounded more like TV lingo than real life. I suspected he hadn't "served on the force" for very long, if at all. The one thing I knew for sure was that he was about forty-three and white, a big dude constantly red-faced and sweating, the musky smell of alcohol radiating from his pores, the damp, curled ends of his hair always glued to his shiny forehead.

"Here, Shel. Hold it," he said, and gestured to the gun. "See how it feels in your hand. Go on."

I looked up at him then back down at the gun. My being from D.C. had put ideas in Ernie's head. Maybe I harbored a dark past that got by the two-minute background check . . . but I didn't, nothing that serious anyway. The worst thing I'd ever done was shoplift, steal beer from parked beer trucks, and occasionally scrawl graffiti as a young'un.

With Ernie watching, I took the gun in my hand and pointed it, held it an arm's length away from me. I felt I should comment on the gun, as if I knew the first thing about them. I moved it up and down, guessing at its weight. Barely weighed a pound. I said, "Wow, real light. Got a good balance to it," and Ernie beamed like a new father. He was still watching me, waiting for me to do something, so I spun the gun around my trigger finger once and handed it back to him butt-first, like a gunfighter. I didn't even fumble.

A new respect for me sparkled in the yellowed whites of Ernie's eyes. He slid the gun back in the holster and made a show of fastening and refastening the Velcro straps until the holster was tight. I'd bought a gun recently for protection, though I could never hold it for too long, a hot second or two before my hand turned clammy and I'd have to set the gun back in the lockbox in my closet.

Ernie picked up the little handheld TV he always watched and we started our rounds. He walked beside me and watched a wildlife documentary on one of the public stations. There wasn't much work to do. Never is, guarding a wax museum. We simply sprayed the mannequins with our flashlights and made sure nothing was moving that wasn't supposed to be. It was the weirdest and easiest job I ever had during the weirdest and hardest time in my life, and after the first day I wasn't sure how long I'd last. I wanted to quit after the first hour.

The museum was...