RE Bunch

Hoplophobia: Fear of Firearms

I stood there thinking nothing had happened. I looked over to Rachel and saw her mouth hanging open. Her hazel eyes grew wider as she looked me over. I heard a noise like a slow drain gurgling, but I could not see where it was coming from. Had she hit a water pipe? My tongue felt oversized in my mouth, and awkward as I tried to speak. I could not hear myself talking or feel my jaw move. Suddenly Rachel disappeared from in front of me. A cold chill gripped tightly as things started to grow hazy before me. My knees went weak as I heard a woman screaming.

Blue Ruin Pearl and Gorgeous George is what we were billed as for A.P. Blythe’s Wild West Experience. A lonesome tourist trap off Route 29, heading to nowhere from nowhere. A.P Blythe’s Wild West Experience was a small rickety hotel supported by a gas station, a large gaming lounge, saloon eatery, horse-riding tours, and some live shows. I always wanted to be an actor, but barren fields are hard to work with. They are even harder to escape from. I started working for Blythe as a gas attendant. Nothing glamourous about telling lost motorists how to get out of a place I could not afford to leave. I had to keep believing I did not mind though. I did it with a smile and kept practicing lines from the stage show until I had my break. I learned every line to the Wild West Experience, the horse skits, the jokes, the way actors would walk around in character to entertain the travelers. I watched and waited until the opportunity came. Aaron, The Waco Kid, took a bad fall from a horse during the trick-riding show. He landed on his neck and could not walk it off. He was the henchman before me to Blue Ruin Pearl, our leading outlaw. The role did not come with a pay-raise, in fact, I would be working more in hazardous conditions, but it was the experience I was after. To feel like a real actor, even for a moment, was the real reward. Blythe gave me the name of Gorgeous George. I was tall with broad shoulders, a hard-square jaw, and a crooked nose. He said I looked the part of the handsome bad guy.

Pearl’s real name was Rachel but, it never seemed to stick. It was hard to say if Rachel was always in character or if Pearl was just more so who she was. Pearl was a hard-hitting woman to behold. She was beautiful and intense. Like a prairie fire burning close to the edge of town. She was direct about getting what she wanted without holding back. She was a semi-pro western-style shooting competitor. She was the obvious and best-choice as Blue Ruin Pearl for Blythe. She always wore a hard-red lip, grey eyeshadow to add to the mystery of her large hazel eyes. Her dirty blonde hair was always curled and worn in a half braid under her large-brimmed felt hat. As she was the “bad guy” she was always in a uniform of a black dress and black duster coat, with black boots with shining silver spurs. I was given a bit more freedom and could wear dark denim instead of black pants. A small relief for the high-noon shoot outs in the summer as we ran through the slippery silt on the gravel roads from the saloon to the horse stables on the opposite side of the property.

Pearl was such a great mentor to me when I was first getting started. I would walk rigidly and avoid eye contact with tourists. I did not know how to exist in the make-believe universe of the Experience. It was hard for me to process what people expected of me. People left their busy urban lives for a weekend of cowboys and horses. It was a safe and scripted idea of what they thought my life was like out in the country. How we lived in a small western town that did not even appear on Google Maps. As a heart-breaking bandit, I was out here drinking, starting fights in bars, and stealing anything not nailed down. The reality was so much darker as I was drinking to escape from myself. Pearl walked around so confidently. She touted me as the muscle behind her brains. A good henchman for her reckless abandon. I would flip the saloon table for her and give her cover as she ran out the door. I was playing a bit, a small non-speaking bit, but it allowed me time to see how I fit into this strange world. I became bolder and grew into my own character of villainy beside Blue Ruin Pearl. I was a smooth talker that the woman loved, and the rugged outlaw that played by his own rules that the visiting CEOs loved to heckle. It was easy to get carried away after the final applause of the trick-shooting show. To see the cheering faces and impressed admiration of the audience. I would have done anything for one last minute of recognition.

The downtime was the hardest to sit through. I often would watch Pearl, Rachel Bowmen, practice her shooting behind the stables. She would lazily shoot at a line of glass beer bottles. Shattering each one effortlessly. The loud explosion of the pistol rang out into the field, almost overlapping the shattering of the glass. Since I sat there to watch, she often would ask me to throw targets. Sometimes plastic frisbees, and other times my empty beer cans. It was in those quiet moments, I really got to see Rachel as she was. I would visit her at her rented trailer. I hated being at my parents but struggled to get out on my own. They were always so nosey. I would sit back drinking and listen to Rachel talk about her missed opportunity out of these arid dirt fields. She almost got to go professional on a shooting circuit, almost making it onto the Olympic team. This was a town build on the word “almost”. The missed opportunities are what trapped people in it.

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