Shorts: "Nambu Type B" by Ben Boulden

Nambu Type B Ben Boulden   *     *     *     *     TOM BOLLINGER HAD LIVED IN P—, UTAH, for 42 years. The only other place he had ever been was Iowa on a two-year proselytizing mission for the Church of the Martyr. He had been nineteen when he arrived in the Hawkeye state and anyone who knew anything about Tom knew he hated Iowa and Iowans. One reason for this hatred was because a missionary’s value is judged by the number of converts he baptized and Tom had only finagled one in two years—and that one had been a middle-aged woman with four cats and no hope of ever getting married or having children and so she didn’t count in Tom or the Lord’s eyes. The other reason is because Iowa was the first place Tom ever really saw the lives of other people. In Utah, Tom only saw the masquerade Martyrs’ put on at church every Sunday. All the men were patient, God-fearing, and hardworking capitalists and the women were pure, happy, and sweet. So Tom enjoyed telling the guys at the Patriarchal Quorum every Sunday that Iowa was a playground for fornicators, adulterers, drug users, and fags. Boy, did Tom like the word, “fag”—he used it as a substitute for “lame,” “stupid,” “feminine,” and of course as a derogatory term for gay men and drag queens. You should have heard him when a “gay family” moved into a house on the very same street where Tom lived. His “brothers”—as Martyrs’ call their male membership—in the Quorum never paid Tom much attention. Sure, he was off, a little weird, he made them uncomfortable but he was harmless. Everyone said so. He lived with his widowed mother, too, which provided his peers with a litany of tiresome jokes. Never when Tom was around, of course, because that would have hurt his feelings. Plus, in their quiet moments, Tom’s “brothers” knew he was right about the world’s dirty and sullen ills and they feared it would encroach upon their perfectly cultivated and inspired lifestyle as God’s chosen people. The thing is, Tom was mostly harmless. Sure, he had a strange obsession with his late-father’s gun collection. A collection that filled an entire room in the aging but well-kept house on Oak Summit Lane where Tom lived with his mother, but he never threatened anyone or even mentioned shooting animals. His favorite gun in that room had belonged to his grandfather. The benevolent and much loved, Lamar Bollinger. “Grandy Lamar,” as Tom had called him as a boy, had taken the little pistol from a dead Japanese soldier on Saipan in 1944. It was called a Nambu Type B and it looked like it had come off the set of a World War 2 movie. The round barrel nakedly sticking out of the blocky frame like an old-fashioned water pistol. And the grips, which were Tom’s favorite part of the pistol, were Philippine Mahogany and best of all Grandy Lamar had carved his initials into the wood so his tent mates wouldn’t get sticky fingers. “L” on one side and “B” on the other. It was a beautiful pistol but one nearly impossible to get ammunition for. It was an 8mm, which has never been popular in the United States. Tom’s mother, she could be a real bitch Tom often thought, wouldn’t let him use her credit card to order a box from a California dealer that specialized in rare ammunitions. She said it cost too much—in that squeaky high-pitched voice of hers that drove Tom crazy—so he had been forced to work extra hours at his job waxing floors at the local University to earn the $100 himself. Since Tom had ruined his credit a few years earlier he made a bargain with the dealer. He’d mail cash for the 8mm bullets, 20 came in every box, and upon receipt the dealer would mail the bullets to a gun store in Provo where Tom would pick it up. The actual cost went from $100 to $150 because of tax, shipping, and a handling fee that made Tom call the dealer a “fag” after he’d disconnected the call. That had been two years ago and Tom still hadn’t shot his grandfather’s old war trophy because he was saving those 20 bullets for something special. He didn’t know what, but he figured it would be obvious to him when the time came. It was even more obvious than Tom had thought it would be, because on September 21, 2020, an apostle of the Church of the Martyr gave a speech at the University where Tom worked. The gray old man said every believer should defend the Church against the gay mob threatening to knock down the walls and sodomize the faithful. He’d used the metaphor of a trowel for building the faith and a musket—which Tom knew was an old word for a gun—to defend it from its many enemies. Tom’s favorite line from the speech, or “talk” as the Martyrs liked to say, went, “a volley of fire is necessary to defend God’s Kingdom.” The speech’s underlying context was how the university’s faculty weren’t doing enough to suppress—and in some cases even supporting—the LGBTQ+ lifestyle on campus.    But what the apostle meant as metaphor Tom took as literal and that line about “a volley of fire” rang in his ears over and over. So Tom set to make the world a better and brighter place. He took Grandy Lamar’s Nambu Type B semi-automatic pistol from the gun room, cleaned it, loaded its narrow magazine to capacity with seven rounds, rammed it into the pistol’s grip, and pulled the slide back to load an 8mm round into the chamber. The slide slammed home with a satisfying clunk. Tom knew the gun was ready to shoot. He walked past his mother watching her absurd television game shows—the crowd applauding like lunatics—opened the front door and walked into the pleasant early-autumn afternoon. He didn’t bother responding when his mother asked where he was going. Instead he walked down the driveway, its crumbling surface crunching beneath his boots. The crisp air as unnoticed as the setting sun. He turned left at the sidewalk. Tom knew where he was going. He had known without understanding this was his destiny since the two “fags” had moved in three years before. But it had taken those carefully crafted words the apostle used for Tom to truly understand what the Lord wanted him to do. When he reached the family’s house, Tom paused a moment. He looked down at the pistol in his hand. He flexed his pointer finger and laid it against the trigger guard like his father had taught him so many years ago. A neighbor getting out of her car after a long day at work saw Tom with the gun in his hand. She squeaked and rushed to her own front door, the key shaking so badly it was impossible to get it into the lock. Tom’s hands were remarkably steady as he walked up Mark and Roger Dawson’s driveway and stepped over a short hedge of privet bushes onto the concrete porch. He saw there were lights blazing inside and from somewhere a piano played a simple and familiar tune. Tom stopped at the front door, which had been painted purple in the spring. He reached for the knob and twisted it—it was open, just like he hoped it would be. After all, no one locked their doors on Oak Summit Lane. A rich and delicious smell of cooking wafted across the threshold. Tom could see Roger in the kitchen, his back turned. On his left a girl whose name Tom thought was Rosie or Rachel looked up from the piano. Her hands frozen in mid-air, her mouth open in surprise. Tom stepped toward her. He raised his grandfather’s prized war souvenir with the same ease as if he were pointing a finger at her. He pulled the trigger. The Nambu’s sharp crack muted the girl’s shouts like they had been so much useless white noise. Tom couldn’t be sure, but he thought her last word had been, “Please.” From the kitchen Tom heard Roger shout. Tom turned as the man rushed toward him. A single phrase flashed in Tom’s mind: Kill the fag! And he did. The little Nambu pistol bucked with the trigger pull and Roger stumbled forward two steps before collapsing face down on the hardwood with a floor rattling thump. A shout came from the second floor. Tom ascended the stairs in three longs strides. At the top he followed a hallway into the rear of the house. The first door went into an empty bathroom. The second opened onto a bedroom and inside Mark Dawson was frantically trying to load a small black revolver. When he heard Tom at the door, Mark turned and threw the gun at him. It smacked against the door jamb and caromed to the floor with a bounce. Tom raised the Nambu Type B. His mouth razored into a tight smile. Mark said, “Why?” Tom pulled the trigger. The gun shimmied in his hands and Mark fell onto his back. In a beat of gleeful worship, Tom whispered, “Thy will be done.” Behind him a baby cried. Tom turned away from Mark’s bleeding form and walked towards the crying. At the back, in a tiny room, a toddler stood in its crib. The boy’s face was crimson with terror. A forgotten binky hung from a ribbon attached to a pocket of its blue pajamas. A mobile turning a parade of shapes—squares and circles and rainbows—glittered with the room’s overhead light. The toddler shook with emotion and if you listened, he was shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” again and again. A chill ran down Tom’s back. His skin prickled with goosebumps. He drew the pistol up from his side and looked at it. He extended his arm and pointed the Nambu at the baby. He squeezed his finger on the trigger but his hand shook with the gun. He closed his eyes and breathed with a conscious effort. When he reopened them Tom saw the child—as the first responders would learn later the boy was named Colin—for what he was. A scared, hurting little boy. An orphan. In the distance Tom heard sirens. He knew they were coming for him and he began crying. For a beat he understood the monstrosity of what he had done. As the sirens grew closer, Tom raised his Grandy Lamar’s prize to his temple and pulled the trigger. He faded to blackness as Colin cried with pain. And Tom knew it was too late for redemption and he hoped there would be no God on the other side, waiting to judge him. Fin

Ben Boulden is the author of two novels, several short stories, and more than 400 articles, book reviews, and columns. His latest book, Casinos, Motels, Gators is available for Kindle, and as a paperback everywhere. Click here to see it at Amazon.

© 2024 by Ben Boulden