"Box of Bullets"

First of all, before I begin, let me say that I will never admit the validity of this short story. Mostly to protect the embarrassed.

It all started one hot summer morning around 1968 or 1969. I'm not sure which. I was a young little monkey enjoying the summer and all its adventures when there was a knock on our back door on that morning of great fate.

My mom was in the kitchen, and I was watching TV in the living room when she said, "Monkey, it's your friend Tim!" (We'll say his name was Tim.)

Well, the only Tim I knew was one of my friends' older brothers, about two years older than me. It couldn't be that Tim! The heavens wouldn't bless me with such a visitor as he.

But they did.

"Hey, Screaming Monkey, wanna do something?"

"Boy, do I!" I probably replied.

Now, let me explain. Having my friend's older brother come to my house to see if I wanted to play would be the equivalent of having George Clooney knock on my door right now to see if I wanted to go get a cup of coffee somewhere.

I was starstruck!

We went out the back door of our "Wonder Years ranch house" and started kicking around things to do. We could go play in the woods behind my house, which was what we usually did to find adventure, or we could walk around the backyard until we had a better idea.

My backyard was pretty big. It was house-level for about thirty feet or so, and then there was a four- or five-foot rock wall that led to the higher and larger area of our yard. That upper level probably stretched back about one hundred feet or so to the tree line of the vast woods that lay behind my house.

We ended up just walking around, kicking things, until we found ourselves looking into the 55-gallon drum my dad used to burn wood or garbage or whatever, in the far back corner of the yard.

It was still smoldering from the night before, so we quickly put some small pieces of wood in it, and before long, we had it roaring!

At some point, we started wondering what else we could stick in it for fun when Tim said, "I wonder what would happen if we put a bullet in it?"

"Only one way to find out," I said. (Or words to that effect.)

"I know where we can find a whole box of bullets!"

I ran down to our basement and unlocked my dad's gun case, which was pretty easy because he always left the key sticking out of the lock.

I grabbed a box of .22 longs and ran out the back door, eager to impress my guest.

I promptly dropped the entire box into the fire, and we ran, laughing and giggling, all the way to a log on the other side of the yard and dove behind it, "combat-style"!

Did I mention that we were incredibly stupid?

Anyway, after a few minutes, one of the bullets cooked off.

Then another.

Then another.

Until we figured out that it might be a good idea if we counted them as they went off.

This was after maybe twenty or so had already "cooked off," but better late than never, I always say.

Finally, after being "pinned down" for fifteen minutes or so and not hearing any more "bangs," Tim thought he would make his assault on the drum.

I, on the other hand, stayed low, having just had a vivid image of a bullet piercing my forehead.

Tim thought, in his twelve-year-old library of wisdom, that if he moved up on the drum sideways, he would become a smaller target for the drum to aim at.

Brilliant!

He had closed in on the enemy position to a distance of about ten feet when...

CRACK!

Another one went off.

Here is where things get a little foggy, but I remember Tim instantly grabbing his crotch and letting out a yelp that could only be described as the sound a wounded coyote would make while falling off a cliff.

He pulled his hands away from the "fellas," and they were instantly covered in blood.

Neither of us had any doubt that the bullet had blown his privates off.

The next thing I remember was running in our back door to show my unsuspecting mother our handiwork.

"Tim's been shot!" I screamed.

She pulled down Tim's pants right there in the kitchen and made her diagnosis.

I learned in that instant that my mom was either incredibly fearless or completely nuts.

Later in life, I would definitively learn which, but that's another story.

"It just nicked his testicle!!" she said, grabbing Tim's hand and pulling him out the front door and toward his home, where his own mother would no doubt be equally surprised that her son had been wounded that morning.

I went straight to my room and enacted the first "self-grounding" ever performed in the U.S. up to that date.

It turns out the bullet went in on one side of his twelve-year-old "bulge," if you will, then traveled behind the zipper of his jeans, nicking said body part. The bullet then made a second exit hole on the other side of his zipper.

The bullet most likely flew over my head, missing me by inches.

I would see Tim about twenty years later at a party, where I asked him if he remembered that fateful day.

He gave me a strange look and said, "No."

Tim never married.

S. Monkey