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Back then, Daddy had opened up the safe to show me what was inside. There wasn't much, really. Some cash, a lot of papers, some old jewelry he said wasn't worth much, and a couple of guns. Antiques, most of them, he said.

When Tommy spun the lock and opened the door of Daddy's safe, it looked much the same inside. Tommy grabbed a stack of cash, did a quick count and said "'Bout five grand is all. Divvy that up later."

He put it back, then reached in among the various handguns on the middle shelf and pulled out a wooden box.

"Here it is," he said. "The Big Iron."

In the car, Tommy had told me about it, this gun. I'd heard Daddy speak of it before, but it never made much of an impression on me. What Tommy told me was that it was our great-grandfather's service revolver from World War I. When Tommy pulled it out of the box and held it up, he might just as well have pulled out a dinosaur egg or a dragon's scale for how alien this thing looked to me. I'd shot some .22 rifles as a kid, but Dad and Tommy never took me hunting since it'd been decided long ago I was "too delicate." This weapon looked too big for anyone to hold up and shoot straight.

"That thing is fucking huge," I said.

"Ain't it?" said Tommy with a grin. "This here is the M1911 .45ACP, which stands for automatic Colt pistol. Used by US troops from th'early 1900s all the way up until the '80s. This fucker'll knock down a horse at 50 yards, an' it killed a lotta krauts in its day. Nips too, I reckon."

He looked at me.

"Nice, isn't it?"

"I suppose so, if you're into that sort of thing."

He flipped it around and held it out to me, butt first.

"Well, it's yours now."

"Tommy..."

"Just take it, Thearn! Don't be a pussy. Just hold it, fer chrissakes."

I took it, held it for a moment and set it back in the box Tommy was holding.

"You can have it, Tommy. I know you want it more than me."

"You're damn straight I want it more than you. But I made one promise to Daddy on his deathbed, just one. And do you know what that one promise was? It was to make sure you got this gun... _and nobody else_."

"What? Why? Why the hell would Daddy want me to have this old, stupid gun?"

Tommy shrugged and closed the safe door.

"I dunno. I asked him, fuckin' _begged_ him to explain why he wouldn't give his coolest gun to his one son who actually _likes_ guns, who actually shoots the fucking things all the time. He just got all Yoda on me an' said: 'These are my wishes' or some shit."

We stood there silently for a moment among the welding supplies, spools of wire and solder and work gloves. We could hear the party outside getting louder as more people pulled up.

"Maybe he thought it'd make me less gay," I said finally.

Tommy turned to me with an odd smile on this face.

"Maybe. Would it?"

I shook my head. "Do you think putting Mom's old apron on would make you a good cook? Or make you grow a pussy and become a woman?"

"Fuck no."

"Well..." I said.

"I got it," Tommy said. "I think I got it. Leopard can't change his spots, right? So..."

We were still standing in Daddy's Closet, Tommy's tremendous girth leaving little room for personal space. We were sipping at our beers, neither of us too excited about going back out into the party.

"So what?" I said.

Tommy surprised me by giving me a hug.

"You're OK, Thearn."

"Thanks, Tommy. You too. For a fucking hick."

Suddenly, the grizzled face of Uncle Junior appeared in the doorway.

"Hey! Tommy! What, you tellin' your fruit brother about how to work a pussy or something?"

Uncle Junior threw his head back and laughed uproariously at his joke.

"How to work a pussy. That's great. Shit. Have fun in there, boys."

Tommy and I watched him go and turned back to each other.

"I don't think I can go back in there, Tommy."

"Yeah. I heard what Trudy said, too, the fucking bitch. When's your flight?"

"Five-ish. But I can go now. Got a book to read, keep me busy."

He smiled.

"OK, brother. Let's go. We can sneak out the garage."

He patted the box with the gun.

"You obviously can't bring this on the plane. I'll ship it out to you. Shit, even if you just get it mounted and hang it on the wall as a memory to the old man, I guess that'd be something."

I thought of Anthony's horror at such a decoration in our apartment and smiled.

"Yeah, it'd be something alright."

Back in town, I drove Anthony crazy by being very spare with the details of the funeral. He wanted to hear about the dirt, the slurs, the looks and all that, but I only told him it was my fervent hope never to return there again in my lifetime. In the back of my mind, I figured Tommy would drop dead from sheer obesity long before I did, and at that time I'd be faced with whether to recant on the Georgia no-fly zone policy. But I figured I had some time to think about it.

As for Anthony, I knew if I gave him some of the details — the remark from evil cousin Trudy, for example — he'd never stop talking about it. For him, the remark would be automatically assigned to all my relatives — to all residents of Georgia and the South as well. If I did ever go down there again, he'd re-hash it _ad nauseum_ in preparation for my trip, perhaps even insisting on coming along as added protection against the ignorant Southern hordes.

Yes, better for him not to know. As hurtful as it was for me, I at least understood the source and context.

After a few days, Anthony stopped pestering me for details, and life and work resumed as usual. I couldn't bring myself to explain the Big Iron to Anthony, and I was putting all my hope on Tommy not sending me the damn thing. He'd either consider it too much hassle, or he'd take me at my word — that I didn't want it — and keep it for himself. A week passed and I actually had just about forgotten about the gun when Anthony called me at work.

"FedEx came," he said.

"That's nice. But, then, they so often do."

Anthony had a mail-order book business, and he knew the FedEx guy by name.

"There's a funny little box for you from Georgia. A _heavy_ funny little box. Is it something from your dad's estate or something?"

I sighed and sat back in my chair as I anticipated his next question.

"Can I open it?"

And so I told him the whole story of Tommy, our dad and the Big Iron. There was a silence on the other end of the phone as Anthony took it all in, and I braced myself for the storm of issues and problems and suggestions he'd soon be blustering my way.

"Well," he said finally, "It seems pretty simple to me. Just send it back."

"Anthony, did you not listen to a word I just told you? I can't send it back. It's this... _thing_. This deal with my dad and Tommy and me, and he won't take it back. Dying wish and all. Whatever. Listen, just leave it in the box until I get home, and we can talk about it then."

To my vast annoyance, Anthony effected his whiny child voice, dragging out his words, freighting each one with special significance to make sure I understood each one.

"But Thearn, I am now _dying_ to open this thing! I've never seen a gun close up before, never held one."

"Anthony, no, seriously. Just leave it. You'll shoot your eye out."

The allusion to his favorite Christmas film didn't mollify him or even elicit a titter. He immediately switched gears from plaintive to petulant.

"Fine," he said in his clipped tone. "You can play with your gun when you get home. So long as I get to hold it before you send it back."

"Yes, you can hold it," I said. "Gotta run. Love you."

"Love you too."

When I arrived home, Anthony was sitting at the kitchen table with two glasses of Chablis, the FedEx box and a pair of scissors. Off his expectant look, I didn't bother to protest but simply sat down, took a sip of wine and slit open the box. There was a note from Tommy, which I read aloud for Anthony's amusement doing my best imitation of Tommy's drawl:

Thearn: Here it is. Couldn't send ammo so you'll have to get your own. The Big Iron takes regular 45 slugs. Just ask the guy at the gun shop. Take good care of it. It was good to see you. Tommy.

I chuckled holding the note, and Anthony wanted to know what was funny.

"Just the fact that he assumes the first thing I'll want is ammunition so I can go shoot this thing."

"Well..." Anthony said, eyeing the box. "Aren't you going to take it out?"

Tommy had packed the gun unceremoniously in wadded-up newspaper. The gun itself was in a simple cloth bag, and I slid it out as Anthony's jaw began to drop.

"Oh my god. Look at that thing Thearn! It's fucking _huge_!"

"I know," I said, holding it up. "And heavy."

Anthony reached out both hands, palms up, and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Give it to me, Thearn. I want to feel its raw, manly power!"

Once in his hands, Anthony opened his eyes and regarded the weapon as if he'd just come across some sort of alien creature. He shifted quickly to his analytical mode as he hefted and eyed the Big Iron.

"It's very heavy. A concentrated heavy, really. It's both ugly and beautiful at the same time. A terrible contraption, but so precisely engineered. And it still works, right?"

I nodded.

"As far as I know."

"And if it's almost a hundred years old, that'd make it an antique, maybe worth something." A beat: "We could use new countertops."

"I'm not selling it, Anthony. At least not yet."

He placed it back in the box among the newspapers and crossed his arms.

"Well, I don't want it in the house."

"Fine. I'll put it out in the shed."

"I don't want it on our property, anywhere."

"OK, Anthony. How about I get a concealed weapons permit and I just carry it around with me?"

Anthony ignored this and began listing all the reasons for not having a gun in the house. He'd obviously been Googling since the box arrived, and he cited statistics about gun deaths in America, the number of instances where homeowners with guns mostly used the guns on themselves in some way and, most importantly, what owning a gun would say about us.

"When you tell people you have a gun in the house, they'll freak out. Period."

"We won't tell them."

I knew this was ridiculous. Anthony had probably already informed half our friends via e-mail that we had a gun in the house. But we left it at a compromise: I could keep the gun, sans ammo, for one week, after which time I would either need to sell it, send it back to Tommy or, worst-case scenario in the "highly unlikely crazy insane event" I decided to keep it "for whatever crazy fucking reason," I would find a storage place for it somewhere far from our home.

"So you don't think we should mount it and hang it on the wall? That's what Tommy thought I might do with it."

"I'd rather put up a framed portrait of George W. Bush."

Even out in the shed, the Big Iron exerted a weird power over me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. First, there was the whole gun thing. If you live in a world where guns just aren't part of your here-and-now, they seem like strange and exotic things — scary manifestations of another world. A good part of that world, I truly believe, was the one where gay men were equated with child molesters. Having a big gun in our shed was tantamount to having a jacked-up pickup truck with a rebel flag painted on the side. Trappings of the enemy — what were Thearn and Anthony doing with this thing?

But more than that, it was the whole reason for the gun's presence in my life. The extremely curious last request from my father that I should have this thing. What did it mean? Did Daddy, as I'd suggested to Tommy, somehow believe my handling a gun would de-gay me? Or was it simpler than that, just an old man's sentimental bequest of something he valued to someone he loved — or at least should have loved?

At work, the unanimous opinion of the few friends I told about the gun was that I should waste no time taking the opportunity to shoot it. One guy even knew of a shooting range over on Dubuque where he'd shot pistols with his cop brother-in-law.

"You can buy bullets there, too, I think," he said. "They have a gun shop in the front."

"I don't think so," I said, realizing I was lying. "It's really not my thing."

Although I was aware of the existence of gun shops and shooting ranges, they'd always faded into the landscape of the city like other locations I had no use for. A brassiere shop, for example, or the Christian Science Reading Room (what _are_ those places, anyway?). But hearing of the existence and rough location of an actual venue for shooting — a place filled with, I imagined, stern, crew-cutted men who'd welcome me into their fraternity — proved an irresistible temptation. The notion of joining the fact of owning a gun with the real possibility of shooting the thing became this delicious, decadent bit of naughtiness I knew I couldn't resist.