en Blessed waited until his wife was in the bathroom before taking his .25 Mauser out of the rear of his sock drawer. He pulled the semiautomatic from its holster. It was shorter than the length of his hand. The smallest key on his key chain fit the lock that plugged the trigger guard. He fingered the safety, confirming it was on, and then removed the plug. He popped the magazine from the handle. Pulling back the slide, a bullet sprang from the barrel on to the bed. He angled the handgun and peered into the breach until he could detect the glare of light inside the barrel, confirming the passage was free from obstruction. He shoved the magazine back into the handle, tugged at the slide, which released it. The slide snap forward, pushing a new bullet into the chamber. Then popping out the magazine a second time, he picked up the bullet from the bed, slid it into the top of the magazine, and once more inserted the magazine into the handle of his handgun.

His wife came out of the bathroom earlier than he had expected. She glanced at him strapping the gun and holster to the inside of his left ankle. He caught her eye. She glared at him and then twisted her head away. Ken adjusted the holster until he was sure of its comfort and pulled his pants leg down, until he was sure of the pistol's concealment. They would now be careful to not speak to each other.

The police officers had been found not guilty in the beating of Rodney King and Los Angeles exploded with rioting. Ken Blessed had taken the Mauser out of the fireproof box in the basement, had cleaned it, and began wearing it regularly when he made his commute into Washington DC. His wife did not app rove and they had argued.

Adrienne grew up in Sweden among the hunting rifles of her father and brothers. She had shot trap, skeet, and at targets with her family. She was not unduly alarmed at the presence of firearms, but her husband's weapon was created for the singular purpose of killing a human. An educated woman, she had listed several points of dissension. Keeping a loaded gun in the house increased the risk of an accident involving the children. Not having a permit, Ken was carrying a concealed weapon illegally. She also worried that a momentary error in her husband's judgment could cause irrevocable tragedy. She made these arguments repeatedly, until she tired of her own voice. There had been no convincing him.

Ken feared the trouble brewing in the streets and would not abandon this means for defending himself, his family, and his bookstore. He insisted he would be sufficiently careful and claimed, as a Vietnam veteran, to be professionally trained in the safe use of ordnance. As for its illegality, he defended himself by insisting the law was not the final arbiter of modern ethics. It was the same defense he used against Adrienne's complaints of his exceeding the speed limits.

Husband and wife sat in silence at the Formica table in the kitchen drinking their coffee and reading the newspaper, waiting for the nanny to arrive. When Mrs. Hammerstrom arrived, they planted good-by kisses on Ken, junior, their four year old, and Sarah, their eighteen month old, and left together for downtown Washington DC, Ken driving their Honda Accord.

Ken drove aggressively through rush hour traffic, slipping down residential side streets to get past congestion. They were well rehearsed secret routes. Rabbit starts and short stops, close calls and quick reactions worried Adrienne, who tried to keep her eyes closed as Ken burrowed into downtown traffic.

A loud pounding against the left rear window of their sedan startled the Blesseds. It was a bicyclist. It was obvious that the bicyclist was furious with Ken's driving and he shouted "asshole" at Ken as he pedaled past. Ken took umbrage, being entirely unaware of any wrongdoing. Piqued with the bicyclist, Ken drove to catch up to him, and caught him at a red light. The bicyclist was directly in front of him waiting for the light to change. The bicyclist was one of the city's impertinent couriers. Ken blasted him with the horn startling the courier. Ken felt avenged.

The courier swung his bike perpendicular to Ken's sedan, and turning to face Ken, the courier commenced to loudly curse. "Oh God," Adrienne sighed and calmly turned aside, annoyed, again closing her eyes. Ken frowned and shrugged at the courier, gesturing with the back of his hand, fingers spread, signaling the question 'what gives'? The courier reached behind to take something from his backpack.

A surge of tension flushed through Ken's body. The courier was Black, Ken was White, and the nation was beleaguered with racial discord. In Vietnam the Blacks counted among his buddies. It made no sense that they should now live worlds apart in the same city. Washington DC was notorious for murder and violence. Was the courier reaching for a gun? Ken glanced at the mirror. There was a car behind him so he could not back up. Ken flashed with a vision of tragedy, his death, his wife clutching him engulfed in horror. He saw his son confused by his absence. Ken then perceived an alternate future where he stood before a judge receiving sentence for illegal possession of a concealed weapon and for manslaughter. He tried to calculate the probabilities. Then it was too late. The courier's arm was withdrawing something from his backpack. Ken realized he would not have time to reach the Mauser with the steering wheel and the cuff of his pants as obstacles. Instead he lifted his foot half way off the brake pedal. That foot was charged with energy and prepared to jump to the accelerator. It was only a matter of withdrawing his restraint.

It was not a gun that the courier held in his hand. It was a narrow tube of steel shaped into a U, a bicycle lock. Ken was flooded with relief. Even if the courier threw the lock, it would not break through the windshield. The courier smashed the lock against the smooth skin of the Honda's hood. Adrienne bolted upright. The Blessed's immaculate car now bore a hideous scar. Ken considered retaliating by hitting the courier with the car, as he was prepared to do, but under the circumstances, only just hard enough to knock him over and maybe injure him. Adrienne shouted abuse in Swedish at the courier, was cranking open her window to make sure she could be heard, and this was sufficient distraction to give Ken pause. The courier calmly peddled away.

Adrienne was angry and demanding an explanation from Ken as to the events that had just unfolded, but Ken could explain little. Ken's own anger quickly dissipated and was replaced with a profound relief, because he knew he had come close to killing by mistake. It was over and he had not made the mistake. However, he did harbor a hope that he might someday find the fellow's bicycle parked unattended somewhere in the city.

The Blesseds parked their sedan at the National Gallery where Adrienne worked. They kissed perfunctorily and Ken decided to walk over to the Library of Congress to see its latest exhibit. He walked across the broad and empty mall under a hot sun. He wanted to think. Minutes earlier he had seriously been considering killing a human, had felt on the verge of doing so. It had happened once before.

Ken was on guard duty when someone had begun shooting at him, the bullets smacking into the sand bags surrounding him. He had an arsenal from which to choose. There was his 5.56mm Colt M16A1, the 7.62mm M60 machine-gun capable of pushing 600 rounds per minute, and an XM174 40mm automatic grenade launcher with a 12-round magazine. He ignored these and locked and loaded the nastiest weapon in his collection, the Browning M2 machine-gun on an M3 tripod with ribbons of .50 caliber rounds. The shots were coming from the village and he could not see his target in the night. He knew many of the Vietnamese living there, particularly the one in the home that was closest. It belonged to a most congenial, old cripple they called Pop, who spent his days perched on a stool in front of his shack, his twisted legs tucked underneath. That was on the other side of the world, the east edge of Asia, and almost a quarter of a century ago. Ken had refrained from shooting then, just as he had refrained from driving over the courier that morning.

Ken had learned later that he had been shot at by one of the white mice, the slang for the Vietnamese policemen in their all white uniforms. The man had been angry with some US soldiers, had become drunk and targeted his wrath at the grunt on guard duty, who happened to be Ken.

Ken was only dimly aware of a commotion when someone next to him startled him with a shrill shout, "I'm talking to you!" He turned and peered down at a face twisted in anger. He was being confronted by a Capital Hill policeman—dressed all in white.

It took a moment for Ken to collect himself and make the long trip back from his years ago in Asia. He had to also shake the preposterous coincidence of white uniforms before he could ask in an apologetic tone, "what is this all about, officer?" In response the policeman scolded Ken for jaywalking. Ken looked about them at the grand interior in the James Madison Memorial building of the Library of Congress and tried to comprehend. People were staring at them and Ken had the growing impression that this policeman must have followed him in from the street and had probably been calling to him the entire distance.

Ken came clean, except to avoid any mention of the weapon strapped to his ankle, and he found the officer was willing to commiserate with him. Ken decided, having been so close to committing murder, he was getting off easy with a jaywalking ticket. The officer was sufficiently amused by Ken's story as to let him off with a mere warning.

Ken finished viewing the Library's exhibit. He reached the Aldus Bookstore and unlocked its door promptly at eleven. In the evening he left the management of his shop to his clerk and rode the bus home, having left the car with his wife. Adrienne arrived home first to relieve the nanny. Ken reached home two hours later. It was only a twenty minute walk from the bus stop to his front door.

"Hello," Ken announced as he came in the front door, and hellos came back from the living room where Adrienne rocked Sarah in her arms and Ken, junior, sat on the floor watching the television. He came home too late to eat with his family. Adrienne always had her husband's dinner waiting in the refrigerator, needing only to be warmed in the microwave.

"I called the police today and reported that evil bicyclist," she said, not yet looking up at him. When she did she saw the wood bat in his hand. "What is the bat for?" she asked her husband as he strolled into the living room to kiss her and the kids.

Ken, junior, turned away from the television to see. "Is that for me?"

Adrienne looked closely at the bat. "Isn't that a little too big for Kenny?"

"It's not for Kenny," he said. "This here is a Louisville Slugger, and it's for me." Ken's son turned his attention back to the television.

"For you?" she said and cocked her head to one side.

"I sold the gun," he said. She smiled.

"And the bat?"

"I guess I'm just not ready to go cold turkey." He leaned forward to kiss her. Instead of her cheek, she offered her lips.

© Bruce Bentzman