Some people carried a lucky coin, a rabbit's foot or some other pocket size idol that became their religion, their belief system. Red carried a gun. It wasnt a belief in cold hard steel that Red stood by, but the implication of what that belief could do that he hung his worn ballcap on. An empty gun is as effective as a loaded one in situations wehre neither is needed, thereby blurring the reality that becomes drawn in , say, a bank robbery.
Red enjoyed the power of his loaded gun theory, often times offering it up on the bar at Sam's as some sort of beacon, watching heads turn, mouths drop and eyes grow wide at the sight of a "loaded" gun in a room full of potentially innocent people.
Was is loaded?
It didn't matter because you had to respect its power, and this is what Red believed in.
Red lived on the second floor of a two story walkup with a dirty view of the street below. He liked to sit in a beat up folding chair with his socked feet up at an angle on the sill, smoking a King Edward's cigar while the world slowly turned outside. Tapping ash into a rusty Folger's can, he usually drank his Old Granddad out of one of the two buckets he had acquired from the Hideaway.
During the heavy summer days when the humidity pushed the city in on itself, Red's radio would be tuned to his favorite pasttime, Dodger baseball. It wasn't so much the Dodger's that he liked, as it was the voice that came out of the radio, that sandpapery rasp of the legendary Vin Scully. Red had been listening to Scully for as far back as he had coherent memories. His father would set up the transistor on the roof of the family plymouth while he fiddled under the hood while Red handedhim wrenches.
The simple sounds of baseball carried over time and distance, bringing the past into the present with the ease of a Sunday morning when the game was in the very capable hands of Vin Scully. Red had always been carried away by the lilting rhythms of passing innings that Scully called, transported to a far away place that was the calmest and most peaceful state of mind that he had ever known.
Baseball in Vin Scully's voice was like paint to Picasso. To Red, there was no better Saturday afternoon than a fresh fifth, an unlit cigar, a Dodger-Giant matinee and a warm breeze blowing down the street.
At three in the morning he was still awake, still at the window, still smoking and still thinking about the accident, the shooting and that woman with his gun in her hand.
It had happened slowly, like a migraine, coming into focus only after he heard the gun shots, and then only because he had recognized the tell tale thunder tha a .45 carries.
Red enjoyed the power of his loaded gun theory, often times offering it up on the bar at Sam's as some sort of beacon, watching heads turn, mouths drop and eyes grow wide at the sight of a "loaded" gun in a room full of potentially innocent people.
Was is loaded?
It didn't matter because you had to respect its power, and this is what Red believed in.
Red lived on the second floor of a two story walkup with a dirty view of the street below. He liked to sit in a beat up folding chair with his socked feet up at an angle on the sill, smoking a King Edward's cigar while the world slowly turned outside. Tapping ash into a rusty Folger's can, he usually drank his Old Granddad out of one of the two buckets he had acquired from the Hideaway.
During the heavy summer days when the humidity pushed the city in on itself, Red's radio would be tuned to his favorite pasttime, Dodger baseball. It wasn't so much the Dodger's that he liked, as it was the voice that came out of the radio, that sandpapery rasp of the legendary Vin Scully. Red had been listening to Scully for as far back as he had coherent memories. His father would set up the transistor on the roof of the family plymouth while he fiddled under the hood while Red handedhim wrenches.
The simple sounds of baseball carried over time and distance, bringing the past into the present with the ease of a Sunday morning when the game was in the very capable hands of Vin Scully. Red had always been carried away by the lilting rhythms of passing innings that Scully called, transported to a far away place that was the calmest and most peaceful state of mind that he had ever known.
Baseball in Vin Scully's voice was like paint to Picasso. To Red, there was no better Saturday afternoon than a fresh fifth, an unlit cigar, a Dodger-Giant matinee and a warm breeze blowing down the street.
At three in the morning he was still awake, still at the window, still smoking and still thinking about the accident, the shooting and that woman with his gun in her hand.
It had happened slowly, like a migraine, coming into focus only after he heard the gun shots, and then only because he had recognized the tell tale thunder tha a .45 carries.
