The Jerk of a Trigger

My dad wasn’t a hunter. He was raised in the city and abhorred guns. As a teenager, he witnessed his best friend’s father kill himself with a 12-gauge shotgun. He saw the whole catastrophe—the final wave, the violent jerk of a trigger. Dad rarely talked about that tragedy. We just knew not to bring up the topic of guns around him. You could see the fear, the panic, and the pain in his eyes whenever a TV scene reminded him of that day.

After my parents’ divorce, Dad wasn’t around much. I really only saw him every other weekend. Still, he did his best to instill a love for the outdoors in his children. He shared his passion for fishing with my siblings and me. I owe a debt of gratitude for those bug-spray-choked summer days catching catfish and bluegills at the Greensboro, NC Jaycee Park. That’s where my dad’s outdoor prowess seemed to end. I’d have to learn what I considered “manly” things from others—like how to properly shoot a weapon.

My friend Nathan’s dad, Bill, had all sorts of guns and animal heads mounted on the walls of his home. He was a jack-of-all-trades, a handyman by profession, and the definition of an outdoorsman. I was enamored that he not only knew how to hunt and fish, but also how to prepare wild game to eat, mount deer skulls, and handle a multitude of guns. Blood-stained mossy oak camouflage was his uniform of choice. Bill hunted not only for sport but also to put meat on the table. Venison in the crockpot, squirrel stew on the stove, or, in this case, bullfrog legs in the skillet were not uncommon.

My brother Shawn, Nathan, and I finished our fried frog legs and prepared to head back into the wild unknown when Bill stopped us at the door. He told us to be back at 3:00 p.m. This was before cell phones. Knowing we’d be too far away for him to yell, he said he’d fire a shotgun to signal our return.

A few hours went by, and as brothers tend to do, Shawn and I began to fight. As we wrestled on the ground, Nathan jumped in with my brother, and they both took turns beating me up. I wiped tears and mud from my eyes and shouted, “The heck with you guys, I’m going back to the house.”

As I approached, Bill looked up from the hood of his two-toned F-150 and then at his watch. He asked where the other boys were, since it was about time for us to return anyway. I explained that we got into a fight and I had walked back alone. To ease my mind after the beating I’d just taken, Bill asked if I’d ever shot a gun before. I lied. The truth was, the only guns I’d ever fired were of the BB variety.

He reached into the pickup and pulled a 12-gauge shotgun from the rack behind the glass. It was a break-barrel single-shot model. Bill pulled the hammer back and handed it to me. The gun was almost as long as I was tall and heavier than I expected. I immediately regretted lying about my experience. I had no idea what I was doing. I figured as long as I had control of the weapon and stayed away from the business end, I would be alright.

Bill offered little direction, taking me at my word that I knew what to do. “Hold it tight. Squeeze the trigger.” Trembling, I felt like I was breaking unspoken rules laid out by my father. To avoid a bruise, I held the shotgun about a foot away from my shoulder. As soon as Bill turned his head, I pushed it out until my elbows locked. Then I yanked the trigger.

The gunshot was louder than I imagined. Everything went white. My whole world rang and tingled. Black dots appeared as the shotgun flipped in slow motion, suspended in the air in front of me. Horrified, Bill turned back to look at me and saw what I had yet to realize.

Blood dripped from my face like a leaky garden faucet. In my shock, I didn’t even register that the blood splattered in the Piedmont dust was mine. The shotgun rested on the ground before me, as if I had lied to it too.

Bill ran up and wheeled me around by the shoulders. The look on his face would have brought terror to anyone. He grabbed a washcloth, pressed it to my jawline, and screamed in a high-pitched panic, “Hold this on your jaw. Tight. Whatever you do, don’t look in the mirror. We have to call your mom.”

Almost immediately, I disobeyed. In the bathroom, I removed the washcloth and looked in the mirror. That was a mistake.

The terror sank in. My jawline was flayed open like a hatchet wound. I could nearly see the bone. The jagged, curved gash was half an inch wide and nearly two inches long. I could put my whole thumb into the ripped flesh. I don’t remember much pain, just a prickly numbness. My concern immediately shifted to facing my mother—a fate more worrisome than the injury itself.

With trepidation, Bill called my mom as he threw me into the cab of his truck. We raced down the dirt road toward town, dust and gravel flying. When we hit pavement, I bounced hard enough to smack my head against the window, still clutching the blood-soaked rag. Bill kept apologizing feverishly, lamenting that my mother was going to kill him. He seemed worried about me—but maybe more so about what she would do to him.

With a smoldering rage, my mom stood outside our minivan at the halfway point where they agreed to meet. She didn’t yet have the time or energy to be angry with Bill. She just asked, “What made you think it was okay to let my son shoot a gun?” She moved the washcloth and, without changing her expression, said, “OK, get in the van. We are going to the hospital.” Calm and steady, like moms are supposed to be. Raising three kids on her own, she had to be strong.

One look at my face rattled the pediatrician, who promptly referred us to a plastic surgeon. But they were all out of town. Our only option was an ear, nose, and throat doctor named Dr. Duck—supposedly the only one qualified to stitch such a complex wound. My mother tried to break the tension with humor: “Great, so you mean we’re going to have a quack sew you back up.” We giggled nervously as she screeched into the parking lot.

With what felt like four bee stings at once, Dr. Duck injected me with Lidocaine. That was the first time I felt pain. I thought they would knock me out, but I was wrong. I stayed awake through the four-hour surgery, feeling every tug and pull as my face was stitched back together. The wound required fifteen stitches inside and thirty outside. When it was over, I looked in the mirror at the irregular black knots along my jaw and felt lucky it hadn’t been worse.

A few days later, Bill was still a wreck. He destroyed the shotgun when he got home—whether out of remorse or to destroy evidence, I don’t know. He later brought me the hammer from the dismantled 12-gauge, the piece that had slashed my jawline. He thought I should have it. I put it on a dog tag chain and wore it as a necklace for the rest of the summer. It, along with my fresh scar, I wore with pride.

I barely touched another gun until Army Basic Training nearly a decade later. I had become wary of firearms, perhaps rightfully so. Just like my father before me, a gun left both a physical and psychological imprint. The scar on my face reminds me of the lessons I learned that summer: the importance of following instructions, of not lying about my experience. Half-cocked theories and painful realities are separated only by the jerk of a trigger.

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently living in Bethania, North Carolina with his wife Jess and their house full of animals. He split his time growing up between chasing wildlife and screaming on stages in hardcore bands you’ve never heard of. He has been published by Dead Reckoning Collective, The Havok Journal, Reptiles Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, and many others. He filmed and directed a documentary called “Hammer Down” about his 2005 deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in with Alpha Battery 5-113^th of the NC Army National Guard. You can find his books, collected works, and social media accounts at www.stanlakecreates.com

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.