Second Chance

In his left hand he loosely held a nearly empty bottle of some kind of cheap Canadian whiskey. His right was tightly curled around a snub-nosed 38. cal. Pistol. The chair he sat in was positioned in the center of the room facing a picture window with the curtains opened just enough to allow him to see her when she pulled into the driveway. “It won’t be long now,” he thought, “maybe twenty minutes.” She had called him and said she was coming for the rest of her things. Well, he had two surprises for her. The rest of her junk was buried deep in the garden out back. The second surprise he intended to leave her was his own dead body.

All he could do now is wait. He sat there in faded jeans, ripped at the knees and a stained, sweat soaked tee shirt thinking about how things had gone so wrong.
She had left him on the first Sunday of the year. It was late in the football season. The biggest play-off game of the season was about to start and she had made a point to wait until kick-off to make her scene. She had sulked in the bedroom all morning and then came bursting into the room to make her announcement. She said she was tired of living with a no-good bum who wouldn’t even pick-up after himself, much less hold down a job and pay the bills. They had fought; it was the same old fight they always had. Everything was always his fault. There was no reasoning with her. He could not help it if he was downsized. Her angry response was to quit using the word "downsized." He was fired, she had screamed, for laying off of work to go bull-hogging with his good for nothing friends.

The problem was, she was right. He had been fired for missing days. He hadn’t even bothered to call in on the last day, or was it the last two? He couldn’t remember. He had been too hung-over to recall. He was no-good. He knew it. She knew it. She was right. He replayed the argument in his mind, hearing her scream the words. He would never change. He would never grow up and he would never take responsibility for his actions.

It was time. He swallowed the last of the whiskey in two long gulps and threw the bottle across the room. He lifted the gun to his head and pressed it against his temple. The barrel of the gun was cold against his skin. He changed his mind and put the barrel in his mouth. It tasted of oil and grit. He took it out and put it under his chin. “Surprise, Baby! He said aloud and steeled himself. He pulled the trigger hard.

Nothing. He couldn’t believe it. He pulled the trigger again and got nothing again. He sat straight and examined the pistol. It was fully loaded. No safety on this weapon. He aimed it at the floor and pulled the trigger again and again, nothing. He leaned forward and rested his gun hand on his knee. He ran the other hand through his hair and sighed. “I don’t get it.” He thought. “I go through all of this and the gun doesn’t work. I fired the damn thing just yesterday and re-loaded it. There is no way she could have found it and removed the firing pin, not where he had it. Besides, she wouldn’t know how, anyway.” He laughed at himself. “Surprise, baby.”

After a moment, he laughed even harder. Those words were so ironic. He had overheard her telling a friend on the phone that she was pregnant. “No,” she had told her friend, “she did not know what she was going to do. She was going to tell “him” if he ever sobered up long enough. She thought she could scare him into it.”

“Wait a minute!” A new thought occurred to him causing him to sit upright in the chair. She was going to scare him into it, into what? He thought she had meant the baby but what if she had meant scaring him into some responsibility? Maybe she meant she was going to scare him into being a man. The man she had married; the man who had promised her all those things about life and dreams. Could that be it? He looked down at the gun. Why didn’t she take all her things the first time? She had only left junk, anyway. So why come back for it? Then a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon of his fogged mind. She doesn’t want to leave, I’m making her leave. She is coming back to give me one more chance. She may not say so, but she is hoping that I will.

His mind was racing now. She wants me to get on my knees and tell her I’m sorry. She wants me to take that job at her uncle’s construction company and be a man for a change. Her scare, he thought, was to make him realize that he needed her and needed to take care of business. “She wants to give me a second chance.” God knows he still loved her. He could not deny that. The pistol dropped from his hand. At that moment, he saw a flash of sun bounce off the windshield of her car turning into the driveway. Hope and joy struggled to be first in his heart. He would make this up to her and be a man. He would be a great father to their child. God had been with him this day and had granted him a second chance. He damn well would make the most of it. He heard her steps on the porch stairs and jumped to his feet. Smiling now, he would tell her he was sorry. He slowly got to his knees and smiled.

She opened the door and looked in. She was smiling as well. He knew at that moment that everything was going to be alright. As soon as he saw her beautiful smile, he knew. She stood in the doorway, hesitating. She had been crying, he could always tell. She may even have come to apologize herself but he would not let her. She had done everything right and he had done everything wrong. “Sweetheart,” he said in a pleading voice filled with emotion, “I’m so sorry.” He looked across the room with hope still lingering in his heart. He could not think of anything else to say.

She stood there in the doorway with her hand on the knob. He could see the tracks of her tears on her cheeks. Her smile faltered and she looked behind him. Her face suddenly became a mask of shock. She screamed. He was suddenly scared. He spun around to look behind him and saw something on the floor beside the overturned chair. It was him. He was lying on his side, the gun still in his outstretched hand. There was a pool of blood spreading around his head. His eyes stared blank and dead into space.

The coroner’s report that came out later that week stated that the suicidal man had pulled the trigger of the gun twice. The first shot was a misfire. The second gunshot, the only bullet fired, entered under the chin and evacuated most of the brain from the back of the skull. He had died instantly.

Second Chance
A Short by bronxbishop
1,259 words