The guns of Pike

The folks at Spinetingler Magazine were kind enough to let me write up an article on the guns in Pike for their current issue.

I’m going to start with what I hope isn’t a shocking confession in the world of crime fiction: I’m a bit of a gun nut. Though admitting that in some places seems tantamount to professing an interest in pedophilia — or, perhaps worse, being a cigarette smoker — I’m hoping that it won’t shock anyone in this community. I started shooting at the age of seven, blowing the guts out of old television sets at the county dump near our home in the Appalachian foothills. Though I don’t remember what make or model that rifle was — it was a semi-automatic .22 with a seven-round magazine — I clearly remember the sight picture and the feel of the trigger.

Then, when I was a little older in St. Lawrence County, New York, I graduated to handguns. We had a neighbor who taught me the basics of pistol handling in exchange for helping him with chores on his farm. He was a Vietnam veteran who’d turned hermit, and he taught me a couple of other things, too, as I recall. Once he gave me a long lecture on how he tried to always shit where the cows did so that they wouldn’t think he thought he was better than them, and that always stuck with me. And I seem to remember a porn stash that taught me a number of other important lessons.

The rest.