On Sunday morning, I was jolted awake by the sound of gunshots. Crack!crack!crack!crack!crack! Rapid-fire. Distinct. Unmistakable.
With my heart pinballing in my chest, I shot upright and automatically checked the time: 5:43.
“That sounded like gunshots,” I whispered urgently to Jason.
“Mm-hm,” he murmured back, his breathing elongating until I realized he was sleeping again. I jostled him awake. “I’m going to check it out.”
“What? It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Those were gunshots.”
“I’ve already forgotten about it. Go to sleep.”
After staring at his rhythmically rising back, I blatantly ignored him and propped myself on one arm, straining to hear additional homicidal noises: a screeching getaway car, sirens, panicked screams, running footsteps, more gunfire. Instead, I heard nothing. I checked the clock again to note the time for the police interview that I was sure would take place later: 5:48.
I racked my memory: there were five gunshots, right in a row. I was sure of it. Whoever pulled the trigger was shooting at one target; there wasn’t enough time between shots for the gunman to aim at anything else.
The gun. It wasn’t an automatic and it wasn’t a shotgun. (I was now an expert on shotguns since I had previously [the day before] shot one for the first time ever at a piece of wood in the middle of nowhere under the tutelage of Jason’s brother and uncle.)
“Are you still awake?” Jason asked.
“Yes. I’m going to check things out.”
A long sigh. “I’ll do it. What am I looking for?”
I didn’t know. A dead body, for starters? A trail of blood leading to the killer? OJ’s glove? I settled for: “Anything out of the ordinary.”
He got up and like a person with a death wish, started to pull back the bedroom shades. Incredulous, I lunged across the bed and hissed, “Jesus! Be discreet!” Even though I theoretically saved his life, he rolled his eyes at me.
As he left the room to investigate, I sat hunched on the bed, weighing our options. (Call the police? Hide?) Jason came back and muttered a dismissive, “Everything’s fine.” I felt the urge to check things out for myself anyway.
There were no lights on; the neighborhood sat quietly in the misty gray dawn. I stood off to the side, cautiously peering out of our patio window, my breath fogging ghostlike patterns onto the glass. The normally inquisitive cats were nowhere to be seen. At 5:54, I begrudgingly went back to bed.
Sleep came, but not easily. Every time I’d close my eyes, I’d feel myself slowly sinking into slumber, but at the last second, it would skip away. I couldn’t explain how convinced I was about hearing those shots – even today, when Jason told me I must’ve been dreaming. (I wasn’t; I was dreaming about the girlfriend in “Chuck” and we were shopping.)
But I think I will stop reading my forensic casebooks and allowing Jason to stop the TV on a violent horror movie while he falls asleep tightly clutching the remote control.
