“Look, Alice,” Herbert Cole said, “the way the world’s going these days it makes sense to have a gun.  You know, for protection.  I don’t wanna face some crook armed with only my bowling trophy.  I need this.”  He patted the revolver in his hand.

Alice Cole bent over and retrieved a magazine from the bottom shelf of her nightstand.  She flipped pages until she came to the article she’d been reading and held it in front of her husband’s face.  “See?  Right here it says that a gun in the house is more likely to kill a family member than a criminal.”

Herbert dismissed the magazine without eve looking at the article.  “That’s nonsense,” he said.  “This baby’s all I got to even the score with anyone fool enough to break in here.  Since Trish got married and Chip moved off to college, it’s just the two of us in this big old house.  What do you expect me to do if someone comes calling?”

“You call the police,” she said.  “That’s what they’re there for.”

“Yeah, the cops,” Herbert said.  “By the time they get here we could both be dead and the crook would be long gone.  Besides, guns don’t kill people. . .”

Before Herbert had a chance to finish, Alice joined in and they finished the quote in unison,  “. . . people kill people.”

He slid the gun into the drawer in his nightstand and threw his robe on the end of the bed.  “Just go to bed now, Alice.  We can talk about this in the morning.”

“You’ve been saying that for months now,” Alice said.  “And talking to you about that gun is like talking to the wall.”

Herbert slipped beneath the covers and turned his light out.  “Tomorrow.”

Alice knew it was useless and gave in for the moment.  She slid in beside her husband and turned her own light out.  She thought about what tomorrow’s conversation would be like and wondered if she’d ever get through to him.  She fell asleep with her thought.

“Herbert, wake up.  There’s someone in the house!”  Alice’s voice was frantic.  Herbert Cole grumbled and turned over, taking a little more of the blanket with him.

His wife pulled the covers back and whispered a little louder this time in his ear.  “Herbert.  Get up.”  She shook him this time and he turned over in bed, rubbing his eyes.

“What is it, Alice?”

Alice Cole threw her arm over her husband’s chest.  “I’m scared, Herbert.  I heard something downstairs.  I. . .”

Herbert silenced her with his hand over her mouth.  “Shhhh.”  He listened as the two of them lay perfectly still in their bed.  Now he heard it, too.  Footsteps.

He let go of his grip on Alice’s mouth and silently slid the drawer open on his nightstand.  His hand fumbled around for a second before he pulled out the .32 Smith and Wesson revolver.  He slid his legs off the end of the bed and stepped into his slippers before grabbing his robe off the end of the bed.

“Oh, Herbert,” Alice cried in a whisper, “be careful.”  Alice got up and put on her own robe and slippers and followed her husband out into the hall at arm’s length.  They both took small, careful steps toward the stairway and stopped at the landing and listened.  There they were again, the same sound of footsteps below.

Herbert took a step down, grabbing the handrail with his left hand and pointing the way with the gun in his right.  Alice stayed right behind him.  At the bottom step, Herbert stopped and listened again.  The footsteps had stopped.  He waited and listened again.  All he could hear was the controlled, muffled whimpering coming from Alice’s closed mouth.

A few seconds later he heard the steps again coming from the kitchen.  He eased his way toward the kitchen door and waited.  Herbert Cole pushed gently on the swinging door that led into the kitchen.  Backlit by a full moon, he could make out the silouhette of a man slinking past it.  He raised his gun and shouted, “stop, I’ve got a gun.”

The figure turned and raised his right hand.  There was something shiny in it.  Instinctively, Herbert fired and the figure spun halfway around before dropping to the floor.  By now Herbert was two steps into the kitchen and Alice had reached in to flip on the light switch.

The figure lay on the kitchen floor face down.  In his right hand the shiny object could be clearly seen now.  It was a deadly spatula.

A spatula?  Wait a minute.  That figure on the floor looked familiar.  Alice screamed and rushed to the man on the floor, kneeling beside him and cradling his head.  She sat there rocking back and forth, holding her twenty-year-old son in her lap.

“Chip?” Herbert yelled.  “Is that Chip?  What the hell is he doing here?”

Alice cried and rocked some more, keeping Chip’s face in her lap.  She looked up at her husband and said in a voice full of tears, “You killed him.  You killed our son.”

Herbert Cole laid the revolver on the kitchen table and stepped away from it as though it soiled him to touch it.  “I, I didn’t know.  How could I know?  Chip hasn’t lived here for almost two years now.  What was he doing here in the middle of the night in the dark?”

Alice Cole said nothing and continued rocking and crying and holding her son.  She rocked with the body in her arms, screaming the pain of her loss.

Herbert looked at the gun lying on the table.  He said, burying the heels of his hands in his eyes.  I’d give my life if I could only go back and do it over again I’d. . .”

“But you can,” Chip said, rolling over in his mother’s lap.  “You can still get rid of that thing and find some other way to protect your house and mom.”

Alice tried not to smile as she stood up, pulling Chip to a standing position.  She looked at the gun on the table and then back at her husband.  “You didn’t think we were going to let you come down here with real bullets, did you?  It’s too bad it had to come to this, but it was the only way we could think of to make you get rid of that thing.”

Herbert’s mouth dropped open at the same time his legs gave out and he sunk to his knees clutching his chest.  His face turned ashen and his lips went blue and in a minute he’d stopped breathing altogether.