The lost Ithaca 20 gauge of his boyhood would be the only thing he could leave to his daughter to pass on the legacy…or so he thought.

Michael wiped the sweat from his brow with an old grease towel from his grandfather’s workbench and slumped to the floor. He had been rummaging through the annex for hours now with no luck in finding what he came for–his grandfather’s Ithaca 20 gauge. It was a modest Ithaca field grade with a walnut stock and bird dogs etched into its sides–the beloved gun from his childhood that hadn’t seen the light of day in years.

At a naïve 25 years old, Michael learned he was soon to become a father. As if that wasn’t daunting enough, three months into his wife’s pregnancy the doctor announced the baby was a girl. He would be the father of a daughter. Upon receiving this news, Michael became a bit manic–he couldn’t avoid the reality that transitioning to fatherhood meant letting go of his childhood. He would be a working man, a husband, a father. It felt as if the weight of this responsibility meant the suffocation of the life he had before.

 

The Ithaca 20 gauge that landed many a squirrel, quail and dove in the past was the only tangible thing left that encompassed those cherished memories. Now, more than ever, he wanted nothing but to bring it home.

 

As he tried to process his inevitable future, memories of boyhood and innocence flashed to the forefront of his mind. One image in particular he could not shake–his grandfather, dressed in Levi’s and smoking a pipe as his grandmother flipped a smoking squirrel on the charcoal grill. Young Michael would wheel around the dirt driveway in his John Deere tractor tricycle until supper was ready.

All he could think was I’ll never have that again.

The Ithaca 20 gauge that landed many a squirrel, quail and dove in the past was the only tangible thing left that encompassed those cherished memories. Now, more than ever, he wanted nothing but to bring it home. Michael swore to himself that he would track down this heirloom to pass down to his own child as he was the only one in the family who considered the gun to be of any worth. When his grandfather passed, no other family members gave the gun a second thought. But Michael couldn’t get it off his mind, especially now with this baby on the way. It wasn’t enough for the stories to live in his mind alone–if they were to truly survive, she would have to know them, too.

Melting in the Carolina summer heat, Michael let his mind wander. He imagined taking his daughter shooting for the first time someday. Would she be jumpy? Would she have a knack for it? Will she grow up to hunt with her daddy or sit pretty like her mama? Both? No other gun would be enough. She had to have that one–the same one that once brought her young father so much delight as he cultivated his lifelong appreciation for all things wild, all things free. It was destined to be hers, along with the stories that came with it.

Michael trudged back to the front porch of the main house where his grandmother still lived after her husband passed.

“Mama Molly,” he called her as he walked up the porch steps to see her rocking on the porch swing and fanning herself with the day’s newspaper. “I can’t seem to find the damn thing.”

“Oh, darlin’,” she said. “Come here and cool down a bit.” She patted the cushion of the seat next to her. “What do you want that old gun for, anyhow?” she asked when her grandson plopped down next to her. “I doubt it’s in shooting shape.”

Michael shrugged. “I want some sort of legacy–something to pass down, you know? Some of my fondest memories were out on this farm shooting cans and squirrels with Granddaddy. And you make the best fried squirrel,” he nudged his grandmother. “I want this daughter of mine to be a part of that somehow. And this is just my way of doing it.”

“Your granddaddy always did love that gun,” Mama Molly said with a reminiscent grin. “I never thought it was much of a looker, but he’d sit for hours cleaning and polishing it up to look its finest. He’d bring it out whenever you came to visit on holiday knowing ya’ll’d be squirrel hunting. And you’d just light up when you saw him carrying it because…”

“…’Cause I knew we were about to have big adventure,” Michael chimed, the recollection bringing that child-like gleam back into his eyes.

His gleam quickly faded as he looked out across the farm. It wasn’t a farm anymore. It was a lively, buzzing subdivision filled with coastal cottages and high-end cars lining the freshly paved streets. Michael squinted toward the sun and tried to reimagine the quaint, Lowcountry farmland he knew from boyhood.

He took a breath of salty breeze blowing off the river, finally cooling the air a bit. Though the sight had changed throughout the years, the scent was the same as it always was–warm salt air and pluff mud. Michael loved the smell best when it was mixed with a bit of gunpowder. He widened his eyes and was thrust back to a blaring and harsh reality–rows of mailboxes and kids riding electric scooters and TVs flashing bright through windows at dusk, horns honking in the distance.

“You know, my child’s not going to be growing up in the same world I grew up in,” Michael said.

“Certainly not,” said Mama Molly.

They sat in silence, aside from the honking horns and the tinny radio music coming from the neighbor’s garage, as Michael looked out across his family’s land in desperate search for something familiar, something he could hold on to. The tire swing was gone now, as were the chicken coop and the dog pen.

Centered in the last vacant lot of the farm property was a grey tabby chimney made of crushed and whole oyster shells. Michael could hardly see it anymore as weeds and vines fought to reclaim it. Mama Molly saw his expression soften as his eyes met the old chimney.

“It’s got be…almost 200 years old now,” she said. “Early 1800s.”

“I shot my first squirrel by that chimney,” Michael remembered.

With the nomadic upbringing of an Army brat, Michael spent years overseas, thousands of miles away from where he felt truly at home, where he could live tied to the land, even just for a little while. He waited with anticipation for every holiday or summer season when he would get to visit Mama Molly and Granddaddy on the farm, whether to swim in the river with the dogs or trap rabbits in the woods. Or to help Mama Molly collect chicken eggs or shuck oysters for a pie. Or, especially, to shoot squirrels out of trees with Granddaddy’s Ithaca 20 gauge. Over by the chimney was a hotspot for squirrels frolicking through the ancient live oaks.

 

The thought of another relic being demolished in the name of something new and shiny lit a fire in him.

 

“Well, get a good last look, dear. It’s scheduled to be torn down next month,” Mama Molly said. “Such a shame.”

“How can they do that? It’s a historic structure. Can you imagine the stories shared around that chimney 200 years ago? If that chimney could talk….”

The thought of another relic being demolished in the name of something new and shiny lit a fire in him.

“I have to find this shotgun,” he said. “Where else could it be?”

“Let’s try the attic.”

The attic wasn’t any cooler. Michael peered inside the door to see mountains of boxes and old junk that smelled of mothballs and mildew. For the gun’s sake, I hope it’s not in here, he thought.

He rifled through boxes and storage containers, pausing in reflection each time he found something from his youth. A shoebox of G.I. Joes– he and his brothers would strap them to rockets and watch them whistle and soar until landing in the fronds of a palmetto. His book of baseball cards–Grandaddy and Mama Molly gave him a new pack in a stocking every Christmas.

With each find he felt more defeated, that was until a bright flicker caught his eye. The afternoon sun forced its way through the wooden blinds of the tiny attic window. The flash of silver came from a small crack in the antique pie safe on the other side of the room–his last hope. He waded through the junk scattered on the floor, pushing his old trinkets and toys aside, threw open the cupboard doors of the pie safe and there it was, in all its humble glory, Grandaddy’s gun.

Michael grabbed the cupboard door for balance–teetering on the fine line between boy and man, man and father, between his past and his future. With his grandfather’s old towel, he wiped droplets of sweat, or maybe tears, from his eyes. He wiped his hands well, too, as if to protect from dirt and oils this gun that was so forgotten by others, and gingerly brought the gun back into the light after it sat in darkness for so many years.

It was just as he remembered it––the beautiful side-by-side from his childhood, though now it felt smaller in his hands. Without realizing, Michael swiftly brought the gun to his cheek, targeting imaginary doves that he could almost hear flutter through the attic.

“You look just like him,” he heard a soft voice say from the doorway.

“Oh,” Michael said with a chuckle, embarrassed that he didn’t notice his Mama Molly standing there before. “Well, he taught me everything I know and love. I wish I could have learned more from him before he passed.”

Taking the old Ithaca 20 gauge outside for a better look, Michael saw it was in worse shape than he remembered. In his memory it remained pristine. Finally in his hands once again, the gun showed its wear, its age–a cracked stock, water damage, surface rust. He ran his thumbs over the worn walnut stock to feel the indention where Granddaddy carved his initials into the side.

 

Maybe his daughter would feel the same way about this old gun–finding beauty in it for exactly what it is. It would be an honest gun if there ever was one.

 

For a brief moment he considered restoration, remembering the gun in its glory days. He looked across the farm and remembered his own glory days. One in the same.

“Are you planning to get her fixed up?” Mama Molly asked as if reading her grandson’s mind.

“I do wish it could shine like it used to. I would love it to be something my daughter can take pride in,” he said.

They looked across the farm once more together.

Mama Molly’s face scrunched as she surmised, “You know, someone had the bright idea to ‘restore’ this land…make it new again, breathe life into it. Seems there is a fine line between restoration and reconstruction.”

The old chimney, never restored, left untouched for decades, maintained its charm, history, mystery as it stood amongst the modern homes that left nothing to the imagination. To Michael, it was a true treasure. Maybe his daughter would feel the same way about this old gun–finding beauty in it for exactly what it is. It would be an honest gun if there ever was one.

A Legacy is Born

The following weekend, Michael took the gun afield for a test run. Granddaddy never lived to see Michael shoot anything more than cans and backyard squirrels. To honor the one man who instilled in him a love for the outdoors, Michael was determined to take the gun out for a real bird hunt in the upcoming season, though he had never been on a real bird hunt before. No one ever took him. He had a lot left still to learn, and Granddaddy would never again be there to teach him. So I’ll have to teach myself, Michael decided. He packed a few granola bars, his newly purchased hunting books, sporting clays and a thrower and headed out for practice.

Michael raised the gun to meet his stubbled cheek and pulled it in close. Gun loaded. Shooter ready. He launched the first clay when a buzzing from his back pocket demanded his attention, and the intact clay grazed the dewy grass.

This was it. The call he knew would soon come but one he could never fully prepare for.

“Honey?” Michael heard his wife say through the phone, “I think it’s time.”

Michael panicked, overwhelmed with the unexpected myriad emotions that followed that call. Lightheadedness, nausea, elation, fear…past and future collided and Michael felt the impact.

He couldn’t move fast enough. The only thing between him and meeting his newborn daughter was the key to his truck. So that’s all he grabbed when he rushed to leave. Everything else in the world could wait. He turned the key and floored it.

 

He watched the old Ithaca 20 gauge sink in muddy tire tracks. He accelerated again––driving full speed into the unknown, abandoning the symbol of his youth there in the dirt.

 

Michael only made it a few yards down the field before he felt a thwump-thwump underneath him with an unmistakable cracking sound that snapped him out of his trance. He knew immediately what it was. “I’m sorry, Granddaddy,” Michael said to the rearview mirror as he watched the old Ithaca 20 gauge sink in muddy tire tracks. He accelerated again––driving full speed into the unknown, abandoning the symbol of his youth there in the dirt.

The next 12 hours were a blur. He didn’t think of the gun again until that night. His wife slept, the hospital quiet, as he held his baby girl in his arms. Her little eyes blinked open and she looked right at her father. Father, he thought. It had quite a ring to it. A weight to it.

He stared at her for who knows how long. She was so new, so perfect. No scars, no broken pieces. He was sure the old shotgun was destroyed, but, to his own surprise, he didn’t care. If he had no guns at all, if he had no clays, if he had no books, no grandfathers, no land…it didn’t matter. Not anymore. He had every memory, every story. He had within him his own potential to learn and to teach. But most of all, he had the epitome of heritage, of love, in a seven-pound, pink-blanket-wrapped bundle right there in his arms.

“Everything you need to know,” he whispered to her, “I will teach you.”

His words didn’t satisfy him. He thought for another moment.

“Everything else,” he added with a kiss of her forehead, “I will teach you to learn for yourself.”

He owed her that. After all, though they just met, she had already taught him a priceless lesson: she is the only legacy he needs.