I found it under a juniper, among branches 
that made a secret cave—a hiding place I passed 
who knows how many times without seeing. 

I was paying close attention to junipers, noting 
how they grow in circles, one overlapping another, 
as I tramped the vacant lots down my street. That’s when 

I spotted a weathered stack of cases, stashed deep. 
The top one, unzipped, clearly held a gun once. The others 
were metal or plastic, nondescript rectangles, shut tight. 

I debated a week, then brought a friend who would know 
what’s what. All gun cases, she said. She turned up shells 
and bullets, dozens of boxes, under the next tree. 

The sheriff was disappointed. I thought this was fresh, 
he said. We urged him to look closer. He didn’t 
want to bother, but lifted the second case 

and exclaimed, There’s something in here. 
Case after case held rifles, shotguns, an ornate 
pistol small enough for a toddler to fire. 

The prize, nestled in a box the size of a pit bull’s 
coffin, was a riot gun with a silencer. When he saw it, 
the sheriff cried out as if he’d been shot. 

Back home, I can’t stop shaking, tell my husband 
Get me out of here, knowing full well there’s 
no place free of arsenals—harsh evidence 

of our lives gone awry, the right 
to murder and mayhem become the rule. 

Bio: Cynthia Anderson