FICTION : GOOD GUY WITH GUN by Matt Carney
When we first decided to publish Matt Carney’s searing, hilarious and unsettling short story about gun-totting “heroes” in America, “Good Guy With Gun”, it was going to go in Issue Seventy-Two of The Racket Journal this last November. And then the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs occurred. It seemed, with five people dead because of another act of senseless gun violence, too soon to publish a piece of writing that grappled with the idea of mass shootings.
After some discussion, we decided to hold the piece until a later date. Until it no longer felt “too soon”. Matt Carney was understanding but made this point: “"Too soon" in the United States is literally always…It's just a sad reality to me that whenever this does go live, there will be yet another mass shooting that either just happened or is about to happen, probably again targeting a systemically underserved community, and again nothing will change.”
Today, right here, we’re publishing Matt Carney’s reading of the piece. And again, we do so in the wake of another horrifying mass shooting. After 10 innocent people lost their lives because a man with a gun decided it was in his power to take them. Again, we wonder: is it too soon to publish this piece?
And this time, we’ve decided no, it isn’t too soon. Or it is too soon, but as Carney says, it will always be too soon, and the only thing we can to do push back against the unchangeable horrors of a country locked into a death spiral, bristling with weapons, is to make art. To write. To challenge. To try and suss meaning out of this fucked up world the only way we can.
So think of this as a trigger warning. This is a piece about gun violence, mass shootings and those who perpetrate them. It’s a challenging and fantastic piece of writing that we implore all of you to read and think about and discuss. But if now is not the time, if it is too soon for you, we understand.
Good Guy With Gun
by Matt Carney
Arlington, Texas
Before he was called Good Guy With Gun, Good Guy With Gun was called Just Chuck. Just Chuck the divorcé with one ex-wife and one adult child, whereabouts unknown, both of them goddamned Libras. Just Chuck pawned his wedding ring, a black tungsten extra wide dude band with a guitar string inlay and whiskey barrel sleeve, and used the money to buy a scalped PS5, a copy of Call of Duty Vanguard, and a Colt .45 ACP 1911 at the marvelous 50%-off gun show sale in Humble, Texas.
Just Chuck had indeed been called Area Man, once, many years prior. But it was a prior that finally he could soon forget. In August, eight months after pawning the ring, Just Chuck sat again among the families and tourists in the cafeteria of the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame, pining wistfully, doin’ the Dew fifty-fifty with George Dickle.
He drank and absently fingered the only ring he still owned: The high school graduation ring his father had given him. With the summer light streaming through the windows, he could still hear dad’s voice as he read engraving to himself again: “NOT BAD – PRETTY GOOD.”
That’s the moment the peace of the bowling museum cafeteria was shattered by gunfire erupting through the glass door – the shooter kicked it open, and Just Chuck whirled in his seat to face Bad Guy With Gun. Some exhausted, pox-scarred piece-of-shit in a Kevlar vest with an AR and an abysmal manifesto on the tip of his tongue.
It was the moment Just Chuck had been waiting for his entire life.
Every jerk and twitch reflex, every match of Call of Duty, every crystal of Mountain Dew in his body popped off all at once. He fell from his barstool to one knee, unsheathed his .45, and fired a single shot – woosh – it sailed through the air as if flicked cross the room by Christ himself right between the eyes of Bad Guy With Gun.
And just like that, it was over. Bad Guy With Gun seemed to not even know what had hit him, locked forever in his final moment of mouth-breathing as his skull emptied into the foyer in slow motion.
And of course Just Chuck stood, tossed his jacket back, and sheathed his .45 without even blinking.
This lucky shot was more than a miracle: it was an American miracle. Women and children cried, fell at his feet, tried to hug him – he politely declined the hugs because he was stoic, somewhat of an asshole, but above all he was a good fucking guy, and good fucking guys never hug crying women.
With the miracle and the media, Just Chuck had transcended Area Man, had transformed into Good Guy With Gun.
Hannity. Jesse Watters. Bred Baier. All of them wanted Zoom interviews with Good Guy With Gun. The United States of America averages a mass shooting every 20 hours, and Just Chuck had stopped one of them, once, had stopped one Bad Guy With Gun by just being a Good Fucking Guy. Just Chuck, Good Fucking Guy in the sheets became Good Guy With Gun in the streets, a stable genius and a real hero who’d proved the Right right, finally. Forget the police, the FBI. Forget regulations. Obviously, Good Guy With Gun needed to be in every single room in America all at once, always, forever, to solve the problem.
There was only one interview Good Guy With Gun really wanted to give. Naturally. Tucker Carlson. But the Tuck had not sent Good Guy With Gun an invite.
Still, he got calls from everybody else. Sponsorships. This unregulated provocateur heartthrob, Good Guy With a Gun, had stopped Bad Guy With Gun in one shot, had turned down all the interviews on purpose to own the fucking feckless Libras, asserting his genius and total lack of concern.
Even his estranged son reached out to him. His son left a voicemail on September 7th, 2022, sounding quite drunk, shouting something from a crowded bar. He slurred something like, “Wow. Okay. Dad. Go ahead and be Good Guy With Gun. I don’t care if you’re Good Guy With Gun, ‘cause mama is a bad bitch with a ray gun, rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” Relishing the tongue roll impossible to Good Guy With Gun before he hung up laughing.
Good Guy With Gun was certain hearing from his son was a bad omen.
Good Guy With Gun started to have real bad dreams. He dreamt of lemurs with shotguns, baristas with machineguns. Things were moving way too fast and outside his control.
But Good Guy With Gun also started to have his favorite dream again. About his dark fantasy. About his special fetish: The ball pit.
He told nobody of the ball pit fetish. Ever. Maybe the secret had driven away the wife and kid. But it was just something about that stickiness. Something about that stink of polymer. That hollow sound, the sinking ankle deep, then knee deep, then falling backwards into clattering chatters of a thousand different colored balls, then being totally swallowed like a microbe in glassy quicksand. He couldn’t help himself. Hard-on was an understatement. Premature ejaculate was an overture. Just Chuck knew a deep dive and slow swallow totally alone into a brand-new ball pit made him a real man.
The ball pit fetish was of course the secret rabbit hole that had led him late at night again and again to Reddit. To 4chan. To 8chan. To Dedchan. The darkest places of the internet.
Right before he’d become Good Guy With Gun, this internet searching led him to something new. Something more. He’d read on Reddit shortly before the miracle shot all about Tucker Carlson’s ball pit slip-n-slide.
The details are scant. Nobody knows really what it is—I don’t even know really what it is. But Tucker Carlson’s ball pit slip-n-slide is a thing, risqué photos from a slick situation that the Tuck himself still fights to erase from the internet. The pictures still exist.
Good Guy With Gun prayed, fingering his Christ tattoo, that Tucker Carlson’s ball pit slip-n-slide was not just another Libra hoax.
Tucker Carlson’s ball pit slip-n-slide gave Good Guy With Gun something he’d not had in so many years. It gave him hope. Hope that he could finally be open with his secrets. Hope that someone would understand him.
And you know what else? It gave him the best cry he’d ever had in his life. Because on September 12th, Good Guy With Gun received the invitation he’d been waiting for: Tucker Carlson Tonight.
The day came. Good Guy With Gun got his clothes back on after the strip search, holstered his .45, and entered the green room to wait for showtime. He grinned, sauntered in his shitty untreated skin, his unleaded mullet and rimless glasses and a sleeveless shirt which read one word in simple all-caps: HOCKEY.
But his heart sank as he entered. He wasn’t alone.
Some of them wore denim, some of them wore leather, some plaid and some just shirt sleeves. There were crew cuts, close shaves, mullets. There were guns, guns, guns.
Good Guy With Gun realized, crestfallen, that the green room was full of Other Good Guys With Guns. That this was, in fact, an entire segment on Good Guys With Guns.
He wasn’t special. There would be no private talk, no interview. Good Guy With Gun was not even Just Chuck to the Tuck. He was nobody.
And just then, walking towards Good Guy With Gun, laughing and laughing, was Another Good Guy With Gun in double denim and a snake t-shirt and a nine million gallon cowboy hat.
“Ho ho holy shit,” Another Good Guy With Gun said to Good Guy With Gun. “Hold up. Dude. I remember you.”
Good Guy With Gun was absolutely still, then. Silent. Sweating.
“I seen you on TV years ago.” Another Good Guy With Gun continued. “You’re… Area Man. You’re Area Man! They arrested you, Area Man! Arlington, 2013. They arrested you for blowing a load in that ball pit right on TV. Chuck-E-Cheese grand opening! You tell me I’m wrong, bud. Tell me I’m wrong.”
The entire green room, a room loaded with Other Good Guys With Guns, were howling with laughter at Good Guy With Gun, Just Chuck again, who could never escape being Area Man after all.
But he’d never go back to who he was. Ever.
There was only one thing left he could do: Good Guy With a Gun squared up.
Good Guy With Gun squared up against Another Good Guy With Gun, a bead of sweat and a hand hovering over the handle and hammer of his .45. Not about to become Just Chuck again, never to become Area Man again. But about to make a big mistake.
Good Guy With Gun was seconds away from becoming Just Another Dumb Motherfucker.
