My father's Iver Johnson .410 shotgun, which he promised would be mine soon, leaned on its stock in a closet off the kitchen filled with other guns and camping gear. The shotgun was given to him by my granddad, who'd bought it at an Ohio sporting goods store in the early 1950s. It was a squirrel gun that took only one shell and had to be manually cocked to fire; my father said it would teach me to shoot safely. I was months away from turning 15 and felt that a gun was the proper acknowledgment of oncoming adulthood.

When spring came, I got to use the Iver Johnson, but not for hunting, as it turned out. My father, a lawyer, was on a business trip and had left us behind, my mother, my brother, and me, on our small farm in eastern Minnesota. We were miles out of town, on a hill above a river, and there was a feeling of being on our own. One night a convict escaped from a state prison—a dangerous convict, someone known for mayhem—and several news reports placed him in our county. It was nighttime when we heard the warnings, first from a Minneapolis radio station and then, a few hours later, from a neighbor, who called us to say the convict had left some clothing in a barn on a nearby dairy farm.

"Lock the doors," said my mother, hanging up the phone.

The rest of the plan was my idea, hatched in a moment of rustic melodrama that seems, 35 years later, picturesque, like a "Little House on the Prairie" episode. I loaded the shotgun by sliding a slim red shell into the chamber. I clunked the barrel shut. Then I made everyone go upstairs with me. My mother and brother stayed inside a bedroom while I took up position on the top step and pointed the old Iver Johnson down the staircase. For the first hour of my vigil, I imagined the violent scene that might unfold. I wouldn't shout a warning; I'd shoot on sight. The load wasn't powerful enough to kill a man, but if it struck him in the head he'd drop, allowing me time to ready another shell. Given the distance, there wasn't much chance I'd miss. I pictured blood. I pictured a person staggering. How realistic these pictures were I didn't know, since the movies in those days weren't graphic about such matters, at least not the movies that teenagers could see.

The night dragged on and on and nothing happened. The next day, the convict was captured by the police. I slid the shotgun underneath my bed where I felt it belonged, now that it was mine.