Harris's five-shot revolver

Harris's five-shot revolver is a long-stored weapon from the Buell police station evidence room that Bud Harris retrieves when he decides to confront Murray Clark. Its importance lies less in its age or capacity than in the role it takes on: Harris arms himself while still telling himself that he means only to talk, then points the revolver at Clark and leaves it behind as events turn deadly. The object makes visible the gap between a threatened act and the violence Harris claims he has not yet chosen.

Provenance and Preparation

Before setting out to find Clark, Harris goes downstairs to the evidence room, where old boxes left over from the station’s move have accumulated. The boxes reach back to the 1950s, and he had once considered destroying them. Instead, he searches among them for several minutes and finds a five-shot revolver surrendered years earlier. Its tag is dated 1974; the account gives no original owner or reason it was turned in. It has remained among forgotten evidence, available because the department’s old records and property have not been cleared away.

Harris inspects the revolver’s timing and cylinder lockup and tests the trigger to ensure the firing pin falls fully. Back upstairs, he takes .38 +P hollowpoints from a box and uses a tissue to handle the rounds as he loads the weapon. These practical checks mark a transition: an object stored as evidence becomes a weapon prepared for use. Yet Harris continues to tell himself that he will give Clark a warning and leave it at that. The revolver’s readiness contradicts the reassuring story he is trying to maintain.

A Weapon Among Other Weapons

The revolver is only one part of the equipment Harris gathers. He puts it in his jacket pocket, but decides that he should bring backup. His duty Sig does not seem right to him, so he retrieves his Harris's .45 Gold Cup, bought after his return from the Marines, and carries it in a rear waistband holster with a spare magazine. He also puts on a ballistic vest and takes a small flashlight. The revolver is thus not his sole firearm, nor his regular duty weapon; it is the first one he selects for the planned encounter, while the other gun and protective equipment reveal how far his preparations exceed an ordinary conversation.

The revolver also has a different history from the .45. The Gold Cup is associated with Harris’s return from military service, while the five-shot weapon comes from an anonymous turn-in and years of storage. Harris’s attention to the old weapon’s mechanical condition gives it immediate practical force, but its anonymous past remains unresolved. It moves from institutional neglect into a private decision without acquiring any clear ownership history.

The Confrontation with Murray Clark

At the meeting, Harris takes the revolver from his pocket and points it at Clark, who raises his hands and says Harris has the wrong person. Harris tells him to leave the valley and warns him against speaking further with the district attorney in Uniontown. The revolver turns Harris’s demand into an armed threat, even as Clark agrees to go. The encounter is not simply a conversation that happens to involve a gun: Harris has brought a loaded weapon, and he has made it part of how he exercises authority over a witness.

The situation changes when another man comes up behind Harris. In the struggle that follows, the attacker gains control of the revolver while Harris draws the .45. Harris fires the second weapon at the attacker and then shoots Clark as Clark escapes. The distinction between the guns matters to the sequence: the five-shot revolver is the weapon Harris uses to threaten Clark, but the narrative does not establish that it fires. It is wrested from Harris during the assault and remains at the scene, while the .45 is the firearm used in the shooting.

Abandonment and Significance

Afterward, Harris thinks about the shell casings and the revolver left in the house, along with the possibility that he has lost his gloves. He cannot remember how many shots he fired overall, and darkness prevents him from searching for the casings. The old weapon, once retrieved deliberately and checked with care, has become an item he cannot conveniently account for. His concern shifts from the planned warning to the physical traces of a violent encounter and the difficulty of concealing them.

The revolver’s path—from an evidence box to Harris’s pocket, then into Clark’s room and out of Harris’s control—condenses the scene’s reversal. Harris sets out imagining that he can manage the threat, but his preparations put a real weapon into a situation he cannot control. The revolver is not the gun that kills Clark, yet its presence makes the threat concrete and its abandonment complicates Harris’s attempt to cover up what happened. As an object, it exposes the instability of his distinction between merely frightening a witness and accepting the consequences of armed violence.