Ragen's Two Pistols

Ragen's Two Pistols turn a private conflict over survival and control into a visible, repeatable danger. The Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol is carried into armed robberies; a second, 25-millimeter Italian gun is kept in the apartment. Together they are not merely instruments Ragen can use but evidence of a parole violation, a threat to the freedom he has regained, and an object lesson in how quickly that freedom can be put at risk.

The Weapons and Their Legal Risk

Arthur identifies the central contradiction plainly: carrying the gun violates Ragen's parole conditions. He rebukes Ragen for playing Robin Hood in Columbus, stealing from the rich to give to poor children. Ragen answers that the act gives pleasure, then shrugs off the prospect of prison by saying that life outside is not much better. Arthur counters that outside they have freedom. The exchange makes the pistol more than a possession: its presence sits between Ragen's justification for his actions and the legal consequence that could end his freedom.

On October 13, 1977, Allen sees the Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol left in plain sight on the mantelpiece. The second weapon, the 25-millimeter Italian gun, is in the closet. Allen is already pacing after receiving John Wymer's eviction notice, with no job and no clear place to go. Seeing the guns changes the meaning of the crisis: either could send them back to prison for a parole violation. Allen wonders whether Ragen, perhaps without realizing it, wants to return to a place where he could rule the spot. The pistols therefore register not only an external threat from the law but also Allen's fear that Ragen's actions are drawing them toward confinement.

The First Robbery

Before dawn on October 14, Ragen takes the Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol in a shoulder holster and leaves Channingway Apartments. He has taken Biphetamine and vodka, and he jogs west toward Ohio State University. The details of his preparation give the gun a practical place in the robbery: it is carried on his body as he sets out to get money for the children. The sequence also follows directly after the eviction notice and Allen's recognition that the gun could cost them their parole.

During the robbery of Carrie Dryer, the pistol makes Ragen's control of the encounter tangible. At an Ohio National Bank drive-in window on West Broad Street, he keeps it hidden between them while pointing it at Carrie as she endorses her check. She considers writing a plea for help on the check; Ragen warns her not to write anything on its back. After the teller cashes it, he tells Carrie she can report the robbery and stop payment, so that the bank, rather than she, will bear the loss. The gun enforces the threat behind these instructions even while Ragen presents the plan as a way to redirect the financial harm.

When traffic catches them downtown, Ragen tells Carrie to drive and warns her not to give the police his description. He threatens that, if he sees anything about the incident in the newspapers, someone else will take care of her or her family. Near the College of Dentistry, he leaves her five dollars for gas; when she will not take it, he slips it beneath the visor, apologizes for the circumstances of their meeting, embraces her, and runs away. The tenderness of this departure does not undo the coercion made possible by the pistol. It places an intimate, conciliatory gesture alongside a robbery in which Carrie was held at gunpoint and threatened.

Return to the Apartment and Loss of Time

At one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, Ragen returns to Channingway Apartments remembering nothing of the robbery. He puts the money beneath his pillow, leaves the gun on the table beside him, and goes to sleep. The pistol thus remains in plain domestic view after the armed episode, while the person who carried it has no conscious memory of what he did. Later that evening, Allen wakes, finds two hundred dollars beneath the pillow, sees Ragen's gun, and infers where the money came from. The same object that had enabled the robbery becomes a clue through which Allen reconstructs Ragen's action.

Allen's reaction also shows that possession of the weapon does not produce a shared understanding of its use. He recognizes the likely source of the money and decides to go out and enjoy himself. Later, Ragen insists that he will do it once more and that no one must touch the money; Allen, distressed by the confused switching, says he hates these mix-up times. The gun remains part of a dispute over money and control that crosses the boundary between Ragen's actions and Allen's awareness.

The Third Departure

In the early hours of October 26, Ragen again sets out toward Ohio State University, this time in his leather jacket and carrying the gun. At about seven-thirty, he stops at an intersection beside a police cruiser and grips it, considering whether the officers might have money. The light changes before he approaches, and the cruiser drives away. The moment compresses the contradiction Arthur had named: the weapon that exposes Ragen to arrest and a return to prison is also what he reaches for as a means of getting money.

Later on East Woodruff Avenue, Ragen follows a woman pulling a blue Corvette into the driveway of a brick apartment building. He had never considered robbing a woman, but now regards himself as desperate and again frames the intended robbery as being for the children. He tells her, "Get into car." The evidence establishes that the gun is part of this repeated armed pursuit, but does not describe what happens after that command. Its recurrence, from the October 14 robbery to the third journey across the city, gives the pistols their decisive narrative significance: they make Ragen's claimed protective purpose inseparable from coercion, lost time, and the danger of forfeiting parole and freedom.