Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “They offered you how much?”

  “You heard me. It’s a lot more than I make teaching here.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why didn’t you just take it?”

  “I’m not sure I can explain it in a way that will make much sense to you.”

  Renee actually slammed the dishes in the sink and pulled out of my grasp. “I’m young, not stupid.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. The thing is I’m not sure I can explain it to myself in a way that makes any real sense.”

  “Try.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want the money. I do. It’s that all the other people included in this deal, they’re still writing. Go into any book store, go on Amazon and you’ll find their books. Mine are so long out of print you can’t even find them on the discount racks. My agent got me included in the deal because Frank Vuchovich got himself killed.”

  She turned to me, brushed the back of her hand across my cheek. “But it’s still your work, Ken. What does it matter why someone buys it or reads it as long as they read it?”

  I winked. “Spoken like an agent. You could have a bright future in the business.”

  “Brixtonians don’t have futures.”

  Christ, what do you say to that?

  She saw the question in my eyes and rescued me. “You didn’t answer me. Why does it matter to you why they included your books in the deal?”

  “Because in New York, I’m still a joke. No, I’m not even a joke. I’m a punch line to a bad joke.”

  “You’re not a joke to me,” she said in that earnest way only the young can and not sound ridiculous. The St. Pauli Girl rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re here, not there. I can’t hear them laughing.”

  “I can. I couldn’t before Meg called, but I can now.”

  “Listen, Ken … you should take the money and get as far away from here as fast as you can.”

  “Hey, you, where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” I asked, staring into her eyes. There was a depth to them I’d never seen in twenty-year-old eyes. “If I leave now, where would that leave us?”

  “Us? I told you, I’m young, not stupid. Take the money, get out of this place, and never look back.”

  “Don’t worry, kiddo, nothing’s going to happen with Stan Petrovic. He’s a bully. I’ve had the shit kicked out of me by better men than him. Besides, I stood up to him. I’ll be fine.”

  “Is that what Jim says?”

  “What’s this got to do with Jim?”

  “Just forget it,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

  She grew quiet, quickly finished the dishes, and left, but I knew she’d be back. They always came back. All except for Amy.

  Ten

  Magician’s Hat

  I met Jim after school as agreed, my old golf bag and clubs slung over my shoulder. He drove a beat-up Ford F-150 pickup. There wasn’t anything unusual in that. Pickups were de rigueur in Brixton. Took me a year to figure out that the parking lot at Wal-Mart wasn’t the staging area for a monster truck show. I didn’t say much of anything after I got into the cab. I figured to let the kid do the talking. He did some, but he was decidedly less expansive about the essential nature of handguns than he had been previously. He seemed far more interested in discussing what a prick Stan Petrovic had been and how cool it was that I stood up to him.

  Even as Jim bragged on me, the St. Pauli Girl’s question rattled around in my head: “If Jim wasn’t there, would you have … you know, done that?” Smart question, that. She knew and I knew the answer was no.

  Hero worship is a potent drug. I knew firsthand that it could make both the worshipper and worshippee do some fairly risky things. Just ask the assistant editors and PR girls who’d slept with me, or the society fans who fucked me in bathrooms at parties with their husbands in the next room. Sometimes I wonder what those PR girls, the assistant editors, and the society dames think of me these days. There probably isn’t enough chewing gum or mouthwash in the world for them to rinse away the taste of those memories, if they remember at all. I laughed to myself, imagining them telling their middle-aged friends about having blown the great Kip Weiler. Kip who? Exactly, ladies. Kip who?

  “What are you smiling at, Kip?” Jim asked, smiling himself.

  “Just reminiscing.”

  “Do you think about the old days much?”

  “More recently. Since Frank Vuchovich was killed, I’ve been remembering things I haven’t thought about for a long time.”

  “Like about your dad.”

  It was as if he’d hit me with a steel pipe. “How did you-you know about that?”

  “That he killed himself and that you found him? Yeah, uh huh, I know. Sometimes I think I know more about your life than I do about my own, Kip. If life was college, you’d be my major. So why did your dad do it?”

  “Because he was a miserable person. I don’t know. He didn’t leave a note. Just like him too, not to leave a note. I think he did that just to torture my mother.”

  We didn’t talk again for quite a while.

  Every time the truck hit a bump, my old golf clubs smacked into the sidewalls of the pickup box. Not that I really gave a shit about those clubs. Although they weren’t quite as old as my brown corduroy blazer, they were woefully out of date. Jim noticed the racket too.

  He said, “I guess I should have tied your clubs down.”

  “They’re not my clubs anymore. They’re yours now.”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t know what we were going to do today, but I didn’t think you really wanted to go hit golf balls, Jim. If I took a swing in anger after all these years, I’d dislocate both shoulders. I dug those old clubs out for you … as a gift.”

  He pulled the truck over to the side of the road. Uhoh. I was a manipulative asshole, but I was much more adept at it with women. I knew just how to play them in the key of me. I was on less steady ground with men. Luckily, he didn’t get that goofy can-I-blow-you-now look on his face.

  “I can have your clubs?”

  “If you want them, they’re yours.”

  “Thanks, Kip.” He shook the life out of my hand.

  “You’re welcome. I’m happy to do it.”

  And I was.

  I should have gotten rid of those golf clubs a long time ago. I’d shed every other vestige of my old life except my car. Strange, the things a man clings to. I remembered all too well the last time I had used my clubs. Back then, “CC” at the end of a place name meant country club and not community college. I was teaching at Columbia, my writing career aimed squarely at the abyss. Things with Amy were deteriorating, and the end of my time at Ferris, Ledoux was at hand. Meg Donovan, in a misguided attempt to salvage what was left of my career, had arranged for me to meet with Peter Moreland III, an up-and-coming editor at the Travers Group. His rise through the ranks wasn’t hurt by the fact that his family was a majority stockholder in Travers’s parent company.

  When he called, Moreland was all good cheer and WASPy old-boy charm. He was polite, self-deprecating, and flattered the hell out of me. He just loved Moira Blanco, but supposed a change of editors might do me some good. Chemistry in publishing, he noted, was a fickle thing. He even seemed willing to turn a blind eye to my recent coke-fueled self-sabotage. He said he always appreciated my edginess and hoped his editing could help re-sharpen it.

  “Why don’t you come up to the club on Sunday? Oh, and please bring the missus,” he’d said as if an afterthought.

  Afterthought, my balls. Looking back, I can’t point to any one thing he said or did after our round of eighteen that betrayed his interest in Amy. He even had the good taste to keep a Daughter of the American Revolution centerfold by his side. Her name was like Zoe Gates-Tilton or Bates-Swinton or some such thing. Bart Meyers would have referred to her as a shiksa goddess.

  Moreland didn’t ignore Amy. He was properly attentive. He knew her work and that led to a
discussion of her more well-known contemporaries. It was as polite and civil a discussion of painting as I’d ever heard. In retrospect, the chat between Peter and Amy may not have been all that polite because I really didn’t hear much of it. I was jonesing like mad and my internal voice kept at me to order another scotch or take a run to the bathroom for a toot. To distract myself from my addictional callings, I pondered the full shape and color of the fair Zoe Swinton-Tilton’s assertive nipples. The distraction was fleeting because I was scared shitless at the idea of talking future books with Moreland. This was before I’d met the man I would come to think of as McGuinn. Besides, for all my legendary debauchery, I never actually cheated on Amy while she was present. To show you just how fucked up I was, I used to think I deserved credit for that.

  Amy recognized the signs of me falling apart and tried valiantly to steer Peter’s conversation to my work. She had, by one means or another, been trying to rescue me from my self-destructiveness for years. It wasn’t as if Peter Moreland didn’t attempt to follow my wife’s lead. He tried several times to engage me in talk of new projects, which in turn led me to order another scotch and to turn my boorishness up another notch. Only after I began to speculate aloud about whether Zoe shaved or waxed did things disintegrate.

  In the car on the way home Amy asked for a divorce. I don’t remember my exact response because I was so thoroughly wasted. I vaguely recall begging her to stick it out with me for a few more years. Junkies get skilled at begging. I remember that she started crying and told me that I couldn’t afford her and that she could no longer afford me. She moved into her Tribeca studio that Tuesday night. I think I was at Indiana University when I heard she’d married Moreland.

  Jim must’ve noticed the sick look on my face. “Something wrong?”

  “Not now. That’s the problem with reminiscing.”

  “What is?”

  “Starts out good, ends badly.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I had seen Jim with his shirt off. The scars on his body from his dad’s belt gave me confidence that he knew exactly what I meant.

  “We’re here,” he said, pulling the old Ford off the dirt road we’d been on for the last several minutes. “Come on, Kip.”

  We were parked on a low bluff near a waterfall, its ambient spray misting the pickup’s windshield. From the foot of the falls, the river narrowed and the water churned white as it was squeezed into a smaller course and rushed over large boulders that jutted out of the riverbed. Tall stands of reeds and weepy grasses that had begun to turn a dormant fall-brown stood silent guard along the banks. Except for a huge clearing just beneath the bluff, old pine forests lined both sides of Crooked River and extended well up into the hills as far as the eye could see. With the warming sun overhead and the strong pine scent filling up the air, it was difficult not to find this little corner of Brixton serene and beautiful.

  Stepping out of the truck cab, I took an icy cold spray in the face and my ears were assaulted by the roar of the river. After a few seconds, the din of the falls and rapids receded into background noise. I was conscious of Jim watching me.

  “Pretty here, isn’t it?”

  “That it is, Jim. Thanks for showing it to me.”

  “Just give me a second,” he said, unlocking the steel tool carrier affixed to the front end of the truck box. Jim pulled out a stained and faded blue Air Force duffel bag that was as patched as the skin on his back and belly. There was a thin rectangular area near the handle of the bag that had been neatly colored over with a black marking pen. My bet was the Colonel’s name was under the black marker. I didn’t need to be a seer to guess what was in the bag. “This way.” He motioned up the hill. “Come on.”

  The low bluff was the last flat bit of land my feet touched for the next ten minutes. We spent that time walking up into the hills above the falls and rapids. I slipped a few times on the pine straw carpet thick beneath the trees. Jim seemed to enjoy my unsteadiness, snickering and yelling for me to catch up.

  By the time we got to the little clearing between the trees, I was in a full sweat and gasping for breath. Although I’d managed to maintain a fairly consistent weight over the years, I was completely out of shape and probably a good candidate for a massive coronary. Decades of cigarette smoking and drug and alcohol abuse had only enhanced my chances of an early death.

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “I feel worse than I look,” I said.

  “You oughta start running with me.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  As I regained my composure, I noticed that the roar of the falls and rapids was somewhat muted, but still remarkably pronounced. I noticed too the old bullet scars on the surrounding trees, and the collection of beer cans, plastic soda bottles, and piles of spent casings. And there was a neatly stacked pile of wood partially covered by a tarp sitting in between some trees. The stack of wood seemed as out of place up here as the blockhouse had seemed in the hangar. Jim saw me staring at the pile.

  “The ashes,” he said, touching his index finger to his forehead, “from the chapel.”

  “The chapel? I’m confused.”

  He tapped his forehead again. “The white building. The other night, remember?”

  “Oh, those ashes. Right. Everybody had that smudge.”

  “That wood is from the first tree we ever used for practice. It’s what we burn for the ashes. Can’t enter the chapel without the ashes.”

  “About that, I-”

  “In time, Kip. In time. For now, are you ready to shoot?” he asked, reaching into the duffel bag.

  I suppose somewhere I’d known this is what Jim was bringing me up here for and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited by the prospect. Since that night at the Air Force base, I’d wanted to get on the inside of whatever it was that had gone on in that white concrete blockhouse. In my bones I knew it was where McGuinn was headed in my book, but he couldn’t get there if I didn’t get there first. I had spent a lot of my time imagining the parameters of the world the character of McGuinn would be thrust into, a world even an experienced killer would find both comfortable and disorienting. Being out here with Jim was the gateway to that world.

  I was also a little sick at the idea of shooting. I hadn’t liked my father very much, but even if it had been a complete stranger’s body I’d found that day when I was a kid, it would have fucked with my head. There’s something about the cusp of teenagehood, when the hormones are just beginning to course through you, that makes you especially vulnerable. I sensed that once I took my first shot, there wouldn’t be any going back. Maybe it was already too late to go back.

  I pointed at the duffel. “That the Colonel’s bag?”

  “It is.”

  “What you got there?”

  “This look familiar?” Jim asked, unzipping a black nylon and foam gun case.

  “Yes, it does.” I smiled in spite of myself, because what he held in his hand was a shiny version of the Colt Python that Frank Vuchovich had used to take my class hostage.

  “It’s nickel plated and newer than the one Frank had.” He undid the trigger lock and handed it to me. “Go ahead, take a few shots.”

  I tried to recall how Bart had taught me to handle a pistol of this size. I held the big revolver with both hands, tried to relax, and squeezed one off. My arms jumped up and back. Brown bark splinters and pieces of juicy white pulp flew from the trunk of the tree about fifteen yards ahead of me. I got an instant reminder of the thunder that thing produced as the report echoed through the woods. Some birds took wing. Water tumbled down the falls. Wind blew back the tops of the trees. Nothing much changed except my heart rate. There it was again. I was rushing. The first snort of coke, the first taste of a woman, the first sip of scotch: every high is different, but somehow the same.

  “Very good. Now watch what happens with the second shot,” Jim said, that knowing smile on his face.

  I took a few deep breaths and cal
med myself, then aimed at the same tree and let go the second shot I’d ever taken. No splinters this time, only the echo.

  “What happened?”

  “Funny thing about shooting, Kip. Before you took your first shot, you didn’t know how the Python would recoil. Once you knew, you anticipated. So even before you got the second shot off, you were pulling your arms back. The only thing you were in danger of hitting with that second round there was a red-tailed hawk in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t fret. You’ll get better.”

  I hoped so, but for now I was perfectly happy to play with all the Colonel’s toys. I fired a Luger, a.38 Police Special, a.45 Browning, a.40 Glock, a Walther PPK, and a.25 Beretta. It didn’t matter what I shot. I got that same rush every time. The Colonel’s duffel bag was like a magician’s hat. Each time Jim reached in, he seemed to pull out a different automatic or revolver. Whatever I fired and regardless of how badly I missed what I was aiming for, Jim assured me that I would get better.

  “Amateur hour’s over, Jim. Now let me see some real shooting,” I said, reaching into the bag and handing him the Browning.

  He positively beamed, as I knew he would, at the chance to show off for me. Jim surveyed the landscape, picking out a target.

  “See that dried pine cone wedged in there between the branch and the trunk,” he said, pointing the muzzle of the.45 at a tree about fifty feet away.

  “I do, the one-”

  Before I got the rest of the words out of my mouth, the round obliterated the pine cone. Shot after shot, no matter the weapon in his hand, Jim hit whatever he set his sights on. Then switching hands, he did much the same thing. He even took a few blind shots and hit most of his targets.

  “I can make you better at this,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll ever get as good as me.”

  “This is fun, but why would I want to get as good as you?”

  “Well, you don’t really have to get as good as me, I guess; but you do have to get better, much better.”

  “Why?”