Gun Church

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Thirty-Four

  Anything, Except Everything

  The paranoia over Lance Vaughn Mabry’s murder had faded away, but was never completely out of my thoughts. Even after the sheriff theorized that the death hadn’t been anything more than a careless accident, my unease persisted.

  “Been known to happen,” the sheriff said at a press conference. “Deer hunters, ’specially young and inexperienced ones, they come down here thinking they’re gonna bag a big buck their first time out. Most of ’em don’t never even get to take a shot. So they get all bored and frustrated and have a little too much to drink. Then they go down by the river with their dumbass side arms, find what they think’s an abandoned car, and shoot it up. My bet is they didn’t even know what they done until they heard about it on the radio the next day. Now they’re just scared. Don’t worry, we’re going through all the huntin’ licenses and checking for suspects. What we’re gonna find here is that it was just a terrible, stupid mistake.”

  But that next morning, other things were far more present on my mind. With only a few breaks for writing and eating, Renee and I spent that whole day and day after that in bed-sore ribs and all. The sense of desperation was heavy in the air. Although I invited Renee to come up to New York for a week when I moved, we both knew she wouldn’t. Just as I was leaving Brixton behind, she had to let me go to leave me behind. Sabbatical or no sabbatical, we both knew it was unlikely I was ever coming back. This time we had together was all the time together we were ever going to have, and neither one of us seemed inclined to waste it.

  Well beyond the continued intensity of my time with Renee, things that had been all wrong since my return from New York had somehow righted themselves. I hadn’t crossed paths with Stan Petrovic again. That all-knowing smile of Jim’s was gone and he seemed genuinely happy for me. He didn’t even react badly when I explained about no longer wanting to risk getting my head blown off in the chapel before leaving town. It helped, I think, that I gave him and Renee a lot of the credit for turning my life around. I’d said it not only to be nice-something the Kipster would only do in service of pussy or cocaine-but because it was true. It may have started with Frank Vuchovich’s gun in my face, but my urge to write again might have died with him that day if I hadn’t gotten involved with Jim and the St. Pauli Girl.

  The one thing Jim asked of me was that we keep up our routine until I was ready to leave. I was glad to oblige him. A writer’s routine is more than just what he does in his office, at his desk. It’s his life. It’s his comfort. And while I knew I would have to create a new routine when I got to New York, I was thrilled at the prospect of having at least some more time with my old one. My ribs were healing, but not healed, so I kept our morning run under a mile. Even that made my chest feel like it was caught in a junk yard car-crusher. I wasn’t complaining. With the term over, I had more time for writing. Shooting was fun again and when we were up in the woods above the falls, I regaled Jim with as many tales of the Kipster as I could remember. I was incredulous at the seemingly inexhaustible nature of those stories.

  Knowing that I was leaving made Renee’s decision about going home for Christmas an easy one: she stayed with me. One of my gifts to her was a clothes shopping spree at the regional mall in Stateline. We went to the movies afterwards and I treated her to Thai food for dinner. When the waitress asked if my daughter and I had enjoyed the meal, we just laughed it off. We fucked particularly long and hard that night.

  Jim came over Christmas Day. Renee made a regional-style ham that featured an apple glaze and chestnut sauce. It was really good. I let myself drink a little bit, having a glass of champagne and a few beers. Renee and Jim both had a lot more than me. After the apple pie Jim’s mom had baked for the occasion, we sat around listening to my vast collection of bad New Wave CDs and discussing New York in the ’80s. Jim knew a lot about the era from my books and from our talks, and I swear I saw a little jealousy in Renee’s eyes, but it quickly passed.

  When it was getting late, I told them both I had gifts for them. Their eyes lit up at the sound of that and I could clearly see they were both still kids, really. The only thing I could have done to make it better was to have had a fat man slide down the chimney in a Santa suit. I handed a small gift-wrapped box to each of them. They hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Open them up.”

  Jim was first. “Holy shit! These are the keys to your-”

  “-Porsche. That’s right. When I leave, it’s yours.”

  For the first time since I met him, Jim Trimble was at a loss for words. He actually hung his head. Then he just held his right hand out and said, “Thanks, but I don’t know how to-”

  I shook his hand. “Just like my old golf clubs, the car’s something I should have parted with a long time ago. There’s no place for it in my life anymore. Take it. Enjoy it. Just beware, the repair bills and insurance will bankrupt you.”

  The three of us had a laugh at that, but I was glad to be rid of the Kipster’s car. I very badly wanted to molt the last vestiges of the Kipster’s skin before I went back to New York. I didn’t know if there would be a future for Amy and me or, if there was one, that I wanted it. I did want to set things right with her. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if the specter of the Kipster was looming. Funny how things evolve. For years after Amy handed me my walking papers and married Moreland, I told myself I would have sacrificed anything to have her back. Anything, except everything. I was as ready to give up my extracurricular activities as I was prepared to write a great new book, which was not at all. The lies we tell ourselves are always the most obvious ones, but we always believe them. I guess my road back started when I began to believe them a little less.

  “Now yours, Renee,” I said, pointing at her gift.

  It held a key too, one she already had a copy of-the key to the house. She was a bit confused by it, I think.

  “The house is yours, rent free until the end of the summer. I’ll pay the utilities too. I’m leaving a lot of the furniture. It’s not enough of a gift, but … ” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The one gift she wanted was the one I couldn’t give her. If I could have only brought myself to say “I love you,” it would have meant everything to her.

  “Thanks, Ken.” She kissed me softly, but hugged me tightly. When she relaxed her grip, I did not. I didn’t let go. When I finally opened my arms, placing my hands on her shoulders, she stepped back slightly and gazed right up into my face. Gauging by her expression, that hug meant much more to her than a few months free rent.

  Almost involuntarily, I said, “I lo-”

  Renee stopped me, covering my mouth with her hand. “Don’t! Don’t ruin it. Thanks for the house.”

  Jim, looking a tad perturbed, cleared his throat and the spell was broken. He went out to his truck and came back in with a gift-wrapped package of his own. He handed it to me.

  “Your turn.” His smile was crooked, but pure. A gift to a friend and father figure, one he took pride in giving. When I caught a glimpse of Renee, she didn’t seem nearly as happy or excited by it.

  “Heavy,” I said, tearing away the paper.

  Under the paper was a lovely cherrywood case about ten inches by ten inches by three or four inches. The case, however, wasn’t what gave my gift its weight. There was something inside, but it was locked. Before I could say a word, Jim held out a shiny key to me. It was a night for gifts of keys.

  “Go on, open her up, Kip.”

  When I turned the key and lifted the case’s finely crafted lid, I was as horrified as I was delighted. Inside the cherrywood case, resting in a molded foam bed that exactly matched its unique shape was a Royal Blue Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. It was the same type of handgun Frank Vuchovich had used to take my class hostage.

  “This is amazing, Jim.”

  “We don’t want anyone up in New York thinking they can fuck with Kip Weiler.”

  “Not unless they’re carrying a Howitzer.” That pleased him.
It pleased him a lot. “Jim, this thing must’ve cost you a fortune.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was no way I’d be able to carry the Python around. Getting caught with an unregistered handgun in New York City meant mandatory jail time. I’d been willing to risk it the last time I was there, but not again.

  “It makes me happy to give it to you. Your books meant a lot to me after the Colonel took off and that we’re friends … No gift I could ever give you would be good enough.”

  “Thanks again. Can we use it up in the woods this week?”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile got even broader. “You bet.”

  “Oh, shit!” I said. “I almost forgot. Wait here.”

  I went upstairs and retrieved two packages. When I got back downstairs, I handed one each to Renee and Jim.

  “What’s this?” Renee asked.

  “Open them up.”

  They pulled off the wrapping paper. Renee was working hard at choking back tears and for the second time in one night, Jim was speechless. Omitting the title of the book, I’d had mock dedication pages done up and framed by a specialty print shop and art supply store in New Prague. The paper was heavy book stock and was the same size as it would be in a hardcover. I took Renee’s and read it aloud.

  ForReneeandJim, whohelpedmefindmywayback.

  Renee couldn’t hold back the tears any longer and ran out of the room. Jim said it was time for him to hit the road.

  Later that night I found myself downstairs in the darkened living room, the Python in my hand, thumb pulling back the hammer, finger squeezing the trigger. I remembered that time in Bart Meyers’ house when I held a Python and how I had tried to grab one just like it out of Frank Vuchovich’s hand. The world, I thought, was rife with bizarre coincidences, invisible threads that pulled together moments of our lives so many years apart.

  Thirty-Five

  Freak Show Roster

  Leaving was finally at hand. The time since Christmas dinner passed with accelerating momentum: each day evaporating faster than the day before it until there was only one tomorrow left. I no longer gave much thought to the death of Lance Mabry and when I did, I felt foolish for ever entertaining my old narcissism. The day I went back to school to clear out my office, I’d hoped to run into the campus maintenance man to apologize for missing him that day at the Dew Drop Inn. I figured that what he had to say couldn’t have been too important, that his wounded arm and wounded pride had finally recovered. Except for my bed and a few miscellaneous items, the van was packed. After the farewell party at the chapel, there would only be sleep. Then, early in the morning, State Highway 87 East and I-95 North.

  This close to leaving, it would have been impossible not to look back at my life. Sometimes you look back at the road you’ve taken, but since September it was more like the road had taken me. That I’d simply been the passenger along for the ride. My time in Brixton was now divided into two distinct parts, BV and AV: Before Vuchovich and After Vuchovich. I thought back to how the St. Pauli Girl, dressed in an unzipped brown hoodie and skin-tight jeans, had showed up at my house soon after Frank Vuchovich’s death: how her nipples hardened in the crisp night air, how she’d given me a soft and solitary kiss and handed me a sheet of paper, an invitation into a world I could never have imagined. Now with Renee sitting next to me in the car, a fancy cherrywood case on her lap, I knew where I was headed. The road was no longer my master. I no longer needed an invitation or a set of directions to where I was going.

  I turned to look at Renee as I drove over the last hill before reaching Hardentine. We’d spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the MacClaren Arms, a rather grand old hotel across from the state capitol building. It was the most fun I’d had in a very long time. I suspect it was the first time Renee had done anything like it. We did formal dress-up and danced and overate and drank a little too much. When we fell into bed well after midnight, we fucked with half our clothes still on, and passed out. The next morning we finished getting undressed and went at it for hours. A room service breakfast never tasted so good. Being with her, watching her enjoy the things she’d only ever seen in movies made it all worth it. I hoped it would help motivate her to get out of Brixton, to show her there was a world of possibilities, and to want more for herself than to die by the inch as a miner’s lonely wife.

  Shooting with Jim using the Python was also a lot of fun. Okay, it wasn’t like half-dressed, drunken sex with Renee, but it was good.

  “Kicks like a motherfucker,” he said, firing my Christmas gift and taking off a small tree branch at nearly fifty paces, “but it’s a really accurate revolver if you know what you’re doing. And, Kip, you know what you’re doing. You’re better at this than I ever thought you could be.”

  “Thanks, Jim. That’s high praise coming from you.” And it was.

  We also talked some about what he was going to do with his life once he got his associate’s degree in June.

  “My mom works for Dixon Mining and I could get a job there anytime. But this life, this place isn’t for me and I know that as much as the chapel is everything to me, it’s a dead end, too. I’d die of boredom here, but don’t worry about me, Kip. I’ve got a plan to get out of here that’s working out pretty fair so far.”

  I waited for him to give me more details, but none was forthcoming. It seemed he’d said about all he wanted to say on the subject.

  Along with shooting and running together, Jim came with me to do all the errands I knew Renee would have hated doing as I prepared to leave. You know, the stuff that meant goodbye was for real and probably forever. He came with me to my old local bank to close my account, to the nearby branch of a mega-bank to open a new one, and to rent the van I’d be driving north in the morning. He came with me to the post office when I filled out the change-of-address form to have my mail forwarded to my new place.

  Meg’s assistant had landed me a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of an old Victorian house on a quiet street in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn. The rent, she said, was a steal at about the same rate I was paying for the house in Brixton. Only in New York City would it be considered a steal and I explained to Meg that her definition of quiet didn’t remotely resemble the Brixton definition. There was no quiet in Brooklyn, ever.

  Renee had been holding up pretty well until we got to the hangar at the abandoned base. There were no tears, not yet. I had no doubt they would come, but later, in the dark and quiet of my bedroom. That’s when Renee always let down her guard. She was most comfortable letting me see her after I’d been inside her and with the dark obscuring my view. Now her mood seemed to fluctuate between melancholy and edginess.

  “Why did you bring this?” she asked me about the Python, handing me the case.

  “Jim wants me to show it to everyone. He’s proud that he got it for me. I don’t mind.”

  She didn’t say the words, but her expression said them loudly enough: I don’t like it.

  There were bound to be many things about that night and the following weeks she wasn’t going to like. The next few weeks were going to be full of painful transitions for everyone involved. I didn’t think myself immune from missing her.

  I put the gun case on the hood of the car and held Renee tightly in my arms.

  “Come on,” I said. “let’s get this over with so we can be alone.”

  With the exception of the maintenance guy, they were all there when we walked in: the whole freak show roster including Stan Petrovic, and even he managed to be civil or what passed for his version of civility. Although it was clear he was already tanked up, he shook my hand and then ignored me. Jim and Renee notwithstanding, I wouldn’t get teary-eyed for any of the chapel losers: not the fat boy, the skater kid, the girl with the bad teeth, the sheriff’s deputy, the security guard, the grill man, et al. Only one thing tied us together and not very tightly, and not for very much longer. They meant no more to me than any other group of ghosts who’d drifted in and out of my life.
No more than people who’d stood at the same subway platform with me.

  Still, I didn’t like that the maintenance guy wasn’t here. It was one thing not to run into him again the few times I’d been back to campus, but I had fully expected him to be there. That said, I didn’t mention it to anyone, especially not to Jim. He was such a stickler for the rules. How could I explain about the clandestine meeting that never happened? Besides, come the morning, I wouldn’t need to waste an ounce more of energy on the rules or Brixton. The world of Gun Church might’ve gotten its start here, but now it existed on the page and in my head.

  It was fucking bizarre. They’d strung a sign above the entrance to the chapel that read GOOD LUCK IN THE BIG APPLE. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that New Yorkers never called New York the Big Apple. There were handshakes, a kiss or two, beers-lots of beers-and even a goodbye cake. The cake part of the festivities felt more surreal than shooting ever had. At least there was no pinata, nor was anyone suggesting we play Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

  Once the cake was dispensed with, they began passing my Christmas present around. I was relieved to have their focus shift away from me and to the Python. They were loading it up and taking pot shots into the mattresses at the back wall. Fine by me. I half-hoped one of them would break the thing so I’d have an obvious excuse to leave it behind. As it was, I had arranged for Renee to keep it at the house in Brixton for me until I figured out what I was going to do with it. I knew that stalling for time wasn’t much of a strategy. I figured if I procrastinated long enough, the situation might take care of itself.

  Jim brought out a bottle of Laphroaig Single Malt-Kant Huxley’s favorite scotch. He poured a round of thimble-sized shots for everyone. I thought there was some chapel rule against shooting and drinking alcohol stronger than beer, but who the fuck cared? The minute the bottle came out, Renee’s demeanor changed again. No longer just tense or sad, she looked undone. She literally grabbed my forearm, urging me to leave.