by Deanna Chase
Up close, the dilapidated Cape Cod looked like a damned shack. The paint was peeling, and the window sills and eaves showed signs of significant rot. One broken window had a plywood board nailed over it from the inside. Was Wyatt so poor that he couldn’t make even basic repairs to his house? He never complained about needing money, or doing without, but his house was in shambles. From the outside, it looked like he hadn’t done a thing in the two years since he’d bought it. Perhaps his home repairs had started on the inside? It would take a lot to fix this place up, so maybe he was just doing a little at a time? Either way, the place made me feel anxious inside, like I should find a way to sneak Wyatt more money, or arrange for a contractor to show up free of charge. How could I manage this without offending his pride, I wondered? Then I wondered why I gave a shit about Wyatt’s falling down house or his pride. That wasn’t like me at all.
It was just as bad in the back yard. There was a dangerously rickety deck off his kitchen, grey with age and full of splintered, bowed planks. He had an equally rickety card table set up on the ground in front of the deck with a target out in my back field. There were cigarette burns, and bottle rings on the card table. An assortment of guns was laid out like a flea market sale.
I’d seen guns in movies before but had limited experience with them up close. I remembered a huge long gun about two hundred years ago when I had popped over here for some fun. It was a stupid weapon. It took forever for the guy to get it ready, and then it was just as likely to explode in his face as fire. It never seemed to hit its mark either. I’d pretty much written them off after that. They looked awesome on TV, but I know the liberty producers take with reality.
Wyatt introduced me to the guns. No really, introduced me. Like we were at a cocktail party. I got to meet Mr. Shotgun. I learned about smooth–bore barrels, the difference between gauges and calibers. This particular one was a 12–gauge, which was supposed to be the most common and thus easier to find and purchase ammunition. It was also a pump action which, according to Wyatt, was more reliable than the semi–automatics, whatever they are. Evidently, I was going to get up close and personal with Mr. Shotgun (whose first name was Remington) before I got to meet the other weapons at the party this morning.
Wyatt handed me Remington and I just looked at him. The gun I mean, not Wyatt. I stuck the butt end under my arm and grabbed the barrel with my left hand, my right hand on the bottom of the gun holding the trigger.
“Here, let me show you,” Wyatt said moving behind me. “It’s not loaded.”
I think I stopped breathing when Wyatt put his arms around me. He moved the butt of the shotgun to the hollow in my shoulder, putting his left hand on mine and moving it back to the appropriate position. We stood there with his arms and hands against mine, the entire front length of his body pressed against my back and rear, and his lips so close to my ear that my hair moved with his breath. A slow warmth built low in my abdomen and eased down between my thighs. Maybe we could stay this way all morning.
“Sam?”
Oh, crap. He’d been giving me some kind of directions and I was supposed to respond. I had no idea what he’d said.
“Yep. Okay.”
I hoped that would suffice. Wyatt gave a low chuckle against my ear.
“Should I go over that again?”
I said no. If we kept this up I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. I wished that I’d brought some duct tape.
Wyatt loaded the gun and commented that he was out of bird shot, so we were using slugs. I gleefully envisioned cramming slimy slugs into a shotgun and blowing them out the barrel. That would be so cool. Someone should invent that. Everyone would want one.
Carefully, I racked the gun and placed my left hand on the forearm and my right on the grip behind the trigger where Wyatt had positioned my hands before. Pointing it at the target, I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Take off the safety,” Wyatt said, pointing to the appropriate part when I looked at him blankly. “And don’t forget to seat the gun against your shoulder”.
I clicked off the safety and pulled the trigger. There was a roar, and a slam of pain, and I was on my ass sprawled into the dirt of Wyatt’s back yard.
“Ow, motherfucker!”
“It’s a 12–gauge,” Wyatt said, helping me to my feet. “And we’re using slug ammo. You need to get it positioned solidly on your shoulder, with your cheek against it to site it better. You’re strong, there’s no reason you can’t shoot this gun”.
I dusted my rump off and Wyatt assisted in cleaning me off, even licking a finger and wiping a smudge from my forehead.
“Let me see,” he said pulling aside my tank top and bra strap to look at my shoulder.
“Ouch. You’ll have a bruise.”
I was feeling anything but pain as he ran a finger across my collarbone.
“Are you okay to shoot it again? Do you want to fix your shoulder first?”
“I’m fine. It’s not bad.”
Mr. Remington Shotgun may have won this round, but I’d be damned if I let him get the best of me.
“Did I hit anything?” I asked Wyatt.
“No, and if we’re lucky you missed the neighbor’s cows.”
I really didn’t give a shit about the neighbor’s cows, but I had Wyatt show me again how to position the shotgun properly. This time, I tried hard to concentrate on what he was saying and less about his body pressed to mine. I wasn’t entirely successful.
Five rounds later I was managing not to get knocked on my ass, but still didn’t seem to be shooting anywhere near the target. My shoulder was killing me, but there was no way I was going to give in. Wyatt finally threw in the towel for me and suggested we bypass the rifle and move on to the pistols instead.
There were three pistols at the table. Wyatt picked up the shiny one first and showed it to me.
“This is a 9mm, which refers to the ammo. It’s a Beretta. This is pretty much your standard, common–use pistol. It holds fifteen rounds in the clip, so you can get a good number of shots off before needing to put in a new clip.”
Wyatt showed me how to load the clip and the bullets inside it. Next up was what appeared to be a gun for a toddler. Wyatt called it a “pocket gun” and said it was a Colt Magnum Carry which was a six–shot revolver. It was evidently an ideal backup weapon that you could strap to your calf or carry in a purse and use if something happened to your larger pistol. I still liked the idea of preschoolers packing, but I could see this had its uses for adults too.
“I have another revolver, too. My father’s Colt Peacemaker. It was used in the army back in the late 1800’s and is what you would have expected to see gunslingers carry in the Wild West. It was mainly a cavalry gun, but it was very popular outside the military at the time. It’s a reliable gun, and even though it is single action, you can do that move you see in the westerns where the sheriff pulls the hammer back with his palm and lets it go to fire the gun rapidly without using the trigger. That’s called fanning. My father taught me to shoot with that gun.”
I quickly calculated human life expectancies.
“But your Dad wouldn’t have been alive when that gun was made and these new guns are so superior. Why would he have bought such a relic and used it?”
Wyatt smiled.
“History is important to us, to me, and to humans in general. It links us to our ancestors and makes us see the totality of our achievements instead of just what we can accomplish in our short lifetimes.”
He picked up the Beretta and looked at it fondly.
“We wouldn’t have these firearms, or even the amazing weaponry in our military, without exploding cannons in the sixteenth century and generations of people dedicated to improving them. Keeping historic items around, it helps connect us with our past and allows us to feel like we can individually contribute to a chain of knowledge and advancement that builds our future.”
I can’t really describe how I felt hearing him say this. Humans men
tally were like amoebas compared to us. The simplest things took them forever to think out and put together. I knew humans learned from each other, but this was the first time I realized the sum total of their advancements. They were mental midgets individually, but collectively and over time their intelligence and their accomplishments grew exponentially complex. Who knew what they’d be in a few thousand more years.
“I’ve grossly underestimated you,” I said. I meant the human race as a whole, but I think Wyatt took this as a personal compliment because he beamed at me. I tucked this away to contemplate it later, and looked at the last pistol on the table. It was a huge ugly hunk of metal. I think I was in love.
“What this one?”
“This,” Wyatt announced as if he were presenting me to the queen, “is a Desert Eagle .50–caliber. It has a gas operating repeating system with rotating pistol locks.”
Wyatt went on to describe the firing mechanism that produced enormous pressure in the barrel, and some other stuff about backward slide movement and recoil springs. I picked it up and the sucker was heavy. About seventy two ounces heavy. It was blocky, ugly, big, and held only seven rounds, but I fell in love just as Wyatt clearly had. It was such unbelievable overkill. I did love overkill.
I picked up one of the bullets and let my energy explore it. Brass casing with bullet inside, gunpowder, and a chemical mixture of lead, sulfide, and barium nitrate at the back end. I could envision the process of ignition in the primer, subsequent ignition of the powder, and combustive pressure ejection of the bullet. Brass is soft, so the powder combustion would push the cartridge case against the inside walls of the barrel, sealing the sides and allowing maximum pressure to propel the bullet with the expanding gas. Simplistic and still inefficient since, by my quick calculations, only about twenty six percent of the energy created by the combustion would propel the bullet. The rest would be wasted in heat or unused energy. Clever, though.
I got to shoot the Beretta. Wyatt had me shoot it two handed with the butt of the gun resting in my left palm. One handed was supposedly ideal since you could turn your body and present a smaller target to your opponent, but using both hands stabilized the gun, especially for inexperienced shooters, and allowed for greater accuracy. I could have had four arms like the goddess Kali and I still wouldn’t have hit the target. Five rounds with the shotgun and fifteen (a whole clip) with the pistol and the target stood there pristine and mocking me. I was tempted to just reach out and blow it to bits. That would have not only been accurate, but very efficient in energy usage. I decided that indulging in my urge to show off might send the tentative and rather promising advances in our relationship back a few paces.
Wyatt wasn’t so humble. He slapped a new clip in the pistol and, with one hand, pounded out five shots in rapid succession. He didn’t even look like he was aiming. In fact, he was holding the gun at some strange crooked angle which was in direct contradiction to his instructions earlier. We walked over to look at the target which had a nice cluster of holes where the drawing indicated a head should be.
“I think you killed him,” I said, admiring the grouping. I wanted so badly to add that I could easily do this without a gun, while doing Sudoku and playing piano at the same time, but I figured that he knew that and I didn’t want to rub it in.
I helped him put the guns back in his safe where I saw at several others he hadn’t trotted out for our session. The card table and target went under the dilapidated deck.
“Come have lunch with me,” Wyatt said putting a hand on my shoulder and sliding it down my arm to squeeze my hand.
I’d never been in Wyatt’s house beside my journey to the gun safe just a few moments ago. It seemed strange that we’d known each other these two years, and he was so free with my place, yet I’d never been in his home. I hoped this offer of lunch indicated some trust on his part.
The house inside was just as bad as it was on the outside. Furnishings were sparsely scattered around on the chipped linoleum and worn carpets. Wood paneling covered most of the walls, except for a strange wallpapered photograph mural in what must have been the dining room depicting a green forest scene. The furniture all looked to be hand–me–downs or thrift store, and the appliances didn’t match. Wyatt clearly spent every dime of his earnings on his computer equipment and TV which took up the entire living room in a humming sprawling mess of boxes and cables. I reached into the lemon yellow refrigerator to get the iced tea and the door nearly fell off in my hands.
“Shit, Wyatt. Your damned fridge door is falling off its hinges. I know what I’m getting you for Christmas.”
Wyatt shrugged unconcerned and told me I’d need to lift it a bit when closing it to make sure it sealed tight. The shape of his home didn’t seem to embarrass him at all. In fact, he seemed oblivious to its dilapidated condition.
We made Panini’s for lunch. Wyatt didn’t have a Panini press, so we used an old waffle iron instead. What he lacked in modern, functioning appliances, Wyatt made up for in the contents of his fridge. I expected a case of beer and cold Ramen noodles, but he had almost as many gourmet foods on his broken shelves as I did. We fixed turkey Panini’s with gruyere, artichoke, and roasted red pepper. They were amazing. I’d not cooked before coming to this realm, but luckily many of those I Owned did know how to cook and I could call on their memories. Otherwise, I would have been at the mercy of take–out for forty years. Still, this was really good and beyond what I usually managed on my own. I told Wyatt he should come over every day and cook me dinner on my decent stove. He thought I was joking.
I hated to leave, but I had some zoning documents I needed to review this afternoon. The city was trying to extend the historical district to encompass a few blocks where I had five apartments. Having to comply with their regulations would seriously cut into my profits and just piss me off in general. I was covering the bribery and threatening bases, but it still was good to explore their logic and reasons in case I needed to rebut this in a more civilized manner. These documents would be boring as hell, but I needed to buckle down and plow through them.
Wyatt walked me to the door and as I turned to say good bye he planted a kiss on me. It wasn’t passionate. It was gentle and tentative. I pushed back my raging hormones, kept my hands to my sides, and my tongue in my mouth.
“Wow, I didn’t die,” Wyatt said in amazement.
“And you didn’t shoot me,” I added.
Wyatt laughed.
“Are we okay?” I asked.
“Sam, you’re my best friend,” Wyatt said softly. “I can’t just throw that away.”
He kissed me again this time with greater intensity. I kept my hands fisted and firmly locked to my sides and kept myself in check. It wasn’t easy as he held himself under no such restrictions and brought his hands up to cup my face, his fingers in my hair. I really wanted to press myself against him, but held back, even as he ran his tongue over my bottom lip. He stepped back and looked at me appraisingly.
“I’ll call you later tonight,” he said.
“Okay,” I told him breathlessly and headed down the lane toward my house. Hmmm. A lot to think about and absolutely no desire to peruse zoning documents and historic district guidelines.
I let Boomer out of the barn and flicked on the radio and outdoor speakers by the pool. Maybe the documents would be more palatable if I read them outside. Pop music blared from the speakers, pumping out a Rihanna song. Walking over to the water I slipped off a sandal and dipped in a foot. What the hell. Work could wait. I pulled off my clothes, throwing them haphazardly around the patio and dived naked into the pool, reveling in the feel of the cool water against my skin. I did laps, and then sprawled on the inflatable lounge for a while. Fuck zoning, this was too nice a day to read that crap. I rolled off the lounge and did more laps.
As I came up for a breath of air, I saw a pair of high heels walking across the patio. They stopped a few feet from the edge and I swam to them. Pushing the hair from my eyes, I looked up and saw an i
mmaculate Candy Starr before me. Her blond poof of hair was pulled tightly back, and she daringly wore white capris and a crisp tan and white button down shirt. I would have had dirt or coffee spilled on that outfit within seconds of putting it on. I wondered if she had a dirt repelling force field surrounding her pants. Or maybe some other kind of repelling force field, I thought humorously.
I knew I didn’t have an appointment with her, and it was pretty ballsy to come out to my home uninvited to discuss business deals. I stared at her silently, not giving her the courtesy of a greeting.
“I have a rather unfortunate matter that I need to discuss with you,” she said.
Chapter Eight
Okay, now I was curious. I couldn’t imagine the canal row houses being an “unfortunate matter”. Candy was at the bar when I saw the angel. I was hoping that wasn’t the “unfortunate matter” she was referring to.
I swung myself up and over the side of the pool, noticing Candy’s uneasy expression when she realized I was swimming in the buff. I decided to expand on this by pulling myself upright to stand square in front of her, and wringing out my hair onto the patio. I didn’t know whether she was more alarmed at the prospect of getting pool water on her gleaming white capris or the full frontal view.
“What’s up?” I asked as she looked around unsuccessfully for a towel to hand me.
“I am a representative for Bobby Winegarten” she said, giving up her search and deciding to only look at me from the neck up.
She said this like I should know who the hell Bobby Winegarten was. He can’t have been important or I would have remembered his name. Although I was really bad at names in general.
“Is he one of the county commissioners?” I guessed. “The one who dated the previous mayor?”
“No,” she said watching me carefully with those shrewd brown eyes of hers. “Bobby Winegarten was found dead in his house on Rosecrest Lane off Old Annapolis Road last night. I’m here because he was part of my pack. As head of his pack, I represent him.”
