Revolver

by Marcus Sedgwick

  Sig didn’t.

  He could remember so little of his time in Nome. He could remember the cold, colder even than Giron, and he could remember the emptiness of the place. He could remember Front Street, but he couldn’t remember what their shack was like, just the odd scene, a moment here and there, frozen into his memory forever.

  He could remember his mother barely at all, not even her face, and they hadn’t had any photographs made that might now stimulate a recollection—of her gentle eyes perhaps, or the long, dark, wavy hair that Anna had inherited. No, nothing like that, but he could remember her as a feeling, a soft and warm feeling, making him safe and happy.

  He could hardly remember what his father was like in those days. He’d had more hair then though, and one of Sig’s few memories of Nome was of a particular habit of Einar’s.

  Sig remembered how he wore his hair, slicked back with oil, but only when he went to work. Every morning, he’d carefully stroke the oil into his hair so it was straight back and sleek as a raven’s wing. He said it was to make him look more businesslike when he was weighing people’s gold and paying out the dollars, so people took him more seriously. And every night he’d wash the oil out again in their little makeshift bathroom, so he looked like the father whom Anna and Sig knew and loved.

  Even now, if Sig smelled the right kind of oil, it would remind him of that early year of his life spent in Nome.

  “I’m sorry,” Sig said. “I don’t remember you.”

  “No?” asked Wolff, raising an eyebrow. “No, perhaps not. But I do need to end this business that I spoke of. You understand?”

  Wolff waited for some sort of reply, but didn’t get one.

  He shrugged, as if to say, “Never mind.”

  Wolff stood, and for a moment Sig thought he might be leaving, but he merely arched his back, so hard that Sig heard all his vertebrae clack and snap back into place.

  “Damn horse,” he said, then sat down again. “Never mind. You don’t remember me. But I’m sure your sister will. Now, when will she be home?”

  18

  Sun Day, dusk

  “Father never mentioned you,” Sig said. “Not to me, anyway. I don’t suppose Anna will be able to help you much either.”

  He put the coffee grinder away and began to tidy the cabin, though in truth there was nothing out of place. It gave him an excuse not to look at Wolff’s face, at those eyes that followed him everywhere. They were eyes which took a lot and gave nothing.

  “That so?” Wolff said. He got up off his chair and involuntarily Sig backed away a little, but Wolff headed for the window.

  “Getting dark. Your sister will be home before dark.”

  He turned to Sig.

  “Lamp.”

  Sig did as he was told. He knew he should try to act as normally as he could. He bent to the stove and pulled out a burning taper, with which he lit the lamps hanging at either end of the room. Wolff stretched his legs a couple of times around the cabin table, his eyes mocking Einar’s form under the blanket.

  “Should bury him.”

  “I tried,” said Sig. “Ground’s too hard. The spade broke.”

  “Should bury him.” It seemed to be something gentle from Wolff, but then he added, “Before he starts to stink.”

  Wolff sat down again, and as he did so, his leather greatcoat swung back, and now at last Sig had a full view of his gun. He knew what it was immediately, because it was the same as the one that waited in the box behind the coffee tins.

  A Colt Single Action Army, the Frontier Six Shooter, though this one was clearly much newer than Einar’s gun.

  Wolff saw Sig’s eyes linger briefly at his hip, and he smiled. He didn’t bother to hide the gun, or the string of shiny brass cartridges held in a belt at his waist.

  Sig turned but his mind had beaten him to it and was far away. It was his twelfth birthday. It was the spring before Einar had brought Nadya to live with them in the cabin, so it had just been the three of them: Einar, Anna, and Sig.

  “Since it’s your birthday,” Einar had said, “you ought to have some kind of present.”

  At that, Anna and Sig had both paid attention. No one got presents. It simply didn’t happen. They didn’t have money for that kind of thing, but Einar had explained.

  “This isn’t the kind of present that you unwrap from a gift store. Though it does come in a box.”

  He chuckled, and his eyes shone.

  “Sig, for your birthday, I’m going to show you the most beautiful thing in the world. Well, after your sister, and your dear mother, that is. The most beautiful thing in the world. Would you like that?”

  Sig nodded.

  “Yes,” he said eagerly, then remembered his manners. “Yes, please.”

  Einar returned the nod solemnly.

  “Very well. Then sit at the table, and shut your eyes. Wait there.”

  Sig sat down, and Anna crowded in at his elbow, delighted that her brother was going to have a present, though a small bit of her remembered that she’d never had one. The only toy she’d ever owned had been that doll, when she was little.

  Still, her father was acting rather strangely, so when he returned carrying a box she hadn’t seen in many years, she grew uneasy.

  “There,” Einar said, putting the box on the table. “You can open your eyes. Good. Inside this box is the most beautiful thing in the world.”

  Sig looked at the box. He couldn’t remember having seen it before, though he had, and it stirred something within him, as if it were an old familiar friend.

  “Go on. Lift the lid.”

  Sig didn’t open the box immediately, but looked at it for a long time first, as if waiting for it to do something, or to speak to him in some way. It had a small catch, which finally he flicked to one side, and lifted the lid.

  Inside was the gun.

  “How is that the most beautiful thing in the world?” Anna said. “It’s horrible. It’s old and scratched and dirty, and anyway, it’s a gun.”

  She got up from the table, and moved a pace or two away. Sig had to admit she had a point.

  Einar shrugged.

  “Well, it’s old, that’s true. Even when I bought the gun it was already old, an 1883 manufacture of the 1873 model. It’s over twenty years old, now.”

  The blued finish of the metal, designed to protect the gun from rust, was wearing thin in places, scratched and pitted in others. The wooden grips had lost their varnish and been worn unevenly from frequent handling at some point in its early life.

  Einar lifted the gun from the box, leaving behind all those things that Sig had wanted to touch when he was five years old, the cleaning tools, the disassembly tools, the oil, the wax. The cartridges.

  It lay on the table like a beast, and already Sig began to feel what his father meant, he already sensed its power.

  “Anna,” said Einar. “Things are not only beautiful from the way they look on the outside, like you. Things can also be beautiful from the inside, because of what they can do.”

  “But how is that beautiful on the inside?” she said, and despite herself, came closer to the table, lifting a strand of hair from her eyes and tucking it behind her ear.

  Sig said nothing, just watched, listened, waited.

  “Look,” Einar said, picking it up again. “Look at this. It is a machine. It’s a machine—perhaps a perfect one. We have machines at the mine, for drilling, for lifting, for sifting. They work, but they are all hideous, clanking, clunking mules. They break down all the time. The Colt is the finest machine I have ever seen in my life. It does one thing, and it does it superbly well. Look.

  “Imagine I take one of those cartridges there, from the box. I’m not going to, but imagine I did. It’s a tiny thing. But it’s made from four separate parts. There’s the case, the brass case that makes up most of its length. At one end, the back of the case, is the percussion cap, a small disc of copper with a little fulminate of mercury inside. At the other is the bullet itself, a tiny co
ne of lead weighing so very little. Inside the case is the gunpowder.”

  Anna’s interest had started to wane again and she felt a little resentment sour inside her. There was always the risk of this, she suddenly realized, the bond between father and son, their mutual fascinations, the things they spoke about, always a step away from her.

  Sig stared intently at the gun as his father spoke, trying to really see what he was merely describing.

  “Imagine I took this cartridge, and lifted back the gate on the back of the cylinder here. It slides into one of the six chambers, a perfect fit. Everything measured and made to perfection. I pull back the hammer on the back of the gun, just halfway at first, so I can rotate the cylinder into place. Now the cartridge we loaded is sitting directly under the firing pin, on the underside of the hammer.”

  While Einar spoke, Sig gazed at the gun, and the gun alone. Einar pulled back the hammer to its full extent, which set into place with a tidy click, and now Anna couldn’t help looking at the gun as well.

  Suddenly there was a loud snap of metal. Einar had pulled the trigger. In truth it was only the crack of a hammer on a nail, but Sig jumped like a startled rabbit.

  “If that had been loaded, you would have heard the bang at the other end of the lake. At least you would on a still day. And it’s over before it’s begun—that’s how it seems when you pull the trigger. But if I told you what happened in that moment, you might not believe me.”

  “Tell me,” said Sig, like that same rabbit bounding into a snare the hunter had set for it.

  Einar smiled.

  “You will have to use your imagination. Can you do that? Good. Well, when the hammer hits the percussion cap, the fulminate of mercury explodes, for it cannot tolerate being struck. You see? Once the cap explodes, it sets fire to the gunpowder inside the case, and instantly the temperature inside the case rises to a couple of thousand degrees, as hot as the smelting works at the mine, but all inside that tiny brass case.

  “Now, Sig, the brass case, being so hot, there and then expands, and swells to press against the inside of the chamber, and so now it releases its grip on the lead bullet. This bullet is sitting at the front of the miniature fire in the case, with gases that expand and send it out of the chamber and off down the barrel. And this is the most remarkable thing of all. For the barrel down which the bullet must travel is, by a fraction, smaller than the bullet.”

  “But you said everything was measured to perfection.”

  “And so it is. Because inside that barrel is a series of three grooves, set out in a spiral down its length. The bullet, which is lead, and with the hellfire of that explosion behind it, is now both hot and soft. It’s forced into those spirals. They bite into it, so that as it makes its way down the barrel, it spins. It spins and spins, and by the time it leaves the barrel, with the last of the gas pushing out behind it, it’s not only spinning faster than Rumpelstiltskin, it’s moving at over a thousand feet per second, which means that the bullet has hit whatever the barrel was pointing at before the bang has even left your ears.

  “Perfection,” Einar said. He paused, and Anna marveled at the look in his eyes, because it was one of love. “Do you see what I mean now? It’s perfect, and if perfection is beauty, then this is the most beautiful thing in the world. A piece of man’s incredible ingenuity, a machine, perfectly designed around the hand of man.”

  Einar put down the gun and with that same hand he reached to gently stroke Anna’s cheek, but before he could, she recoiled.

  Sig didn’t say anything but studied the gun on the table where Einar had set it again.

  Anna stood at his shoulder, her eyes clouding.

  “But what happens when the bullet hits something?” she said. “Someone, I mean. That’s not beautiful. That’s terrible.”

  Einar scowled.

  “Anna, for once … You sound like your mother. I’m just trying to explain …”

  “What?” Anna said, her anger suddenly welling out of her. “If you’re going to explain it to him, you should explain both halves of it, not just one!”

  She grabbed the gun from the table.

  She lifted it and pointed it at Sig’s forehead, no more than a few inches away. All three knew the gun was not loaded, and yet the act was terrible.

  “How does that feel?” she cried. “Does that feel beautiful, Sig?”

  Einar got up angrily and left the table, left the cabin, left Anna’s rage to dissipate, but before it did, Sig learned that having even an empty gun pointed at you is an awful thing. He could feel the muzzle pressing into his forehead like a strong thumb, though it was in fact inches away. He felt his lip twitch, and it occurred to him to wonder what in hell it would feel like if the gun were actually loaded.

  Eventually, seeing his sister start to cry, he put his hand up and took the gun from her. It was the first time he had held it since that time in the shack in Nome, and now he had only a single emotion, no, not even that, merely a single thought.

  The gun was heavy. He had forgotten how heavy it was.

  Later that day, when everyone had calmed down, Einar had taken them out to the back of the cabin, by the woods, and let them each fire one shot, so that they knew how.

  “We can’t afford more than one for each of you,” he said. “This is an old gun, and we only have the old ammunition left for it. They make the gunpowder smokeless now, and the smokeless is much more powerful. This old thing probably wouldn’t stand it. Would blow it apart. Anna, you’re oldest, you will have the first try.”

  There were eight cartridges left in the box.

  He took two of them and loaded the first two cylinders, then handed the gun to Anna.

  Einar let her take the weight of the gun with her own strength. Anna looked at her father and he nodded back, reassuring her.

  “There. Gently. Keep it steady. Pull the hammer back with your thumb. Use the sights, line them up on the tree you want to hit. When you pull the trigger keep it steady, hold your breath. Pull it fast or slow, it doesn’t matter, just keep it steady. Now. When you’re ready.”

  Anna’s finger squeezed reluctantly in on the trigger, and suddenly there was a bang louder than any noise Anna or Sig had ever heard before. Birds flew squawking from the depths of the forest, and chasing after them, the echo of the gunshot came back across the lake.

  “I missed,” said Anna.

  “No, you didn’t,” Einar said. “There, look at the tree.”

  There was a splintered hole the size of a fist in a pine thirty feet away.

  “But I wasn’t aiming for that one,” Anna said. She laughed, and then they all laughed.

  Sig took the gun from Anna, and now he, too, took aim. He felt the weight of the cold metal and found his mind blurring with everything Einar had said about what was to happen. He let all of it drift out of his head, and he looked down the sights.

  A moment later, and it was all over again, just as Einar had said it would be.

  His ears ringing from the bang, Sig heard Anna say, “He missed too!”

  “No, he didn’t,” Einar said, a fat note of pride in his voice. “Look, he hit your hole. It’s bigger. Is that what you were trying to do, son?”

  Sig nodded.

  He tried not to smile, for Anna’s sake, but inside he felt the best he’d ever felt in his whole life. It had felt amazing, incredible, indescribable. It hadn’t been frightening at all.

  The only frightening thing was how easy it had been, but it would be years before he understood that.

  19

  Sun Day, dusk

  If Wolff felt any discomfort at sharing a table with a dead man, he didn’t show it.

  “What food?” he’d said, and Sig had boiled up some palt, the local dish of meatballs in potato, from a pot that had gone cold the day before.

  He swung his chair around so it sat at the end of the table, and when Sig brought the palt over, Wolff pushed Einar’s feet to one side, making more than enough space for the bowl.


  Sig watched and hated himself for not shouting at Wolff, for not telling him to stop being so disrespectful to his father, even though his father could take no more offence.

  “You not eating?” Wolff said.

  Sig shook his head.

  Wolff shrugged and shoved Einar’s booted legs farther out of the way.

  “Just you stop that!” Sig blurted, before he knew what he was doing.

  The spoon hung in the air, halfway to Wolff’s mouth. Slowly it went down into the bowl again. Wolff stared ahead of him, his right side toward Sig, his coat back, the gun gleaming in its holster.

  Before Sig could move, Wolff sprang from the chair, knocking it flying behind him, and with his hand on Sig’s chest backed him against the rough cabin wall. He towered above Sig, breathing foul air over him. More than his breath, he stank of horse and sour sweat.

  For a moment it seemed that Wolff would simply kill him, right there, but a moment passed, and then another, and, moving away slowly, Wolff picked up the chair and set it in front of the stew again.

  He sat down, grabbed the spoon, and went on eating.

  Sig slumped against the wall; he felt warmth trickle down his neck. Wolff had shoved him so hard he’d cut the back of his head.

  “I’m hurt,” Sig stated, feeling for the blood with his fingertips.

  Wolff blew on his stew and slurped a mouthful.

  “Is that my problem?”

  It wasn’t a question that expected an answer.

  Sig said nothing. The cut wasn’t too bad, and he had learned something. Terrified of Wolff’s anger as he was, at least he had managed to rattle him, at least he had managed to make him angry, and that was better than facing the cold automaton he’d been up till then.

  It made Sig feel less as if he were a fly waiting to be squashed by a boot, and more like a boy facing a giant.

  20

  Sun Day, dusk

  “You like games?”

  Sig put the empty bowl on the side by the window, wondering what Wolff was going to do next. In his mind he realized he had begun to plan distances and speeds, judging the route to the door, to the outside, to the storeroom. But every time he did, he pushed it away again. The gun was at the man’s hip, for God’s sake. He’d be dead before the last wisp of hot gas had left the barrel. Sig realized that the newer gun Wolff carried would use the latest smokeless powder Einar had told him about. Super-powerful and leaving barely a trace of evidence of the bullet that had killed Sig, it would throw his body across the cabin’s floorboards with frightening ease.