Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

  Jimmy watched them join the sluggish flow of hunters, browsers, T-shirt collectors, and potential murderers milling about the aisles. Over by Doug Lindsay’s table, a local TV crew had set up and under hot lights an enthusiastic brunette was, he assumed, saying something like, “ . . . whether or not these particular guns should be banned from the marketplace continues to be a hot issue. But most of these folks have already made up their minds, and they’re just out to have a good time. Back to you, Frank.”

  As Jimmy took a seat, a squat sixtyish man, bald except for a ruff of gray hair, carrying a Barney’s Guns shopping bag, came up and pointed at the sign leaning on the display case. “That for real?” he asked. “Serious inquiries only?”

  “It’s what she says.”

  “Well, I got a serious inquiry.” The man squared his shoulders and arranged his features into a sober mask and set himself as if he were about to lift an enormous weight. “What’s it all about?” He stared deadpan at Jimmy for a beat, then laughed until his face grew red. “That serious enough for ya?”

  Postal worker, Jimmy thought. Long-divorced and given over to solitary drinking. Favorite TV show: Cops.

  “What’s it all about?” the man said again, and shook his head in glee.

  Jimmy found that he was considering the question, though in terms the gray-haired man might have judged irrelevant. “I’ll have to get back to you,” he said.

  * * *

  After her nap, Rita drove to a Buy-Rite for Alka Seltzer. She hung in the aisles, enjoying the antiseptic smell, picking up bottles of skin lotion and transistor radios and packets of pencils, not really interested in buying anything, just nosing around like a cat exploring unfamiliar territory. Her brain idled, releasing stray thoughts. A Muzak version of an old Stones song began to play. “Two Thousand Light Years from Home.” Shoppers holding plastic baskets drifted past. She had been inside the store for two or three minutes when she noticed that a skinny young guy in a white shirt with Buy-Rite stitched in red on the pocket was following her. She ducked around a corner and hid behind a stand-up display of sunglasses. When the guy came up, she stepped out at him. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m here to rob your ass blind. I’m after Post-it Notes, legal pads, aspirin. Shit’s worth a fortune on the street.”

  The guy adopted a wounded look. “Ma’am, I . . .”

  “It’s okay. I understand,” Rita told him, and smiled. “From a distance you probably thought I was black.”

  “I’m just doing my job.” The guy glanced toward the rear of the store—hoping for assistance, it seemed.

  “ ’Course you are. But now you see I’m a Native American, you realize I’m not after sundries, I’m after liquor.” She glanced about inquiringly. “You do have a liquor department?”

  “We got beer,” the guy said uncertainly.

  “Be vigilant,” Rita said. “Don’t confuse those stereotypes.”

  Once he was out of sight, she opened a box of Alka Seltzer and slipped the packets into her shirt pocket. She was heading for the exit when she spotted Loretta Snow browsing in an aisle devoted to health care products. Affecting the style of the guy in the Buy-Rite shirt, though more efficiently, Rita tracked her progress, watched her slip two bottles of children’s vitamins, a couple of toothbrushes, a Pokemon action figure, and a motorcycle Barbie into her voluminous purse. That Ms. Snow was stealing for her kids spoke to Rita, who recalled having to go Christmas shoplifting for her own kids after her ex-husband had run off. Maybe, she thought, sweet little Loretta wasn’t all weak tea and trembly chins. One thing for sure, she was no great shakes at petty theft. Before stuffing an item into the purse, she would lift her head and peer about the store, her hand poised above the thing desired, and after acquiring it, she would hurry away from the site of the theft, head down, clutching the purse to her chest, the picture of guilt. Assuming this was not her first such foray into crime, it was amazing that she had not been caught—to Rita’s mind, Ms. Snow did not have the look of someone who had ever been caught.

  As Ms. Snow turned into the candy aisle, hovering by a selection of imported chocolates, Rita spotted Mister Buy-Rite homing in on her, moving stealthily along a cross-aisle. Rita quick-footed it down the aisle adjoining the one in which Ms. Snow was stationed. When she reached the cross-aisle she kicked the bottom of a stand supporting a pyramid of vacuum-packed cashews. The pyramid collapsed. Cans clattering, rolling in every direction. The sound alerted Ms. Snow. She gazed wildly about, then hustled toward the exit. The Buy-Rite guy stood glaring at Rita, hands on hips.

  “Spill on Aisle Four,” she said. “Sorry.” She picked up one of the cans and inspected it. “Damn! This is cheap! I’m gonna get some of these for my husband.”

  She caught up with Ms. Snow in the parking lot—the woman was fumbling with the keys to an old Toyota wagon, its every ding and scar showing under the strong sunlight.

  “Hey, Loretta!” Rita called.

  Ms. Snow wore a hunted look, as if she were seeing not Rita, but some terrible and unfeeling authority.

  “Don’t worry,” Rita said, coming up beside her. “You’re in the clear. The junior G-man back there’s too busy picking up his nuts to bother about you.”

  The woman’s expression changed to one of perplexity.

  “Didn’t you see him?” Rita leaned against a Ford SUV parked next to the Toyota. “Skinny little fart in a Buy-Rite shirt. He was coming to bust ya, honey. That’s how come I knocked over the nuts.”

  Denial came and went in Ms. Snow’s face. “I . . .” she said. “I don’t . . .”

  “Ain’t no thing,” Rita said. “I’ve stole for my kids. But if I was you, I wouldn’t do no shopping here for a while. Fact is, you need to work on your technique before you go shopping anywhere.” She tapped Ms. Snow’s purse. “Don’t make such a big production out of it. Just grab what you want . . . or maybe walk around with it, see who’s watching before you stash it. Most of your store ferrets are looking for someone acts suspicious. You steal something right in front of them, they’ll never notice. Like here . . .” Rita held out the can of cashews she had been hiding behind her. “Your kids like nuts?”

  Seeming dazed, Ms. Snow nodded.

  Rita handed her the can and pointed to a latte cart in front of a Safeway across the street. “Let’s you and me get a cup of coffee. I’m paying.”

  They crossed the street, ordered an Americano (Rita) and a double tall latte (Ms. Snow), and stood in the sun beside the cart.

  “Best thing to do,” Rita said, “is just strip the packaging off and steal what’s inside. That way, even if they stop you, they can’t tell where the hell you got it.”

  Ms. Snow sipped, peered at her over the lid of her coffee.

  “You ain’t talking much,” Rita said.

  “I’m embarrassed. I don’t usually . . . do anything like that.”

  “Things are bad, you do what you gotta.” Rita set her coffee down on the edge of the cart. The barista, a good-looking guy with shoulder-length hair and a wispy mustache, flashed a smile, which she ignored. “You gonna be all right,” she said to Ms. Snow. “You done well coming to Jimmy. He’ll move that Colt for ya.”

  “I hope so.”

  “It’s a done deal. He’s already hooked a buyer.”

  “I know . . . he told me.”

  Rita shaded her eyes so she could watch a jet plane inching across the bright sky, about to vanish in the blaze of the sun. “I like you, Loretta. I didn’t at first”—she turned back to Ms. Snow—“but I was in a bad mood. I wasn’t looking at your situation. But knowing what you’d do for your kids, even if you don’t do it so good . . .”

  This elicited a nervous giggle from Ms. Snow.

  “ . . . that lets me see sharper. One thing I see bothers me, though. You’re looking for a hero, Loretta, and I think you looking at Jimmy.”

  Ms. Snow’s smile flattened out.

  “I understand how it is,” Rita went on. “There’s been times I was looking
for one myself. Son-of-a-bitch never did show up.”

  Two pretty thirtyish women who had emerged from a hair salon in the mini-mall next to the Safeway approached the cart, and the barista fawned over them, calling them by name, asking how their day was going.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Ms. Snow said with delicate firmness, as if she didn’t want to offend, but felt compelled to make her position clear.

  “Honey, I can see the way things are even if you can’t. I got no problem with you. Could be Jimmy’s the hero you been looking for. But he ain’t your hero. Understand the difference?”

  Ms. Snow put her coffee down beside Rita’s. “I should go.”

  “Don’t get your back up. I ain’t telling you this ’cause I’m trying to stake out my territory. That’s not my concern.”

  “Then why are you telling me?” Ms. Snow asked in a cool voice, an inch or two of steel showing above that soft white sheath.

  “What you need to do,” Rita said, “is let things play out with the Colt. Take your money and go to Seattle. Don’t get in any deeper.”

  “It sounds,” Ms. Snow said carefully, “like you’re threatening me.”

  A black Firebird swerved out of a gas station down the street and burned rubber past the cart; a long-haired kid in the passenger seat stuck his head out the window and yelled some mad and mostly unintelligible business about pussy. Ms. Snow appeared rattled.

  “I’m cautioning you,” Rita said. “This ain’t about me. It’s about you. Jimmy’s took with you some, and you’re . . . vulnerable.” She gave a snort of laughter. “I hate this Oprah Winfrey shit, but that’s how it is. You’re vulnerable, and the two of you might end up making the same mistake together. Now that’d piss me off, but I wouldn’t lose my mind or nothing. All I’m saying is, maybe you oughta think about it. Y’know, if the subject comes up.”

  Ms. Snow thinned her lips, dabbed at them with a napkin. “I appreciate what you did over there.” She gestured toward the Buy-Rite. “But I guess I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying.”

  “Don’t go trying to figure it out.” Rita told her. “You don’t have enough information. Just take it to heart.”

  Ms. Snow squinted at Rita, as if she had suddenly gone out of focus. The barista asked if they wanted a refill, and Rita said, “No.”

  “I should go,” Ms. Snow said again, but gave no sign of leaving; then: “Is everything all right? I mean with the gun?”

  “I told ya, it’s a done deal.” Rita pointed to the purse. “I was you, I’d strip the packaging off the things you took before I went back to your car. Just in case.”

  The Firebird returned, pulled into the Safeway lot, stopped near the cart, its sunstruck body quivering like an overheated dog. The driver stuck his tongue out at them and waggled it around, while his passenger laughed to see such wit. Rita envied the boys. So full of dope and glory, the endless low-grade buzz of high school like a horizonless world they believed they could escape. Ms. Snow turned her back on the car and fiddled with the strap of her purse.

  * * *

  Twilight hung a dusty curtain over the town, the light gray like coffin lace wrapped around some old bride’s bones. Jimmy followed the expressway up into the Cascades, humps of fir and granite, the shape of country hams setting on their sliced sides. A milky green river meandered the valley on his right. South and east, away from the mountains, the pale sky stretched on forever. He drove slowly, the radio tuned to crackly 80s rock and roll. An eighteen-wheeler passed him on the upgrade, taking so long to manage it, he had time to check the tread on its tires, read all the fine print on its rear doors. Cars whipped by as if coming from a universe where minutes had a quicker value.

  He thought about the story, about what Rita had advised him after coming back from her nap. Make Susan stronger, she’d said. I can’t give a damn about her ’less she shows some spirit. That seemed right, but he didn’t want to make her too strong. Hell, he figured she’d had to be plenty strong as it was to survive being the prisoner in the colonel’s one-person jail. He imagined her at the writing table in her bedroom, translating a poem Luis had written for her, armed with a Spanish-English dictionary. The lines she had just finished translating had caused her to fall into a daydream:

  . . . when I contemplate the idol of your sex, / a little cat asleep in a silk basket, nested / in the absolute acceptance of its self-embrace . . .

  She was thinking about making love with Luis that morning, about the intensity of her physical reactions, considering clinically the specifics of those reactions. A few months previous, she would not have been able to entertain those thoughts—she had not known such thoughts existed. They were unladylike, occasionally causing her to flush, but she exulted in them, indulged in them, until those same reactions began to manifest anew. She recalled his face above hers in the yellow light of the early sun, mahogany carved in a mask of passionate exertion, his hair a black lava flow, and she recalled, too, how each movement of his body illuminated her with heat and pleasure. But she could not sustain memory against the depression that enclosed her as securely as the gates of the estate. Why, she asked herself, could she not move? When she focused her mental glass upon Luis, when she considered the virtues of the relationship, not merely the lovemaking but the world he offered, a world of mutual caring and adventurous interests, Havana at night and the beaches on the Isle of Pines, there seemed nothing she could refuse him. Yet when she turned her gaze the least bit to left or right, her vision of a life with him was shredded on the iron fences of restraint and restriction. Were those fences so unbreachable? Surely her father, were he to learn of her suffering, would not wish her to stay? He would find some way to avoid utter ruin. And Luis . . . She knew he would survive her husband’s retribution. His spirit would never permit him to fail. Why, then, could she not move? Despairing of thought, recognizing it for another kind of prison, she rested her head on her arms, and remained that way for a long time, drifting in a quiet, desolate place where the only perturbation was the erratic humming of her mind. If she had someone to confide in, she told herself. Perhaps a more objective eye focused upon the subject would generate a flash of inspiration, an aperture through which she might see the possibility of hope.

  The image of her cousin Aaron emerged, it seemed, from no particular thread of logic or filament of wish, simply appearing as if dredged by random process from the depths of remembrance. She had been able to talk to Aaron, but in the years immediately prior to her marriage, difficulties had arisen between them. Difficulties of a disturbing nature. His hand had come to linger on her arm, her back, and his kisses had grown less cousinly, until at last, while they were walking in the garden one evening, he had, in a manner touched both with apology and desperation, confessed his love to her. The shock of this confession left her stricken, and she had made him promise never to speak of this to her again. Her affection for him was so firmly seated, she had been consoling in her rejection; yet things had changed between them. He had relocated to New York City and sent a note on the occasion of her wedding saying that business prevented him from attending the ceremony.

  Perhaps, she thought, the years had contrived a remedy for his misdirected ardor. And even if they had not, what did she risk by seeking him out? He could do no worse than reject her. Exhilarated by the prospect, by the hope—however slim—that something might be done, she removed a sheaf of linen paper from the desk drawer, chose a silver pen from among half a dozen in the holder, and began to write:

  My Dearest Cousin,

  It may seem strange that after so many years I am breaking the silence between us. Stranger yet that I am doing so without introductory pleasantry or preamble of any sort. But I am too impatient for such, and I hope that for the sake of our deep connection, you will set aside bitterness and any other emotion that may hamper an exchange of letters, for I have urgent need of your good will and concerned counsel . . .

  It was dark by the time Jimmy turned onto the winding t
rack that led up to Borchard’s place. Potholes jolted the van, and he had to concentrate on holding the road. Swatches of a psychotic-looking landscape strobed in the headlights. Clumsy dark green boughs swatted the windshield like bearish arms and thumped on the roof. A glint of barbed wire tangles, a heap of white sticks. A glittery gravel track littered with empty shotgun casings. Pebbles rattled and cracked against the suspension. Something with glowing amber eyes scooted into the underbrush ahead. Grinding the gears, he climbed past a caved-in shack, its door hanging one-hinged, a rifle target tacked to a half-collapsed wall. He urged the van up a final section of grade, then turned into a flat open area rutted by tire tracks, lit by floods, bounded by a double-gated entrance fashioned of planks and heavy-gauge wire. He killed the ignition, jumped out and walked over to the gate. Locked. Suspended above the gate was a signboard, and painted on it was a design of a stag with red eyes rampant upon the American flag. The lights of a big house showed through the trees.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! Anybody up there?”

  “Put your hands on your fucking head!” said a voice behind him.

  Startled, Jimmy complied.

  “Awright! Turn around!”

  A pale compact man with a girlish mouth and brushcut hair that looked white under the lights was training an M-16 at his chest. “I don’t know you,” he said.

  “I come to see Ray Borch . . .”

  The man snapped, “I ask who you come to see?”

  “You didn’t ask nothing,” said Jimmy calmly. “All you said was you didn’t know me.”

  “I love it when a wiseass comes walking in my woods.” The man shifted closer—pale eyebrows gave his face a rudimentary, post-human look. “Keep it up, okay?”

  “I come to see Ray Borchard about maybe selling him a gun.”