Afternoon sunlight twists through bent tree limbs and a musty fog, the passing midday shrouded over a long road.
“How much longer!” Care whines, smoke billowing from her lips.
“We’re on the road he told us. It can’t be forever. Maybe if you didn’t smoke yourself to death all the time.” I snicker.
She stuffs her half-smoked cigarette in my mouth. “And what about you? This feel like a fun little hike?”
I pull the stoge out of my mouth, look at it. “Maybe. It’s not bad. I’m the one who just fought that hulking guy,” I grin.
She lights another. “Wasn’t a fight,” she says. “That was murder. Sorry I doubted you.”
I shrug.
“You held back.”
“I didn’t want to break his arm. They were nice people.”
“Probably the last we’ll ever see,” Care says. “Point is, if you can hold back on a two-thousand-pound dude like that... man, you’re something different.
“Maybe I used to be a boxer and got hit in the head too many times...”
“Oh yeah, just your average teenage female boxer who can do crazy wrestling grabs to boot. And the gun? Knowing it like you were a soldier or something? Everything about you’s just... outta this world.”
“The gun’s a very simple disassembly.”
“Yeah, simple disassembly. Were you born in a factory?”
“I don’t know. How about you?”
She looks down and we suddenly laugh. “Yeah, we’re the Lost Boys. No parents, no names, nothing going for us...”
“We’re free. Isn’t that good enough?”
“Free, yeah, sure...” she grumbles.
The roads stretch longer, great houses atop jutting hills on each side. Driveways bending up and over like rubble snakes to decrepit longhouses of chipped paint, logwood and torn cedar shingle scales. Rotting pickup trucks and rusted town cars with mismatched doors scattered in overgrown yards. Some are sprouting with thorn bushes and eaten by encroaching woods, melting relics slowly returning back to the ground their metal was dug up from. The road turns from gravel to dirt. Clouds cast a shadow over musty forest all around.
“It looks like the end of the road,” I point ahead.
“Heh, doesn’t it always...”
We stop in front of a steep drop to rock and swampy thickets. To the left is a house like a mansion, rich unlike anything in the rest of the neighborhood, painted tan siding with white trim and doors. Two pristine Cadillacs and a sports car glimmer up the smooth black driveway.
On our right, farther down a hill, lies a three-story shack of old old wood, rickety stairs leading to a surrounding balcony, no lights inside. Beside it is a smaller hut with a crooked door and no windows, shingles peeled off from the wind, tree branches scattered on and around it in a yard more cold dirt than grass. Down past, a river flows, and you can almost hear its sound, almost feel a sense of sadness from it.
“Was the old man sure he meant the last house on the right?” Care nudges toward the rich house. “Maybe he got them switched. I mean, the house on the hill over here is more what I’d imagine from gun dealers. Out of the way, good living. That down there just looks like where someone died and no one noticed.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But we paid and fought for this info. If we don't trust it, we might as well just knock on random doors. And at that point...”
“Yeah...” she gulps.
“Can’t be safe with guns, can’t be safe without them... Let’s go.”
“Wait... Don’t you want to hold the gun? What if this turns into the O.K. Corral?”
I turn around to her. “Keep it put away but ready. Don’t shoot unless I say or I’m already dead. If this goes wrong, we’re probably not going to be walking out, but be prepared to run. Shoot and run.” I feel a bit out of place giving her orders, but they come naturally.
She squeals in objection. “Can’t we try somewhere else? I’m... I’m kinda freaked out.”
“Stay outside then.”
She clenches her fists and stomps, sighs, follows beside.
I scan the house as we walk up to it. No signs of life. The front door is small and ancient, with long, pointed hinges stretching halfway across the width of the door, dried rust bleeding from them over grainy, spotted wood. I lift my hand and knock hard. It’s solid and dampens the sound. Care squirms.
I listen, then knock loud enough to hurt my knuckles. I look back and see her panting, sweat beading on her brow. She looks away. Some of her anxiety starts to rub off on me, but I refuse to just leave now. We back away from the door and I notice a worn foot track that leads out back. Quietly, we follow it, discover an ancient white truck parked out back, its chrome bumper eaten away by rust, old dirt shot up its wheel wells like blood splatter.
“Kade...!” she whispers. “I don’t like it. It’s like someone’s here, but they aren’t...”
I wave her to be quiet. I’m drawn toward the dilapidated shed, wondering if someone is inside, behind its murky windows. Its roof is lined with brown bottles straight across the top. I wave back at her to stay put and creep toward the shed, feeling my muscles tense. My hand goes toward the green-rusted knob.
“Now I wouldn’t do that, young lady,” a gruff and raspy voice says from the left. A man half-stands beside the truck, a long revolver shining dully, aimed my way, hanging casually over his forearm. “That shed’s got all my tools in it. Dangerous stuff, not for pretty little ladies.”
The man is large and covered with dark fur, peppery disheveled beard and hair, giant arms and a fat belly. His pocked nose is round and red, his leery eyes thin and olive-colored like endless forests.
I hear a metal jangle and my head shoots back. Care’s pointing the Glock at him. He points his gun at her.
“Easy!” I shout. “We’re friends.”
“Lot of pistol pointin’ and skulkin’ around for friends.” The man grimaces.
“Let’s just lower the guns and talk. We’re looking for someone named Wallace,” I say, looking between him and Care. “Care, don’t do anything crazy.”
“Wallace, huh? And what’d ya want with him?” the man asks.
“Chuck sent us. I beat Rufus in a fight so he’d tell me where to find you.”
The man chuckles. “You? Beatin’ that big boy? Sooner the devil himself...”
I stare into his eyes. His face grows somber.
“I need equipment... the dangerous kind,” I say. “That’s the only reason we’re here. We mean no harm.”
“Looks like your friend’s already got some dangerous equipment. And she’s pointing it my way.”
“If we both just put the guns down...”
“And how do I know she ain’t gonna just shoot if I do that?” He blinks his eyes to me.
“You don’t. But you don’t think she’d hit you, do you?”
He tightens his lips. Care’s hands are shaking.
“Look, your gun’s decocked,” I say surely. “Now the question’s if you can cock it as fast as she can pull the trigger. That’s a big gamble.”
“Never heard of revolvers with double-action, little girl?” he says, gruff and cocky.
“I’d bet my life it’s single. And how good’s your aim?”
“Better than the little girl’s, I’d wager.” He blinks again, groans. “Have her point that thing away from my face.”
“Care,” I go. “Throw it here.”
Her head jerks at me, drops of sweat swimming around her wide eyes.
“Throw it!”
She shakes and tosses the gun in my direction. I snatch it from the air, pull back the slide and click on the safety, holding the gun harmlessly over my heart as the man slides away from the side of his truck, his revolver casually aimed at the sky.
I hum and slide the gun in my belt. He tucks his revolver in the front of his pants.
“Are we good?” I ask. He nods. I run over to Care as he tucks his thumbs into his belt.
“Well, that’s some greetin’ I ain’t had in awhile.” The guy walks over. “Ain’t had a kid point a gun at me since the war. How’d you be sure my revolver was single action?”
“How could I miss an old Single Action Army? It’s a classic.” I shrug, nodding at the silver gun tucked in his beat-up jeans.
“Y-you... left the gun locked?” Care asks me, shocked and insulted.
“No, you left it unchambered,” I tell her. “I just didn’t remind you.”
“Best to leave shootin’ to the professionals, darlin’,” the man says. “Watch here.”
He looks toward the top of the shed. He suddenly draws his revolver and four of the bottles explode as he swipes its hammer. He finally decocks it and puts it back in the front of his pants.
“They call it a specialty,” he goes. “I call it a bit of sport.”
“Why only four shots?” I ask.
“Well, I still don’t know my guests,” he grins toothily, a few metal-capped teeth shining.
Care starts to give some false names. I interrupt her.
“I’m Kade and she’s Care,” I say. “I came here because I need tools to protect us from some really bad people. Can you help us?”
“Hmm.” He strokes his beard pensively, staring cockeyed into the sky. “And what’re two little things gonna do against some very bad people?”
I sigh. “I want a fighting chance. We have the right to defend ourselves.”
“That you do,” he agrees. “But does that mean you can?”
I breathe in and close my eyes, pointing my pistol to the shed. I blast each bottle to raining glass pieces, and then blast the bottoms of them when there are no bottles left. One shot left. I stuff the gun in the back of my pants.
“Well I’ll be!” he claps. He shakes my hand violently. Care is quiet but puts her hand out daintily for him.
“Well, I’ve never seen anything like that since a competition some while back, with this pretty lady all the way from Australia. Boy, did she take the cake. You remind me of her.” His thoughts float off for a moment. “Ah, I’m Wallace Williams. You can just call me Wall.”
“Wall... We just need more ammo for the Glock here. There’s a very bad set of people that want to hurt us, but we didn’t do anything to them. We just want to get out of this town.”
“Didn’t do nothin’ to them, eh?” He scratches his beard. “So why don’t ya just get out, then?”
Me and Care look at each other. “We don’t have everything we need yet. We’re trying as fast as we can.”
Wall hums. “Best way to deal with danger is avoid it,” he says. “But... if you’re going to be in the middle of the shit- pardon- it is better to have some teeth.”
“Then let me see inside.” I walk toward the shed, opening it slowly. The door creaks open to piles of dusty tools, saws, a dirty lawn mower.
“Ah, sharp teeth on that,” Wall laughs. “Actually, been meaning to change them, hitting all these things in my yard...”
I look to Wall mournfully.
“Alright, alright,” he goes. “The toys are inside. Come on.”
He moves along to his house and ascends the stairs to the second-floor deck with creaks and cracks. I follow behind, nudging Care along. She stares ahead, almost in shock.
“You left me defenseless,” she mutters. “You knew the gun wouldn’t work.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking... I didn’t want you to start a firefight. If you’re not trained to shoot, it just makes you a liability... for all we knew, six armed guys would come out and take us right away, and then what use would one gun be but getting us shot for sure? We can’t defend against everything.”
“But... don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I trust you,” I whisper. “But would you trust me with selling the drugs? Dealing with the criminals?”
“I’d...” She looks down.
“We have to play to our strengths like you said. I don’t know much, but something in me knows this stuff.”
Her head is locked on the groaning steps.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say. “I should have.”
“Come in, little ladies,” Wall waves. Care seems to be letting me lead her, so I follow him inside. The house is musty, fragrant with rusted metal and old dust and old memories. A center room next to a kitchen, scattered with tables of tools, screws, nails, debris.
“Bit of a mess, sorry bout that,” Wall says, leading into the next room. “Bathroom’s right here if you need it. And here’s my workshop of sorts.”
A squat, wide room with a desk ahead, barely visible. He pulls a draw chain and a golden lightbulb flickers on, illuminating a sea of intricate steel parts and gizmos, springs, pieces of firearms scattered around. On the wall hangs a few guns beside some tools, some partly disassembled.
“Also a mess, I’ll admit, but they say a genius’s space is a mess or some such, right?” He gleams. “So, ammo, ammo,” he goes, rummaging through drawers. “What was it you’re looking for? Box of nine-mil?”
“More than a box,” I say, looking around in wonderment. Chrome pistols, black conceal guns, revolvers tiny and gargantuan, barrels next to rifle stocks...
“All that trouble for some boxes of ammo... I tell you...” Wall goes.
“Is that a rifle from the war?” I ask, looking it over. The sleek wooden frame of dark brown walnut, polished and clean, a magazine inside. Somehow I know it’s already locked and loaded. “A Garand? An M1?... no...”
“M14. Don’t ask how I snuck it back from ‘Nam... Think I left myself there and it came back. Traded all that for a rifle... I wasn’t gonna leave it. But I didn’t bring it home in my tailpipe, ain’t that a relief!” he hoots then quiets.
“I think I was wrong,” I say. “I need more than just ammo.”
“Not for sale, kiddie. That and the Colt Army here are my babies.”
“Not those. A pistol. Something with more kick than this Glock.”
“More kick? You think you can handle...?” He looks me up and down. “Well, I suppose I could have something kicking around here.” He digs around more drawers and tool tables.
“I’m thinking of something particular. Shiny. Straight. Old. Made for big hands. Take down big guys,” I reminisce scattered fragments of memories.
“Ah! I’ve got just that,” he says, pulling a dark glossy pistol from a top drawer. “Look here, this is a Browning HP, think they call it. Comes from Belgium. Think that’s in France. Anyhow, both sides used it in the World War. Tried true and tested. Shot it a ton myself. .40 caliber, lot more kick than nine-mil. Can’t beat Browning.”
“That’s not right,” I say. “It looks almost just like that, but bigger. Not .40.”
Wall gets a little flustered. “Well, I... I don’t... I mean, there could be something kicking around here like that, but it’s a bit of an antique and-”
“Show me, please.”
“Well, damn thing...” he mutters, going to a bottom drawer, digging to the back of it. He pulls out a dusty silver pistol, looks it over frustratedly. “Colt 1911. Been around about a century. Both World Wars, Korea, ‘Nam... Boy, they did the job in the war, but couldn’t smuggle mine home. I look for one and end up stuck with this piece-a-junk that’s always jamming up.”
“It’s probably the ammo,” I say. “Can I see it?”
He raises his eyebrow and shrugs, handing it over. I drop the magazine and look down the slide. I begin to disassemble it on the bench, carefully rotating the barrel bushing.
“Don’t let that fly off at you now!” Wall exclaims. “Wait now, you gonna put that back together? I’m a little rusty, but...”
I pull out the plug and spring, take them apart. They’re dirty. I take off the bushing, pull the slide back and separate it from the frame. I slide out the barrel, show it to him.
“Can you smooth breech down here, at the bottom where it feeds?” I ask, fingering the mouth of the barrel. “It’s probably mostly hollow points catching, isn’t it?”
“Huh... Hadn’t thought of that...” he says. “Guess we saw some of that back...”
“Can you do it?”
“Well, doesn’t mean it’ll work,” Wall goes. “Doesn’t mean I wanna sell it either.”
“How’s five-hundred dollars sound?” I ask.
He brightens up a little. “Well, wouldn’t hurt to give it a try... But don’t mean it’s for sale!” Wall harrumphs, pulling up a stool to the work desk, plugging a little tool into an outlet, assembling his favorite tools like little army soldiers. He looks beside and I have a cleaning kit of his out, wiping and brushing at the smaller parts.
“It’s clean now,” I say, handing him the barrel without a glance.
He hums thoughtfully and turns in his seat with a leathery creak. Electric buzzing and burnt metal smell fill the air for a few minutes. Care’s fingers tap on a pack of cigarettes in her pocket as we gnome away at the old puzzle pieces of war.
“How’s this look? Up to the young miss’s high standards?” Wall asks, wiping a clean spot off his brow, revealing lighter skin underneath.
“Smooth,” I rub the breech with my thumb. “It should work.”
“Should work? Wall Williams always does it right!” he puffs up.
Care catches a glimmer of a smirk in the corner of my lip and snickers into her finger. She looks less nervous now.
“Only one way to be sure...”
Wall tugs at his grizzly mane. “And what ammunition would the special lady use?”
“Every type,” I say. “Have to be sure it works in all conditions. Round, hollow point, high-powered. Old stuff, new stuff, self loaded, armor-piercing, if you have it.”
“Easy now, one step at a time!” he scolds, rummaging through some drawers and pushing around bench-top boxes with clinks and metal jingles. The smell of old dust grows. “Got a box of this-and-that from over the years, but half it’s rusted.”
I take the small carton and run fingers mousily through a hodgepodge of dirty old cartridges, some greening or caked in aged dirt, some shiny dull steel encased in brass. Round, flat, dimpled heads, wadcutters, and ones like razor-patterned cupcakes wound to expand, shed and explode in a tornado of shrapnel on impact.
“Perfect.” I clank the box beside the gun, whose pieces swiftly come together whole in my hands.
“Don’t know a boy in the company who field-stripped so quick, missy,” Wall wonders aloud, his yellow, plaque-stroked teeth grinning.
I feel my lips smile lightly. “It needed more than a field-strip.”
“I wonder where you come from, being how you are.”
“I wish I knew myself,” I mutter.
“She’s an alien,” Care chimes. “Here to save the dirty world from itself.”
“Oh, that about explains it,” Wall chuckles.
I stick my thumb in the reassembled magazine. It pushes back, strong and smooth. I slap it into the bottom of the gun and drop the slide with a loud clack. The hammer clicks. The large pistol hangs relaxedly in my hand, the dark eye of its muzzle watching the floor. Care and Wall’s green and blue eyes watch me, enraptured.
“Guess we gotta play around with it now.” Wall breaks the silence, smokey and gruff, but a tinge of necessity and curiosity behind it.
“I’d like that,” I say, eyeing the weapon over, grabbing the ammo box.
“Well, never said it won’t blow your hand off! Or that I’ll sell it to you if it don’t...”
“I’m just playing with it.” I smile.
He harrumphs. “Couple of targets to plink round back the other side.”
Out back, a number of black-painted rectangles mounted on poles are scattered across the dusky field like scarecrows at varying distances, scarred with silver pocks.
I take a knee and carefully pick out rounds from the carton, shoving seven into the magazine, the magazine into the gun, one into the chamber. I cock back the hammer, a sense of excitement and foreboding mixing in my stomach.
“How often does it misfeed?”
“Well, I’d be surprised if it didn’t jam up before you emptied the clip,” he answers.
I take up aim at the closest target, exhale...
“Alright?” Wall asks as I hesitate.
I switch to the farthest target, fire. The kickback is strong but my hands hold firm. I follow through. Gunshot explosions answer with resounding pings that shoot back through the air like hammered gongs, till the slide snaps back with a loud click through the last deafening reverberation.
The two stand speechless as I load rounds again, noting each type, and rain shots on eight targets in no particular order. I start to load again and notice a funny gleam from Wall, a wide dumbfounded smile from his sailor teeth.
“One man’s junk...” I joke.
“Well, I didn’t call it junk, did I?” he ponders. “I just figured the Browning up there is plenty good.”
“No, this is just right. Still sure you don’t want to sell it?”
“Well!” he coughs. “How could I now, with it shooting right? But then...” He stares wistfully at the darkening sky. “Might be you’ve earned it.”
“Damn right!” Care exclaims.
Wall shoots her a steely glare. “‘Course, that still leaves the price, the why-at-all, the moral conundrum of arming little girls...”
I stare in his eyes coolly. “I need this more than anyone in the world.”
“May be, may be.” He pulls at his beard unrelentingly. “But what for?”
I pause, look at Care’s emerald eyes that glow in a flash of sunset, then fade to midnight green like cold pines, cast in a blanket of cloud shadows sweeping over us from a high wind.
“To defend all that is good,” I say passionately, looking to Care. “It’s for the work of God.”
Wall hummed and grumbled and growled sternly. Finally, he yelled up to an open window in the house. “Boy! Yer off duty!”
Care looks up confusedly and Wall laughs. “Thought I work alone, lettin’ yinz walk in here pointin’ pistols? But there’s something about you little ladies, even this fireball here.”
Care pouts, arms crossed.
Wall beckons into the house. “Let’s get you suited for war- ah, self-defense, I mean..”
“And the ammo?” I ask. “More mags?”
“Wall Williams suffers for lack of nothing, my little friends, and neither shall you.”
Care eyes me nervously but I nod reassuringly.
Wall moves an old bookshelf and takes off a six-by-six piece of false wood-panel wall, marching us into a secret room with pegboard walls painted army green that smells like smokeless powder and gun oil. Black metal pegs hold a dragon’s hoard of shotguns, rifles, handguns, grenades, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, machine guns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, derringers, war relic pistols and homemade pipe guns.
On white shelves, caltrops, railroad spike knives, antique cavalry sabers, sword canes, cane guns, compound bows, crossbows, machetes, tonfas, pepper spray, scopes, lasers, bayonets, Tasers, bolas, throwing stars, throwing knives, tomahawks, nunchucks, sand gloves, slingshots, brass knuckles, stilettos, pepper paintballs, bowie knives. Stacks of sorted ammunition boxes line the room wall to wall on lower rows, and unmarked crates on the floor beneath them.
“And the Lord said, I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”