ARRIETA 410 by Margaret Grant
LATE NOVEMBER, DEER SEASON and Carly LaFontaine stood on the cracked and weedy cement apron outside the empty barn, waiting for her dogs. To the east the blue hump of Layton Mountain was blurred with flying snow. The tin roof of the old barn keened a little in the wind. She settled the bright orange cap more firmly on her head.
“Come on here,” she said, turning to go. The two big black, shaggy sisters and the heeler, Painter, came along, and they went on up to the house and into the kitchen. She fed them their kibble and finished her coffee, standing at the counter while reading through her grocery list. Today was her day to go to the market in town.
With her list in her pocket, she loaded the dogs into the pickup truck, Painter riding shotgun and the sisters in the extra cab. The dirt road from the barn down to the blacktop was frozen and unforgiving as steel, and the pickup skidded as the drive curved and steepened the last quarter mile.
At the foot of the hill she checked for approaching cars and saw a girl walking up, followed by a young man leaning over her, talking and waving his arms. There was no shoulder to speak of, only a steep-sided ditch that ran alongside the narrow road. The girl had her head down, so Carly could see only her hair, curly and orangey blond with dark roots. She wore a short, baby-pink parka and had her hands stuffed in the pockets. The boy grabbed her arm, but she tugged it free and kept going. He shoved her hard then, and she staggered but stayed on her feet and when Carly saw this, she leaned on the horn. Painter growled low and trembled, eyes fixed.
The girl regained her balance and, glancing up at the truck, increased her speed. “Ah, hell,” Carly whispered to herself. Before the girl ducked her head again, Carly saw that half her face was swollen, and blood trailed from a cut over her eye.
Without shifting her gaze, Carly said, “Get in the back,” to Painter, who glanced at her, incredulous, and turned back, still growling. She snapped her fingers, “Go on,” and the dog hopped between the seats as Carly opened the passenger door. The girl climbed up into the truck without slowing down and shut the door. She flinched when Carly reached behind her to lock it. Carly put the truck in gear.
The boy yelled, “Hey! Hey! What the hell—” and began to run, but Carly pulled out of her road and turned the truck uphill toward town. In the rearview she saw him take a couple of steps before stopping and raising his arms and letting them fall.
A leaden quiet filled the truck cab. The dogs thrust their muzzles toward the girl to sniff before settling down. Carly drove along the familiar road that was hemmed in by woods on both sides with the occasional break of a driveway rising to a house, its shape only visible in winter.
Glancing over at her passenger, Carly saw blood drip onto her parka. She dug a bandanna out of her hip pocket and handed it to the girl, who took it and pressed it against her eye. Carly drove into town past the low, brick post office and Beebe’s Market and pulled over under the elm trees in front of the sloping lawn of the library. She put the truck in neutral and drew a deep breath.
Looking ahead, Carly started to speak, cleared her throat, and tried again, “You should have that seen to.”
The girl whispered, “Yes,” her voice thick with unshed tears and soft like a child’s. “Thank you for stopping. I’m sorry—” And now she did cry.
Carly watched her for a moment. “Size of him I can’t think what you got to be sorry for.” She stared ahead, her fingers resting on the lower curve of the wheel, one foot tapping a slow rhythm. The girl didn’t speak but cried quietly, dabbing her eyes now and then with the handkerchief.
“You got anywhere you can go? Any family or a friend?”
The girl looked down at her hands, kneading the bandanna, and shook her head. “Not around here. I don’t know nobody here.” She glanced up at Carly, her good eye clear blue like glass, and frightened. Her eyes traced over Carly’s powerful, six-foot frame, her white hair in a braid tucked under the collar of her faded blue chore coat. The hand resting on the wheel was broad-palmed with long fingers.
“How about I take you to a friend of mine’s house? She lives up this road.”
The girl looked straight ahead and nodded.
Carly tried to think of something else to say. The girl couldn’t stay with her. Whoever that was following her had seen her come down the drive. She put the pickup in gear.
For forty years Carly had worked at the Layton Center Post Office, her light blue short-sleeved shirt snug around her powerful arms, her long braid softening from thick chestnut to gray to white. She started out doing delivery, driving the back roads six days a week and helping her father with the milking and chores before and after work. Later on she worked inside, just the two of them, her and Rita Caldwell. They became best friends, Rita’s ebullience the perfect foil for Carly’s reticence. Seven years ago she had retired from the post office and was for several weeks stunned by the deep sense of relief for the silence her days became.
She pulled onto the short blacktop drive to Rita’s house, passing the heavy deer lawn ornament and pink gazing ball up on a cement pillar. The girl pulled on the door handle and turned her small hips to slide to the ground. Carly saw her flinch when she landed. They went through the garage to the kitchen door.
Knocking twice before entering, Carly called, “Hi, Reet.” Rita’s spotless kitchen was warm and busy with knickknacks, frilled cafe curtains on the window over the sink, and salt and pepper shakers on the dinette set beside the fridge.
Carly met Rita as she came up the cellar stairs. “I got somebody with me. Could use a hand. Was walking up the main road, followed by a big kid. He shoved her.” Rita frowned and led the way into the kitchen.
At the sight of the girl she pointed to a chair. “Have a seat. I expect you could use a hot drink.” When the girl sat at the table, Carly sat down, too.
“You can take your jacket off, you’ll be plenty warm in here. I’m Rita and you’re very welcome. This here’s Carly, I don’t expect she told you.” Carly tipped her head at Rita with a half-smile. The girl unzipped her parka and slid her arms from the sleeves, letting it slide down behind her. She wore a close-fitting, bright green sweater with diamond shapes on the front dotted with fuzz. It was tight and looked small enough to fit a child.
The girl sat worrying Carly’s bandanna, its faded blue stained with blood and dark with tears. Carly was pretty sure that eye was more swollen than before.
Rita wrapped a dish towel around a bag of frozen peas. She gently raised the girl’s hand, placed the cold parcel in it, and raised it to her eye.
“Hold that there.” She whisked cocoa powder and sugar into a pan of milk and left the room. They could hear her rummaging in the pantry, and she came back with a first-aid box and a soft, worn washcloth.
When the cocoa was hot, she poured it into three mugs with pictures of game birds on them—pheasant, duck, and grouse. She set these on the table. “Drink that up now. It’s hot, go slow.” Turning to the sink, she held a washcloth under the hot water tap, wrung it out, and turned to the girl. “I’ll clean that cut for you, if you’ll let me.” The girl nodded and raised her chin, looking Rita in the eye for a second before closing her eyes, her lips pressed together.
“What’s your name?” asked Rita, and the girl’s eyes flew open.
“Nicky. Nicole.”
“Good. Close your eyes. That’s it.”
When she had cleaned and treated the cut, the three of them sat finishing their cocoa. The girl looked almost comical with her face uneven and Rita’s large dressing. Her small hands were chapped, some of the nails long and filed, some broken, as though she had made an effort once that she could not sustain. Like her hair now mussed out of its bun, loosely held with a toothed clip of brindle plastic.
Rita nodded once to herself and spoke, “What do you want to do now, Nicole?”
Trust Rita, thought Carly. Cut to the chase.
Nicole’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two older women. “I—” she faltered.
“Way I see it, you can either go back where you were or you can go someplace else. Whoever did this, is that where you live?”
Nicole kept her eyes down and nodded.
“Do you have somewhere else to go?”
The girl shook her head, and tears welled up and slid down her face. “Not around here. I’m not from here.”
Rita’s voice lost its businesslike edge. “You could stay here, if you like. Carly can tell you I got a—what’s the word?”
Carly replied, “Predilection.”
“That’s it, for taking in strays.” She peered at Nicole. “Just until you figure out what to do.”
Nicole raised her eyes. “Thank you.”
“I guess I’ll go to the store, Reet, you give me your list.” Carly stood up.
From the side of the fridge Rita freed her grocery list from a kitchen magnet of a state trooper’s cruiser. She made a check out to Beebe’s Market and signed it, leaving the amount for Carly to fill in.
Nicole cleared her throat. “Thank you, Carly.” She tried to smile. She had small, very white teeth.
Carly nodded, “People should help each other.”
Nicole looked down at her hands, and Carly went out through the garage.
Rita followed and stood beside the pickup with her arms folded. “Best get a little more than usual, I guess. Though she don’t look like she eats much.”
“It’s OK, isn’t it? Bringing her here?”
Rita snorted, “You know better than that.”
“Thing is, that fella, he saw me come down the drive. Knows where I live. Reckon he’ll be back.” If he isn’t there already, she thought.
Rita looked pained. “I’ll call Elias. I’d call him anyway. This here ain’t OK, that girl’s no bigger than a minute and look at her face.”
“Best warn her. Elias in his trooper uniform fills the room. Cruiser out front.”
Rita chuckled, proud. “Yup. I’ll tell her he’s my son.”
Carly started up the truck. Rita waved a hand over her head and went back inside.
Carly headed back to town along the high road that edged the ravine and turned into Beebe’s, gravel pinging under her truck. She parked and switched off the engine and sat staring ahead with her hands on the wheel. Picturing the boy at the bottom of her road, wondering if he turned around to go downhill. Her unlocked kitchen door. The 410 in its case on top of the high buffet in the kitchen. She tapped her fingers. Painter in the passenger seat raised a paw at her, leaning sideways.
Carly chuckled, rubbing the dog’s powerful chest. “Be right back.”
Pulling a cart out from its place, she raised a hand in greeting to Jeanine at the register and pushed the cart along the aisles.
At the butcher counter Paul Beebe said, “How are ya, Carly? Can I get for you?”
Filling her orders, he said, “I hear you been scaring off hunters.” She concentrated on her lists. “Scared ’em off with that pretty shotgun of yours, from all accounts.” Carly shrugged. “Came in here for beer and all. Talking about being chased off land that wasn’t posted.” Paul handed her several packages wrapped in butcher paper. He placed his hands on the high, stainless steel counter.
Carly shook her head. “Wouldn’t have had to post it if they could have told the difference between a Jersey cow and a buck.”
“I know that, Carly, I know it.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “But you don’t want to be pointing a gun at nobody. You don’t want to be doing that.” He straightened up, watching her. Carly split the packages between hers and Rita’s and thanked Paul.
“Yup, see ya, Carly.” He slapped a hand on the counter. She pushed her cart along to the next aisle.
Last week she had confronted two men on her land who had disregarded the No Trespassing signs posted along the property line. They had looked ridiculous, fit out head to toe in orange and camo, and disbelieving of an elderly woman, six feet tall, ordering them off her land.
She told them, “You can find your way, just follow your own tracks past the No Trespassing signs you ignored. Then you’ll know you’re clear.”
When she got up to the register, Carly said, “Two orders here, Jeanine.”
“Alright, I see it,” replied the fair-haired woman, nearly as wide as she was tall. She scanned the items with practiced ease, glancing up now and then at Carly.
“What?” said Carly.
“Them guys. You scared them off,” she chuckled.
Carly snorted.
“They couldn’t believe it. They said, ‘Crazy old lady with a little bitty shotgun.’” Jeanine watched her. A fizzy anger crawled up Carly’s back. She bagged her groceries. Which was worse, ‘old’ or ‘lady’? Neither. Both.
“I said, LaFontaine land’s always been posted. Everybody knows that for cripe’s sake.” Wide-eyed, showing she was on Carly’s side.
“Well . . . ,” Carly placed the paper bags in the cart. ‘Little bitty gun’ rankled. She filled in the amount on Rita’s check and made out her own, got her receipts from Jeanine. “Thanks. See ya.” She pushed the cart out through the automatic door, loaded the groceries in the bed of the pickup.
When she pulled into the driveway, Rita came out to meet her. “We been having a chat. She’s from over in Littleton, and he is Ronnie Jewett’s youngest boy, Ryan. She doesn’t want the police or court or anything.”
Carly shook her head. A Jewett, she thought. That figures. Her toes curled in her boots.
“Well, I expect you want to get home. Watch yourself.”
“I’ll be OK.”
She followed the blacktop through town and down the hill, turning up the dirt road to the farm. She let the dogs out of the truck and watched them, but they didn’t seem worked up about a new scent. After putting the groceries away, Carly settled herself in her chair and switched on the reading lamp, but her thoughts would not stay with her book.
Way Paul Beebe sounded, she was the one in the wrong. The land had always been posted and still was, even though the cows were gone. She mowed the pasture every summer to keep it open and kept a stout roof on the barn. Her father would have confronted any hunters on his land, although, she had to admit, without a shotgun under his arm. She shook her head. Without it, those boys wouldn’t have bothered running their mouths at the store, talking themselves out of being scared. The truth was, they wouldn’t have heeded her at all. The only thing Carly was afraid of was the small bell that rang in her mind with the hope that those boys would press their luck and the Arrieta could prove its mettle.
The first time she had ever held a gun it was the Arrieta 410. Her father said, “Here, you should know how to handle a gun.” She resisted. “No, I don’t want to shoot anything.” She was sixteen and tenderhearted, she supposed. But he insisted, and she took the shotgun in two hands like he showed her, one just behind the trigger guard and one on the forestock, and in the moment she hefted its weight, judged its perfect balance, a knot she never knew lived in her chest let go and she felt the axis of power and opportunity shift in her favor for the first time ever. Her only conscious thought was, line ’em up. Anybody who ever made fun of her height, taunted her silence, pressed her to be ladylike. Line ’em up. She raised her eyes to her father’s, and he nodded. Carly drew a deep breath and handed the gun back to him. He showed her the floral scroll engraving on the receiver and the gold inlaid fleur-de-lis on the trigger guard. “Neither of us will probably ever see a better piece of equipment than this gun. Handmade by a Spaniard. A work of art.” She nodded, catching his reverence. She wondered how he had come by such a thing, but he never said. He broke open the action, showing her how it worked and how to take care of it, as he had every tool on the place. She paid attention.
Evening came on clear and cold, the sky turning deep purple blue, jeweled with stars. Carly stood by the back door, waiting for the dogs. Listening. When they came in, she walked through the house, turning out lights, and went to bed in her room at the back of the house. At one point she got up and locked the back door, getting the WD-40 from under the kitchen sink and working the skeleton key in the stiff, dry lock. She lay back down and thought that since those boys she had confronted told their story to all and sundry, they would not be back. Carly pulled the blankets up over her shoulder, thinking that narrowed it down to one, a balance that allowed her to fall asleep.
When she opened her eyes in the morning, all three dogs stood beside the bed, staring at her. She rose and let them outside and made coffee. After breakfast she took them out behind the barn and let them sniff and chase, take their time. She searched the sky for signs of snow, wishing it would come and silence the reminder of outdoor tasks, leave her alone with her reading. As she turned to go back, the dogs started up barking and raced as one around the side of the barn.
When she reached the dooryard, she heard, “Go on, get off’a me, ye bastards!” and saw the young man from yesterday standing on the stone walk that led to the side door. The two sisters stood away from him, hackles up, stiff-legged, spit flying. Painter worried his legs, her stout body in an arc, lip curled back. OK, thought Carly. Alright, now. She crossed the barnyard to the walk, regretting that he was between her and the house. Between her and the 410. The boy stood in one place and kicked now and then at Painter, who skittered away and came right back. When he saw Carly, he straightened up and stuck his chest out. He was a big boy, tall and powerful. Wavy red hair, a tight denim jacket, jeans, and yellowish roper boots.
Carly stopped at the end of the walk and said, “Quiet,” to the dogs.
“Where’s Nicky?” he said.
“Who?” replied Carly.
“What do you mean who? You know good and goddamned well who. Where is she?”
“I wouldn’t know, son.”
“Well, she got in your truck.”
“Small girl? Curly hair? Face all beat up?” She held his eye, her face grim.
He huffed, “Well—she here?” He waved toward the house. “Nicky!” he shouted, watching the windows. The dogs began barking again, but he ignored them and took a few steps toward the house. “Nicky!” Carly’s hands twitched, and she jerked her chin at the dogs. They rushed him and he froze.
“Son, you go in my house without an invitation and you’re trespassing.” Her chest ached from holding her breath.
“Who’s gonna stop me, them?” He looked doubtfully at the dogs. Carly had never seen the bigger dogs so wound up. She wasn’t sure what they would do. Painter, on the other hand, would bring him down with a good lock on his throat given half a chance. The heeler sat in front of Carly. She appeared relaxed, but every bit of her attention was fastened on the boy.
His shoulders slumped, and he adopted a pleading look, “Where is she?”
“She isn’t here. I drove up the hill and dropped her in town. What she wanted.” He frowned and turned to go, stopping two feet from Carly. Painter stood up.
“I don’t find her, I’ll be back,” he jutted his chin.
Carly stood, watching him walk down the drive, his hands in his pockets. Sweat ran down her sides. It wasn’t often she had to look up at someone. He turned around once, but Painter, tracking him, changed his mind. Carly called her back, and she and the dogs went into the house. She locked the door and took the Arrieta, gun oil, rag, and brush down from the buffet and set them on the table. She sat down, pressed her hands onto her thighs and exhaled hard, rocking for a moment. He was a big boy, that kid. Never had the distance to the house seemed so long. Painter leaned on her knee, and Carly told herself to take it easy. She threaded her fingers through the dog’s thick, merle coat. Took several deep breaths.
After a while she called Rita.
“Do you think I should tell Nicole?”
“I expect she knows he’s looking for her.”
“I’ll send Elias over to you. He’s coming by for lunch.”
“Well, I’m always glad to see him, you know.”
“We’re sticking close to home today, I guess.”
“Me too.”
Carly kept busy splitting wood and washing her own and the dogs’ bedding. Stopped herself from looking out the window every few minutes. After lunch she let the dogs out and sat on the bench by the back door, watching them. The sky was clear and blue, and she stretched her legs out, tipping her face toward the sun.
Yesterday when she saw the girl, Nicole, coming up the hill, staggering, face all done in, she hadn’t driven away. Now she pondered that, wondering what had made her sit there and let that girl come toward her. In her years at the post office she had been on one side of the counter and all the human drama played out on the other. You couldn’t just drive away from something like that whatever it might bring. She wished to hell she had left for the market ten minutes earlier, though. She pictured Painter in the front seat yesterday, growling.
The dogs set up barking and raced by her. She heard tires on gravel and figured it was Elias, but stayed near the door, detesting her caution. When the green hood of the cruiser came in sight, she stood up and called the dogs, not that it did any good. The car stopped, its engine quieted, and Elias Caldwell got out and straightened his lean, six-foot-two frame out of the cruiser.
Ignoring the dogs he nodded at her, “Tante Carly.”
“Elias. Could you use some coffee?”
“Sure, thanks.” He followed her into the house.
She put the kettle on and measured coffee into the pot. Elias sat at the table in his uniform and heavy socks. His dark, thick hair was cut close to his skull and his face was angular, offset in a way that made him more handsome. He lifted the book on the table, reading the back. Carly set coffee and cream in front of him.
“Thank you.” He poured cream and sipped, “That’s good, yup.”
“How are you at work, Elias?”
“Busy. Things are changing here, Tante. Drugs, like never before.”
“I heard that. Makes people desperate.”
“That’s exactly right.” He drew a breath. “Mom’s got this girl staying with her, I guess. Nicole Giss, she is, from over in Littleton. Mom will put her on the bus there. He’s been up here, has he? Ryan Jewett?”
She nodded.
“What happened?” Elias took a small notebook and pen out of his breast pocket. Carly glanced at it and he said, “Just to help me remember.”
She told him what had happened. When she described how Ryan had said he’d be back, a flush crept up Elias’s neck, and his eyes flashed. When she finished, he let the silence settle for a moment before saying, “Anything else?”
She shook her head, propped her elbows on the table with her hands in front of her mouth. “Wish I had left earlier. Or not gone. But once I saw her . . .”
“I know what you mean. Wish it was somebody else’s watch.”
“You too?”
“Sometimes. OK. We’re looking for Ryan Jewett and will arrest him for assault, but since Nicole wants nothing to do with it, they will likely release him. So I’m going to have a talk with him, tell him to show some restraint. And stay away from here, away from you. I don’t much care for anybody threatening you, Tante Carly. I don’t care for that at all.” He slipped the pen and notebook into his pocket.
“You let me know how it goes?”
“I will, yes. He’s in a trailer on the edge of his old man’s place. Doesn’t do much.” He was quiet for a moment. Carly watched him twist his coffee mug around. Waited for him to say what was on his mind.
“What’s this I hear about two hunters in your woods?”
“For Chrissake. They come to you? What a couple of—”
“No, they didn’t. Jeanine told me. Couldn’t wait to tell me.”
“Jeanine’s why there’s no Layton Center newspaper.”
He laughed. “Anyway,” he stretched his arms up, met her eye as he lowered them, “I have to ask if you in fact threatened them with a weapon.”
“No, I did not. They had deer rifles, I had the 410, the Arrieta,” she rolled the rrs, sounding Spanish. Loving.
Elias nodded, “Just holding it. Lowered.”
“Of course.”
“Alright, then. That’s what I say as part of my job.”
“I know it.”
“And there’s what I say as your honorary nephew.”
“I’m more interested in that.”
“And that is to be careful. Chainsaw, tractor, all on your own here.”
Carly bit her tongue. When she could look at him, she saw that he looked twelve years old and twenty years younger. “I don’t think you mean the tractor. Or chainsaw.” Didn’t quite keep the bitterness from her tone.
“No, I don’t guess I do. But you and Mom, well, you aren’t getting any younger is all.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“And if you have a problem, you call us.”
She looked away toward the parlor where Painter stood in the doorway, eyes flicking from her to Elias and back.
“Elias, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to sit here and wait to be rescued. I can’t even imagine that.” She looked out the window to the rise at the end of the pasture where a huge old locust tree’s black, spiky branches stood out against the sky. She looked back at Elias. “I can’t understand anybody who would do that. I’m not saying you go looking for a fight. But Ryan Jewett won’t be coming between me and the best means for me to protect myself and my dogs again.”
They sat for a while, willing the tension between them away. Painter went back to curl up on the bunk, letting out a low moan as she settled down.
Elias took his leave soon after and Carly, refusing to be trapped in the house, took the dogs out to the pasture. Strapped orange safety vests on them and herself and stayed in the open. The dogs tunneled and pounced on grassy tussocks in search of mice. She returned to the house before dusk, crossing the pasture in long, downhill strides. To the west the sky turned gold and pink and lit up the tops of the fir trees behind her.
After supper Carly settled in her chair in the parlor, the heavy drapes pulled closed. Her mind skittered between Nicole and Ryan, finding purchase on Elias’s words of caution. She couldn’t quite work herself up to indignation, only a soft apprehension that he was right. Or that the world would say that her age alone would speak for her, as her gender had all her life. It would be graceless to pretend she wasn’t getting older, she knew that. “Not dead yet though,” she said to the dogs. Painter opened an eye that then slowly closed.
Before bed, Carly let the dogs out and stood watching them sniff around the yard on their usual routes from bush to tree. When they came back in, she locked the door and placed the Arrieta on a blanket, sliding it under the bed. Sometime before midnight she fell asleep, and when the dogs’ frenzied barking woke her she sat up blinking, trying to focus. She turned on the bedside lamp as Painter skidded into the room, eyes wide and dark, her high-pitched bark insistent. Carly wrapped her wool robe around herself, picked up the Arrieta, and followed Painter across the parlor to where the big dogs stood with hackles up and lips curled.
She hissed, “Quiet,” and heard what sounded like rain start and stop. She pushed aside the curtain edge. The moon was nearly full in a clear sky, and she could make out a man in yellow-colored boots standing ten feet from the house with his hands held together. Carly saw him throw something and heard it hit an upstairs window. Pebbles. She shook her head. Fool. Almost felt sorry for him. For the pebbles, for his boots, for his inability to comprehend the obvious. She decided to wait him out, see if he would go away. She let go of the curtain and moved away from the window.
After a moment the dogs barked and pushed each other in their haste to get to the back door. Carly followed them and stood in the middle of the kitchen, the Arrieta cradled in her arms. Ryan pounded on the door and tried the handle. And he must have shouldered the old door then because frame and all shook and cracked and the dogs went crazy.
“Alright, that’s enough of that.” She went to the door. “Quiet, back.” She opened a drawer in the buffet and dropped several shells into her pocket, turned the key in the lock, and eased the door just enough to slide the slim barrel of the 410 through the opening at eye level.
“Where’s—whoa!”
Carly opened the door with her foot and backed Ryan off the porch and down the walk. The moonlight lit up his face alabaster white and gleamed along the barrel of the 410.
“Son, I told you she isn’t here and never was and now I’m telling you to get off my property.”
“I just want—”
“I lost any interest in what you might want.” She felt the warm weight of Painter on her calf.
“Maybe she ain’t here, but you know where she is. You’re going to goddamn tell me.” He lunged toward her. Carly snapped the barrel up and to the side and fired into the night, the loud report freezing him in place.
“You meant to do that!” he cried. “Jesus!” His voice cracked.
“I wouldn’t be holding it if I didn’t mean it. I won’t be wasting another shot on thin air.” She held the 410 across herself.
“You’re crazy! Jesus!” Fighting tears, Ryan backed down the walk and turned, flinging himself away. Looking back once over his shoulder, he picked up speed. From the edge of the porch she listened for his boots on the road and watched the top of his head lower away down the hill.
Carly took the dogs inside and locked the door. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, gripping the Arrieta and waiting for sensation to come back to her feet and hands, letting the sharp event soften into details. She heard again the pop and hiss of the shot, smelled the rank cordite. The boy’s eyes had fixed in disbelief on the twin barrels of the slender, lethal bore and she saw him see her for the first time. This is what she would remember: the heavy certainty in the center of her chest as he backed away. The edges of her eyes lost some of their tightness.
The Arrieta still smelled a little smoky, and she broke it open and laid it gently on the kitchen table, resting her fingers for a moment on the walnut stock still warm from her grip. “You did just right, there,” she murmured. “You did just fine.” She drew a breath from way down, nodded to herself.
She went to the door to look out, pressed her fingers against the cold glass, and waited for her heart to steady its beat. Didn’t want to think about how it would have gone without the 410. The Arrieta just evened things out a little is all. What it took to get his attention, make him listen. She didn’t make the world that way, but she did have to live inside it. And anyway he backed off and left, so it worked, so what else was there to say. Nothing. Nobody’s business.
One of the big dogs clicked toenails across the floor to her dish, the sound like ice on a tin roof, drawing Carly out of her reverie. She could not be sure what if anything she had proved.
Painter caught her eye and wagged her tail once. “I guess that isn’t something I ever need to do again. Good dogs. You’re alright.” She filled the kettle and set it on the stove.
Carly fetched her cleaning kit from the buffet. Her hands shook a little as she pressed the oily rag along the bore, but she knew that meant nothing and would pass. The wind whistled and buffeted the corner of the old house, shifting from west to northeast, and she hoped it would bring snow before morning.
A version of this story first appeared in the July/August 2018 issue of Kenyon Review Online.
MARGARET GRANT is a fiction writer from northern Vermont. She is a former workshop leader for the Burlington Writers Workshop and past managing editor of Mud Season Review. Margaret’s collection of braided short stories, From Here, was a finalist for the 2019 Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press. Margaret’s writing appears online in Flash Fiction Magazine (February 26, 2017) and Kenyon Review (July/August 2018).