“Where do you keep that shotgun, Em?”
“That what?”
“Just for show.”
Emmet looked at him. Then he flung a hand toward the closet.
Grant found the softcase and set it on the bed and unzipped it, releasing a smell of walnut and steel and gun oil. It was an old Remington 20-gauge side by side.
“You know how to handle that?”
“I used to have one not too different. It was my dad’s. Angela wouldn’t have it in the house once the kids got older.” He unbreeched the barrels and sighted the bores and snapped the barrels back. “You took good care of this,” he said, but the old man didn’t seem to hear him.
GRANT WENT DOWN THE porch steps and reached into the El Camino and turned the key, killing the engine and the music. The chromium tailpipe shuddered out a final blue cloud and was still.
“Fuck me,” the pimpled boy said, “the hired gun’s got a gun.”
“What are you up to, Grant?” said Billy.
“I asked you to call it a night and now I’m not asking.”
“Did that old man put you up to this?”
“No, he was against it.”
“Well, what do you intend to do, shoot us?”
“No. I’m going to shoot the tire on one of these cars. After that, if you’re still here, I’m going to shoot another one. If I have to buy new tires tomorrow I will, but tonight the party’s over.”
“How we gonna leave if you shoot our tires?”
“Shut up, Vernon. Grant, I don’t believe you’ve got any ammo in that old gal.”
“You’re right about that.” He thumbed the lever and broke the shotgun, chambered two red shells and snapped the gun shut again.
“All right,” said Billy. “There’s phase one. But I guess we’re going to have to see phase two before these negotiations go any further.”
“Jesus, Billy,” said the girl on the steps. “Let’s just go somewheres else before this old man does something crazy.”
“Sit down and shut up, Christine.”
“These aren’t negotiations, Billy,” Grant said. “This is what’s going to happen next if you go on sitting there.” His voice was even, his chest calm. He thought about that as Billy lifted his cigarette to his lips and crossed a black boot over his knee. Billy tugged the hair under his lower lip, that shapeless brown tuft. Then he nodded, and Grant stepped around the El Camino and raised the gun on the front tire of a battered GMC pickup and with the stub of his forefinger squeezed the forward trigger. The gun kicked and a flap of rubber flew from the tire in a gaseous cloud and the truck buckled like a stricken horse and swallows burst from the spruce and wheeled amid the stars while the boom echoed away in the hills. The night air bittered at once with the smell of cordite and the rubber tang of old tire air.
“You shot my tire,” said Vernon, rising. “You fucking whackjob.”
Grant took a step and raised the gun on the toylike tire of a small red Honda.
“Billy!” cried the girl on the steps, and Billy laughed and said, “All right, all right.” He put his cigarette in his lips and gave a few claps. He stood from the rocker and offered a hand to the Gatskill girl. “Time to go, those who can.”
“What about my goddam truck, God damn it?”
“You heard the man, Vernon. Said he’d get you a new tire tomorrow, and you’ve already seen he’s a man of his word so quit your crying and get in
the car.”
As the young people loaded into the El Camino and the Honda, Grant looked at the stars. The patternless bright birdshot of ancient, monstrous bodies. Forces unthinkable. Passing him, Billy stopped and looked beyond him, peering into the dark foothills. He squinted as if he saw something out there and spoke: “What the hell—?”
Grant didn’t turn to look, and Billy dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the toe of his boot.
“Thought I saw somebody,” Billy said. He looked up into Grant’s eyes. “But there ain’t nobody out there. Is there, Grant?” He winked, and tossing the leather jacket ahead of him onto the Gatskill girl’s lap he swung down into the El Camino.
Taillights withdrew into the night. Grant stood with the Remington on his shoulder, the weight of the barrels, the shapely walnut grip, the warm triggers, the slam of the stock yet playing in his bones—all a strange pleasure to him.
Emmet stood at the screen door, one hand on the handle as if he were making up his mind whether to step out into the dark or latch the door against it. Grant held the old man’s eyes a moment, then he turned and began to walk back to the ranch house. A black shape separated from the shadow of the spruce and slid along the ground toward him and became the old dog at his heels, half crippled in her hips, panting softly, halting suddenly when Grant halted: there was movement at the ranch house, someone passing through the dark square of the kitchen window. A woman. She came back and remained there in the frame of the window, doing something with her hands, preparing something, as if she belonged there.
Grant stood beside the spruce with the gun in his hands, the dog quietly panting. He looked to the north and made out the shape of the mountains by their erasure of the stars along the base of the sky. In his dreams she was running—always running. Her heart strong and her feet sure, never stumbling, never tiring, mile upon mile, coming down like water. He looked to the north and he began to speak, as he did every night. He began to speak and the old dog stopped panting and grew alert, cocking her ears to the dark.