“Yeah, I think so.”
They were out in the country. He’d lined the top of a split-rail fence with half a dozen empty Campbell’s asparagus soup tins. Eldon liked asparagus soup. “Okay, just squeeze the trigger. Just look at your target and your arms will know what to do.”
She squeezed. Blam. God, what a feeling. Thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Would have been even better if she’d hit the can.
She glanced back at Eldon’s Toyota parked on the shoulder of the gravel township road, saw six-month-old Katie through the open back window, buckled into her safety seat, gnawing on a red plastic ring. Miranda waved.
“Okay, try again, but relax a bit this time. Don’t think so much about aiming, just look at your target, concentrate on it, don’t concentrate on your arms or your hands or anything. You’re just one with the gun.”
“Jesus, you’re getting all philosophical on me.” She squeezed again. Blam. Ting! A can flew off the fence. “I did it! I don’t believe it!”
“Yes!” Eldon said, giving her a hug. “Awesome!”
It didn’t take long until she could hit a can about half the time. Not bad, Eldon said, considering how small the can was and how far away she was standing. “If it was a moose,” he said, “you’d have no problem. And really, how often do you see a little can walking through the woods, anyway?”
She went to hand him the gun when they were finished, but he said, “No, it’s yours. I got it for you. You keep it. You know how to use it now. It’s small. It’ll fit in your handbag.”
Well, she didn’t want to carry it in her handbag. She was too frightened by what it could do. She couldn’t imagine using it on anything but a tin can. And there was the baby. It wasn’t safe, having guns around with a baby in the house.
But she didn’t tell him all that. She kissed him and thanked him. He wanted to do the right thing for her. He just wanted her to be safe. Things had been kind of crazy the last few months, and he wanted her to have some protection. But he was her protection. She didn’t want to have to carry a gun around in her purse.
There was a war on, and Eldon was feeling pretty tense. Not just because of the skirmishes between the Slots, who owned the Kickstart and were led by Gary, and the Comets from across town. The battle over hookers and drugs would have been enough to keep someone awake at night. But Eldon was troubled by how ineffective a leader Gary was. Gary needed to take bold action. He needed to make it clear to the Comets, once and for all, that the Slots were in charge.
But Gary wasn’t a planner. He was ruled by impulses, often reckless ones. A Molotov cocktail had been tossed through the window of the Kickstart, starting a small fire. Luckily, it was after hours, no one got killed. But Eldon couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened if Candace had been there. If the fire had spread upstairs, to the office, where she often worked late into the night adding up the receipts, doing the books.
She could have been killed, those motherfuckers.
The Comets were sending a warning, that they were moving in. They had to send a message back.
Eldon, who’d been content up to now to let Zane and Eldridge and Payne handle the more violent stuff, pressed Gary to take a stand. Run a tractor-trailer through their clubhouse, he said. Find their homes and blow them up. Go nuclear on them.
Gary couldn’t decide quite what to do. He wanted to do something, but wasn’t sure what.
So one day, he’s driving around town late one night in his big four-wheel-drive pickup, he sees one of the Comets out and about in his mint, red 1970 Dodge Super Bee, hood scoop, bumblebee racing stripe, the whole deal. Grant Delmonico, a minor player in the Comets, but still one of them. So Gary follows him, figures maybe an opportunity will present itself.
Grant’s coming up to a railroad crossing, lights flashing, big freight coming in from the west, couple of massive SD40s linked together. Gary comes up along behind, truck sitting up high, headlights shining into Grant’s car.
The crossing has no gate. Gary gets an idea. He drops the truck into low gear, shoves the Super Bee right into a passing tank car. The train took hold of the front of the car, dragged it down the track, mangled it all to shit. Some mess. Grant was toast.
Gary was pretty proud of himself when he got back to the Kickstart, telling the boys. Eldon said it was bush league. Grant was small potatoes. And would the Comets even get the message? For all anyone knew, the dumb ass just drove into the side of the train.
Not long after, one of their own, some hanger-on by the name of Sebastian, never really one of the crew but did some go-fering for them, gets beaten to death behind a butcher shop.