He lost himself there for a while and that wasn’t cool, that wasn’t military, and he would have been the first to admit it. But so what. He liked the feel of the place, liked the old armchair with the dog hair on it and the stuffed deer head sticking out of the knotty-pine wall across from it—and he liked the liquor too, a handle of vodka, two-thirds full, papa bear, mama bear, baby bear. He found a hacksaw in the toolshed and a vise and file there too. Food in the refrigerator, ham and cheese, yellow mustard, soft white sourdough bread that toasted up just perfect. And what was that tapping on the roof? It was rain, that was what it was, first rain of the season, and if it swelled the streams he wasn’t worried. All that hurry, and for what? In fact, he just took a time-out and built a fire in the woodstove and sat there through the back end of the morning and into the afternoon, drinking somebody else’s vodka and modifying somebody else’s .22 rifle, and didn’t think anything at all.
What woke him was his sixth sense. He heard the rain, heavy now, sizzling like the deep fryer at McDonald’s, and something else, an automotive noise, but the wheel inside him was barely turning at all and the vodka seemed to just press down on him till he felt like a deep-sea diver in one of those old-fashioned deep-sea suits with the riveted helmet and the long trailing air hose that seemed to rise up into infinity. It wasn’t weakness and it wasn’t the vodka, or not exactly, and it wasn’t the warmth of the woodstove or the fact that he could have lived in this cabin himself, all by himself, and built a wall around it too . . . it was just that he was feeling cool, equal to anything, and he was just waiting to see who or what was coming through that door because he had a sawed-off .22 in his hand that was just like a pistol, that he could use as a pistol in any tight place, and a box of shells for it too that was just lying there in the drawer of the coffee table next to a deck of cards that had been thumbed through so many times the lamination was practically worn right off each and every one of them. And he’d looked. He had. And saw that the deck was missing the ace of diamonds—not the ace of spades, the ace of diamonds—and what that meant or didn’t mean he couldn’t say. He wasn’t superstitious. Or maybe he was.
Footsteps on the porch. Key in the lock. And there she was, an old lady with white hair and a what’s-up face who could have been his grandmother if his grandmother wasn’t dead already and buried and probably being dug up at that very minute by Art Tolleson, whoever he was or turned out to be when you peeled his mask off. It took her a minute, hanging there in the doorway as if she couldn’t decide whether to stay or go, the rain hanging like a gray sheet behind her and smelling of release and new life for the plants, the animals, the gullies and creeks and rivers. “Who are you?” she asked and before he could answer asked what he was doing there. Or what he thought he was doing there.
The door stood open. The old lady had three plastic bags of groceries dangling from her purple-veined hands. Her hair was wet on top and two long strands of it, one on either side of her puzzled face, were plastered wet to the skin there. “Who am I?” he said. “I’m Colter. What was the second question again?”
The rain sizzled behind her. It was really coming down, a real worm-washer. She didn’t seem to have heard him. She just stood there, the bags dangling. “What are you doing in my house?” That was what she wanted to know, and if there was an edge to her voice now, that was because she’d begun to take in the scene, the open window, the vodka, the fire, the metal shavings on the floor and the vise he’d clamped to the edge of the coffee table to steady the blade. And the guns: his rifle, propped up against the armchair with the dog hair on it, and the modified .22 he held in his hand. Which used to be a rifle. And used to be hers.
She deserved an answer and he felt so lazy and peaceful and calm he decided to give her one—and to be as pleasant about it as he could too. “Enjoying your hospitality,” was what he said, even as another sound entered the mix, the rattle of a dog’s toenails on the boards of the porch, and here came the dog himself, a miniature poodle sort of thing, old and arthritic and with the dark stains of his drooling eye fluids darkening the white fluff of fur on either side of his snout. He didn’t even bother to bark. Just stood there next to the old lady, dripping.
“You get out of here,” the old lady said then, and it wasn’t the dog she was talking to.
He held up a hand. Everything was okay, couldn’t she see that? There were no aliens here. And she wasn’t Chinese, not even close. So what he did was push himself up from the chair and go over to the window and pull it shut. “Sorry about the glass,” he said, and then, forgive him, he couldn’t help himself, he was laughing. “But you forgot to leave me a key.”