Bloodline (25 page)

“This thing loaded?” I said, keeping the barrel of the rifle pointed at the ground.

“Why you asking me?”

“Because you gave it to me.”

“You never take anybody's word on whether a gun is loaded. You check yourself.”

He put his rifle down on the ground, then reached for mine. I handed it over gladly and he slid the lever up and the bolt back.

“This is a Remington. Model 700. Bolt-action. Thirty-aught-six. A very popular deer rifle. Very accurate.”

I nodded.

“This is the chamber.”

He held the rifle so I could see the shiny silver opening where the bolt had slid out.

“Holds five rounds. Four in the magazine, one in the chamber, ready to fire. Look in there. See that spring-loaded piece? That forces the cartridges up. See how it's empty? And there's nothing in the barrel? That's how you know the gun isn't loaded. It's the only way you know.”

“Right,” I said.

“This is the safety.”

He thumbed a small inconspicuous lever at the top of the gun.

“Back is safety on. Forward is safety off.”

“That's it?”

“Yeah,” Clair said. “That simple.”

“Seems like it should be painted orange or something.”

He continued.

“You don't check the safety by pulling the trigger. I know a kid who did that. Safety back, press trigger. Safety back, press trigger. Except he got the sequence off one time and the gun fired. Almost blew his friend's leg off. A lesson I never forgot.”

“Were you the friend?”

“No. And my buddy never forgot it, either. Your finger doesn't even go near the trigger until you're ready to shoot. You ready?”

“I'm ready.”

I slid the bolt back and forth. Squeezed the trigger and pulled the bolt back and forward again. The trigger barely required any pressure. Just touch and barely squeeze.

Click.

I aimed the rifle at the trash-can lid, which Clair said was about sixty yards away. The metal sight wavered with the end of the barrel.

“You don't try to hold it still,” Clair said. “You try to time it so you fire as the sight crosses the target. We'll try a scope in a minute.
I just want you to know what to expect so you don't ram that scope into your eye.”

He took a cardboard box out of his jacket pocket, opened it, and handed me a cartridge. It was about two and a half inches long, copper with a pointed silver tip. I held it gingerly and placed it in the chamber. It dropped in and lay flat. I slid the bolt forward and down.

“That's it?”

“You're ready to shoot, Bones.”

I put the stock of the rifle to my right shoulder. Clair told me not to squeeze it tightly, but to keep it loose, so all the kick wouldn't be absorbed by my shoulder. I pushed the safety forward and aimed at the can. Held my breath and squeezed.

Bam!

The barrel kicked up and back and the sound echoed across the field like a cannon shot. I couldn't tell if I'd hit the can lid or the plywood, or even the trees behind them.

“Did I hit it?”

“Hard to say,” Clair said. “Try again.”

I fired five rounds without a scope. Then we walked across the field and checked the lid. I'd hit it three times, leaving raw metal holes three-eighths of an inch in diameter. One shot buried itself in the ground below the lid. Another tore through the plywood.

God, I thought. What would this do to a man?

Clair stapled a plate to the plywood with the staple gun and we walked back to where the rifles were on the ground. I picked mine up and Clair pulled a scope out of his jacket pocket and slid it in place for me. It was a Redfield four-power with a crosshair sight that drifted slowly across the plate. I fired four rounds from a crouch and hit the plate three times, just right of center.

“Missed my calling,” I said. “Should have been a sniper.”

“Scope's kind of useless in Maine,” Clair said. “Most of the time you're in the woods, shooting twenty or thirty yards, max.”

“But if it's a trophy paper plate you're after, it's just the ticket, right?”

“We'll get you that one. You can hang it on the wall of your den.”

“Right beside the tin cans,” I said.

We shot for a half-hour more. Clair showed me his gun, a seven-by-fifty-seven Mauser. Its cartridges were slightly narrower than the Remington's, and a little shorter. I asked Clair why he was shooting such a sissy gun.

“Oh, this gun's an old friend,” Clair said. “It just feels right. Got the right fit.”

“And this rifle here is supposed to be my new buddy?”

“You seem to hit it off just fine. You aren't a half-bad shot, either.”

“For a liberal.”

“Right. For a worthless, yellow-bellied pinko, you're pretty good.”

“Enough. I'm getting all choked up.”

I slid the bolt back on the Remington and made sure it was empty. Let the barrel point down at the ground. Picked it back up. I just couldn't find a natural way to hold the thing. Anybody with a half grain of perception would take one look at me and see a city slicker with a big gun.

“Hey,” I said, as Clair slid a cartridge into the Mauser's chamber. “What's this all about, anyway? First shotguns and firebombs? Then they come at me with paper plates?”

Clair lowered his rifle and looked at me.

“I can't shoot anybody,” I said.

“I'm not saying you should. Anything but.”

“Then what's this all about?”

Clair smiled. Pushed the safety down on the Mauser. It looked natural in his arms.

“Deer hunting,” he said. “Give me a break.”

He stepped in front of me. Raised the rifle to his shoulder, paused for a three-count, and fired. The Mauser roared, the muzzle blast rippling the grass in front of him for twenty feet. He slid the bolt back and the empty shell flipped out onto the ground. I bent and picked it up and handed it to him.

“Well,” I said.

“Jack, I don't think you quite know what you've gotten yourself in for, here. This guy isn't letting air out of your tires or throwing toilet paper around your yard. He blew the window out of your house, missed you by a couple of feet. Blew up your truck. And that's just for starters.”

“So he's a little playful.”

I grinned.

“Jack, I know his type. This Kenny guy. He's a psychopath. Crazy. I've had them under my command; I know them. With kids like this, things have a way of escalating out of control.”

“I thought you didn't like that word.”

“I don't,” Clair said. “And I don't like what's going on here. This guy could kill you in a second. Wouldn't have to plan it. It'd just happen. Run you off the road. Burn your house down with you in it. Next time he shoots out a window, you're walking by on the way to the fridge.”

“So what's this deer rifle supposed to do for me?”

“It's a deterrent.”

“You mean, like arms talks? Hey, I've never been to Geneva.”

“It's what he understands. Right now he knows you're in there with nothing. What do you have? Your little reporter's hands.”

“What do you mean, little?”

“You know what I mean. To him you're just some wimp. All that typing and stuff.”

“How 'bout I just rent a backhoe and drive it around the yard.”

Clair stopped. He looked at me the way he probably once looked at a corporal.

“Jack, this isn't a joke, my friend. You have this girl who got killed. This guy blowing stuff up. It's time to stop laughing. You're a good friend, and I'm telling you: I've seen these kamikaze characters at work. It's time to show some firepower.”

Standing there in his field, with the blue sky and the golden tree line, we were suddenly somber.

“You're serious, aren't you?” I said.

“Some things you know about. This is something I know about.”

“Okay. What do I do? Let him know I can shoot the eye out of a paper plate at sixty yards?”

“You get another truck. You buy a gun rack. You drive around town with that thirty-aught-six in the rack.”

“With a straight face?”

“Yup. Let him and his buddies know it's there. And when you're home, keep the gun within reach. You don't have to keep it loaded, but don't lock it in the cellar, either.”

“Why? So I can keep the paper plates at bay?”

“Better than being down there a sittin' duck.”

“I'm not a sitting duck,” I said. “I've got you to protect me.”

“Like I said. Keep it handy.”

We turned toward the house, Clair with his Mauser, me with my Remington Model 700 security blanket. When we were almost to the house, I stopped and slid the bolt back one more time. The rifle was empty.

By the back door, I stopped.

“Clair,” I said. “I've got one question about all this.”

He waited.

“Now is it safety on when the safety is back? Or is it safety off?”

Clair looked at me, hard.

“Just kidding,” I said.

“I hope I'm wrong,” he said. “But I've got this funny feeling the time for kidding's over.”

I did buy a truck. It was an old red four-wheel-drive Toyota with a rusting bed and 128,000 miles on the odometer. It was eight hundred bucks. And it had a gun rack.

Clair drove me to look at it in Waterville, a little mill city about twenty miles away. The kid who was selling it said he needed the money to pay court fines. I thought that was as good a reason as any. Clair didn't say anything to the kid, just leaned over the open hood and listened to the motor. Then we drove it up and down the street, with Clair shifting it in and out of four-wheel-high and four-wheel-low. He said it sounded fine, that he liked Toyota four-wheel-drives because you couldn't kill them. I liked the gun rack because it symbolized my newfound machismo. All the way back to Prosperity it seemed that women turned their heads and watched me pass. Roxanne would melt in my arms. Maybe I'd let her watch me shoot.

I liked driving the thing, even found myself smiling as I slipped it into overdrive and listened to the big tires whine on the pavement. But the smile had barely set when everything else flooded back and wiped my face clean. Missy. Kenny. A couple of cops who wanted to nail me. I couldn't allow myself the indulgence of a joyride.

At the general store in the town of Albion, I stopped and bought a
Waterville Sentinel.
The obituaries were on the back page of the first section. Sitting in the truck by the gas pumps, I scanned down the names and didn't see Missy's. I went down the page again and there it was: “Melissa Jean Hewett, 18, of Prosperity, died unexpectedly in Portland.”

Somewhere at the Waterville newspaper, there was a master of understatement.

The obituary said Melissa was the daughter of Joyce Hewett. There was no mention of her father. Take that, you no good son of a bitch. The obit did list four surviving sisters with four different last names, which I supposed meant they were all married or had different fathers, or both. They all lived within fifteen miles of Prosperity. Visiting hours were at the Littlefield Funeral Home in Belfast from four to six.

After reading it twice, it struck me. Her baby had been omitted, too.

23

I
t was quarter to five. I drove the last ten miles in less than ten minutes, then bounced the little truck down the dump road and slid it into the dooryard. Trotting inside, I grabbed an apple from the bowl on the table, then went up to the loft to pick out something suitable to wear to the wake of a young girl who'd been murdered. I picked a gray tweed jacket, blue shirt, dark blue Levi's corduroys, and L.L. Bean moccasins. The family might think I was one of her professors. I wondered if Missy's mom would even remember that we'd met.

The funeral home was in one of the big sea captains' mansions that lined Belfast's streets, keeping oil dealers and housepainters in business. I drove past the place once and glanced at my watch. It was quarter to four. I turned around in the driveway of a stately gray Victorian ark, where a small blonde girl, three or four years old, watched me from the yard. She had been jumping into a magnificently huge pile of multicolored leaves. I waved and she stared.

Reluctantly, I drove back. The Littlefield Funeral Home was a big Greek Revival place with the gable end facing the street and the entrance on the side. There were two pickups parked out front and, as I pulled in behind them, a car came to a stop directly behind me.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw an older woman getting out of a small red car. She was in the passenger seat and another woman, younger, was driving. The younger woman held the door open and two teenagers got out of the backseat. One was a girl wearing a short skirt and boots. The other was a boy wearing jeans and a black leather jacket.

I was not underdressed.

When they had let themselves in, I got out of the truck and followed, feeling a little queasy. It was the same feeling I'd gotten every time I'd had to go to a funeral as a reporter, elbowing my way into the inner sanctum of some family's grief. This time, I didn't even have that license to hide behind.