Bluff City Pawn (15 page)

“They don’t take the rest?”

“We
sell
the rest. We just take our lumps. We let ATF know and they just take what’s stolen. Look, I never been crossways with the feds and I ain’t about to start. We just get the guns, log ’em in, run the serial numbers, and if there’s problems, we give whatever up and that’s it. Feds ain’t gonna freeze the collection over a bad handful. Some bad ain’t gonna make the collection radioactive, if that’s what you’re worrying over.”

“I’m worrying over everything.” And he leans in and stabs at the list. “You’re talking about a hundred thousand this and a quarter-million profit and you’re only giving me one way it can go wrong?”

Huddy nods, thinks about Joe’s question, and the number of answers he can come up with. “Okay. Look here: I’m telling you about stolen guns. Well, you gotta worry about fakers, too. Put-together guns with mixed serial numbers. But you ain’t gotta worry, because this guy was meticulous. Every collector makes mistakes—but he’s got his mistakes
labeled
. Look,” and Huddy searches the list and finds a page where a gun’s marked
fake
. “I see this, and when I matched it with the gun, he got a tag hanging on the trigger guard saying, ‘Uh oh.
’
”

“He wrote that?”

“I’m saying,” Huddy’s hand steadied against Joe’s concern, “he knew when he stepped in it. Only happened to him a handful of times, and he didn’t try to hide it. Joe, this guy’s got everything labeled but a missing screw. He knew his guns. And I know ’em, too.”

“You know your guns.”

“I know how to spot a fake.”

“You always saying you a jack of all trades at your shop. Maybe it’d be better if you rolled up all that knowledge and put it all here.”

“Don’t need to. Guns was the thing I knew before I started.”

“So you’re telling me you’ve covered everything that is or isn’t supposed to happen. I don’t jump off a cliff and figure my way down. Handful are stolen. Handful are oops, he missed that.”

The cell phone rings, Huddy’s, and he looks at the number and sees it’s home. “I won’t answer. Chri—”

“Best not,” Joe interrupts, and Huddy nods, but he likes it better when it’s himself saying what he’ll take and ignore.

He stops it ringing and says, “Where were we?”

“We were going off a
cliff
. With a bunch of stolen guns. With errors. What else?”

“Nothing.” Huddy’s hands open empty, but Joe’s mind is empty, too, all additional suspicions and complications and outcomes unnamed and unknown, so Huddy goes ahead. “That mean you in? I need to know before I call my buyers. You ain’t just gonna get up to the line and stop?”

Joe examines the list, squints to peer in at what’s wrong underneath but Huddy knows what’s poking through is what’s right. “Lemme think on this.”

“Sure. Take ten minutes.” Joe squinches a face. “It ain’t me. We gotta be ready to go. People lining up to get at these guns. The son’s gonna make trouble. Find a way to get between me and the deal. He’s talking to his mama right now putting a ton of crap in her head about auction and keeping some guns for himself and he’s got a wedding ring and you know he’s got kids, and he’s thinking about what Little Junior should have from granddad . . . and don’t forget about Uncle Bubba and . . . and what we promised to Cousin In-law.”

“Alright, calm down.”

“I can’t! Collectors gonna swoop down. His gun buddies—I’m surprised they didn’t bring a checkbook to the funeral. Please. Carry the body out the front door and the guns out the back. Everybody’s gonna get a piece, and if I’m calling the widow in a week it’ll be a lawyer answering the phone. I can’t sit on this, Joe. Yewell didn’t just buy from me. I’m bringing the cash in two days or the guns start evaporating.”

Joe’s eyes circle the list, not following lines or moving up and down columns, unsure of the order and how it’s divided and where to count, and Huddy’s about to instruct, tell him how ’64 is the magic date of Winchesters and everything here is pre-, but he pulls back from adding words and information when Joe taps his forehead and shakes his head and says, “I don’t like not knowing what I’m looking at.” He drops his hand down on the page.

“So go over there and look at ’em. See what’s actual. That’ll help you get it. You gonna get gun-happy. You be seeing the Golden Age of Guns. ’Course you gotta pay in first. Pay to play.”

Joe nods slowly, his hand patting the list.

“That a yes?”

“You saying there’s nothing stupid here? Nothing else we’re getting hung by?”

But Huddy knows he doesn’t have to answer because Joe’s voice is calmer than the words and he’s only staring inward.

Joe turns to the wall, studies it, his eyes squeezing small, and Huddy waits for him to return the short distance. “I’m saying yes.”

Huddy brushes his hand across the table and his fingers stick; some small mess or spill getting missed. The feeling surprises him, he almost laughs at what he felt, but he’s got bigger desires than pointing out an unclean table inside his brother’s house. “You ain’t just going over there to see about the land?”

“Fifty thousand dollars, you damn right I’m seeing about the land. But that doesn’t mean I’m bluffing you. I’m gonna look over the land. Have a little chat with this Southern-belle land baron. And then I’m gonna check out the guns.”

“But you paying in first. You ain’t just teasing me with the brink of something, just so you can set yourself up long-term.”

“Setting us both up long-term.”

Huddy nods. “Well, if you’re talking
us
—you can help me carry the guns out. ’Cause I’m gonna need more than my own hands. And you wouldn’t trust me with all your guns, right?” Huddy laughs and Joe rolls his eyes but then looks square.

“You got the security to hold ’em?”

“My system locks up tight. ’Course, with your work crews not working, you can always build me something extra in the back room. If you’re worrying. Build us a room within a room.”

Joe smiles. “I might just have to do that. Maybe you need some security from yourself. Being as how you have a thing for pretty guns.”

“You mean, the way you like to cream my merchandise? If it floats to the top, I can always count on you creaming it.” And Joe rolls his eyes for Huddy bringing up some old unfairness to spoil this even moment. “Another time, sure. I’d want to squirrel some away. Guns like these, they’d gimme a woodie at midnight. Except I got bigger plans. I’m buying my freedom, brother.”

“From me?”

“From me, too. And if you’re speaking of trust, you and me ain’t telling no one. This is a closed conversation. That includes wives.” Which Huddy would’ve said anyway, but especially after Joe silenced Huddy’s call. “No talk. Not until the guns are in the store, logged in, ’cause guns have a nasty habit of walking back out.”

“Nothing’s walking out.” And his arms stretch, not to shake Huddy’s hand but Huddy doesn’t need a hand brought to his own to know he’s made a bond with his brother. The deal is binding, the money’s getting transferred and his life’s becoming fixed.

Seven

Harlan’s truck is in
the street. Parked in front of Huddy’s house. Which isn’t surprising, some instinct of Harlan’s to be present when you don’t need him nearby, to go into hiding when you want him at hand. It’s like Huddy got followed from work, which was why he bought a home not only big and nice enough and in a quiet neighborhood away from the highway and traffic, but far enough away from the shop so no one ever tailed him back—except Harlan mistimed the arrival by getting here first. Still, after spending the hours in the big spaces of Germantown, Huddy feels where he works and lives are too close and the same.

He stares at the truck, the hood pocked from hail. The damage can’t be seen under streetlight, but Huddy saw the dented metal earlier. He turns to his house. Behind the blinds, Harlan’s head sits like a stone atop the armchair and Huddy studies it through the bars and glass. Then he climbs the porch steps and hears through the cracked window a cry that’s only TV; the amplified voice makes him want to tune out real ones, especially Harlan’s. He’ll be happy to see him—tomorrow. He wishes the doorbell could swing a trap beneath the chair and send Harlan belowground for the night, and when daybreak came and Huddy rose and ate breakfast, he could later dig him out and pull him up to light.

“Look who looks expensive,” Harlan says, his feet up on Huddy’s chair in the room Huddy comes home to. “Whoever pawned that coat must’ve paid serious chicken.”

Harlan’s talk already feeling on and on. “Thought you’d be out with KayKay.”

“I had to get back to my other job,” Harlan says, and Huddy waits for the next joke. “I’m a test pilot for La-Z-Boy recliners.” And Huddy still smiles at the rehearsed punchline, a line that wouldn’t be pointless on a different night, and he imagines hearing it then and laughs. Harlan lays back satisfied, but to Huddy it looks like he’s seated in a backseat, in a car that got pulled over. Or maybe he’s up against a wall. “Thing is, with KayKay, we’ve always been fast sweethearts. She’s not much into foreplay, dancing, songs. Ain’t much into romantic requests.” How little Huddy wants to hear about Harlan and KayKay’s rutting session, until Harlan says, “’Sides, I wanted to hear about your bonanza,” which is worse. “You find your fortune? Tell it, man. Don’t be modest.”

“It’s late, Harlan.” Huddy motions to the back room to start to leave.

“They sacked out. Little man must’ve took a tranquilizer, from the way he’s snoozing.”

Huddy crosses the room and hears from behind, “What was the family suicide gun? That granddad blew his head off with.” He turns back not to Harlan but the TV to see what’s reminding, if there’s some crime show or corpse triggering memories, but it’s a commercial, a skinny kid with a mohawk like a rat ate up the sides of his head, and the music’s blaring from his ears and his parents stand stunned, unhappy until they next sit under sunshine on a beach and hear only birds and ocean—so maybe the killing was before.

“Why you talking about dead family?”

“’Cause of the dead man you seen. Seeing about. A dead man with guns. Which got me thinking about how our granddad made himself dead with a gun.”

Huddy shakes his head at Harlan then at the TV, which is back to a program that isn’t crimes but sports but Huddy still won’t watch.

“Just saying how he ended it,” Harlan says. “And it was cancer. Illness. Bad health. Ain’t saying he gone crazy. Wait, it was our
great
-granddad, weren’t it? It was our daddy talking about
his
granddad. See, it don’t matter. He’s even older than what I thought. Even more ancestral.”

“How ’bout talking about his
life
?”

“That’s the only thing I know. Nothing else got passed down, except for what he done to his brains. How he left. If I told you a story about his life, I’d just be making it up. But tell about the deal. You buying selling trading? Buying to sell? Trading to buy? You gonna need some big-dog funds, ain’t you?”

“Which part you want me to answer?” Huddy feels likes he’s losing something more precious than sleep. Maybe he’ll doze through whatever Harlan says next.

“The last part. Well, you know where to go. You got one brother who’s puking money. Just borrow his checkbook. That’ll pay for you. Forging his signature’d be easy. His name’s small.”

And Huddy remains standing halfway in and out of the room, he won’t sit close on a couch beside his brother but stay behind the divider he built with the other, the promise of money probably glowing on his face. As much as Harlan talks, he’s alert to the business stored in Huddy’s mind. “All sorts of ways to raise money,” Huddy says. He wishes there was a door in the room to shut.

“Sure is. Lots of ways to scramble up cash. You ever think he got the wrong name? Huddy and Harlan—goes together. But Joe? Daddy, after he named us, he should’ve gone back and switched it. To Hank. Harlan and Huddy and Hank. Or Huey? Harlan and Huddy and Huey. Howie?”

Huddy shakes his head, Harlan like some kid who can’t tie the end of a string.

“Then we’d all sound the same. And equal. If I ever saw daddy again, that’d be the first thing I’d tell his face. His face—my face. Same, ain’t it? I got his, don’t I? More than two of you. I’m his lookalike, might say.”

But Huddy can’t tell which answer Harlan wants. But, yes: Put Harlan in bib overalls and he’s the spitting image. Those overalls—real good for lifting daddy’s drunk ass off the floor. When Huddy shakes his head of the memory, Harlan takes that for an answer.

“Fine. Anyway, what I’d say to him was he named the first one wrong. That he made Joe think he was different. Not that I’d want his name. Boring. But daddy, he made him a half-brother to us. You and me, we’s full. I think his first name came from somewhere else. Good thing our daddy’s name wasn’t a J—or I’da thought you and me was adopted.”

Huddy stares at Harlan’s mouth, at his loud words and thoughts not stopping, listening to Harlan is like hearing two people talking together who can’t understand who the other is, but then he remembers, suddenly, being little, his name fitting with Harlan and thinking, “Joe, what are you?” Harlan’s problem is he’s an adult with too much of his schoolboy self in his head. Too much of what should be gone isn’t.