what I'll say.
This was a satisfying thing to think, but her undermind knew
that she would of course say no such thing. In the Paulson house, it
was Joe who mostly picked the roads and drove the horses. She
supposed that it would be best to just dispose of it herself put it in a
plastic garbage bag under the other rickrack from the closet shelf.
The gun would go to the dump with everything else the next time
Vinnie Margolies stopped by to pick up their throw-out. Joe would
not miss what he had already forgotten the lid of the box had been
thick with undisturbed dust. Would not miss it, that was, unless she
was stupid enough to bring it to his attention.
'Becka reached the bottom of the ladder. Then she stepped
backward onto the Reader's Digest Condensed Book with her left
foot. The front board of the book slid backward as the rotted binding
gave way. She tottered, holding the gun with one hand and flailing
with the other. Her right foot came down on the pile of knitted caps,
which also slid backward. As she fell she realised that she looked
more like a woman bent on suicide than on cleaning.
Well, it ain't loaded, she had time to think, but the gun was
loaded, and it had been cocked; cocked for years, as if waiting for her
to come along. She sat down hard in the hallway and when she did
the hammer of the pistol snapped forward. There was a flat,
unimportant bang not much louder than a baby firecracker in a tin
cup, and a .22 Winchester short entered 'Becka Paulson's brain just
above the left eye. It made a small black hole what was the faint blue
of just-bloomed irises around the edges.
Her head thumped back against the wall, and a trickle of blood
ran from the hole into her left eyebrow. The gun, with a tiny thread of
white smoke rising from its muzzle, fell into her lap. Her hands
drummed lightly up and down on the floor for a period of about five
seconds, her right leg flexed, then shot straight out. Her loafer flew
across the hall and hit the far wall. Her eyes remained open for the
next thirty minutes, the pupils dilating and constricting, dilating and
constricting.
Ozzie Nelson came to the living-room door, miaowed at her,
and then began washing himself.
She was putting supper on the table that night before Joe
noticed the Band-Aid over her eye. He had been home for an hour
and a half, but just lately he didn't notice much at all around the
house he seemed preoccupied with something, far away from her a
lot of the time. This didn't bother her as much as it might have once
at least he wasn't always after her to let him put his manthing into her
ladyplace.
'What'd you do to your head?' he asked as she put a bowl of
beans and a plate of red hot dogs on the table.
She touched the Band-Aid vaguely. Yes what exactly had she
done to her head? She couldn't really remember. The whole middle of
the day had a funny dark place in it, like an inkstain. She
remembered feeding Joe his breakfast and standing on the porch as he
