A World of Thieves

“It’s one less hardcase in the world,” I said, and headed back to the car. I released the revolver’s cylinder and put my thumb over the two live rounds still in it and shook out the empty shells. I had a box of .38 cartridges under the driver’s seat and I got it out and reloaded.

She lingered over the snake a moment before coming back to the car. “Nice shooting, huh?” I was a little surprised to realize I’d been showing off, that I wanted to impress her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Nice.” There was something else on her mind.

“What?” I said.

“Sonny,” she said. It was the voice she used when she didn’t quite know how to broach a subject. She looked over at a bunch of prickly pear, then off at the mountains, then finally back at me. “Teach me?”

“What? You mean shoot?”

“Yeah.”

“You never fired a gun?”

“Daddy was always going to show me but never did get the chance.”

I took the bullets out of the .38 and passed it to her so she could get the feel of its heft and its fit in her grip. I showed her how to stand sidelong to the target to shoot with one hand and how to face it when you shoot with two and how to use the front sight. I showed her how to squeeze the trigger rather than jerk it. How to cock the hammer and uncock it again without firing. How to unlock the cylinder and how the ejector rod worked and how to load the chambers.

“I love the sounds of it,” she said. She spun the cylinder to hear its soft whirr. She cocked the hammer with its softly ratcheting double click and snapped it on an empty chamber. “It sounds so…I don’t know. Efficient.”

“That’s the word for it,” I said.

I gathered a few stones about the size of my fist and set them in a row on top of a waist-high mound of sand, then backed up about a dozen yards and reloaded the piece and handed it to her. I told her to shoot into the mound first, to get used to the report and the recoil.

She stood facing forward with a two-hand grip. Pop! She flinched hardly at all. She turned and looked at me and silently formed the word, “Wow!” Then stood sideways and fired two one-hand shots.

“Oh man!” she said. “I can do this. Watch the rock on the right.”

She took careful aim. Pop! Sand spurted an inch to the side of the rock.

“Hey girl, almost.” I was impressed.

“Almost is for horseshoes,” she said without looking at me, taking aim again, the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth. Missing again, this time by a slightly wider margin.

“Dammit!”

She drew another bead and held it. Then lowered the revolver to her waist and regarded the rock like she was seeing it in some different way. Then brought the gun up smoothly and fired and the rock went flying.

“Whooo!” I applauded. “Give em hell, Kitty Belle!”

She whirled around to me, wide-eyed. “Know how I did it? I didn’t think about it or even aim so much, I just sort of up and pointed at it, like with my finger. It felt, I don’t know, so natural.”

“I’ll be damn,” I said. “Fired six rounds in her life and already she’s giving lessons how to shoot.” I was smiling when I said it, but I was also flat amazed.

She opened the cylinder and shoved out the empty shells with the ejector rod. “More bullets, please,” she said.

I let her shoot up the whole box. She missed about as much as she hit but she always came close. It was damn good shooting, any way you looked at it. And you could see she loved it. It was in the brightness of her eyes, in the way she set herself to fire, in her eagerness to reload. By the time she’d used up the last of the cartridges she was as easy with a gun as she was behind the wheel of a car. It comes that naturally to some.

“Not bad, girl,” I said when she was done. “If you want, I’ll bring the .380 tomorrow and show you how to shoot that.”

She leaped into my arms, locking her legs around my waist and giving me an unintentional conk on the back of the head with the revolver in her hand.

“Oh I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, and kissed my head—and then we were both laughing as I swung her around.

We stopped at the swimming hole to cool off before going home. There were a few kids there, swinging on the rope and splashing around, but they left pretty soon after we arrived, and we had the place to ourselves. We dogpaddled over to a shady spot under a dense overhang of tree branches where we could stand with the water up to our necks. We ran our hands all over each other under the water and she undid my pants and took hold of me and I slipped my hand up under her dress and underwear and we hugged close and gasped against each other’s neck as we used our hands on each other and a minute later both of us groaned with our climax. Then hugged and kissed and got into another laughing fit.

“You really think I’m good?” she said. “At shooting, I mean. You really?” She looked radiant. Her face had fully healed and every passing day I’d marveled even more at how truly lovely she was.

“Your daddy didn’t know the half of it,” I said. “You’re a regular Barney Oldfield and a regular Annie Oakley.”

And so, a week later, when I told her what I had in mind and she said she wanted to do the job with me, I said, “Well now, I don’t know about that. Let me think about it.”

The truth was, I’d been thinking about it for days.

The day after the arrival of Bubber’s telegram, we heard Russell and Charlie arguing in their room. He’d had her go into town that morning and buy a crutch—“To have ready for when I’m able,” he’d said. But when she got back with it he wanted to use it immediately. He said he needed to get up and walk around some before he went crazy from being on his ass day and night.

“I knew it!” she said. “What a dope I am! The doctor said to stay off that leg a month and you know it.”

“What the hell do doctors know? I’m turning into a goddam vegetable lying here all day.”

“If you put weight on the leg before it’s ready you might hurt it worse. It needs to mend more.”

“That’s what a crutch is for, to keep weight off it. Now quit arguing and hand it over here.”

“No. Quit acting like such a child!”

“Quit acting like my goddam mother!”

She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her and stomped into the kitchen to snatch up her cigarettes without a glance at me and Belle and headed out the back door, letting it bang shut on its spring. Belle gave me a look and then went after her.

I went to Russell’s door and opened it. He was sitting up on the edge of the bed looking gloomy.

“Jesus,” he said. “Bad enough without having to put up with her shit too.”

He gestured for the crutch leaning in the corner and I got it for him.

“Easy does it,” I said, helping him up and slipping the crutch under his arm.

“Beep beep,” he said to get me out of his way. He stepped off a few awkward paces, repositioned the crutch for a more comfortable fit, then slowly gimped out of the room and into the parlor and all around it and came back down the hall and into the kitchen. Bracing himself on his good leg, he eased down into a chair and let out a hard breath.

“Christ damn,” he said. “Feel like I run a mile.” His face shone with sweat.

I checked the bandages. The one on his back was still spotless, but there were a couple of rosy stains showing on the back of the one around his leg.

“Best keep off it yet for a while longer,” I said.

“Goddammit,” he muttered.

I offered to get him a cold soda pop but he said the hell with that, give him a beer. I got one for each of us and sat across from him and we clinked bottles in a silent toast and drank. Then I told him about our tight money situation and asked how much he had.

“Had about twenty bucks on me in Midland,” he said. “Charlie’s probably spent most of it by now.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s only one thing for it.”

“Hell kid, I’ll be ready to go in a few days. First we deliver Buck and then we get back to working Bubber’s