“ Sorry.”
“ If you’re gonna come, you gotta be quiet and careful or we both might get dead.”
“ What if it doesn’t work?” she asked again.
“ Then we’ll probably both get dead anyway, so we gotta try.” He was halfway out before she was finished with her shoes, but he was having trouble finding the plastic milk crate with his foot.
“ What’s the matter?”
“ The crate’s gone,” he said, letting go and jumping down.
“ Who could have moved it?” Carolina whispered as Arty helped her to the ground.
“ Who do you think?”
“ Anybody could have come in here and moved it,” she said.
“ Sure,” he said, because he knew who’d moved the crate.
He led the way on his hands and knees, scooting through the bushes. He wished he had a flashlight, because he wanted to explore all the dark places between the two houses and see if he could spot the milk crate. The hair on the back of his neck stood up when he thought that maybe the wolf was back there with them, hiding in the bushes back by the fence. Watching and waiting. He felt better when he cleared the bushes and was standing up on the dew damp front lawn.
“ Ouch,” Carolina said and Arty jumped.
“ What?”
“ I scratched my hand,” she said as he helped her up.
“ Is it bleeding?” he asked.
“ I don’t think so. I wish they’d fix that streetlight, then I’d be able to see.”
Arty looked up and down the block. “I didn’t notice before,” he said, “but the only two lights working on your street are the ones at the corners. The two in the middle are out.”
“ Yeah,” she said, “it’s kinda spooky. I wish they would hurry up and fix them.”
“ Streetlights are never out more than a day. And you never see more than one out on a street. I oughtta know. When a light blows they fix it the next day, or the day after at the very latest. They’re real good about that. These lights have been off for three days.”
“ What are you saying?”
“ They were off Monday night, so they would’ve fixed ’em Tuesday or yesterday.”
“ Maybe they didn’t fix them?”
“ They fixed ’em. They never miss.”
“ Then why aren’t they working?”
“ The wolf lady,” he said.
“ The wolf lady,” she repeated.
“ Yeah.”
Carolina shivered and took Arty’s hand, a gesture that only a few days ago would have set his young heart thumping, but now seemed natural as rain. They drew strength and courage from each other as they walked the early morning streets toward his house.
“ There it is,” Arty said, pointing to a white house with a detached garage.
“ My papers aren’t here yet, so we’ll make the shells first.” He led her into the garage and turned on the light.
“ Kinda cold,” she said.
“ I got an extra jacket you can wear when we finish here.”
“ That it?” She pointed to a machine that looked like a combination food processor and meat grinder.
“ Yeah.” He opened a drawer under the counter and took out various sized boxes.
She watched as his expression turned serious. His fingers were nimble and it was obvious he knew what he was doing.
“ You’re supposed to weigh the powder,” he said, “but I never do. I’ve done this so many times I could do it blindfolded and asleep.” He dipped a tablespoon into the bag and shook the black powder off, till it was level on the spoon. Then he poured the powder into a brass shotgun shell with hands still and steady.
Arty had lined up ten empty shells along a wooden workbench in his father’s garage, although technically it wasn’t his father’s anymore, he thought, wondering if his dad was in heaven or hell, and betting it was hell. Anybody that could beat his wife and kids belonged in hell, ’cuz that’s why God made it.
He also wondered about Carolina’s father, and why he was in town secretly. Why had he shot the gun off in her front yard? Was he shooting at the wolf lady? Is that why he was here? To protect her? Was he the man in the tent at the end of the clearing, or was it someone else?
Arty picked up the first shell and set it under the machine.
“ It looks like a drill press,” she said.
“ How do you know what a drill press looks like?”
“ We had one in the garage in Atlanta. It belonged to the landlord.” Her teeth chattered a little and Arty noticed the goosebumps on her arms.
“ Want me to get the jacket now?”
“ No, I’ll wait.”
“ This is the wad column,” he said, talking to take her mind off the cold, “It’s used to separate the buckshot from the powder.” He inserted the plastic wad into the shell. “You gotta get a tight seal or else the pellets don’t get maximum velocity. That means they don’t go out of the gun hard enough to kill anything.” He was talking like a TV doctor during an operation.
“ Next comes the dimes.” He squeezed ten dimes into the top of the twelve gauge shell. They barely fit and he was worried the shells would be too tight in the barrel and cause the gun to blow up in his face. But he’d gone this far, and he was convinced this was the only way to kill the wolf lady.
“ Okay, the final step,” he said as he pulled the handle down on the reloader, crimping and closing the shell. “Nine more to go.” He repeated the process nine more times, talking his way through each shell.
Once finished, he loaded the shotgun with five shells, then handed the rest to Carolina, who, without a word, put them in her backpack to keep Sheila company.
A squeal of brakes from outside told Arty his papers had arrived.
“ Can you ride a bike?” Arty asked.
“ Of course.”
“ Then you can ride my old one while I deliver the papers,” he said, as he put the boxes containing the buckshot and powder away. Then he looked for a place to hide the shells and decided on putting them in his dad’s tool kit, but he caught himself. His father was dead and he didn’t have to hide them or anything else ever again. He left them on the counter and said, “Let’s go fold some papers.”
“ Can you get me that jacket?”
“ Sure, follow me.” He thought about climbing in the window, but decided with his father gone, he didn’t have to. An eight-point-five earthquake couldn’t get his mother up before dawn. So he used his key and opened the front door, leading Carolina into the house.
Carolina tiptoed behind Arty as he made his way to his bedroom. All the lights in the house were off, but there were little nightlights plugged into the wall sockets, so it was easy to move around in the dark. She was right behind Arty when he turned on the light.
“ Mom,” he exclaimed and his mother opened her eyes. She had been sleeping in his bed.
“ Good morning, Arthur.”
“ I like to be called Arty now.”
“ You never liked it before.”
“ I do now.”
“ Okay, Arty, you didn’t come home last night, or the night before that, or the night before that either.”
“ Sorry, I had stuff to do.”
“ I didn’t say anything because of your father, but he’s gone now and all we have is each other.”
“ He has me, too,” Carolina said and Arty’s mother noticed her.
“ Well, who are you?”
“ Carolina Coffee.”
