straight into their pockets. Or they use it for all those programs where they spy on what’s in your trash and read your mail. It’s true—I saw a special on it.”
“Uh, yeah.” Stella decided not to argue; she was still a little light-headed. “That’s too bad. I do have a good flashlight, though.”
“Good, ’cause we don’t want to buy too much. Because the checker might notice. I was kind of thinking we want to draw as little attention as we can to ourselves here. That’s why we’re driving over to the Wal-Mart in Casey, you know?”
“Good thinking, sugar,” Stella said. “Plus, there’s an Arby’s near there, isn’t there?”
Chrissy perked up and nodded. “Yes, I think there is. I sure love that roast beef, don’t you? The way they slice it up so nice and thin? My sister Sue won’t eat it because she says it’s all parts mashed up fine and then re- formed, but I say, why, that’s the same as Spam, ain’t it? And everybody likes Spam.”
“That they do,” Stella said, smiling despite the pain in her busted lip. “That they do.”
Stella figured she needed to go long on iron and protein, so she had a Super Roast Beef sandwich. It was time to quit messing around and treat the situation like what it was: serious.
Within the hour they were back in Stella’s kitchen. Stella laid old towels on the kitchen table and got down her shoebox of gun-cleaning supplies from a cabinet over the refrigerator. She had brought the Ruger in from the Jeep; it was already clean, but it felt good to break it down and go through the motions.
Across the table, Chrissy carefully disassembled the Makarov, laying the filthy parts out in a neat row. She picked up the cleaning rod and the solvent and went to work on the receiver, humming softly.
“Jesus, Chrissy, anybody ever clean their firearms over at your house?”
“Sure they do, the ones they use. But I didn’t want to take Daddy’s everyday guns, you know? On account of he might need ’em and all.”
Stella, wondering what constituted the need for an everyday handgun, remembered her pledge to be more respectful of the girl and kept her mouth shut.
“You clean guns much?” she asked instead.
“Of course,” Chrissy said, rolling her eyes. “Daddy made all us girls learn to take care of the rifles before he let us shoot squirrels. We had a couple of Marlins and they never had a speck on ’em. We used to have contests to see who could get them took apart and put back together the quickest.”
That was quite a vision; Stella imagined the little tykes lined up at the supper table waiting their turn at the guns, a row of Lardner girls with blond pigtails and rosy cheeks.
“Well then, I guess I’ll let you clean that thing up. After that we’re gonna go out and shoot a few cans. Sound all right?”
“Yeah.”
For a while they worked in silence. Stella went over the Ruger with a tiny utility brush and then polished it with a silicone cloth.
“Stella?” Chrissy said after a while.
“Mmm-hmm?”
“You got anything to snack on? I have to tell you, I’m just a little bit nervous. And when I get nervous I get hungry, you know?”
Stella knew. She was the same way. She also got hungry when she was worried or pissed off about something or bored. She smiled. “How about I make us some popcorn?”
“Oh, that’d be perfect.”
Stella got out her mother’s old soup pot. Added the oil and a good layer of kernels. Put a stick of butter in the microwave to melt and shook the pot when the corn started popping inside.
She tossed the popcorn with the butter and a few good shakes of salt and set the bowl in the middle of the table. As the two of them sat munching on the popcorn and sipping ginger ale and cleaning the guns, Stella noticed she was feeling something that she hadn’t felt for a long time.
The scent of gun oil mingled with the buttery popcorn aroma, and the silence between her and Chrissy was companionable. Stella closed her eyes for a moment and remembered other times she’d sat around this very same table.
It had been her parents’ kitchen table. On Sundays, Stella liked to sit with her dad while he shined his shoes before church, handing him the rags and the tins of polish and the big brush, happy to be his assistant in such an important chore.
Later, her parents got a new table and gave the old one to Stella and Ollie. Noelle used to sit at the table for her after-school snack, coloring with her crayons, her little legs swinging, not long enough to touch the floor.
When Noelle was in high school, Stella waited up for her to come back from dates with Schooner, the high school boyfriend Stella wished she’d held on to, the one Noelle liked before she developed a taste for losers. They would sit at the table and sip tea and Noelle would describe every little detail of the pizza they’d shared or the movie they saw and Stella would listen and try to hold on to every moment, knowing her baby was growing up.
Now she was at this same table with Chrissy, and as much as she missed her own daughter, she was happy to have the girl’s company.
The thought that she was dragging Chrissy into the midst of a bunch of crazed, armed criminals hit her in the gut—followed fast by a memory of Lorelle. Or rather, of Lorelle’s feet, white and bloodless and puckered from all that time in the water, floating just below the murky surface in the rain barrel.
“You know,” she said, voice shaky, as Chrissy scoured out the spare magazine with a cotton patch. “You don’t have to come along tonight. I can do this by myself.”
Chrissy snorted. “Like hell. I’m not staying here.”
“It’s just—you know. There’s a chance things could blow up. You should think about what you’re getting into.”
“I guess I know enough. Roy Dean’s done something stupider than I ever thought he could. Got himself involved with guys mean enough that they’ll beat up an old lady. Oh, I mean, not
“Jeez, Chrissy, I’m
“You
“Well… thanks.” Stella brightened a little. The first time she’d gone jogging, in an old pair of Keds and baggy leggings, she’d made it halfway around the block before she had to stop and walk home, wheezing the entire way. Now she was up to ten-mile runs through town and out dusty farm roads. She might not look it, but she was in the best shape of her life, which was a good thing, since she was planning to take on a bunch of guys who were a lot more fresh-minted.
“Yeah, so, what do you think it is anyway? Drugs? Prob’ly drugs; seems like that’s what people get craziest over.”
Stella considered whether she ought to tell Chrissy everything she knew. She owed it to the girl, really; it wasn’t right to leave her in the dark.
“Listen, honey. When I went over to talk to Benning yesterday, I had a little more than a feeling about what- all he was up to. See, the night before… when I said I was going to Lovie Lee’s divorce party?”
“You didn’t,” Chrissy said. “I should have figured.”
Stella told Chrissy what Arthur Junior had said about the car theft. Chrissy, who had finished cleaning and wiping off all the gun parts and was working on putting them back together, stopped working and listened with her head shaking slowly back and forth.
“Figures, don’t it? Do you know Roy Dean still had all his Matchbox cars in this big old paint bucket in the garage? Threw out my box of bridesmaid dresses because he said we didn’t have room, but we got to keep those stupid cars.”
“Boys will be boys, I guess,” Stella shrugged.
“Boys will be assholes, more like,” Chrissy said. She held up the reassembled gun and turned it this way and that, gleaming under the kitchen light.
“Okay, Stella,” she said. “I’m locked and loaded. Show me something I can shoot the shit out of.”
