I went around to the driver’s side. “Move over.”
She scooted nimbly across the center console. I got behind the wheel. “Know how to use a gun?” I asked.
“Big one like a rifle, or a little one?”
“How about a revolver? That’s a little one. A handgun.”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then: “My dad and one of my uncles took me to a firing range when I was thirteen or fourteen, something like that. I shot a .22 rifle and—I think—an automatic. It might’ve been like a .33 or something. Didn’t have a big huge kick to it.”
“They don’t make a .33. It might’ve been a .32 or a .35.”
She shrugged.
A few miles from the highway, on a slope into the foothills, nothing but rocks and weeds all around, I stopped the car and we got out. I opened the trunk and the lockbox, got out two revolvers—a sturdy SP101 Ruger .357 Magnum with a 2.9-inch barrel, and a little S&W .32.
I handed her the .32.
“We gonna kill things?” she asked, holding the gun between thumb and index finger as if it were a dead fish.
“The way you’re holding that gun, target practice might be a good thing. Just in case.”
“In case of what. Jihadists?”
“In case of anything. Trouble. Jo-X is dead, in case you forgot. We don’t know what might be going on around here.”
She looked at the gun, dangling from her fingers like a piece of week-old road kill. “Is this thing loaded?”
“Not yet.”
I took the gun from her, opened a box of .32 ammo, swung the cylinder out and put in five rounds, snapped the cylinder back in place. “Now it is,” I said.
“Oh, great.”
I handed it to her. “Keep it pointed away from yourself or me. Or the car. You need to think about what would happen if the gun were to fire, even accidentally, where the bullet would go.”
“Great,” she said again.
I loaded the Ruger. On the drive from Vegas, we’d each had a 20-oz plastic bottle of water. I got a viciously sharp CRKT knife out of the lockbox and cut the tops off the empties. I scooped up enough dust to weigh them down, set them a couple feet apart about twenty-five feet away, then came back.
“Okay, here’s the way it goes. You don’t just blast away. You get a reasonable sight picture before you pull the trigger. If that takes you an extra half second, it’s worth it.”
“A sight picture?”
I drew her a diagram in the dust. “Like this.” I pointed out the front and rear sights of her .32, had her line them up on a bottle. She closed one eye and wrinkled her nose as she squinted along the barrel. “Got it?” I asked.
“I guess.”
“If you have to use the gun, odds are your target will be less than thirty feet away, usually less than fifteen. In a gunfight, six or eight feet wouldn’t be uncommon.”
“A gunfight. Smokin’.”
“Beyond thirty feet you can pretty much forget about hitting anything—unless you’re an expert.”
“Right. Gunfights at thirty feet.”
“Here’s a little factoid: If your aim is off by just two degrees at thirty feet, you’ll miss by more than a foot. Which means it’s unlikely you’d hit anything useful. Like a man.”
“Learning stuff like crazy.”
I gave her a look. “Are you taking any of this seriously?”
“Sure. Thirty feet. Aim. Don’t blast away.”
I sighed. “Okay, watch. I’ll take the bottle on the left.” I gave her some foam earplugs, packed two in my ears, then lined up the sights, squeezed the trigger, and missed. Well, the bottle was only two inches wide, and I’d forgotten that the Ruger, with its fixed sights, fired a skosh left. I fired four more rounds, hit the bottle three times in eight seconds.
“Okay,” I said. “Your turn. The gun will kick a little, but not a lot. It won’t hurt you. Take your time.”
At which point she dropped into a stance, two-fisted combat grip, and hit the right-hand bottle four times in five seconds.
“Well, shit,” I said, staring at the perforated bottle. “You blasted away. I told you not to do that.”
“Was that okay?” she said with enough sugar in her voice to put a diabetic into a coma.
“I’ve been fuckin’ had.”
“Not yet, you haven’t. But you will. If not tonight then, I don’t know. Sometime soon.”
“I meant right here, now.”
“I know what you meant. Kinda fun, though, listening to all that NRA stuff. It never hurts to review the basics.”
“Shit. So, what’s the story, Sugar Plum?”
“The story is that I’ve had a concealed carry permit since I was twenty-one. My dad insisted since I’ve been sort of traveling around by myself. I’ve got a .38 in my suitcase loaded with plus-P ammo, and I find a firing range five or six times a year and fire at least four boxes, sometimes as much as eight, fifty rounds a box. Dad insisted, and I like doing it.”
“Well, shit.”
“But this little .32 was fun. Hardly any recoil.” She popped the cylinder out, ejected the brass, handed the gun back to me, barrel down. “It’s pretty wimpy, though. If you don’t mind, I’ll use my own. It’s got a lot more stopping power.”
“You never said a word about having a gun.”
“You didn’t ask. And there’s lots of things I haven’t told you. You don’t even know where I went to high school or if I went to the prom.”
“Well, shit.”
“Your vocabulary could use upgrading, though.”
“Well, fuck. And—no prom. Entire junior and senior class was probably terrified of you.”
“That’s better. And, wrong, I wore a dark blue gown.”
We packed up our stuff. Before we left, Lucy got her .38 out of her suitcase and buckled it around her waist in a black nylon holster. Not knowing what we might run into, I did the same with my .357. We took off, headed uphill. I drove. Two miles later, I said, “Art history major, shit.”
Lucy
