Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [74]
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Jody said to Jaynee. Earl had disappeared inside the house. “You know your father well enough by now to know that.” Jody stood up and walked to the yard’s back fence. “Your father thinks that women and guns are a terrible combination.”
“He always said I should watch out for myself,” Jaynee said, her back to us. She pulled a cookie out of her pocket and began to eat it.
“Not with a gun,” Jody said.
“He showed me how to use it,” the daughter said loudly. “I’m not ignorant about firearms.” She didn’t seem especially interested in the way the conversation was going.
“That was just information,” Jody said. “It wasn’t for you to use.” She was standing and waiting for Earl to reappear. I didn’t do work like this, and I didn’t hear conversations like this during the rest of the week, and so I was the only person still dismantling the play structure when Earl reappeared in the backyard with the revolver in his right hand. He had his shirtsleeve pulled back so anybody could see the tattoo of the rose run through with the saber on his forearm. Because I didn’t know what he was going to do with that gun, I thought I had just better continue to work.
“The ninth law in your bedroom,” Earl announced, “says you use violence only in self-defense.” He stepped to the fence, then held his arm straight up into the air and fired once. That sound, that shattering, made me drop my wrench. It hit the ground with a clank, three inches from my right foot. Through all the backyards of Westland I heard the blast echoing. The neighborhood dogs set up a barking chain; front and back doors slammed.
Earl was breathing hard and staring at his daughter. We were in a valley, I thought, of distinct silence. “That’s all the bullets I own for that weapon,” he said. He put the gun on the doorstep. Then he made his way over to where his daughter was sitting. There’s a kind of walk, a little stiff, where you know every step has been thought about, every step is a decision. This was like that.
Jaynee was munching the last of her cookie. Her father grabbed her by the shoulders and began to shake her. It was like what you see in movies, someone waking up a sleepwalker. Back and forth her head tossed. “Never never never never never,” he said. I started to laugh, but it was too crazed and despairing to be funny. He stopped. I could see he wanted to make a parental speech: his face was tightening up, his flesh stiff, but he didn’t know how to start it, the right choice for the first word, and his daughter pushed him away and ran into the house. In that run, something happened to me, and I knew I had to get out of there.
I glanced at Jody, the new woman. She stood with her hands in her blue jeans. She looked bored. She had lived here all her life. What had just happened was a disturbance in the morning’s activities. Meanwhile, Earl had picked up a board and was tentatively beating the ground with it. He was staring at the revolver on the steps. “I got to take that gun and throw it into Ford Lake,” he said. “First thing I do this afternoon.”
“Have to go, Earl,” I said. Everything about me was getting just a little bit out of control, and I thought I had better get home.
“You’re going?” Earl said, trying to concentrate on me for a moment. “You’re going now? You’re sure you don’t want another beer?”
I said I was sure. The new woman, Jody, went over to Earl and whispered something to him. I couldn’t see why, right now, out loud, she couldn’t say what she wanted to say. Christ, we were all adults, after all.
“She wants you to take that .22 and throw it,” Earl said. He went over to the steps, picked up the gun, and returned to where I was standing. He dropped it into my hand. The barrel was warm, and the whole apparatus smelled of cordite.
“Okay, Earl,” I said. I held this heavy object in my hand, and I had the insane idea that my life was just beginning. “You have any particular preference about where I should dispose