Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [28]
—Funny? It’s the same shoes for less money. You ought to feel funny paying full price.
Bud looked down at little Lit, his angle against the weight of his big pistol. Drawing himself together, remembering his higher degree of suavity among the hillbillies, Bud said, Slim, you need a twenty-two. It would fit your hand better. One of those purse guns.
Lit closed the back step Bud had taken. He reached his .45 out, and Bud took it from him and turned it from one face to the other and studied it, like a message might be written in the diamonds of its grips.
Lit switched his beer to his shooting hand and pitched the half-full can toward the clay bank. It rolled, spewing, just a score of feet.
Lit said, Can you hit that?
—In my damn sleep.
—Well then, if it’s that easy, can you empty the clip into it?
—Step back and watch me.
Bud squared up and started shooting, pulling the trigger as fast as he could jerk it out.
The first round hit the can fine and knocked it spinning up against the bank. Then with every shot, the .45 began rising on him, like it wanted to haul back and strike him in the forehead. He fought to hold it down, and he lost. By the time the clip emptied, the barrel pointed about where the moon would be come midnight.
Lit said, Yeah, that’s how I figured.
—Shit. Let me see you do it.
Lit took back his empty pistol and packed it in its holster and snapped the flap over it.
—I tell you what, Lit said. When you can do it, I’ll do it.
Lit walked away. Immediately, several shooters came over to Bud with fresh beers. One of them said, Natural mistake. He was off duty and out of uniform.
—Off duty from what? Bud said. Pumping gas?
Laughing and delighted, they talked over one another, telling the new man the famous story about Deputy Lit and the burglars. How when Lit was first hired, many people around town thought him a figure of amusement due to his size. But that ended one night when three men set out to rob the dime store in the dark hours after midnight. The burglars carried guns for some fool reason. Lit surprised them in the alley as they came out the back door with their loot. Nineteen dollars, mostly in ones, from the cash drawer. And a brown paper sack of stuff they had scooped in leaving. A fat roll of a thousand Daisy BBs, a hawkbill knife with a fake bone handle, a red-and-white paper cylinder of Royal Crown pomade, and a pink rabbit’s-foot key chain. So, altogether, make it twenty-three dollars and change. It shouldn’t have amounted to much trouble at all. A fine would have taken care of it if the magistrate was in a good mood. Except when Lit turned his light on them and told them that they were under arrest, one of the burglars misjudged and pulled his pistol. Lit was afoot and off duty, making one last check of town on his way home. He had his flashlight and nothing else. Nevertheless, the flashlight was longer than Lit’s lower arm from elbow to fingertips, heavy with D batteries stacked down its black metal sleeve. When Lit was done, all three men ended up in the hospital, and the one that pulled the pistol nearly died. He never thought right from that mistaken moment forward. Even now, you could see him most days sitting on the bench outside the pool hall, a slow simple fellow with a deep pink dent in his forehead, smiling at everybody, a friend to mankind. Afterward, a rumor passed around that Lit had been a Ranger in the big war, which meant he could kill you barehanded ten different ways without breaking a sweat.
—Shit, Bud said at the end of the story. Shit, shit, shit.
One of the tale tellers, struggling to keep his mouth straight, said to Bud, You know what I think?
—What?
—Lit must have taken a shine to you.
So, Bud reckoned, a bad move for starters, calling attention to himself with the law. But don’t look back. You make your mistakes, and then fuck it. You don’t dwell, you move forward.
And sure enough, as night settled in and the marksmen quit shooting their guns and drank more beer and ran their mouths, they taught Bud something welcome. They bitched