Lola on Fire

by Rio Youers

  She left the bedroom, still behind her pistol. Brody heard doors opening. He dropped his bag, sat on the edge of her bed, and looked numbly around. It was an unloved space, appropriate for an unloved person. There was no softness or delicacy. The walls were painted sunflower yellow (many years ago, judging by the water marks and discoloration), and were bare except for a small painting of a horse. The dresser housed no perfumes or makeup, only an iPad and a stack of magazines. Clothes were draped over the back of a chair. There was a paperback on the floor next to the bed. No nightstands. Brody felt an odd grief for her, then realized this wasn’t his mother’s room—his mother, Natalie Ellis née Myles, who’d laughed with him and loved him and sat him on the throne of her world. This was Lola Bear’s room, and Lola was an obdurate killer with a paperweight for a heart.

  “Killer,” he mumbled through dry lips. And yes, that was why he was here, the only reason. This wasn’t about reuniting with his mom like some desperate cub. It was about getting Jimmy Latzo off his back and avenging his father’s death.

  I need you to focus. Can you do that for me?

  Brody stood up, blinked several times, breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Gooseflesh rippled his arms.

  “I’ve got this,” he said to himself, then Lola came back into the room and thrust a semiautomatic rifle into his hands.

  * * *

  She opened the window. A cold breeze lifted the curtains and puffed the hair from Brody’s brow. It felt wonderful. Unlike the rifle he held—the very real, very lethal gun, which had never top-fired blanks, and couldn’t be bought for sixty bucks and a baseball cap. A metallic taste flooded Brody’s mouth. He pined for his replica.

  Lola registered the dumbfounded expression on his face (he thought it must be hard to miss). “That’s an MMR Carbine,” she said. “Built on the AR-15 platform.”

  “It’s a fucking assault rifle.”

  “Technically, it’s not, because it’s semi, not fully automatic. A bullshit distinction, if you ask me, because it’ll still fire as fast as you can cycle the trigger.” Lola swept the magazines onto the floor, spun the iPad onto the bed, and dragged the dresser over to the window. “It’s designed to perform devastating damage, very quickly. So yeah, it’s a fucking assault rifle.”

  Brody looked from the MMR, to his mom, then back again. “What do you expect me to do with it?”

  “Do you know that one in five guns bought legally in this country is an AR-15, or variant? It’s the nation’s number-one choice for home defense.” She gestured out the window. “So . . . defend.”

  Brody didn’t move. The rifle wasn’t heavy—it was surprisingly light, in fact—but lifting it was another matter.

  “Listen to me,” Lola said, stepping toward him. He edged backward, as if she were an animal with a tendency to bite. “Everything between the tree line and the house is my land. It’s wide open. No cover. I don’t think you’ll have to pull the trigger. But if you do, don’t worry about accuracy, just aim toward the assailant. Get anywhere close and they’ll retreat or go prone. If there’s more than one, alternate between them. I’ll assist from the room next door, and I’ll also cover the front in case they come from both directions.”

  “I don’t know if I can shoot at someone,” Brody said, but recalled that he could, if sufficiently pushed. The incident in Bayonet dashed across his mind, and he remembered the hard shift he’d felt inside—the sudden and unnerving coldness in his veins. A little something he’d inherited from his mom, as it turned out. “I just . . . I . . .”

  “It’s time to snap into survival mode. Now watch.” Lola knelt in front of the dresser, her arms poised, demonstrating position. “Four points of contact: shooting hand, supporting hand, shoulder, and cheek. Bring the sights to your eye, not the other way around. Use the dresser for stability, and don’t grip the gun too tightly.”

  “This can’t be happening,” Brody whispered.

  “Oh, it’s happening,” Lola assured him. “And if you need extra motivation: just know that anybody who approaches from that direction likely had a hand in killing your father, and that they’re coming here to kill us both.”

  A blank expression from Brody. His mind was anything but; he imagined gray-faced mobsters accosting his old man, dragging him into the service elevator of the Folgt Building, then dangling him from the rooftop while Jimmy fired questions.

  He imagined those same mobsters emerging from the woods at the back of his mom’s land, weapons strapped to their bodies.

  Lola grasped his shoulder—man, she was strong—positioned him in front of the dresser, kicked the back of his right leg so he dropped to one knee. “Supporting hand here, on the handguard.” She moved his left hand into position, palm beneath and thumb over the barrel. “Shooting hand here, on the pistol grip.” Same again, placing his right hand where it needed to be. “All fingers stay clear of the trigger guard until you have a target. Understand?”

  “Yes,” he said, and here came the adrenaline—bouncing and tumbling, like barrels going downhill.

  “Now pull the buttstock into your shoulder. Here.” She showed him, placing her hands over his and drawing back until the stock was tucked into the pocket of his right shoulder. “That’s good. Keep it on the inside. Nice and secure. Remember: bring the sights toward you, don’t hunker over the gun.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yes, but you’re twisting your body. Square your shoulders as much as you can, tuck your elbows in. That’ll help with recoil and shot recovery—that’s the adjustment your body and the rifle need to make between shots. The smaller the adjustment, the better.”

  “It’s a lot to remember,” Brody gasped. The window might be open, but there was less oxygen in the room, he was sure of it.

  “The safety selector is here, just north of the pistol grip. You don’t have to hunt for it; inch your right thumb up and you’ll find it.”

  “This thing?”

  “Yes. Thumb the switch down when you’re ready to fire—ready being the operative word. Do not engage the safety until you have mounted the rifle and acquired a target.”

  “Which won’t happen,” Brody said. He glanced at his mom with big eyes. “They won’t come this way, right?”

  “I doubt it,” Lola said. “But we need to be ready, just in case. Now, this is a semiautomatic rifle, which means—”

  “I know what it means. One bullet for every trigger pull. There’s been enough on TV about guns lately.” He palmed sweat from his brow, then got back into position. “None of it good.”

  “When fatigue sets in—and it will, into your arms and legs—get up and shake it out. Stretch. Take five. But keep your eye on that window. If you see movement at the tree line, it’s probably a deer. Use the optic if you want to make sure.” She tapped a knurled wheel on the riflescope. “This adjusts the magnification. Play around with it a little. Get comfortable.”

  Brody nodded, swallowed awkwardly. Lola stared at him for a second, then—unbelievably—kissed the top of his head and swept from the room.

  “We need to talk,” she called from the hallway. “We’ll do it later. For now, I need your help to keep us alive.”

  * * *

  His mom never asked if he’d been followed. Quite aside from it being an inane question, it was, in this instance, entirely redundant. His very presence had put her on high alert. Being holed up, scoping her acreage for threats, was not the retaliatory response he’d hoped for, but did he honestly expect her to smear greasepaint across her face, strap an RPG to her back, and take the fight to Jimmy? Okay, so he’d fantasized as much on the journey here, but the reality was different. They would need to withstand the impending assault, then pick up the pieces—hopefully Jimmy’s—after the smoke had cleared.

  The minutes stretched out. Twenty . . . forty-five . . . eighty. Lola called to him every so often. “Give me a status report,” and, less militarily, “Anything, Brody?” This was obviously to keep him on his toes. On one
occasion she asked, with a note of concern, “How are you holding up?”

  “Been better,” he called back.

  More than once, he told himself that it had been a good decision to leave Molly with Renée. If he’d done anything right during this whole nightmare, it was that.

  His adrenaline evaporated deep into the second hour. Brody set the rifle down, stood up, and stretched. His arms were on fire. Pain lanced from his knees to his hips. He paced the breadth of the room, working out the discomfort. Time trickled steadily by. Brody didn’t know how long, but at some point he noticed the light had changed.

  He mounted the rifle again, scoping from northeast to northwest and back again. How many times? Fifty? One hundred? All emotion drained from him, then exhaustion moved in. Brody stretched again, easing the stiffness from his arms and legs. Take five, his mom had said, so he did. The next thing he knew, he was climbing out of a light doze, his forehead resting on top of the dresser.

  “Oh shit.”

  He snapped upright, looked out the window, certain he would see a troop of Jimmy’s boys within twenty yards of the house. The sun had dipped westward, pushing its light into a pillow of cloud. It was murky out there, but he was able to see that his mom’s acreage was as empty and featureless as it had been all day.

  “Okay.” Brody breathed, one hand on his chest. “No one there.”

  His mom came in several minutes later with packaged food. Potato chips, a Snickers, a can of Welch’s Grape Soda. “It’s not healthy, but the sugar should pep you up.” Brody tore into the Snickers bar, nodding gratefully. He took a bite, swallowed, then pointed out the window.

  “It’s getting too dark to see.”

  Lola nodded, then left the room. She returned a moment later with a new scope, which she fitted to the MMR.

  “That’s a thermal scope,” she said. Her hair was tied back, and the pistol she’d been carrying was now holstered to her right hip. “The clarity and magnification aren’t as good, but you can pick up a heat signature at sixteen hundred yards. You’ll see anything—or anybody—coming out of those woods.”

  “Right,” Brody mumbled around a mouthful of his candy bar.

  “A lot of wildlife here, especially at night. Deer and coyote, mostly.” Lola cracked a tired smile. “Those coyotes are a pain in the ass. Feel free to get some target practice in.”

  The next few hours moved languidly. It was dark, cold, and uncomfortable. The sugar did lift him, but not for long. His exhaustion was as lumbering, yet oddly attractive, as a sea turtle, and it flopped across him by inches. He wondered how his mom was doing. Was she equally exhausted, or had she trained herself to operate without sleep, like an elite sniper? Not this kid, Brody thought, and closed his eyes for a second—maybe a couple of minutes, ten at the most—before returning to the scope.

  He saw deer, or thought he did, a dozen of them, highlighted a hot white though the thermal optic—his tiredness underscored when they separated into a thousand brilliant particles and drifted across the darkness like dandelion seeds.

  * * *

  Brody slept, properly and deeply. He stirred in the early hours to find himself in his mom’s bed, the covers pulled up to his chest. She tucked me in, he thought blearily. It was dark but he saw her outline at the window, scanning her property through the riflescope.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Tell me about Molly. Where is she?”

  His mom stood in the space previously occupied by the dresser. She was tired, despite whatever training she’d had. Not even the vivid morning light could lift the pallor from her skin. Her eyes, though, sparkled with something Brody couldn’t read, and didn’t like.

  “With Renée.” He stepped out of the en suite, having just brushed his teeth and splashed his armpits with cold water. In terms of his morning ablutions, this would have to do.

  “You didn’t think,” Lola said, “that she’d be safer here?”

  “What? No. Jesus, no.” Brody shook his head. He gestured at the gun in her holster, then at the bigger gun on the dresser. “Are you serious? This is a fucking war zone.”

  Lola narrowed her eyes, hands on her hips. Silence fell between them. Somewhere, a bird called.

  “Listen,” Brody began, as if this needed further justification. “I’m running short on cash. Molly was almost out of meds. All things considered, Renée is in a much better position to take care of her.”

  Lola pondered this for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. It was the response Brody wanted, but he still didn’t care for that look in her eye.

  She left the room, heading back to her window. Brody started to follow—he wanted to dig into her odd curiosity; Jesus, shouldn’t he be the one asking questions?—when an alarm sounded. A single high note.

  * * *

  Lola got into position: behind a rifle in the front window. A shooter’s rifle, Brody thought, designed for power, distance, and accuracy. He stood numbly on the landing. Without breaking her sight picture, she said to him, “It’s probably farm business, but if I give the go, grab the MMR and start laying down suppressive fire from the next room.”

  “Suppressive fire,” Brody repeated. Four weeks ago, he’d been sprawled across Tyrese’s sofa, watching The People’s Court on Channel 62. He tried drawing a neat line from there to here, but couldn’t. That line made no sense.

  He moved, though, and with purpose. He grabbed the MMR from the dresser. It already felt familiar—comfortable, even. Engaging in any kind of conflict would knock that familiarity into a different time zone, but he didn’t have to worry about that for now; his mom met him on the landing. She’d taken off her holster and tucked the pistol into the back of her jeans.

  “Stand down, soldier,” she said. “It’s just Hudson.”

  “Hudson?”

  “From the Country Market. He’s here to pick up the eggs.”

  * * *

  The window in the spare room was open and Brody caught snatches of his mom’s conversation with Hudson. Her tone was convivial, and he detected a subtle change in her accent—a shift in her vowels—that deepened the Midwest connection. It was convincing, and Brody was impressed with how smoothly she’d switched from gun-savvy mom to happy-go-lucky cowgirl. Must be some kind of survival mechanism, he thought. Serial killers probably had the same chameleonic trait.

  This show had drawn him into the spare room. He watched from the window for a moment, making sure he wasn’t seen. Hudson had a ruddy face and Paul Newman eyes, and his posturing suggested he might have a soft spot for Lola—or Margaret, as he knew her. He licked his lips frequently, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans. It was an interesting display on both parts, but Brody didn’t watch for long; his attention was claimed first by the bolt-action rifle set up in front of the window—it looked powerful enough to drop a charging rhino—and then by the bulletin board on the wall. Specifically, the photographs pinned to it.

  “No fucking way.”

  Eight headshots, cropped and enlarged. Three of the faces were familiar: Jimmy Latzo’s, with his Gotti hairdo and unmistakable scarring. This was the same photograph that accompanied the article in The Mighty Penn Online, reporting that Jimmy was being questioned in connection with the murder of Art Binkle, whose severed head was discovered spinning on a turntable at 45 rpm. There were photographs of Leo and Joey, too—Brody’s nemeses from the motel in Bayonet.

  Three familiar faces, and one other that was very familiar.

  “Hello, Blair.”

  Hers was in the middle. A candid shot, no doubt lifted from some online source. Her hair was brown, sensibly pulled back from her face, not purple and punky. Without the wild makeup, she looked both older than the girl who’d sat across from him at Rocky T’s, and younger. Brody might not have recognized her at all, but the cunning in her eyes was one hundred percent Blair. He recalled how she’d drawn him in—her clever fabrications, the sexually loaded body language—only to tear his world apart.

  Hudson rolled
out a big old country laugh. It was a pleasing sound, if not entirely genuine. Brody dragged his eyes from Blair’s headshot and approached the window again. His mom appeared relaxed—just another Wednesday morning in Lone Arrow, Nebraska. He could see the shape of the pistol beneath her shirt, though. A suitable metaphor for the margin between lives.

  “Say, Huddy,” she said, stepping a little closer to him. “You get any out-of-towners through the store yesterday?”

  “I’d say likely. We’re right off the 183. See a strange face or two most days.” Hudson tucked his hands into his back pockets. “Why’d you ask?”

  “Had a fella come by here,” Lola replied. “Pencil-pusher. From the Federal Highway Administration, he said.”

  “That so?”

  “Asking questions about the land.” Pronounced lend with the accent. “Boundaries and such. Says not to be surprised if I see surveyor types in the area. You see anybody like that on the way out here?”

  Hudson removed one hand from his back pocket to rub his chin. “Hmm, can’t say that I did.”

  “Likely parked up in SUVs, or some other corporate vehicle?”

  Hudson snapped his fingers. “Shoot, Maggie, I did see a car parked out by Crandall’s place. Not an SUV. A Nissan, or some other Jap model.” He took a step back and peered from east to west, as if checking for traffic. “You think they’re looking to buy you out, run a highway through here?”

  “They’ll do it over my bones,” Lola said, and that earned another big old laugh from Hudson. Lola laughed, too—she was very convincing—and led Hudson around the side of the farmhouse, but not before casting a deep, searching stare at the driveway.

  Brody stepped away from the window, thinking that Lola’s performance as Nebraskan Farmer was second only to her performance as Loving Mother, which she’d kept up for twelve years. Anger flashed through him. A feeling of betrayal, too, and disjunction. He wanted to hold on to those negative emotions; to relinquish them would be to allow room for forgiveness, and he wasn’t ready for that. Or so he believed. He looked at the bulletin board again—all those people who wanted her dead—then at the rifle. It was fixed to a hunting tripod, and it was this, the permanence of it, that struck him inside. This woman lived in fear, and had since Jimmy Latzo stepped onto the warpath. She’d spent most of her life looking over her shoulder.