Mountain Home

by Bracken MacLeod

  Dishonesty was a hard burden for Bryce to bear. He’d been sleeping with another woman, but he carried the guilt of it from the first moment he flirted with her and let the weight pile up on him every time they slept together after that. As the weeks became months, he became a little more stoop-shouldered under the burden. He was certain that he’d kept that receipt in his trouser pocket for exactly the purpose of getting caught. It was an escape plan––one poorly conceived, but then, Bryce Douglas was better at reacting than planning––a perfect patrol cop.

  “What else do you want to hear?” she asked.

  He’d come to the credit union looking for an order from a superior. “When I can come home. I miss the kids.”

  “You see them every day after school.” Cherie wasn’t exactly cold. He could see that she loved him, but her disappointment was plain. Comfortable silences had been dealt a deadly blow.

  “You know what I mean. I miss our home. I miss us.”

  “Did you miss us when you were betraying your wedding vows up at Sleepy’s?” Bryce had no answer. He had no explanation other than that his loins had gone wandering and his head followed like a teenager who only conceived the consequences of his actions as they were starting to take shape.

  “I’m sorry, Cher. How long do I have to pay for one bad bet?”

  “Oh, it was a gamble? I thought you said it was a mistake?” Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. Looking for a hint that his remorse was dishonest.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You have to play this hand until you’re square with the house. How does that sound? Now I have to get back to work. Your next ante up is to figure out what you’re going to fix the kids for supper. I’m not getting out of here until late.”

  “Does that mean I can come home?”

  “For dinners. Let’s start there and see if you can handle the responsibility.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Cherie paused while she studied her husband. He felt her gaze penetrating him, looking for faithlessness. “Thank the kids. They convinced me to try this. I wanted to call Steve Pullman.” He almost choked at the mention of the lawyer. Bryce liked Steve. He’d reluctantly arrested him a couple of years earlier for beating the holy hell out of a guy who had casually backhanded his girlfriend in a bar. They’d gone out for breakfast after Steve made bail. He got the charges dismissed and they’d become casual pals––not the kind who fish together, but if they ran into each other it could turn into an hour or two of coffee and catching up. Bryce knew that friendship was ephemeral, however. Steve had told him that he went into law to punish men who treated their women badly––the way his daddy had done. Once Steve knew about Bryce’s infidelity he would no longer consider him a friend; Bryce would be another notch in his gun.

  “One more thing,” Cherie said.

  “Anything,” he promised.

  “Have you faced up to what you did to her?” He, of course, had not. As soon as Cherie confronted him about the receipt he dropped his lover without a word. He ignored her calls on the CB and stopped going up Route 2A on his patrols.

  “I think you need to be very clear with whoever it was…” Cherie had already told him that she did not want to know the identity of his mistress. She couldn’t face the idea of running into her at the grocery store or the salon and having to pretend to be nice. It didn’t matter to her if everyone in town knew but her. She was adamant that she was not going to help Bryce carry his guilt around. “Very clear, that you have done her wrong, that you are sorry, and that you are finished. For good. You got it?”

  Bryce nodded. As usual, Cherie was right. He’d not just hurt one woman. He thought of the ten-year chip in his dresser drawer. Once a year he drove over to Portland to attend a meeting––to mark the years since he’d gotten his life in order. But now he was back on his steps.

  He needed to make amends.

  Chapter Two: Joanie Goes to War

  1443 hrs.

  Joanie lay down on the blanket spread over the cool hardwood platform she’d built. It had taken her longer than she’d anticipated to get it perfectly sturdy and immobile, but she had accomplished her goal in time. She picked up the Remington M24 rifle and carefully extended the bipod legs. Resting her cheek lightly against the butt stock, she flipped up the lens caps on the scope. Looking through it and the diaphanous black drape she hung in front of the window facing the restaurant––completing what snipers called “a hide”––she trained the crosshairs on the glass doors to the diner. The air outside was still. Without any wind to correct for, she calculated drop at a hundred meters and settled in for the wait.

  She had hoped that the lateness of the day would mean a minimum of customers in the restaurant, but Your Mountain Home Kitchen was becoming ever more popular as word spread among people who both worked and played along the points connected by the scenic highway. It was about as deserted as the place was going to get until they closed late tonight. But if she waited until they closed, then Adam Bischoff wouldn’t have a chance to understand exactly what the consequences of his actions were. He needed to be shown that it doesn’t matter who you think you are. Everybody pays.

  Through her scope she saw the woman with the little dog walk to the cash register. Her husband’s back was turned and provided a perfect target. Except the doors were closed. The glass might distort her first shot, and Lyn was directly in front of the man. Joanie’s 7.62mm black tip ammunition was designed to pierce twenty millimeters of hardened steel at one hundred meters. She knew that the ammo was overkill, but anticipated having to shoot through obstacles like overturned tables and perhaps the lunch counter. Plus the windows were meant to withstand the kind of weather that pummeled the mountain in winter. Her shot was definitely going through that man. He bent down, she assumed, to sign the check. Through the scope, she saw Lyn looking at him, forcing a smile, while he decided whether or not he’d pay her fairly for her service.

  What are you doing, Joanie? Are you insane? Because this is fucking crazy. She had been trained to find her target, aim, and shoot with mechanical indifference. In three tours as a counter-sniper she’d put down six men; all were righteous kills––justified takedowns of bad men trying to do harm to good people. She’d done her duty and protected the assets under fire.

  This was murder.

  Just pack it in. Eject the round and pack up the rifle. Then go into the living room and take your dog out back and bury him. Call the realtor and tell him you want to sell the house after all. Take the check, your lumps, and move home with mom. Give up on giving up.

  She watched the man signing the check look at Lyn’s chest. Lyn looked a question over his shoulder, tugging her earlobe. Her face fell; the smile replaced by a look of disappointment that meant the house lights had gone up and the show was over. Joanie felt herself soften at the sight of the girl looking at once both so sad and unsurprised.

  I give up. She slid her hand from the grip, intending to do the sane thing and rack the bolt lever to eject the chambered round. And then it happened. The woman with the dog turned around with a smile on her face, her husband following behind, laughing. The two of them filled with joy as they headed into the light. The cross dangling from the woman’s wrinkled, sun-damaged neck glinted in the daylight.

  #

  2009 –– Time Unknown

  He thrust into her again, grunting as she shrieked, the cross dangling from his neck glinting in the light of the LED lantern he’d set up inside the shipping can. He pumped in and out and that cross swung back and forth and she screamed and screamed. For mercy, for help, for him to let her go. And all he did was fuck and laugh, scrunching his face as he moaned, “Oh yeah,” and “Oh god.” He came inside the rubber and gave her one last thrust shoving his bony hips between her bruised thighs. His necklace batted humiliatingly against her forehead.

  “You know, you’re getting better,” he said as he pushed off of her. “I figured you’d get with the program aft
er a while. Fuckin’ frigid dyke.”

  She pulled up her knees and tried to curl into a ball. Her muscles cramped and she arched her back, kicking out with one leg, grazing the mercenary’s knee with her bare foot. “You fuckin’ bitch!” The zip ties held her arms together at the top of the cot while he punched her in the gut and then in the face. She caught a glint of gold below one knuckle that exploded in a flash of white as she mercifully lost consciousness.

  #

  14 July 2013 –– 1445 hrs

  The woman with the dog stepped out the door of Your Mountain Home Kitchen into the gravel parking lot. Joanie felt herself break as she pulled the trigger. She imagined herself sailing forward, riding the bullet like a missile hurtling into oblivion, slamming into that stupid fucking face and pushing through her brains and out the back of head, through her teased up fake blond hair. She rode the bullet into the man behind her––his head exploding in a red cloud of stupidity and bad intentions. Joanie returned to her own body to see the lifeless couple fall to the ground through her riflescope. She felt like someone ripped out of a shining white tunnel by doctors who’d returned her from the brink of death––cheated out of paradise. She tracked to the right to find the fat man trapped in the booth like a god damned beached whale and pulled the trigger again. This time she stayed put and watched her bullet do its job all on its own.

  A bullet has no conscience to consult as it flies from the barrel of a gun. It doesn’t feel the wind or the sun or the rain as it speeds toward its target. It penetrates the innocent and the guilty with equal intent and creates victims with the same enthusiasm with which it saves them from the bullets of others. No feelings of regret or elation occur to it as it tears skin, breaks bone, rips through organs, and frees blood to flow over them all. A bullet is the ultimate punctuation: more final than a period, more forceful than an exclamation, and never a question. A bullet is only potential and, after fired, it settles into eternity as a dead heap with no future. And the gunman’s hand, having writ in fire and smoke and blood, moves on to send another round to follow along.

  In the distance, Joanie heard a deep, throaty howl echo through the mountains. The sound chilled her blood as she settled in for the work ahead.

  #

  1445 hrs

  Lyn choked and sputtered on Richard Mills’ blood and nearly fell down in the spatter of glistening blood, bone, and grey matter in front of her. She screamed in concert with the sound of crashing glass. Another watermelon whump of exploding bone and brains followed a half second later by the thin thunder peal of a rifle crack. Growing up in Idaho you couldn’t mistake the sound of a rifle, although this was no twenty-two or thirty aught six. The women sitting together at table four shrieked and ran for the bathroom hallway. Another shot smashed through a window and one of them fell, her face skidding along the tile floor. Lyn’s panicked mind repeated, What is happening? Jesus Christ, what is going on? but all she could do was scream.

  “It’s coming from the parking lot!” the man sitting with his son at table seven shouted as he grabbed the boy and hit the floor.

  “What the fuck?” Luis called out.

  “Behind the lunch counter! Get behind the counter!” It was Lyn shrieking that last. Others might have thought she was instructing everyone to take cover, but she was really trying to convince herself to move. She yelled again as she staggered out from behind the register looking for somewhere safe to hide. “Get down, everybody get the hell down!” She slid into the space between the counter and the kitchen and huddled up, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  “Syl! Sylvia! Oh god, oh fucking god help me get her in here!” The redhead from table four was trying to drag her girlfriend behind the counter, but the limp woman’s hip was caught on the edge of the coffee machine and she couldn’t pull the body around. More shots. More breaking glass. Lyn crawled forward and was nearly crushed under the collapsing racks of coffee mugs and pie plates that toppled over as Luis hurdled the counter, landing against the far wall. She reached the redhead, grabbed her under her armpits, and pulled as hard as she could. The limp woman’s body wrenched free of the teetering coffee station and together they hauled her back. A hole the size of a soft ball had been torn out of the woman’s right breast. Her mouth was filled with blood and she clearly wasn’t breathing. “Help her! Somebody help her!” the redhead screamed.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Lyn sobbed.

  “Call 911. Somebody call somebody!” The redhead cried.

  “Mine’s broken,” Luis shouted. He held up the pieces of the phone that had shattered as he crashed into the wall behind the counter. “Anyone else got one?”

  “My purse!” The redhead pointed to the dining room.

  “Mine’s in my locker in the back, but I never get a signal up here,” Lyn said.

  “Where’s the landline?” the woman demanded.

  “By the register,” Lyn answered, pointing. That phone hadn’t rung all day. She usually answered two or three calls a shift from townies or tourists wondering if they were open late enough for supper. Today, nothing. “But it’s right in front of the door where…” She wanted to say, “Where those shitty tippers got shot,” but she couldn’t bring herself to vocalize it. She remembered her wish that they lose it around the hairpin curve up the road. I take it back! I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Please! Stop this!

  “Syl,” the redhead sobbed. “Please don’t leave me. Someone has to call the police.”

  Lyn crept to the far edge of the counter and peeked around. She expected to see the gunman standing in the doorway of the restaurant, rifle in hand waiting to pick her off. Instead, all she saw were bodies. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. There was a break in the line of windows between table one and the cash register where a brick wall, featuring a local artist’s painting of wild horses hung above the gumball and salted peanut vending machines. To discourage dine-and-dashers, the register was in sight of the doors, resting on a narrow counter that stored menus, phonebooks––for both Mercy Lake and Jasper’s Fork––and the night deposit bags. The phone hung on a hollow plywood wall behind the register. It would be impossible to get to the phone without being seen. Opposite the dubious cover of the plywood wall, were swinging doors leading to the kitchen and Beau’s office all the way in the rear. There were no windows on that side of the building and a single steel door, which led out to the back lot––the only place anyone could usually get a cell signal.

  They’d advertised the lack of service as a feature of the restaurant. Come dine in an environment where your social network is at the table instead of in your hand.

  Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she thought she might die without ever being shot. Frozen, she struggled to catch her breath. You can do it you can do it just fucking do it people are dying. As she worked up the will to leap toward the swinging doors, Beau came bursting out of them. “What in blue blazes is going on out here?”

  “Get down!” Luis called out.

  “Lynnea, what the hell is hap––” The rifle report cut off his question and Beau hit the floor. Lyn screamed again. “Jesus H. Christ!” he shouted as he crawled behind the counter with the others. “What is going on?”

  “We’ve got to get to the phone.”

  “It’s dead,” Beau declared. “Has been all day. I’ve been on my cell trying to get the company out to look at it, but my signal shits the bed every time I get them on the line.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Beau said.

  “Syl is dying.” The redhead held the dead woman’s head; a mouthful of blood trickled down her chin. “We’ve got to help her.” No one replied. The truth seemed too difficult to put into words. “Please. Will someone please do something? I don’t know what I’ll do without her.” She slumped over the body and wept.

  Lyn curled behind the counter, pulling her knees to her chest. “She’s right. Somebody has to do something.”

  “What do you suggest, Lyn?
There’s only one way out of here and that’s the road between us and…” Beau trailed off as he realized what was happening. His eyes got round as the last trace of bravado drained out of him. “Joanie.”

  “What? What is it, jéfé?” Luis said.

  “It’s Joanie Myer.”

  Luis was blinking his eyes so quickly Lyn thought he was having a seizure. Instead, he said, “Who the fuck cares about Joanie Myer? Someone out there is trying to kill us.”

  “She’s the one shooting at us, moron! She’s a god damned Air Force sniper.”

  “Dude, fuck that. I am getting out of here.” Luis got up on his haunches like he was ready to spring over the counter the way he’d come.

  “How? Which way?”

  “The back, man. She can’t see out that way. I’ll go down the hill and then climb back up to the road when I’m far enough away. I’ll get help.”

  “You ever look down the mountain behind this place?” Beau asked. “There’s no way out.”

  “It’s forty-five miles to Mercy Lake, Luis,” Lyn added. “Even if you make it through the forest, it’ll be hours before you get back. Let’s wait her out.”

  “Bitch, my cousin’s a sniper in the Marine Corps. He told me that one time he waited three days to get the perfect shot on some sand nigger. No sleeping, no eating, pissing in his pants. Three days. We can’t wait her out.”