Bluff City Pawn

by Stephen Schottenfeld

  The sergeant only knows Harlan once, a few hours of one day, but Huddy knows other incidents and history, his beginning lies, knows what he’ll say now as if it were an old episode coming back, a memory safely remembered. He trusts that Harlan will lie, depends upon it, and he’ll use Harlan’s version to cover his own mistake. Huddy will give not his own story, not some other side of it, but Harlan’s.

  “I got two AKs here,” he says, matter-of-factly, looking back to the place he got caught prior, “but they’re both semi-auto.”

  “Let’s go look,” the sergeant says, faceless, and Huddy watches his arms unfold.

  Huddy takes him inside, through the double doors leading to the darker storeroom, down an aisle flanked by shelves crowded with hardware and cheap sets, equipment and instruments, other people’s things or Huddy’s or soon to be, the cement floor lined with oily machines, and then to the gun locker. He keys the hockey-puck lock, swings open the heavy-hinged doors and steps to the gun racks and stands at attention. Two AKs side by side, the third one off the books and off in Harlan’s hands, Harlan not knowing it was full-auto until he fired it, touched the trigger and got a burst, the recoil carrying the gun upward, went from shooting straight to shooting up at the sky. Dogs barking, the Wolf River filled with echoing combat noise, target shooting that sounds like a military operation, and Harlan’s legs wobbly and his eyes twitching, but his thoughts now clear on why Huddy didn’t log it in. You paid for it but you can’t sell it, so let’s see what I can do. Reloading another magazine and squaring his stance, his legs spread and shoulders leaning in so he’s steady on the gun, bringing the weight to him, the can he’s just finished a long-range target on a tree stump, Harlan squeezing and the bullets burying into the dirt behind. Another beer, another can set up afar, more lightning rounds blasted, and Wow, this weapon, all that energy pushing through it, the next magazine emptied and Harlan’s indestructible, the power in his hands, the stump drilled and the target hit and zinging, the gunfire rattling through the deep woods and volleying out, a dispatcher answering distress calls about what must be the local militia engaged in training exercises, a mother crying about her kid on a river-rafting trip, a veteran sitting quiet on a lawn chair and he hears rapid fire, perfectly timed, and it’s wartime again, the surrounding miles in ringing earshot, there’s a shooter in the woods, a machine-gun psycho in a city park, an artilleryman gone AWOL, but Harlan’s mind is remote and soundproof.

  Two AKs on a full rack. Nothing absent, so the gun couldn’t’ve been stored here. The configuration encourages Huddy: the rack a complete story with no missing pieces. Just repeat it. The sergeant’s eyes move across the lineup.

  This here’s my brother’s gun, but he don’t know I got it. He don’t even know it’s his.

  Huddy hears Harlan as if he were hearing himself.

  “These are my AKs.”

  “What about what your brother was firing?”

  Huddy shrugs innocently. That third AK is a mystery. He’s only sure about two, and two’s his limit. “These are what’s mine.” He knows he’s crossed a line to walk back to Harlan, and the sergeant is even more suspicious because he’s interrogated Harlan before coming to him.

  “What are you saying?” the sergeant says, after peering at the guns.

  He’s confirming that Harlan took it before it came into the shop, because that’s what Harlan said. A loyal thief, he’ll steal a gun and surrender it but not a brother. Caught red-handed, the gun leaving Harlan, the sergeant’s hands taking hold, and Huddy is seized by fingerprints. Panic inside him, but don’t signal outward. His shoulder blades squeeze, heat surges across his face. He stares at a corner, fixes himself. If they ran prints, he can say his touches came from the gun-room inspection.

  “He helped me load the collection in. He must’ve slipped the gun out for hisself. Before it came here.” One added word to change the sequence—Harlan took the gun before—to avoid incrimination. A lie, but more than half-true, completely true minus the one word. He’s matched Harlan’s account, told an accurate lie. He tries to read the sergeant but there’s no impression, the stubbled face not moving. “My brother may have been upset about me and my other brother buying them.”

  “Your other brother.”

  That’s right. Huddy gives up the name. He watches the sergeant take down the information on his notepad. He wishes he could add a brother to every answer. Ten, fifteen brothers—older brothers and new ones till his own name hid inside them like an alias, and what he’d done wrong couldn’t be found. “He may have been angry about not getting a share.”

  “Harlan.”

  Huddy nods because he is telling the truth. Watches the sergeant write another note.

  “And so he walked off with your gun. Without either brother seeing it.”

  Huddy spreads his palms in both directions, at the other racks and the number of guns all over shelves and different levels and along every plank. “It was a big collection.” He nods again, another correct answer.

  The sergeant turns behind him and his nostrils flare, as if the mowers on the ground were doused in gasoline. He steps out of the locker and scans the room, the property everywhere, and then he looks past the personal items on the long rows of shelving, to the walls, the length and width and corner edges, surveying dimensions and angles up and down as if he were measuring the floor plan. “You won’t mind if ATF conducts a compliance investigation.” It’s time to pass the case up to the feds.

  “Of course not,” Huddy says, he’ll cooperate fully, because if he objected they’d push harder, and the audit would feel like a raid.

  ATF isn’t here yet, but Huddy feels them so close he wouldn’t be surprised if the sergeant could wave agents in from the back wall. They’re waiting for their directive, poised to take over. They’ve already read the report that the sergeant hasn’t written up yet. Huddy’s mind pulls backward to Harlan’s arrest and forward to the audit, his mind in two places but his eyes only in this small locked room.

  Twelve

  He arrives at the end of dinnertime. He drove here, but he feels like he’s been dropped off. He’s home, but he’s still over there, separated, and he walks through one room to get to another, to stand beside the table and see what his wife is having on her plate.

  “Da,” Cody says, and Huddy smiles, his son saying almost words.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Ieee,” he hears back, as he heads to the kitchen, fills his dinner plate at the stove, sets his pistol atop the fridge, grabs a beer below, and rejoins them.

  “Did my brother call?”

  “Which one?”

  The one that got caught, he thinks, but he just says, “Either.” He could call Joe to see if he’s learned about Harlan, but he’s talked enough brothers today.

  “Something wrong?” she asks.

  “Why?”

  “You ain’t sitting down.”

  He sits across from Cody, who’s strapped in a high chair, Christie in between. After lying to the police, maybe he should rehearse his lines for the feds. Or maybe he should relieve the pressure of the truth, make it easier to lie all day tomorrow. He cracks the can open, considers which talk. And then he tells what Harlan did—he watches her fork pull from her mouth in disbelief—and what he didn’t do, and how Harlan’s lie will be his alibi.

  “He fired one of your guns in the Wolf frickin’ River?”

  “It’s an all-time fuck-up.”

  “Ah ba ba.” The baby points at his food, at some complaint or demand.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Abba-dabba,” Huddy says.

  “Something like that.”

  “Ah hop,” Cody says, his tiny arm stretching across the tray and the food beyond reach.

  “That means he needs help.”

  Huddy rises and edges the fruit chunk over.

  “So where’s the fuck-up now?” she asks.

  In a box. And if Harlan wasn’t put in a
cell or cage or wherever he’s stuck, where would he be? Not back at the pawnshop. He’s test-fired a machine gun that Huddy can’t sell—might as well take it to a gun show, sell it out in the parking lot to a buyer who, surprise, is undercover. Win the award for stupid, except he’s already won it for the woods.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I told you,” Huddy says, and he eats his meal. “It’s Harlan’s problem.”

  “How’s it just Harlan’s problem?”

  He doesn’t answer, sips instead, clenches his mouth so it’s airtight.

  “Boo,” the baby says, his lips pursed.

  “He’s trying to say spoon.”

  “I figured,” Huddy says, and he nods at the clutched utensil.

  “So you’re gonna break the law?” She eyes him, then their son, but Huddy doesn’t, just her.

  “There ain’t no point cooperating. It’s paying for something I didn’t do. They want me to tell the truth so they can take my guns—and they ain’t once gonna ask for no asking price. Well, I aim to sell what’s mine.”

  She gets up, removes her plate. He takes a bite, and another and he’s so hungry he devours half his serving, and he’s already planning for seconds. He tears the meat from the bone. He hears food scraped into the garbage, hears the sink run, the dishwasher tray sliding out, the door banging shut. Done with cleanup, but the floor creaks as she paces. He chews, swallows. Needs more. Cody smears his leftovers, draws arcs and circles. He says words and fake ones.

  She returns, wipes her hands.

  “He’s talking up a storm,” Huddy says, but now it’s her turn not to look, to only talk at him.

  “Did I ever tell you about my cousin Bobby? The car thief?”

  “No,” Huddy says, studying her features. He watches her focus, her face serious but also relaxed.

  “He had this scheme. Steal cars, drive them from Arkansas to Florida. He was hooked in with—I don’t know what you’d call it. Some syndicate. Crime ring. Anyway, it was big money. And he decided he was gonna make seven hundred fifty thousand, not a million, and that’s how he wouldn’t get caught. ’Cause million was the first number he thought of, so when he lowered it to seven-five, he knew he was being safe. As long as he didn’t get greedy for that extra money.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Nothing. Happy ending. He stopped at seven-fifty. Living on a houseboat is what happened.”

  “That’s a sweet story. Call that a cautionary tale. The moral being, go for less. Break the law smaller. Don’t try for an even million—but just about.”

  A baby arm swings, the sippy cup knocked off the tray. “Uh-oh,” he says.

  “You told me it before,” Huddy says, after Christie bends down to pick what fell.

  “Yeah? I thought so. It felt familiar. I was looking at you, wondering if you’d heard it. Why didn’t you say?”

  Huddy angles his head, gestures at his motive. “I wanted to see how you told it.”

  Later, after Cody’s bedtime, after watching TV in the living room, Huddy turns off the bedroom one and faces her. “How long did he steal cars? Your cousin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Say it like you did.”

  She sits up to understand. “You mean, make something up?”

  “Tell me how long he stole cars.”

  “A year,” she says, but her eyes lift in a giveaway. He shakes his head at her body language. “What’d I do?”

  “Not much. You just looked like somebody else. Or trying to be.”

  “That’s what you have to do?”

  He shrugs, sees her doubt and fear, her arms wrapping her stomach. The door is closed, the blinds drawn. The back porch light, set on a timer, casts shadows on a window. Dirty clothes tumbled in a dark corner, stray papers on the bureau, disorganized. A phone on a nightstand that if you stared too long, would ring.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “I’m already.”

  “Well … don’t,” her voice nervous, stammering.

  “The alternative being?” He stares ahead, at the red light on the TV indicating Off. “Maybe I could tell ’em that Harlan wanted to join the Army. He went to the woods to enlist, but nobody was there. I already told you, it’s too much blame. ’Sides, they won’t find anything.”

  “They’ll surprise you. And then they’ll find it. You’ll get in more trouble.” She shakes her head hard, as if she were answering a list of questions.

  “I didn’t steal a thing. Just bad bookkeeping, but they won’t penalize me for that. Now I’m liable for what Harlan done.” He’s tired of defending himself for Harlan, or what he forgot to do himself. He wants to answer differently, be someone different. I stole cars for one year. No, he changes himself better. I never stole cars. Ain’t responsible for cars getting stolen.

  Outside a dog barks at a dog that’s barking from inside the next house. They listen for a noise from the crib, a thump or cry. The barking dies down, stops. The commotion out front is nearer to the baby’s room, not enough to wake him, but they both lie still. He gives a second look at the red dot.

  “I’ll tell you something else about Bobby,” she says. “About his wife. She moved to Florida because she was part deaf and she always wanted to live by the ocean, because water was the only nature noise she could hear. Couldn’t hear the birds, but water came in fine. So now she’s on a houseboat and she gets to hear it all day.”

  He’s watched her—noticed a small eye-shift on a mostly signless face, and her voice sounds sure, her words authentic. “You just made that up,” he says, but he’s guessing.

  “It’s true.” She stares right at him.

  “Yeah?” He tries to glimpse what’s invisible.

  “True story.” She blinks. “Just not about him.”

  “Who about?”

  “Someone I used to work with. Her cousin.”

  “She married someone on a houseboat?” Because he can’t follow where she is, what she means.

  She smiles at his confusion and her own act. “No, my cousin’s the one that lives on the houseboat. Her cousin’s the one that’s part deaf. Bobby’s single, far as I know.”

  “So …” He’s stuck between stories. Or inside one story that’s inside another one. “You just came up with that ocean bit?”

  “No, Huddy. That part’s true. She lives on the Gulf Coast. I was just telling different water.”

  Huddy laughs at her adjustments, the switched geography, the borrowed lives and different sources. “Different parts of the same. Of course, that depends on which coast that houseboat sits on.”

  “I guess I don’t know that either. Suspect it was somewhere in the Keys.”

  “Oh, I know which side,” Huddy says.

  “You do?”

  “Sure.” He knows this part by heart, can say it honestly. “The right side.”

  He lies back, exhausted. He imagines he’s in a car, stealing through darkness, the headlights broken and no traffic and the road so dim he can’t see past the hood, and then a light brightens behind on a highway shoulder and flashes in closing pursuit. His eyes open, his mind comes back. Her hand covers his, he feels its weight, and she stares up at the ceiling, then over to the glowing window. Another barking fit, inside and out, from the window and the street, the same dog and a different one. The noise passes. He rests again. He sees himself, in the next vehicle. Floating offshore, a deaf man on a houseboat. And the questions are called from a distant island and as silent as the water all around him.

  “Hey,” she says.

  He’s almost on a boat, then not. A voice, a light scratch on his skin. He opens his eyes and he’s not away. No water, no wind, just himself.

  “Don’t go to sleep.”

  “No?”

  “Not yet,” she says, and her body curls sideways.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I was dreaming, but I wasn’t asleep.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She smiles.

  “I don’t fall asleep till the mi
ddle of the night. Not till I’ve been dreaming for hours.”

  “Now you’re the one confusing.”

  “I’m just playing,” he says. “Or maybe I’m sleepwalking.” His eyelids drop low, a zombie hand comes out and she swats it laughing. He tries again and she lets him touch. She pulls him close, clutching. He kisses her, she breathes on his neck, seizes his shirt, and now it’s early and they’re both awake.

  They drive up in two unmarked Chargers. Nine a.m. sharp to meet him at opening, but he’s been here hours, earlier than ever, but it’s never felt later, because he can’t go backward, reverse yesterday, rewind the month, redo the log-in when he first saw the selector switch and wrote nothing, called no one. He’s never been to the shop before six, but he woke up near five with a problem in his head as if he’d dreamt it from the dead of night: Joe took two guns, but Harlan took one. The imbalance of the theft, he couldn’t imagine Harlan taking less, worried Huddy through the house and out the door—speeding over, he remembered Harlan wanting to spin that Colt in the gun room. But when Huddy got inside the shop and the locker, and pulled the wooden tray from the top shelf, he saw the Colts all there, the pistols flipped to face each other, trigger guard to trigger guard, right angles undisturbed. But his heart still raced—there was something that Harlan or someone else had done with guns that he didn’t know about. He checked his watch: enough time for an inventory. He grabbed his gun book beneath the loan counter and returned to the racks and shelves and started counting (trying to rush carefully so the ledger lines wouldn’t blur and jump), the contents of the locker and then the various safes, and when he finished, the totals matched. At least there were two questions Huddy wouldn’t get today: “Where’d that gun go?” and “Where’d that gun come from?” None too few, and none too many. Even the absent AK corresponding, invisible in two places. His mind, for an instant, at rest. He nods, tells himself he knows everything. Minutes before nine, the morning hours feeling like a footrace, and he goes to the bathroom, splashes water, unclings his shirt. He readies himself at the loan counter. A chair but he can’t sit. He searches the Appeal and finds the article, not on the front page or even the front of the local, but tucked inside, at the margin, a small brief beneath the crime report heading, with no information that the police didn’t say prior, except for the final sentence: The identity of the shooter was not immediately released. He’s surprised that Harlan is unnamed, but he’s more surprised that there isn’t a photo, since he’d already pictured it in his mind.