by Loy Holder
Lucille studied Liz for a moment and frowned. “OK, while you finish your beer, listen to this: I want you and the kids to be safe while I’m at the club tonight. My brother left me his gun. I’ll be home after I close at two, but while I’m gone, you can use it to protect yourself and the kids.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Liz rolled her eyes and her hands went up in protest. “I don’t know anything about guns. Never wanted to.” Liz drank the last of her beer with a growing sense of dread.
“It’s in the house.” She stood and pulled on Liz’s arm. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Liz grew more uneasy as she followed Lucille to the coat closet near the front door. She watched Lucille reach up to the top shelf and pull the gun out from under a plaid blanket. Lucille held the gun with the barrel pointing up at the ceiling.
“This is a thirty-eight, six-shot revolver; it’s pretty simple. You just point and pull the trigger. This one doesn’t have a safety lock, so we need to keep it away from the kids. It’s not loaded right now.” Eyes wide, Liz stared at the object in Lucille’s hand. A sense of dread filled her. Lucille pulled a small cotton sack from under the blanket and held it up. “There are six bullets in this little sack, one for each chamber of the cylinder.”
Lucille pushed open the cylinder, showed Liz how to slide a bullet into one of the chambers, and then removed the bullet and placed it back in the sack. Liz was dumbstruck. Lucille chuckled softly, closed the cylinder, and gave the gun and bullets to Liz. “You look as pale as a ghost. But this just might save your life, so get familiar with it for a few minutes. Put them back in the closet until the kids go to sleep, and when you go to bed, you could load it like I showed you and put it in the drawer beside your bed.”
Liz shook her head and tried to give the gun and bullets back to Lucille. “No, I can’t do this. It scares the hell out of me.”
“Hey, this is a serious situation.” Lucille refused to take the gun and bullets back. “What if Ron comes back? He might hurt you worse than he already has. I’m going to go take a shower now and get ready for work. Think about what I’ve said, Liz.”
She stood alone in front of the closet. Her stomach flew up to her throat as she forced herself to look at and feel the ominous, black revolver, its weight heavy in the palm of her right hand. The bullets in the sack clinked together in her left hand. Could I pull the trigger and shoot Ron? What if he took the gun away and shot me? What if he breaks into the house, and I don’t hear him? Would I have time to get the gun from the drawer? What’s right for me? It was an easy decision. She opened the closet door and placed the gun and bullets back under the plaid blanket on the shelf. She had no idea how to handle a gun, and decided she’d be safer without it. Overwhelmed by the day’s events, she walked into the kitchen to cook dinner.
When Lucille came into the kitchen, the kids had just sat down, and the meal was ready. They ate without talking to each other, but the children’s stories about the zoo eased the silence. When the children left the table, Liz cleared her throat. “I know you’ll disagree, but I’ve decided to leave the gun in the closet.”
“Why?” Lucille frowned, disapproval written all over her face.
Liz chewed on the inside of her cheek and then blurted, “Because I’ve had no training with guns, and I don’t think I can handle one. Ron might get the gun away from me, maybe even shoot me or, worse, hurt one of the kids.”
“After all you’ve been through, you still don’t see the necessity of a weapon in this situation?” Shaking her head in disgust, Lucille countered, “You’d be surprised at how well you could handle a gun if your life depended on it. When Ron gets out of jail, he’ll be on foot, and he’s not going to be in any mood for talk. If you’re not going to keep the gun handy when you go to bed, at least wait up for me and watch for trouble. When I get home, I’ll keep the gun with me. I know how to use it.”
Lucille had a point. “OK, I’ll stay up. I know where the gun is. Hopefully, I won’t even need it.”
“Good. Now I’ve got to get going.”
It was going to be a long night. Liz put the leftovers in the refrigerator and washed the dishes. The evening was warmer than usual, so she let her children play in the pool while she watched from a patio chaise lounge. She breathed in the warm air and thought she could detect a faint scent of rose petals coming from Lucille’s garden. She glanced at her watch. It was time for the children to go to bed. She coaxed them inside with chocolate ice cream, and they were asleep before she finished the bedtime story.
The house was too quiet, and she went back out to sit on the patio for a while. Soon, the sun went down, and the waxing crescent moon created ominous shadows at the edges of the yard. A noise came from the side of the house. Was that Ron? Was he out of jail already? Is he watching me?
Liz rushed into the house, breathless as she locked the sliding-glass door and peered through the window. Nothing moved, so she hurried into the living room and parted the heavy curtains covering the bay window. In the pale moonlight, a neighbor was walking his German shepherd, and down the block, a boy and girl were talking under the streetlight. It was a peaceful scene, yet she felt like her hair was on fire.
She closed the curtain, turned on the lamp by the sofa, and sat down to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. She finally gave up and went into her bedroom to undress. She gazed at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall. Her face was still grotesque. She ran her tongue through the gaping hole where her front tooth used to be and over the stiches that were standing at attention like tiny sentinels on her lip. Well, nothing’s grotesque about my body. Once my face heals, my moves on stage will support me until I get it together. I’ll show my mother.
The warm bath failed to unkink her knotted muscles. She got out, dried herself off, and slipped into an old nightgown, short and threadbare. Lucille had asked her to stay up, so she sat in the dark watching a movie and then the late news.
When the news was finished, she left the sofa to check the doors and windows. She was in the hall when she heard a faint scraping noise. High octane adrenaline shot through her veins. She edged down the hall and looked out her bedroom window. Through the transparent curtains, she recognized the prominent nose and full lips in the patio light. Ron was trying to break in.
Terrified, she ran to the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. A dispatcher answered, and Liz stammered out the information, saying the intruder was her husband and that she feared for her life. The Sheriff dispatcher said she’d send someone out right away. What if Ron gets into the house before the deputies come?
Without another thought, she ran to the coat closet and took out the gun and sack of bullets. Trembling, she placed a bullet in each chamber like an expert and closed the cylinder. Holding the gun in front of her with both hands, she walked back to her bedroom. Through the curtain, she saw that Ron had the screen off and was working on the window. He didn’t seem drunk, just focused. With a deep breath, she steeled herself, pointed the gun and yelled, “Ron, get the hell away from the window, and get off this property, or I’ll shoot.”
Ron stopped working on the window and looked up. “You won’t pull the trigger, Liz. Put the gun down and come talk to me. If you don’t, I’ll just keep working on this window until I can get in. You know, I didn’t like jail very much. I’d like to show you just how much I hated it, but I can’t do that through this window.”
Still steady, Liz took a step closer to the window and pulled the trigger. Ron dropped out of sight as the window shattered. In a split second, he jumped to his feet and yelled, “You stupid bitch! You just made my job a lot easier!” The bullet had missed its target.
At that moment, a voice boomed, “Sheriff’s department!” Liz set the gun on the dresser, grabbed her robe, and ran to look out Lucille’s bedroom window. Two officers moved along the side of the house toward the backyard. Relieved that the deputies were there, she went to the kitchen to look out the sliding-glass door, which provided a full
view of the backyard. She wanted to savor Ron’s arrest.
The deputies aimed their flashlights into the foliage along the fence line. Then one of them climbed over the back fence and dropped out of sight. The other was examining the window screen and the window. Where was Ron? Did he just vanish into the darkness?
* * *
Chapter nine
When Ron saw Liz put her finger on the trigger, he dove for the cement. After the bullet shattered the window, he heard the deputy shout, and he immediately bolted over the back fence. He climbed several fences and crossed other backyards in his effort to get away. He had scrapes on his arms and a bleeding gash in his right leg from landing on a rusty, broken tomato cage. He ignored the blood and the soreness and kept moving. He was not going back to jail.
He’d lost the deputy after he’d climbed over the last fence. Before he ventured onto the sidewalk, he checked for cops and then rounded the corner onto Folsom Boulevard. He walked a half block to the Chevron station where he’d parked Joe’s 1965 Harley Davidson Panhead Chopper. There it was, right where he’d left it. He loved that motorcycle and hoped to have one just like it someday.
Ron’s best friend, Joe Mahoney, had loaned him the chopper and the two whiskeys he’d had for courage, had burned out of his system. He fished in his shorts pocket for the keys, and started it up. It had a deep rumble that he felt throughout his body. The vibrations aroused all his senses. He headed east on Folsom Boulevard and turned left onto Coloma Road. He watched his speed to avoid drawing attention to himself; a sense of gloom settled over him like a cold, damp fog. He couldn’t enjoy the warm summer night or the wind whipping his hair, because he couldn’t go home. That would be the first place the cops would look for him. He wanted a few beers from his own refrigerator and to fall into his bed, the bed he had shared with Liz until a few days ago. He longed for her smell, her taste, the feel of her lithe naked body lying beneath him. He wanted her back, but it was going to be tougher than he’d thought.
He snapped out of his reverie and turned off Coloma Road. Maybe Joe would let him stay for the night. He’d figure something else out in the morning; perhaps he’d leave town for a while. He parked the chopper beside Joe’s truck in the driveway.
When he approached the front door, he heard Elvis singing on the radio; Joe was still up. He knocked three times, loud enough to rouse Joe over the music. Joe answered the door wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. His shiny black hair was slicked back, and he had a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grabbed the cigarette and said, “Whoa, Ron. Your leg’s bleeding. What the fuck happened to you?” Joe leaned out to glance at the chopper parked in the driveway. “Hell, I hope my bike fared better than you did.”
Ron put both hands up in protest. “Relax, man, your chopper’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it, but I can’t go home. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”
“Sure, come on in.” Joe put his cigarette out in an ashtray and waved his hand around the room. “House is a mess. Living alone’s the shits, man. Want a beer?”
“Sure, love one.” Ron slumped onto an old, worn couch in Joe’s cramped living room. While Joe was in the kitchen getting them each a beer, Ron gazed around the room and noticed a picture sitting on a small table near the couch. He picked up the picture to get a closer look and called out, “So is this a picture of Donna and the kids?”
“You mean the picture on the lamp table?” Joe asked. “Yeah, that was taken a year ago, just before she left me. I miss the hell outta her and the kids. Hey, I’m going to bring you something to fix that leg, too, OK?
“It’s fine now. It’s stopped bleeding, but thanks.”
After Joe came back with the beers, and set the two cans on the coffee table, he handed Ron some mercurochrome and a large bandage. Ron chuckled. “Thanks, man. This stuff will kill anything.”
Joe sat near Ron and took a long drink of his beer while Ron doctored himself and winced from the sting of the antiseptic. “Yeah,” Joe continued. “I wish things could have been different with me and Donna. I keep that picture there to remind me of what I could’ve had.” His eyebrows raised in a questioning look. “Enough about me. So what the hell happened to you? Thought you’d be with Liz.”
Ron let a swallow of cold beer dribble down the back of his throat while he collected his thoughts. “I needed a little boost of courage, so I went to the bar near your house and had a few stiff drinks. When I got to Liz, the house looked dark, so I decided to go in through a window and she heard me. She had a gun and told me to get lost. Then, she pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the window and whizzed right past my ear. Then the cops showed up, and I jumped the fence. I’m sure they’re looking for me.”
“What is wrong with you, man?” Joe frowned. “That’s attempted breaking and entering. That could mean some serious time. Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell? Hell, you could’ve been killed.”
“I wanted to surprise her, maybe have my say before she had a chance to object.”
“Well, now what?” Joe tilted his head and squinted at Ron. “What happened between you two?”
“Just before she left, we got into a fight. I may have had a few too many beers for breakfast. Later she came back for some clothes and stuff, and I lost it, went crazy. It didn’t register with me that the kids were in the back seat of the car, and I smashed the windows. She tried to stop me, and I hit her, hard. I haven’t seen her up close, so I’m not sure exactly what I did to her. I stayed drunk the rest of the day. Then, another time, I tried to talk to her. I was actually sober. She was on her way somewhere. I followed her, but she lost me on a side street.”
Ron took another long swallow of beer. “Tonight was the last straw. I really fucked up. I guess I scared the hell out of her. I’m out of control, Joe.” Ron put his head in his hands. “Man, she doesn’t want me anymore.”
“It’s the alcohol, man. You need to quit drinking, or you’re going to lose your family like I did.”
“No, Joe. I need it. I got a lot of pressure on me at work.” Ron held up his fingers an inch apart. “I’m this close to losing my job. The one thing I haven’t done yet is drink at work.”
“Right now, you seem pretty sober, but you need some help. I went to this guy downtown. He’s pricey, but I’m better for it,” Joe offered.
“Nah, I’m not into shrinks. I’m thinking I need to get away for a while. Let her cool off. My folks live back in Tennessee. They’ve always asked why I don’t come see them. Maybe I’ll give them a call, take the bus, and go for a visit. If you let me stay here tonight, I’ll give them a call in the morning. Could you give me a ride downtown to the Greyhound station?”
“Sure but what about clothes and stuff for shaving?” Joe paused. “Maybe I can help.”
“I got some cash on me. I’ll just pick stuff up when I get there. You got a spare toothbrush?” Ron asked.
Joe chuckled. “Yeah, I always have a few of those. I’ll get you one.”
While Joe was gone, Ron thought about what it would be like to visit his parents. Maybe he could find a job in Nashville and stay for a while. His dad drank. He’d understand the need for a drink once in a while. He’d have to sweet-talk his mom, make her see how selfish Liz was, by not wanting him to relax with his friends after work.
Joe came back with his arms loaded. “Here’s a blanket for tonight, and I found a toothbrush and some spare toothpaste. I had this old travel case. I even put a razor in here and the mercurochrome.” He showed the open case to Ron and smiled. “But watch out. That razor might be a little dull. Oh, and there’s some towels and washcloths in the bathroom if you want to take a shower.”
Ron stood to take the items from Joe. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, but I’ve got to turn in now. I get up early on Sundays to go to church. If I’m not here when you get up, just make yourself at home, have some coffee. There’s eggs in the refrigerator. I’ll be back around eleven.”
&nb
sp; Alone with his thoughts, Ron found his way into the bathroom, took a hot shower, and fell into a troubled sleep on the couch.
Sunday morning, Ron woke to an empty house. He found the half-full coffeepot and a cup sitting on the kitchen counter. The coffee was hot and helped him focus. Now he was sure that the way to get Liz back was to disappear for a while. The old “absence makes the heart grow fonder” routine might work. He didn’t really care anymore about his house, his job, or his belongings. Without Liz, they didn’t matter.
He called his folks, and they were excited that he was coming. Then he called the bus station; a bus was leaving at two that afternoon. He dressed, made some eggs for breakfast, and was just sitting down to eat when Joe walked in the door.
They talked for quite a while at the kitchen table. Joe told Ron what had happened to his marriage, how he’d been using cocaine and drinking straight whiskey. He said, “Man, I couldn’t start my day without a snort and a shot. I lost a really good sales position. The company kind of frowned at drinking on the job. I thought I needed that stuff to make me be more outgoing, a better salesman. Then Donna got fed up with me. She took the kids and left, and now I’m trying to reinvent myself as a clean and sober person.” Joe poured himself another cup of coffee. “You know, Ron, prayer works and you can find a deep peace in reading the bible.”
Ron was polite, but he let Joe know he was not interested in prayer or the Bible. He did admit he needed to make some changes but confessed he wasn’t sure what kind of changes those were.
Just as Joe was about to give him some more advice, Ron glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hey man, I’d love to stay and philosophize with you some more, but if I’m going to make that bus to Nashville, we’d better get going.”
“Well, are you ready?”