Desperate Times 2 Gun Control

by Nicholas Antinozzi

  Jimmy lit up a smoke and thought about what he should tell Julie. He quickly settled on the truth; this was no time for lies, and Julie deserved no less than to hear it from him. He hadn’t really done anything, and he needed to explain things to Julie. He only wished they would remove the cast from her face. He missed that face. He missed that woman.

  The walk took him nearly his entire cigarette, and he paused about a hundred feet from the front of Julie’s cabin. He was shocked to see that the blinds had been opened. Candles lit up the inside of the cabin, and they cast a warm glow from within. Jimmy snubbed out his smoke and slowly made his way to the cabin. His heart was racing inside his chest as he thought about how he would explain this mess.

  Ten feet from the front door, Jimmy suddenly froze in his tracks. Julie wasn’t alone.

  Mars was inside with her.

  Jimmy gritted his teeth and growled in anger. He slowly moved away from the door and hid in the shadows behind a birch, studying the big window and trying to decipher what was going on inside. Mars was talking, and it seemed to Jimmy as if he was pleading with her. Julie, her casted face looking orange in the candlelight, was pacing the room and covering her plastered ears. Jimmy didn’t think it looked good.

  He stood there for nearly five minutes before Julie rushed into his rival’s arms and held him tight. Jimmy felt like a wounded animal and wanted to scream. Mars seemed to see him out in the cold shadows, even though Jimmy thought it was impossible for him to do so. He had his hands on Julie’s back, and he was slowly running them up and down. He was smiling with such satisfaction that if Jimmy would have had a gun, he just may have used it. When the two finally broke for air, Julie went to the window and slowly closed the blind.

  Jimmy then ran back to the shop with tears of helpless anger streaming from the corners of his eyes.

  The explosion nearly knocked Jimmy off his feet. The shop, their beautiful man cave, blew up like it had been filled with hydrogen gas. The walls bulged out, and most of the roof seemed to be raining down from the sky. Flames shot almost a hundred feet into the night air, and Jimmy could feel the heat as it tried to blister his skin. He rolled away on the snow and checked himself for any injuries. Had he arrived a minute sooner, he knew he’d be a dead man. He stood helplessly as people ran towards him from all directions.

  They fought the fire and contained it to the shop. A headcount was taken, and they waited a while before doing another. They had lost two of their group in the blast. There was no sign of Big Al or Gloria, nor would there ever be again.

  Chapter 20

  Losing Big Al was a heavy blow to the mechanics. Burt had taken the last of the cabins, a small one-room dwelling that had been fashioned into a cabin out of a shed. Wart, Jimmy, and Bill were each assigned their own ice fishing shacks to live in until they could find more permanent housing. The shacks were small and rustic, but they were heated with LP gas furnaces and had been designed to protect their occupants from the cold. They came equipped with a gas burner for cooking, a sturdy but battered kitchen table, and steel folding chairs. Homemade bunk beds sat on each end of the small fishing quarters. They were in need of a good cleaning and airing out, but they provided the men a place to get away from the world. As luck would have it, there were three of them, and they sat down by the frozen lake. The men took turns shoveling the two hundred foot path out to them. The shacks were painted olive green, and each boasted a picture window with a lake view.

  Wart would spend nearly a week locked away in his little shack. He and Big Al had known each other in their previous lives. Jimmy could see the pain in his eyes, and he looked even more pale than usual. Not to be outdone, Bill began wearing a black armband that he fashioned out of an old dress sock. He walked around the camp looking sad—some said a little too sad—and it took him many days before he could deal with his loss and return to work. Jimmy also missed Big Al, but he missed a lot of people these days. The sad truth was that life went on, with or without them. Jimmy spent his days combing through the rubble and salvaging what he could. Some of the tools had survived, hand tools mostly, but they were a welcome sight.

  Pluto and Venus shared the caretaker’s house across the camp from where the shop had stood, while Mars lived alone in a doublewide trailer that sat a hundred feet behind the house. There was a garage there, and Jimmy decided to ask Pluto if it would be all right to set up shop there. Pluto couldn’t see why not, but he explained that Mars had some things stored in the garage and that he would have to run it by him. Jimmy nodded, fully expecting what was about to come. Jimmy tracked down Pluto the following day outside the mess hall and cornered him on it.

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy asked, unable to hide his disappointment. “Where the heck are we supposed to work?”

  “I know, Jimmy,” Pluto had said, looking red-faced and embarrassed. “Mars says that he has some very valuable things stored in the garage. I’m sorry.”

  “But you own the garage, not Mars. Tell him to get his shit out of there.”

  Pluto’s eyes narrowed. “Mars was here from the beginning. None of this would be possible without all of his hard work and dedication. You watch what you say about him, young man. I agree; you men need some space, and I’m working on getting it for you. Look, Jimmy, I’m sorry for your loss, and I want to help. Maybe we should talk about your feelings. You miss Big Al, don’t you?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Yeah, everyone misses Big Al, and no, I don’t want to talk about it. Listen, we need a shop as soon as possible.”

  “I feel your pain, Jimmy. I can see it in your aura. Big Al was a good man. Go ahead and let it out. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth, but there were no words that seemed appropriate for the situation. Instead, Jimmy spun on his heels and returned to his work.

  Burt had all but disappeared from the moment that Jimmy had left him inside the mess hall. He and Venus had instantly hit it off, and they seemed suddenly joined at the hip. Jimmy asked Burt what he thought had caused the explosion, but Burt only shook his head. He said that these things happen, and that he was sure it was accidental. Jimmy wasn’t so sure about that. He thought he had made an enemy on the day Burt arrived, perhaps more than one.

  Bill and Cindy spent little, if any, time together. Cindy spent her days attending classes and her nights in the company of Seth Pason. Seth seemed like a decent kid, and he seemed completely smitten with Cindy. Jimmy was happy for them, but he missed his conversations with Cindy. She seemed to have grown up overnight.

  Julie still wouldn’t see him, and Jimmy had grown bitterly angry that she seemed to have plenty of time for Mars. She still hadn’t left her cabin, and it was very rare for him to catch a glimpse of her. Seeing her in the plaster mask always made him feel a little queasy. Those few moments were enough to remind him of what she was going through. The cast was to be removed soon, and everyone seemed quite nervous about that.

  On the fourth night after the explosion, there was a light tapping on the door to Jimmy’s fish shack. Dinner had been served three hours ago, and he wondered who would bother him at this hour. He knew from experience that Bill didn’t knock. Could it be Julie? Jimmy checked his hair in the mirror and quickly chewed a breath mint. The tapping started again, and Jimmy opened the door. Jasmine stood there. In one gloved hand she held a gallon jug of wine; the other held two wine glasses.

  “I never drink alone,” she said, stepping by him. “Brrr… it’s cold out there.”

  “Look,” Jimmy said, quickly lowering the blinds on the big window. “You can’t be here. We can’t do this.”

  “What, two friends can’t share a bottle of wine?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Let’s start over,” she said, setting the glasses down on the table and unscrewing the cap to the bottle of Italian Lambrusco. “I’m Jasmine. What a beautiful place you have here.”

  Jimmy shook his head and chuckled. The truth was that he was starving for some conver
sation as well as thirsty for some alcohol. The problem was going to be keeping her at arm’s length. He promised himself to resist temptation; he reasoned with himself that Julie could see Mars and prayed to God that no one would find out that he and Jasmine were spending time together. He took the glass she offered him.

  “To new friends,” Jasmine said, clinking her glass against his.

  “To new friends,” said Jimmy, nearly blushing as he saw the way she was looking at him. He took a sip of wine and sat down at the table. “Have a seat. You can’t stay too long. I have to get up early.”

  Jasmine nodded as she took off her winter jacket. Jimmy took another sip of wine when he saw what she was wearing underneath. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “You don’t have to get up for anything.”

  Jimmy took a deep breath as she tipped her glass to her lips and drank. Jasmine’s winter clothes had hidden a body that practically demanded attention. She wore a low-cut blouse that revealed bone china skin and a fair amount of cleavage. Her jeans looked painted onto her long legs, and she obviously hadn’t been lying about her workout schedule. She smiled at him in a knowing way, picked up the bottle and refilled their glasses. She then sat down on one of the bottom bunks and patted the spot next to her. “Come on, I promise not to bite,” she said, seductively.

  Chapter 21

  Jimmy wasn’t sure what time it was when Burt suddenly burst inside the cabin. Bright sunshine followed him in, and it hurt Jimmy’s red eyes. Burt was holding his service revolver.

  “Thank God!” Burt said. “I thought they’d got you.”

  “You thought who had got me?” Jimmy asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and quickly sitting up. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Your friends Myron and Tony,” Burt said, peering out the door. “They’ve lost it, man. They’ve got guns, and they’re holding everyone hostage in the mess hall.”

  Jasmine was gone, and Jimmy sighed with relief. He spotted the empty glasses on the table; there was no hiding the lipstick on one of them. “Slow down. Tell me what happened. What do they want?”

  “They want a million dollars and a helicopter,” growled Burt, closing the door. “How the hell should I know? I’ve got Venus staying with Julie and Doc, but we need someone to ride back to Ken’s and bring back some firepower. I can’t take ‘em with this,” he said, holding the black revolver in front of Jimmy’s face. You’ve got to ride, Jimmy. The whole camp is counting on you.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “There’s no time for that. Get up and get some damn clothes on! My machine is still parked down at the gate. Here, take the key.”

  The morning sun was bright, and Jimmy’s head ached from the wine. He ran as fast as he could to the gate and was relieved to see Burt’s machine parked there. He rode the Polaris hard, like a man possessed, and he tried not to think of anything except the matter at hand. This proved to be difficult as so much had happened so quickly. When Jimmy hit the opposite shore of Ken’s lake, he pulled all the way back on the throttle and held it there for nearly a minute. The speedometer needle buried, and Jimmy’s eyes watered as the screaming snowmobile flew across the hard-packed snow.

  The wall still stood, and Jimmy could see wood smoke coming from the stone chimney of the house. Snowmobile tracks led from the lake to the gate, and Jimmy followed them with reckless abandon. He slammed on the brakes and slid nearly fifty feet before coming to a stop, just an arm’s length away from the timber wall. “Open up!” Jimmy croaked, trying to find his voice. “We need help!”

  What amazed Jimmy more than anything was the speed of their turnaround. Not even a half hour had passed before he and Ken had armed themselves to the teeth and were heading across the lake back to Bailey’s. Ken had asked Jimmy to explain himself, and he had asked very few questions. There was only one thing to do. Patty hugged Jimmy and told them both to be safe. Rita promised to keep an eye on things while Ken was away. Jimmy didn’t need to ask what she meant by that. The remaining two snowmobiles from the pole shed stood next to the house. Ken chose the larger onem and the two set out at high speed.

  Jimmy had to stop halfway back. Ken roared in behind him as Jimmy ran three steps into the woods, pulled off his helmet, and fell to all fours. He then became violently sick into the virgin white snow. Ken looked away as his idling machine covered up Jimmy’s tortured groans.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” Ken asked as Jimmy wiped the corners of his mouth and followed his footsteps back to his machine. “You look like shit.”

  “I’ll be all right. I just needed to do that.”

  “Did we have a little too much to drink last night?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I suppose Julie is hung over, too,” Ken said. “This is exactly why you can’t drink like that. You need to keep your wits about you, kid. I was hoping to get her a gun before we storm the place. Maybe we should just move in and do it ourselves.”

  Jimmy nodded, realizing for the first time that Ken had absolutely no idea of what had happened to Julie. The thought made him gag, but he fought down the urge to be sick and climbed on his snowmobile. “I think that’s our best bet. Let’s just kick the damn door open and rip some shit. These two are a couple of punks. They’ll throw down their guns as soon as we show up.”

  “I hope you’re right, kid. I hope you’re right.”

  The morning sun nearly blinded Jimmy as they headed east down the winding trail. Tall white pines dotted the rolling landscape, their snow-covered limbs offering brief interludes of shade as they raced underneath them. Jimmy guessed the temperature to be in the single digits, which seemed warm compared to what they’d recently experienced. The only wind was generated by their speeding snowmobiles, and it sent tiny shivers of cold down to the bottom of Jimmy’s Sorel boots. They were close.

  Faces seemed to flash in front of Jimmy, the predominant one being the china doll profile of Jasmine. Julie’s former face was a close runner up. Patty, looking saddened and disappointed, followed Julie. The last face he saw was that of an angry Venus. Jimmy swallowed hard and tried hard to push them out of his thoughts.

  He carried an M-16 slung over his shoulder, as did Ken. He had two holstered handguns at his side, exposed for the world to see. Ken had a .44 Magnum stuffed into his belt and a .38 Special tucked into his boot. They passed the gate at over eighty miles per hour.

  Burt was waiting for them behind the old woodshed outside the mess hall. Jimmy and Ken drove straight for the steps, and they wasted no time waiting for Burt. “Lay down your guns,” screamed Ken. “That is, if you want to live!”

  Jimmy and Ken exchanged a glance, and Jimmy slammed his shoulder against the glass double doors without ever checking to see if they were locked, and they burst open in a cascade of broken glass. Jimmy rolled to his feet and came up with the assault rifle. He felt strangely calm as people began to scream in terror.

  A gunshot sounded, and Jimmy watched as a young man was violently thrown back in a shower of blood. Jimmy quickly spun on his heels as another shot whizzed past his ear. Tony Clerk stood there with a handgun; his crazy eyes told their own story. He fired again. Ken then stepped through the door like a hunter with all the time in the world. He leveled his M-16 at Tony, took careful aim and slowly squeezed the trigger. The shot caught him low in the throat, and dark blood exploded from the wound as Tony was violently thrown backwards onto the hardwood floor. There were more screams, and Jimmy began to frantically search for Myron in the frenzy of movement. The mess hall was full beyond capacity, and everyone seemed to be running toward the exits.

  “Did you get them?” Burt asked, fighting for breath.

  “I got one,” Ken said, kicking the Colt from Tony’s quivering hand. “Go to hell, you bastard,” he said. Ken then pressed the barrel of his gun onto Tony’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

  Burt exchanged a worried look with Jimmy as Ken walked over and retrieved Tony’s sidearm. “Burt,” he said above t
he din in the big room. “This looks like the Colt I gave you. How did that creep get his hands on it, and where’s the other one?”

  “We can talk about that later,” said Jimmy, ripping the gun away from Ken and tossing it to Burt. “There’s still one more of them here, somewhere. We’ve got to find him.”

  Ken looked at them skeptically, and Jimmy knew that he suspected something close to the truth. He shook his head in disgust. “Tell me who I’m looking for,” he growled.

  Jimmy quickly explained what Myron looked like until Ken looked satisfied. Burt kept his distance as he covered the room with the big handgun. They split up, and each moved to an exit where the screaming had died away and the residents were funneling out the open doors into the bright sunshine. Gunpowder hung in the air, and the room stank of that and fresh blood. A woman groaned impatiently as she waited her turn.