Guns [John Hardin 01]

by Phil Bowie

  “I’ll spank your backside, Sam,” Joshua said with a dimpled grin. “Sam, did you know that girl lions have to go out and get all the food and the boy lions just lie down under a tree? For real. I seen it on TV.”

  “You saw it on TV,” Sam said. “And that’s exactly how things ought to be.”

  “You’re warping my kid, you know,” Valerie said.

  After the events of the day Sam felt especially privileged to be here with the two people he had come to care most about in the world, sharing the meal and each other, and he saw them with a newness.

  Valerie glowed primitively in the candlelight. Her Cherokee blood, thinned only by two generations, gave her fine skin a dark sheen. Her cheek bones were high, her carriage was unpretentiously proud, and her long dark hair was satin black. She thought her breasts were much too small but Sam considered them to be perfect. Lightfoot was her family name, Joshua’s father having died in a brutal car wreck near Johnson City, Tennessee, just two weeks before the date that had been set for their marriage, never having seen his son. Her relatives were scattered up in the North Carolina mountains. At thirty-two, she was nine years younger than Sam.

  Joshua was slender like his mother, with her large shining dark brown eyes, but he was light-skinned. His face was lean, his chin faintly prominent, his lips full, and his hair a tumult of light brown curls. He’ll break a heart or two when he’s grown, Sam often thought.

  Over bowls of her peach cobbler, Valerie said, “I’ve been talking with Pam a lot at work when it’s slow about a new line of products she’s selling.”

  Uh oh, here she goes again, Sam thought.

  Valerie worked as a waitress at Sonny’s Seafood, and always had a little left over at the end of each week for her savings after promptly paying all her bills, but she was continually on the lookout for some scheme that would greatly expand her income and help make her dreams of what she called a real house and of a good college education for Joshua come true. Sam knew she had tried Tupperware, which now filled two of her limited cabinets, and lines of cosmetics—although she seldom wore any makeup herself—and vacuum cleaners, and Beanie Babies, not to mention envelope-stuffing and home crafts assembly for some company based in Minneapolis.

  “Val, please don’t take this wrong, but I don’t think you’re cut out for sales. The way you cook you could open your own restaurant and get rich. You know that business.”

  “But these products practically sell themselves once people understand the principles behind it all,” she said, starting to clear the table. She turned on the overhead light and let Joshua make a wish and blow out the candles.

  Joshua ran into his room and came back with an armload of worn miniature Star Wars figures and created an imaginary alien planet on the kitchen table while Valerie and Sam washed and dried the dishes.

  “The way Pam explains it, there are all kinds of toxins in our bodies. If we can help our bodies get rid of them we’ll be healthier in every way,” she said seriously.

  “So how do we go about doing that?”

  “Magnets,” she said.

  “Magnets.”

  “I know it sounds a little far-fetched but Pam swears it really works. This company has all kinds of products. Small disc magnets about this big.” She made an O with her soapy thumb and forefinger. “Car seats with multiple magnetic pole lines embedded in them. Vests. Pads that you sleep on. Wrist bands. I’ll show you something in a minute. Pam’s mother-in-law used to have severe indigestion and painful arthritis. She’s been sleeping on one of those pads for just a week and taping the discs on at specific locations and her symptoms are all gone. Pam’s husband had a bad back from working construction so he started using one of the car seats and now he says he feels ten years younger. It’s a Japanese thing. Pam has a tester that lights up and beeps when it senses a magnetic field. She can tape a disc on your back and pass the tester near your stomach and it will go off. That demonstrates how the force field passes right through your body. The field stimulates the nerves internally to increase your blood flow and when you have increased blood flow you’re getting rid of toxins and you have healing, don’t you? Pam goes to monthly meetings that the company puts on over in New Bern and she’s invited me to the next one. You’d be welcome too, of course.”

  “Now I know why you feel so good when you’re around me,” Sam said. “Go ahead, ask me.”

  “Okay, why?”

  “It’s my animal magnetism.”

  “Pam said your friends won’t believe it at first. Wait, I’ll show you.”

  She finished washing the last glass and Sam dried it and put it away while she rummaged in her oversized purse and came up with a thin pasteboard envelope, from which she extracted two knobby-looking black shoe inserts. “One size fits all,” she said. “Sit down and take your boots off.”

  He sat and worked off his ropers.

  She slid the inserts inside. “Okay, put them back on.”

  “How much do these cost?”

  “They’re not inexpensive, but what price do you put on your health?”

  “About how much.”

  “Sixty dollars. Well, plus tax and shipping, of course.”

  “Sixty dollars.”

  “There,” she said. “Now walk around a little. That’s it. Don’t your feet feel better already? Pam wears them and her feet don’t bother her at all anymore, and you know how we’re on our feet all the time, with that cement floor in the kitchen and only a thin layer of vinyl on it.”

  Sam had to admit the insoles seemed to stimulate his feet somehow, either the knobs or the magnets evidently at work, thinking maybe she’s not such a bad sales person after all.

  “Mmmmm,” he said. “Not bad.”

  “Go ahead, wear them for a day or two. Pam said to give them a good fair trial. You let me know what you think and then I’ll try them.”

  “Is this my second reward?”

  She smiled slyly and said, “Not hardly.”

  They played a game of Monopoly at the kitchen table, Joshua winning with only a little sneaky assistance from Sam. Then they sat on the couch, Joshua snuggled in the middle, and laughed uproariously together through an old episode of “The Angry Beavers”—the one in which Norb fakes illness and wears his concerned brother Dag out waiting on him, trying to satisfy an endless list of increasingly outrageous requests, but Dag finally manages to turn the tables. They watched a chatty Australian naturalist in his baggy shorts picking up deadly snakes in the wild and tickling alligators and eating something he scraped off of a stump, all much to Joshua’s delight. Then Valerie decreed it was bed time.

  “Do I have to take a shower?” Joshua asked pathetically.

  “Well, you had one yesterday, so I guess we can skip tonight,” she said, “but you still have to brush your teeth. All of your teeth.”

  They hugged him and both tucked him in. He called Sam back into his room for a drink of water. Then he called him in again to turn on the night light. The third time Sam went into his room he was sitting Indian-style in the middle of his bed.

  He said, “Sam look, I can almost snap my toes.” With his thumb he folded his second toe over the top of his big toe and flicked them. “See? Almost a snap. I bet you can’t do that.”

  “Good goo. I sure can’t. That’s a pretty good trick. Now, what say you hunker down under these covers and think about having the best dream ever.” Sam sat on the edge of the bed. “About Luke and Han and Leia, maybe. What kind of adventure do you think they’re having right now? Maybe they’re flying the Millennium Falcon down, down, down to a planet that’s glowing in the light from its star. Its great oceans glimmering even from way out in space. Pure white swirls of cloud hundreds of miles across. The sensors showing thousands of incredible life forms below…” He talked on quietly for five minutes, weaving a fantasy about a miraculous planet not at all unlike Earth, watching the boy’s eyelids flutter and his breathing slow, until he finally drifted off on a smile.

  Sam a
nd Valerie sat on the couch with cups of hot green tea.

  Valerie looked at him evenly and said, “Sam, tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything there is to know. Start with when you were zero and give me an autobiography.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what she probably had every right to know by now, yet he didn’t want to lie to her. He had fully intended to tell her all of it, but had just kept putting it off.

  He said, “Well you pretty much know it all. I grew up in Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. My parents died three months apart when I was eighteen. I was always interested in flying. There was enough money to pay for most of my training. Then I didn’t want to go the airlines route so I started flying charters. Hauling freight. Towing banners with Super Cubs. You know, ‘Meet ‘N Eat At Pete’s Pizza.’ I worked as a corporate pilot. Saved up enough to buy the Cessna. Found my way out here to Ocracoke. You’ve been right there for the rest.”

  She gave him an exasperated frown and said, “You know if you tried harder you could probably be even a little more vague.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something else, isn’t there? A big something else you’re not telling me.”

  He could feel her starting to withdraw from him.

  “Why do you say that?” he said lamely.

  “You have nightmares and you mumble things.”

  “Val, I…”

  She shook her head quickly and said, “No. Never mind. I don’t mean to pry or nag. Some day when you feel you can trust me to handle it, you’ll tell me.”

  He said, “Look, all that matters, really, is that I found you and Joshua here on this island and since then things couldn’t be much better, as far as I’m concerned.”

  He used the remote to switch on the news. They both watched in uncomfortable silence for a while.

  Then a report came on about a new eruption of violence outside Kosovo. There was hastily-shot footage of masked men boldly brandishing what looked to be new AK-47 assault rifles and shouting. Sam abruptly grabbed up the remote and cut the TV off. He sat there staring at nothing. Brooding.

  She studied him searchingly, but gradually her frown faded to be replaced by a resigned smile. She canted her head, raised an eyebrow, and brought her fingertips up to trace the line of his jaw.

  For a dreamlike time they touched and caressed like teenagers, Sam gradually drifting back from wherever he had gone in his mind.

  Then she got up, pulled her heirloom turquoise and silver clip off to let her long hair swirl free, and tugged at his hand.

  “Take me to bed,” she said.

  He cleared his throat and said, “I was wondering.”

  “What,” she said a little breathlessly.

  “Well, should I keep my magnets on?”

  “I’ll slap you. I swear I will.”

  Not long later, in the low light from a single candle on her bedside stand, with the blue moonlight softly tinting the sheer window curtains, while he held himself up on his forearms to just brush her nipples with his chest, his fingers loosely splayed in her hair, both of them willing themselves still for a long moment, freezing time, she said,

  “Those gray eyes. Sometimes…like a wolf.”

  “Do I frighten you?”

  She gave him a feral smile and whispered, “Not hardly.”

  And she pulled him down to kiss him hungrily.

  4

  THE DAY WAS BRASSY, WITH THE TEMPERATURE IN THE high seventies, so Sam had the top off of the Jeep when he picked Joshua up from kindergarten. A frayed flight bag on the back seat held a bag of corn chips and a thermos of ice-cold root beer, the boy’s favorite snack fare, along with other items purchased that morning at the General Store. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were on the tape player doing “If I Can Find A Clean Shirt,” the Mexican trumpets harmonizing soulfully in the background, so Sam and the boy sang along loudly as the breeze flailed their hair.

  He drove to the airstrip and parked by the Cessna.

  “We goin’ flying?” Joshua asked.

  “Nope. Your mom doesn’t want the two of us to go up unless she’s with us.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just the way moms are. Sometimes it’s hard to understand them. Tell you what, though, as moms go I think you got lucky and got a really good one.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought I’d clean this old plane up a little. Why don’t you look in that blue bag there? Whatever you find inside you can keep.”

  Joshua unzipped the bag and came up with a yellow dozer with a backhoe attached and a Ford Explorer towing a runabout on a trailer that had a working winch. “Hey, cool,” he said. “Thank you, Sam.” He immediately put the dozer to work on a sandy patch behind the plane.

  Sam got out a gallon of dry wash, towels, and a three-step folding ladder. He turned the Jeep’s player back on with a tape that was a compilation of his favorites. Ray Charles and Willie doing “Seven Spanish Angels". Waylon and his Jessi Colter doing stuff from their old Leather and Lace album like “Waltz Across Texas” and “Wild Side Of Life". Willie and friends again doing “Slow Movin’ Outlaw” and “Are There Any More Real Cowboys” and “Tryin’ To Outrun The Wind".

  He set to work swabbing on the dry wash, letting it haze, then wiping it off to leave a fresh luster and a protective coating. The constant sun and the salt air were taking an inexorable toll on the paint job despite his efforts. Twice a year he removed all the inspection plates and used a pump garden sprayer to mist expensive corrosion proofing into all areas to fight the sea air. Then, for weeks he would have to swab away black streaks that seeped out between the aluminum skin overlaps. The dry wash did a good job of removing stubborn black stains, chalking, and leading-edge bugs, but required a considerable amount of elbow flexing to scrub all the surface area on the plane.

  When Willie’s rendition of “Honky Tonk Woman” came on he did some fancy footwork on the top step of the ladder and sang along, and Joshua jumped up to dance enthusiastically as well, giggling when Sam nodded his approval.

  When the tape ran out Joshua made construction noises for a while and then said, “Becky Sampson said there used to be horses on Ocracoke. Is that so?”

  “Yup. That’s why that motel in town is called the Pony Island.”

  “How come there was horses here?”

  “A long time ago men used to ride along the beaches looking for wrecked ships, to help save the people and to salvage the cargoes.”

  Over the decades the 125-mile stretch of the Outer Banks—despite six lighthouses, the most famous of which was the spiral-painted brick Hatteras light, tallest in the nation—had claimed some seven hundred known vessels, earning the title Graveyard Of The Atlantic. Once in a while the sands here or there would shift to expose the ribs of some old wreck, only to soon shift back and cover them up again. The elements reminding Bankers, hey, don’t forget what we can do.

  “The men stopped riding the beaches but some of the horses stayed on and became wild,” he told Joshua. “They learned to take care of themselves. There haven’t been any on Ocracoke for a while, but there’s still a small herd down on Shackleford Bank where there aren’t any people. I’ve seen them lots of times from the air.” The shaggy animals resembled the wild mustang, and Sam always enjoyed spotting them running free among the dunes whenever he happened to be flying down that way.

  “What do they eat?” Joshua asked. “And what do they drink? ‘Cause you can’t drink the ocean.”

  “Good questions. They eat the marsh grasses and they drink rain water or they use their hooves to dig down to get water that’s fresh enough. Once a year some people have a roundup so a vet can look the horses over for any that need doctoring, and they rope a few and sell them to keep the herd small enough so all the horses that are left have enough to eat.”

  Joshua thought for a while and said, “Sam will you help me buy a horse? I got money in my
bank.”

  “Now, where are you going to put a horse? In your bedroom?”

  “We could build a big fence right here near the airport and then I could sell rides on him like you sell rides in your airplane and there would be a horse on Ocracoke again.”

  “Hmmm. Not a bad idea. Maybe some day. We’ll see.”

  “You know, Sam, grown-ups always say maybe and we’ll see. I think they really just mean no.”

  “What you need there is a house on the top of that hill you just built,” Sam said, changing the subject. “Take a look in the back of the Jeep. There’s a small empty box in there you can use.”

  Sam finished the tops of the wings, the vertical stabilizer and rudder, and the top surfaces of the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator, then stood back and said, “What do you think of the old girl?”

  “Good goo, she’s shiny. Can I please sit inside?”

  Sam lifted him up onto the pilot’s seat and put the headset on him. “You push here to talk and let go to listen. Do you remember what I told you about the instruments? Which one tells you how high you are?”

  Joshua pointed at once to the altimeter.

  “Which one tells you how fast you’re going?”

  He reached over to tap the face of the airspeed indicator with a small finger.

  “Which one lets you know if you’re upside-down or right side up?”

  He pointed at the attitude indicator.

  Sam described what some of the other instruments and gauges were for and the boy paid rapt attention. Then he gripped the yoke and made airplane noises.

  “You know it’s getting on toward supper time,” Sam said. “Maybe we should call it a day. I can finish up here tomorrow.”

  “Sam, can we go for a little walk on the beach?”

  “Sure, you bet. Let’s pick things up first, though.”

  They walked along the access road through the dune line and headed northeast alongside the lazily breaking rollers, Joshua stopping frequently to investigate a glinting shell or a ghost crab den. There were several four-wheel-drive pickups and sport utilities parked on the beach, rods propped in PVC pipe sections hammered into the sand, monofilament lines like spider strands angling out into the surf, people sitting patiently in comfortable old clothes on tilted canvas chairs and gazing out to sea as the nearest star slowly rolled aflame down the sky behind the island.