Guns [John Hardin 01]

by Phil Bowie

  His eyes slowly lost their glare and after a moment he said, “You mean to go after these men.”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean to kill them.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There is no other reason. You mean to kill them.”

  Quietly, he said, “Yes.”

  The old man thought for what seemed a long time, then said, “Where are you staying?”

  “I took a motel room in town just for the night.”

  “Go get your things and come back here. You will stay with me for a time. I’m too old and slow to go with you after these men, but there are things I can teach you. How to walk in the woods or anywhere else quietly and almost unnoticed. Some ways to stalk and kill. How to heal and strengthen your body. But mostly how to harden your heart to what you will do. How to scour out all but the killing-will that you must set loose, to call on the ancient cunning you already have sleeping deep inside yourself, so you will act swiftly and surely.

  “But you must not let yourself become like one of them, so you must begin to know how—after you have done what you must do—how to restrain the killing-will and to wall it off from your life again. You won’t ever forget the great power of it, and it will change you, but you must learn to live with it as though it is a chained bear safely behind a wall. Then you must work to bring love and laughter and compassion back into your heart. My own bear is chained. I can teach you. Yes, I can teach you. Go now and get your things.”

  Wasituna gave him Valerie’s old bedroom in the back of the small house. There were still traces of her. A faded print dress hanging alone at the end of the closet rod. Stacked boxes on the closet floor, and two boxes up on the closet shelf that held the best of her grade-school papers. He tried to look through them carefully but found the innocence and the raw imagination and the good heart the discolored old papers displayed much too painful. There was a small red cedar box in the top dresser drawer that held costume jewelry, a key chain, and a high school ring. He left it all undisturbed and turned away, his eyes burning.

  He got little sleep that first night in her soft narrow bed, staring at the shadowed ceiling for hours and thinking of her. On a summer night with the bedside window open she would have drifted off listening to the wind gathering in the conifers, and she would have awakened in the morning to the pure music of the birds and the clean scents of the forest. When he closed his eyes he could see her and hear her laughter and feel her hair caress his face with a touch as light as a summer breeze, and recall in detail any of the times they had shared. A perfect vaulted sunny day at Kitty Hawk with Joshua. One night when the three of them capered on the beach as the lazy breakers glowed green. A cool windy fall afternoon spent fishing out behind the island in a borrowed skiff.

  He had a hundred snapshots of her locked away in his mind and he took some of them out and examined them. Valerie tossing her glossy hair back with a proud lift of her head, the cord in her bronzed neck prominent. Valerie preparing a meal at her kitchen counter, absorbed and serious. Valerie giving him a mock-angry look when he came out with some lame joke. Valerie closing her eyes as she inclined her head and leaned close for a kiss. Valerie gazing with total unconditional love at Joshua while the boy lost himself happily in some imaginary world on the beach.

  He could not allow himself to think of Joshua yet. The boy was safe from the evil that had struck out like some monstrous snake to claim his mother. Joshua would certainly be in great emotional pain, feeling lost and alone, but he was safe and that had to be enough for now. If I can go out there and make a measure of justice for Valerie, he thought, if I can neutralize the threat and if I still live, then I’ll think about Joshua and how I might ease his pain.

  But that seemed almost impossibly distant, and he knew the old man was right. He would have to banish compassion and all thoughts of a normal life, of long-range hope or plan, of what good things might have been or what good things there might still be. Such thoughts could only weaken his resolve, encumber him, make him fear or doubt or hesitate. So he began to push all such thoughts away, even the sweet memories of her, and he examined from a cautious distance the nature of the evil he would soon confront, drawing on every relevant fact he could dredge up. He looked for weaknesses, for ways that he might invade it. And destroy it.

  He went to work on his body the next morning, rising just before dawn to dress in sweats, and easing out of the house. He found a smooth rock the size of a crushed elongated baseball behind the house and it became his squeezing stone. There was a path behind the house that led up the mountain through the woods and he struck out on it at a fast walk, squeezing the cold stone hard fifty times in his right fist, then fifty times in his left, gradually warming it, and back to the right fist.

  A thick opalescent mist moved stealthily through the trees. Birds called above and squirrels scampered over the thick carpet of leaves. The path rose higher and made him break into a sweat, and his leg muscles ached deeply. The indistinct path veered off to the right to follow a natural cleft, then it became much steeper and he had to slow and pick his way around and over rocks and thick roots. It ended in a clearing near the summit, maybe two miles from the old man’s house and a thousand feet higher. He was winded and his body hurt badly in several places.

  He would use the path twice each day, he decided, early and late, building up his speed until he could run it all the way up and down without stumbling and falling, increasing his stamina and honing his agility and balance. He would carry the squeezing stone at first and then heavier stones in each hand. In the summit clearing he would do stretches and sets of push-ups and sit-ups, and with increasingly heavier stones he would do curls and lifts. The exhaustion of the workouts would clean out his mind and sharpen his focus. He rested briefly, his lungs burning, his side and hip aching. He walked on trembling legs and skidding feet back down to the house, where Wasituna had a pancake breakfast in the making.

  “Yes, my walking path is good,” the old man said as they ate at his kitchen table, “but it will soon become familiar so then I’ll take you to other trails. And when you run with the stones in your hands choose two of much different weights. They will better help test your balance.

  “But preparing your body is the easy part. Preparing your mind is much harder. You already have most of what you’ll need deep inside you, passed down through thousands of years. There was a time long ago when your ancestors always walked with danger on all sides, from animals and from other humans. So they learned how to smell the danger and see it on the edges of their vision and even sense it with their minds alone. You have that ability within you but it sleeps because you don’t use it. You’ve felt it. When you’ve walked up to a strange house, or into a darkened room, and you have known with certainty if anybody else was there or if it was empty. Or you have met a man who smiles widely but you have felt his treacherous nature and so have not given him your trust. Or there have been strange times when you have known exactly what is soon to be said or done by another. It is that ancient power within and you can use it to stalk an animal or a man. If you learn to tap into it, as you would tap into a tree for the hidden sap, the power will help make you stronger than your enemies.

  “You must also be aware that one among your enemies may have learned to call on that same power, although he may not even realize it himself, so if somehow that one becomes the hunter you will know to quiet your mind and still your body so you don’t betray yourself with movement or sound or fear-scent or even thought, until you can become the hunter again.”

  “It all sounds difficult to achieve.”

  “I’ll help you. But I think you’ve already begun. When you run the path to the top of the mountain sit down there and be still for a time. Wash out your mind. Push away all regrets, all doubts, all thoughts of tomorrow except how you might set out to do what you must do. Think of how it once was for your nameless ancestors. Their blood runs in your veins. Drive away all emotion, even anger. Above all, blinding
anger. Make your heart cold and hardened. Try to hear every single sound in the woods and know what each means. Be aware of every sound you make yourself and always try to move more quietly. Smell the breeze and know all it tells you. Go walk in the town and try to know what the others around you are thinking. If you try hard enough the power will slowly awaken in you. And then you can unchain the killing-will.”

  During the days he jogged and then gradually ran on the path and helped the old man do chores around the place. He found downed hardwood trees in the forest, used a bow saw to cut them into lengths that he could drag back to the house with a heavy rope looped around his shoulders, then he cut them up and split them to build up a store of firewood, stacking it high between two trees at the edge of the woods behind the house. He repaired and repainted the shed on two long warm days. He stocked the refrigerator and pantry but left the cooking to the old man, who made mysterious Indian dishes using different herbs that he claimed had magical healing powers.

  In the evenings they sat by the fireplace drinking an herbal tea. One night the old man asked, “Do you have enough money?”

  “Yes. My plane was insured and paid off. The Marshals got the money for me. Over forty thousand dollars.”

  He began to grow a beard, which he would keep closely trimmed. He put on an old hat and dark glasses and ran down into the town and walked along by the crafts, souvenir, and leather shops, trying hard to read the thoughts of those around him and actually seeming to get fleeting impressions from this person or that one. He went through the museum, taking in every bit of knowledge it offered about the Cherokee people. He didn’t engage in any conversations.

  The big casino on the edge of town sat at the end of a vast and ugly parking lot to accommodate the lines of tour buses and the hundreds upon hundreds of cars bearing plates from many states, which fed a steady stream of hopeful people into the neon fantasyland inside the low imposing building of massive laminated beams and stone. The action among the rank upon rank of electronic slots and games went on around the clock as the slick operation gathered in millions from the dreamers and offered only ephemeral cold glitter in return. “It’s a palace for fools,” the old man said of it.

  As he worked or ran, pushing his body harshly, he thought of how he might go after them. There had been at least two in that silver Blazer. The one with the bulldog face, the one Marshal Nelson had said was probably the street thug known as Winston. The other had most probably been Montgomery Davis. A third could have been the young one in fatigues who had been seen in the Ocracoke General Store asking about an airplane charter. He had first spotted that Blazer near the store. So find out for sure who and how many had come in the Blazer and then go after them one at a time, he thought.

  He would begin with the one called Winston, whose real name Nelson had said was Walter Calzo, from Newark. Strake was different. Strake was most often surrounded by tight security, either in one of his homes or in his warehouse office, and there were often other people nearby, innocent people who could get hurt or serve as witnesses. He had to strike with total surprise when the man was isolated somewhere. If possible make it look like an accident. Gradually he imagined a fitting way it could be done cleanly and with absolute finality. He began turning the raw plan over in his mind, looking for flaws, thinking of specific ways he might carry it out.

  Wasituna took him to several different mountain trails, the old Indian usually walking by himself for a time and then waiting placidly in the car while Hardin ran the trails to near exhaustion. Wasituna urged him to buy a pair of deerskin moccasins, which the old man first soaked in water and then instructed him to wear while he ran until they dried on his feet and so fit like his own skin. “You’ll feel every stick and rock on a trail,” Wasituna said, “so you’ll soon learn to place your feet more carefully, even while you’re running as fast as you can. The moccasins will make you quieter and more sure-footed. You’ll see.” He punished and bruised his feet at first, stumbling and slowing on the mountain path, once tripping on a root and falling headlong, painfully scraping his knees and forearms on sharp slate rock. Gradually he learned to run at speed while still placing each foot in the best spots almost instinctively. His feet began to toughen along with the rest of his body.

  On a gray heavily misted day after a light snow the night before, five weeks after he had arrived, Wasituna drove him in the pickup over poor back roads to a new trail a long way from the town on the edge of the sprawling Great Smoky Mountains National Forest. He ran for miles along the trail as it climbed and fell and climbed again, forking three times and winding through the rugged terrain. He lost track of time and was on a sustained runner’s high, feeling at times as though he could glide along the rough ground without even touching it, sweating freely, his legs sure and strong and his lungs inflating and expelling deeply and smoothly.

  As he climbed on the faint twisting path strewn with forest debris he ran alongside a narrow swift stream and the path became even more indistinct, as though nobody else had been this way in a very long time. The ground became steeper and more rocky, the stream eventually disappearing into jumbled rocks. Then the trees thinned and opened onto a foggy meadow surrounded by cliffs on three sides.

  He slowed and stopped, breathing deeply, his blood singing. He stretched his shoulders and torso and dropped for fifty pushups. He wiped his face with his hand and sat on a log to rest. He knew he was miles from anywhere. He could not pick out where the trail went from here. As his breathing calmed he rested his hands on his knees and stilled himself, listening intently to the forest all around. There was a fitful breeze building, rustling through the conifers up high and at times clattering in the topmost branches of the hardwoods. The air seemed to warm and thicken. He could hear drops of mist hitting the heavily-matted forest floor and tried to pinpoint where each fell. Some small animal, a squirrel or more likely a chipmunk, judging by the furtive quickness of the movements, suddenly skittered up a tree, its tiny claws scratching at the bark.

  He closed his eyes and tried to pick out other sounds. A particular branch tapping another. The trickling headwaters of the stream that was now five hundred feet off, barely distinguishable from the breeze sounds above. A bird calling plaintively in the distance, higher up on this nameless mountain.

  The breeze increased until it was a steady susurration, mesmerizing, sighing throughout the forest. Still with his eyes closed he listened closely and he could pick out what sounded like the soft beatings of wings. Hundreds of wings. Birds wheeling and climbing and settling. But there was a quality of unreality to it and he did not dare to open his eyes because if it was a mere sensory illusion he desperately did not want to lose it. He knew the mists were swirling around him now; he felt it, but he didn’t move. There was a startlingly heavy sound behind him. He froze every muscle. Then it came again, moving up on his left now, a dragging shuffle that broke twigs and scattered damp leaves.

  It was a black bear. He heard it clearly, its breathing uneven and chuffing, and smelled the rank odor of its matted coat, but he also saw it in some strange way even though his eyes were closed. It moved past him, lurching, and there was a glistening runnel of dark blood leaking from a wound in its shoulder. It ignored him as it lumbered slowly on. The moisture on the high cliffs was thickening and flowing down the rugged granite in violet rivulets. The mist-filled meadow was not a meadow but an ethereal lake. A lake that was real and yet not real. There were ghostly birds above it. Hundreds of them performing exuberant aerial dances in the violet mist.

  He thought he had pushed her far back in his mind where she would be safe until he had done what he had to do, but she stepped out from behind a tree, her back to him, wearing a dark green robe, her long black hair sheened with the chilled moist air.

  He did not dare move. He called out to her quietly but she did not turn around, just raised her left hand in acknowledgment and reassurance and moved on. Close by the lake shore she let the robe fall. The bear moved painfully down alongside he
r and looked up at her, its paw lifted and dripping blood. She motioned for it to go on and it moved awkwardly into the water until only its humped back and head showed and it was swimming out into the mist. She entered the water, her back finely muscled, her hair iridescent, her skin exquisitely supple. The lake waters flowed around her waist and the mists swirled and enfolded her and she called out something but it was lost in the breeze.

  He stood abruptly, his heart hammering and his breath coming in ragged gasps, searching wide-eyed ahead in the mist, but the bear was nothing more than a black boulder, the lake just a vale of low-hanging mist. The robe only a lush patch of moss. And although he strained to hear, the sounds of the birds were fading into the strengthening breeze.

  Shaken, he stood there for a long time, his eyes streaming hot tears, until he dimly realized the light was failing. He shook his head to clear it and walked back, looking repeatedly over his shoulder. Then he ran, filled with heartache, until he cut the trail close by a familiar cliff and suddenly knew his way again. The old Cherokee was waiting patiently in the darkened pickup and said nothing.

  Over the next two weeks he went back to the same trail three times but, despite running for hours and following each of the forks, he could never find the particular stream branch or the high meadow—or Ataga’hi, the magic lake—again.

  Wasituna bought ten boxes of .45 ACP cartridges, a pistol cleaning kit, and a yellowed Army manual from an old white man he knew who owned a gun shop off the reservation, and Hardin took the old Colt that Hank had given him to a clearing deep in the woods. First he spread out a square of canvas on a rock shelf and taught himself how to strip the gun and clean it. He did it over and over, enough times so that he could finally do it with his eyes closed. He felt its heft and balance and practiced with it loaded but without a round chambered, drawing and aiming it, from behind his belt buckle and then from behind his belt at the small of his back, over and over, trying to improve his speed and confidence so he would not fumble it. He spent long hours at it every day, and carried the gun with him at all times, becoming intimately familiar with it, learning to conceal it under a sweatshirt or windbreaker, in a leather fanny pack, or slid into the top of his boot under loose-legged jeans. He learned to draw and aim it with his right hand quickly while standing or seated, aiming with both eyes open and his left palm cupped under the butt to steady it.