“This rifle once belonged to Bob Lee Swagger,” it said. It was signed Bob Lee Swagger.
And one day, a month after his return from Washington, Nick answered a knock on the door to find a UPS guy with a package about three feet long that weighed about seven pounds. He signed for it, took it into the basement and opened it.
It was the Ruger Mini-14.
“Nick,” said a note in careful, almost childish handwriting, “am moving on. Thought you might want this as a souvenir of our days on the lam. You sure you weren’t a Marine?”
No signature.
Nick looked at the damn thing. A small, handy, neat little rifle, once owned and used by Bob the Nailer. He shook his head.
“Honey, what is it?” Sally called down.
“Ah, just a deal from a guy I used to know,” he said and went over and slid it behind the water heater, where to this day it remains, rusting.
They came over the last rise.
In the desert, the town looked like a patchwork of bright and dark shapes, flung across the living radiance. It was hot and dry and above the sun blazed down without mercy.
“It’s not much,” she said. “No mountains, no trees, just scrub pine and little sticky things that will kill you. And hot. It’s so hot out here most of the time that people live on iced tea and air-conditioning.”
“It looks like rough land. Not too many people around, though, is that right?”
“Hardly any,” she said.
“And lots of room to move and nobody to pay you mind?”
“Only me,” she said.
“Sounds pretty good,” he said. “Now let’s stop somewhere and get us a dog.”
“That would be fine,” she said. “We can raise him with this damned baby I seem to be carrying.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEPHEN HUNTER is the author of thirteen novels. He is the chief film critic of the Washington Post and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. He is also the author of one nonfiction book and two collections of film criticism. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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