She Needs Him

from before

There was just starting to be an edge of blue on the horizon; almost dawn. It was a spring morning- still cold really but warmer enough than it had been so that I was fine in shirt sleeves. I wore my jacket tied around my waste and let my vest and the chest clasp for my shoulder holsters hang.

When I got back to the house I could see the lock was off and the loop of steel it had hung in was sheared and bent to make it open.

The door was closed, but it had been open, I could see. When I got closer the light from the wood stove shone through the space under the door, darker and lighter light from the flames.

I figured she had been taking her time and watching me and she’d decided to come back and finish the job. Not long ago I had been of two minds about killing someone in the house, but I knew how to clean up a bunch of blood and water now.

I closed my vest and clipped my holsters together in the front. I laid my jacket on the ground outside the door. I stood on it and squatted down to listen.

If she’d been looking out the turret holes she’d have shot me before I got this close. She wasn’t trying to hide with that fire going. I released my pistol clip quietly into the meat of my palm by my thumb and counted the rounds, first the pistol from under my left arm, then my right, listening.

She wasn’t moving around at all. I heard a log settle in the stove and saw the light come up for a moment in the space under the door. She didn't move in there.

I flung the door wide with the toe of my boot and stood outside the throw of the light from the wood stove, which was open. It was clear once the door was swung wide that there was a fire bordering on too hot for the box in there.

I could see her feet from where I was: a ways down the berm along the dug-out path leading to the door.

She had boots on. They were wet. The laces were undone. The elastic in her socks was fucked and I could see the hair on her ankles down past the cuffs of her dungarees. The shadow on the wall in the firelight might have had the barrel of that shotgun in it but the fire was blazing and all the edges danced.

I muttered 'fuck it' to myself and went in with a pistol level in my right hand.

She did have that shotgun over her thighs, but she didn't raise it when I walked in with her tiny head in the notch of the hammer where I aimed, right down the barrel.

She blinked her eyes like she was winking both of them at the same time and screwed a smile up onto her face. I think she might have been wearing make-up.

She didn't seem like she'd come to kill me.

I walked over to the stove. "This fire is way too hot. You're gonna light the chimney soot and burn my shit down."

I grabbed the end of a split piece of pine and pulled it out of the stove door and put it on the bricks next to my feet. I smudged it out with my boot sole and hooked a second one with a stove hook that lay next to the box.

"I'm wet." She said, "I needed the heat to dry my breeches and my boots."

"You've been keepin' yourself pretty well hid for somebody who's not s'posed to be afraid a nothin.'"

I was trying to get the remaining four split pieces spread out two across the other two. I gave up and closed the door and opened the slot and tipped the flu a little. The flames got low and the room was almost instantly warmer.

"It's a simple machine, but you can still kill yourself with it if you're stupid enough."

I instantly regretted my word choice. She fired a single barrel of bird shot into the wall above where I was crouched. It fucked up the drywall, but it was a stud wall with cinder block behind it so there was no real damage done. I did duck.

"Jesus."

"The world being like it is, a girl can get trapped and still be in love. I've got no interest in being trapped and there's no keeping me from falling in love. You aught to know your life is in danger."

"There's a woman with a gun in my house. And she already shot me once. I'm just trying to keep the place from burning down."

She just sat there. She took a big loud breath. I took a big loud breath.

I said, "The last time I slept I woke up because I thought I heard a little girl talking to me from the dark."

I turned to face her. "Yeah," she said.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, I don't really go in for this kind of shit, but I think I heard her too."

She was occupying the three legged stool so I sat on the bench and looked across the brick floor where we’d laid together nearly a year before.

She was pale from winter-paler than I remembered her. Her eyelashes and her eyebrows were black. She didn’t seem scared, just ready for something fucked up to happen.

“You could’ve killed me, you know. I thought you meant to. I thought you might come back and do it.”

“It was an accident. I just wanted to get out.”

“Well I know that now.” I was heated about it.

She twitched her head like a dog that was about to shoot in and bite. She still had one live round in her shotgun.

“What’s wrong with your place?” I wasn’t just annoyed. I was annoyed and curious like a man who might get laid. I’ve never imagined I could hide my intentions from a woman, but they often don't want to hear.

She took another big loud breath. I noticed her hair was all up under a dirty hat and that she was muddy all down one side.

“There’s a dead guy in there.” I’m not sure why I laughed.

“Some drifter who was after me.” she explained. “He tackled me in the mud in the yard and I fought him off and then he followed me into the house and I shot him a few times. He’s dead.”

8

There aren’t generally flies around in any number while the weather is still cool, but there is something about a dead body that brings them.

We dragged him over to my yard to let him lay there as a warning. There were still husks of snow in places that were always shady.

We cleaned the floor. It was wood slats. There’d be a stain where his blood had pooled but the trail of it from where we’d dragged him out came up with scrubbing.

We came to talking more sweetly to each other. She smiled a little and even laughed once.

We had tea part way through the task and when she put the cups down on the counter with her pistol I took her hand.

She stopped what she was doing and cried for a few seconds. I kept her hand in mine and looked down at her pistol. There were still at least two rounds in it. I believed that one of the spent rounds was in the floor at my house and the other two were in the chest of the man we’d just put out.

I thought about how I make my living and what a woman might need. Her shoulders shook and tears fell down on the floor.

The kettle started to whistle and she pulled free of my hand to fetch it.

Later we sat on the edge of the cot in my place with the door bolted from inside and her guns and my guns and talked about the voice of the little girl we’d both heard in the night.

In some way that neither of us fully bought, we decided we might like to see if we could bring her into the world with us. We kissed about it. It didn’t matter if we didn’t understand. It didn’t matter that we could believe the words that came out of our mouths when we talked. It seemed better when we kissed about it, and everyone is full of shit.

We kept our secret thoughts to ourselves. I never leveled another gun at her. I’m not that hard to keep in line.

I never mention her to the boys at work.

She’s like a stone in the foundation, or any other precious thing you keep to yourself. Sometimes her cat sits in my lap.

And we practice.

We practice trying to bring a little girl into the world because we are strong enough to teach her that it isn’t all fucked. It might be easier for her to grow up in a world that’s already like this. It’ll be normal and we can hold her hands one of us on each side til she’s old enough to shoot.