Chapter 1 May 18, 1998
Each part of the weapon is in place, like a deadly table setting, but instead of crystal goblets, I see a thing that kills.
Killed.
I blink away the memories and attach a brush head soaked in bore cleanser to the cleaning rod and run it through the barrel of my grandfather’s disassembled Winchester 30-30. Next, I run several cloth patches through, then a final one with oil.
I woke this morning feeling the need to pull out the old thing. Something in my dreams maybe, something itching at my past. I couldn’t shake it, so I skipped breakfast, instead filling the table with the stripped pieces of Gramps’s gun.
Why I chose this gun, I can’t say. I still have the Glock I used during my time in Intelligence in a locker under my bed, where I keep my old badge and Nicaraguan ID from when I started out as a bridge agent. While passing on a message to an undercover officer, my cover was blown. Fucking Latin American language with the same pronunciation of votar and botar. My “vote for” a grenade instead of “throw” a grenade nearly got us killed.
I got promoted. The “guy in chair” life served me better. High-stress, fast moving, real impact. My brain’s need to organize and order information, people, and tasks kept me well suited to the office atmosphere. But the Glock came with the badge, something I strapped to myself the few times I went out into the field with an agent, a thing I never fired outside of my proficiency testing.
I finish wiping the rifle barrel and place it on the worn wooden table in the same kitchen my grandmother used when she’d scramble eggs and kiss me on the forehead. But instead of her homemade meals, this kitchen is filled with the rank aromas of metal and grease.
I’d forgotten how much I hated the scent of gun oil. It’s like a distasteful relative showing up, uninvited. The scent is suddenly too heavy, weighing me down with darker recollections. That day in the woods when I was eleven and everything went sideways.
A premonition of danger tickles at my neck like loose spiderwebs. My shitty upbringing has given me a skewed sixth sense that if all is well, soon the other shoe is going to kick me in the ass. Or maybe because life isn’t trying to completely fuck me over, I believe some terrible event must be imminent, shaking itself into life just beyond the edge of tomorrow.
Probably the imminent danger idea.
I readjust the disassembled pieces, admiring the order of each. Barrel, slide, guide rod, frame, and magazine. In perfect order. One by one I wipe them down and replace each to its spot on the table.
I left the CIA after six years and, at age twenty-eight, returned to rural Ohio where I’d built a small community of friends, even more so after my grandparents died three years ago. They raised me here from age eleven until I left seven years later for college and then my “supply job” with the military. My life now is in direct contrast to the isolated childhood I had in Bitterroot National Forest with my father. If you pointed it out on a map, your finger would land on the bottom left corner of Montana.
So why can’t I shake away the ominous feeling? Maybe it’s the season, the end of spring warming into summer. The sweet bloom of fully green leaves, mixed with the pungent tang of iron filling the air. I shut my eyes at the memory of the barrel flash, the weight of the gun. The blood.
Again, I resist being pulled into the past and check the cleanliness of each part on the table.
My father and I never had many good moments. He’d been a forest ranger, often trailing the scents of pine needles and whiskey off him, especially during the deep folds of winter nights. But our last day in the woods, that day had been a life changer. For both of us.
I can’t reassemble the gun fast enough before I return it to the gun cabinet, a piece of locked furniture I’ve been able to ignore these past three years.
Three clucks of my tongue and my Dobermans, Florence and Rome, jump up from where they’re curled on the kitchen floor, their nails clicking on the linoleum as they approach me.
“Hey you two.” I rub their heads, relishing the sensation of their warm bodies under my hands. They lean against me on either side. “Daddy’s off to teach for a few hours.”
I acquired the dogs after my grandparents died, when the house echoed grief over their deaths. The pups were barely eight weeks old, and I got them in a trade. A local Doberman breeder, one of the world’s top producers of best-in-show winners, commissioned a Doberman sculpture from me for three thousand dollars. While they were both the smallest in the litter, I saw how tiny Rome propped up little Florence. As they cuddled in their box to keep each other warm, the tenderness I saw there was foreign to my own childhood. I asked for them in lieu of payment for the Doberman sculpture. The owner laughed at my choice, but now they’re massive, healthy, and beautiful. The breeder offered six thousand dollars to buy them back a year ago.
As if.
Florence and Rome follow at my heels, their stump tails wagging. Some things don’t have a price.
Yet, there’s no remedy for what happened to my first dog in Montana. Again, that memory tries to push into my mind. That fucking smug face—dad’s face. Heat warms my neck. No. I can’t let that image back in. Keesha’s furry body, and the gun still in my father’s shaking hand.
Sick of these memories, I head outside and scan the property and massive junkyard I inherited when my grandparents died. Of course, it’s been my home too since I moved here after my dad’s death.
Belton, Ohio has an isolation that feels more friendly than the lonely mountains of Montana. It offers its own form of companionship.
The sun is well into the sky as I cross the flat yard that separates the house from the store. As a child, this area was a curious labyrinth of strewn cars and rusted junk. After my grandfather died, I organized the vehicles in the junkyard that extends for acres to the side of the house, leaving a path to the small country store my grandpa opened with my grandma in the ’40s.
I’ve had enough shocks in my thirty-five years on earth. The traumatic past, the high-stress career. I can’t imagine I’ll ever leave here now that I’ve arranged my life where I can indulge the artistic side I’d used as an escape as a kid. Few interruptions and limited surprises.
I shake away the musings of the past—it’s time to get going.
“Snuggle up,” I say to the dogs. They disappear through the doorway of their doghouse as I close the gate in the fencing surrounding it. Their mini house is climate-controlled and the size of a large shed, with room for my repurposed childhood bed, complete with their favorite blankets and pillows, a braided rug on the hardwood floor, and an outside covered patio where they always have fresh water and food.
I’m accused of liking my dogs more than people. And it’s true. They’re my sounding board most days when no one is around.
My girlfriend, Victoria, loves my dogs. So far, our on-again, off-again relationship has worked for us, although the last time we talked I got the feeling she wants something deeper. She mentioned spending more nights over, having space for some clothes, a toothbrush. Her pretty brown eyes drilled into mine as she suggested it two days ago, and I kept it cool. I want her around. I like having her around. But does she deserve to be with a guy who keeps her at arm’s length because the secrets from his past can’t be shared?
No. Breathe deep and shut these memories the fuck up.
I follow the dirt driveway to the store and try to avoid the standing puddles. It’s mid-May, and although spring has been unseasonably warm, this morning’s rain leaves fingers of cold trailing across the surrounding woods and fields from Lake Erie.
I squint as the sun glints off the various old signs attached to the front wall of the store, named On the Rustic Side. For sale inside are old-timey items like apple butter, whisk brooms decorated in aprons, and bibs embroidered with bunnies.
Grandpa Dardin collected the signs. It was basically an obsession. I run my fingers along the raised metal on two of my favorites, Old Gold Cigarettes—not a cough in a carload and Pepsi Cola—A nickel drink worth a dime.
Finding places for the signs was easy. Grandpa built the house behind the store that sits up front along the road, giving plenty of space on the front walls for the décor. Grandma added to it with a giant sunflower clock with a bent minute hand that makes a tiny screech when it passes the nine. Not much has changed in either building since the ’40s.
I push through the front door.
“How’s it going, Greta?” I lift the lid of the pop cooler and take out an Orange Crush.
Greta sits on a stool behind the counter, reading a paperback. She sets the book down; her smile is generous and welcoming. “Hiya, Wyatt. It’s been slow today.”
“So the usual, right?” I chuckle. The store is not a moneymaker, but it’s a great tax write-off. It’s just off Route 59, making it a good location for road trippers looking for a quick stop on their way to Akron or locals who love to stop for a beer and a chat.
Greta shrugs. “There’s a chill out. Might keep people home.” Her knuckles are swollen, and I know the cold bothers her, but she never complains. She works the store most days, allowing me time with junk sales, the time I volunteer at the club, or even my own budding hobby in painting frescoes using slack-lime putty, like the old Italian masters made. Outside is a shack where I hold the white, high-calcium, liquid lime putty that matures over a few weeks so that I can then slap it onto a wooden plank and begin sculpting figures and shapes. It gives me a sense of control, I think. The commissioned scenery piece I finished that covered the side of a nursery was an exciting challenge. And lucrative.
She runs her fingers through her short white hair. It’s combed off to one side, in almost a manly way, but she likes it like that. When she has her monthly hair appointments in Geigerton, a nearby town, I always drive her because we catch lunch after. The beautician tries to convince her to grow it out, but Greta refuses.
“Where are you off to today?” She pulls her blue cardigan tighter. She lives a half mile down the road in a double-wide next to a much larger maple syrup production shack. Her husband, Meryl, died twenty-four years ago. She never remarried.
“Back to the Boys and Girls Club. I’m teaching watercolor this time.” I shake my head. “Learned my lesson with pastel crayons and beginners last week.”
She chuckles. “I imagine that was a mess.”
“Ten minutes to get going and an hour to clean up the kids’ hands.”
“Well, you best get on. I’m good to stay and lock up if you don’t want to hurry back.” She straightens a few of the maple syrup bottles lined up by the register. Each spring, Greta taps the trees and produces quart jugs of syrup she sells in the store. I have a few locals bring their goods for consignment, and I almost always sign them up, but I had to tell old man Sprague out on Highway 94 that I wasn’t interested in deer antler wine stoppers. No one says, “I wish this wine bottle looked more like a deer,” unless they’ve downed too much wine to begin with. I’ve also said no to AstroTurf flip-flops—you’ll feel like you’re walking on grass everywhere—and miniature toilet bowl necklaces.
I retrace my steps to the side of the house making my way to the junkyard, as most people would call it. I refer to the expansive acres of rusted metal as treasures, all carefully lined up in twenty or more rows. Like the ’84 Oldsmobile Firenza station wagon I’m currently driving. I have my pick from a lot of old cars Gramps collected, some all the way back to the ’30s. Most are more corroded metal husks than actual cars, but there are many that still run.
I tap the Firenza’s roof, satisfied at the hollow sound that answers. It’s square, compact, with a ludicrous number of headlights, as if the designers wanted to show the world this was their version of a “bright idea.”
Ha.
Corny jokes aside, it runs well, never lets me down, and has a “Sorry for Driving So Close in Front of You” bumper sticker that makes me smile when big ol’ trucks ride my tail.
I drop into the seat and roll down the window. In the distance, one of my favorite sounds is coming out of hibernation. The buzz of a distant chainsaw signals that spring is here and the woods are warm enough to clear away the winter’s deadfall. Spring was my mother’s favorite time of year too. “You smell like dirt,” she’d say, pulling me close after a busy day playing around our cabin in Montana. “It must be spring.”
Damn, today is just sucking me backward in time. I push away the deep ache that surfaces when I think of my mom and try to remember the good times. There were smiles and laughter, those years before I turned nine, when she left Dad and me.
The hot flush is back, and I roll down a window to let in some of the spring air. If she hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have been stuck with the drunk, and my dog Keesha would have been safe from him. He would have been safe from me.
I stick to the less traveled back roads as I near Akron, trying to weed through the shitstorm of my past, trying to grasp something warm and fuzzy, but it takes an energy I’m not quite willing to spend.
The sun highlights the spider pattern running through the tarmac, where road crews filled its cracked face with tar. This is a land of barbed wire fences, cow pastures, and ofttimes a wind feathering through the grasses along the ditch. If I currently painted landscapes, I could throw up an easel anywhere along here. The setting is the balm I need to pull away from the mixed torture this morning’s memories have stirred up in me.
Painting, sculpting, the frescoes. It’s all an escape and I know it. When I left the CIA, I went from having two dozen action items—weeks spent prepping and planning for an agent to go into the field under extremely dangerous circumstances—to a simpler life in rural Ohio. Any screwup here didn’t lead to the death of team members or more civilians. I’d only been back four years when my grandparents died. Their deaths narrowed my world even more and I’ve been happy to create order on a smaller scale. An individual one. Art allows me to mix a meaningful combination of colors and add the strokes to create an image so inviting, a person would want to step inside.
I never thought artist was a word I’d be known by. Or two words, responsible adult. Perhaps I subconsciously needed to be the opposite of what my old man was, and art was my way to do that.
A hawk circles over a cornfield of last year’s stalks, hunting for lunch. I steer around broken glass in the road. Car shrapnel is a telltale sign somebody recently hit something. Most likely a deer got clipped, one of the main reasons cars end up in my junkyard.
And there it is off to the side of the road—a mangled pile of tan fur and legs pointing in four directions.
The foreboding creates a tight place behind my eyes. Twenty-four years ago. An ordinary day like today, in the Montana forest, when I raised the gun like the one I had so carefully cleaned this morning and quickly aimed it at a bear charging alongside my father. After I pulled the trigger and unloaded all six shots, they both were dead.
I punch on the radio to a hard rock station, spin the volume, and let Steven Tyler drown out the bloody images, looking forward to spending my afternoon with a group of kids whose lives are a little less fucked-up than my own.
