Cody McFadyen - Shadow Man

He notices Bonnie and smiles at her. She doesn't smile back. "And who's this?"

"That's Bonnie."

Jazz has always been a good reader of people. He knows Bonnie is not all right and doesn't bother with any "hey, honey, how are you"

stuff. Just nods at her and looks at me, hands flat on the counter.

"What do you need tonight?"

"That Glock." I point at it. "And just a single clip. And ear protection for both of us."

"You bet, you bet." He removes the gun from the case and lays a full clip beside it. He grabs some ear protectors off the wall. My hands are sweating. "I, uh, need a favor, Jazz. I need you to take it into the range for me and load in the clip."

He raises his eyebrows at me. I feel myself blushing with shame. My voice, when it comes out, is quiet. "Please, Jazz. This is a test. If I go in there and can't pick up that gun, then I'll probably never shoot again. I don't want to touch it before then."

I see those eyes, examining me, warm and cold at the same time. Warm wins out. "No problem at all, Smoky. Just give me a second."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot." I grab the ear protectors and kneel down in front of Bonnie. "We have to wear these inside the firing range, honey. It's superloud when you fire a gun, and it'll hurt your ears if you don't."

She nods, holding out her hand. I give her the ear protectors. She puts them on and I do the same.

"Follow me," Jazz indicates with a gesture.

We go through the door into the range. Right away I smell that smell. The smell of smoke and metal. There's nothing quite like it. I'm relieved to see that the range is empty right now. I make it clear to Bonnie that she has to stay back against the wall. Jazz looks at me and slides the clip home. He lays the gun down on the small wooden counter that faces the range. The cold eyes this time, but then he smiles at me and turns and heads back into the main part of the shop. He knows I want to be alone.

I look back at Bonnie, give her a smile. She doesn't return it. Instead, she looks at me, an intent look. She understands that I am doing something here, something important. She's giving it the seriousness it deserves. I pick up the human-shaped target and attach it to the clip that holds it. I hit the button, watching it sail away from me, down the range, farther, farther, farther. Until it seems the size of a playing card. My heart thuds in my chest. I am shivering and sweating at the same time.

I look down at the Glock.

Sleek, black instrument of death. Some protest its existence, some think it's a thing of beauty. For me, it's always been an extension of myself. Until it betrayed me. This is a Glock model 34. It has a 5.32-inch barrel and weighs just under thirty-three ounces with a fully loaded magazine. It fires ninemillimeter bullets and has a magazine capacity of seventeen. The trigger pull, unmodified, is a smooth 4.5 pounds. I know all of these mechanical things. I know them like I know my own height and weight. The question now is whether or not we can reconcile, this blackbird and I.

I move my hand toward it. I am sweating more profusely now. I feel light-headed. I grit my teeth, force myself to keep reaching. I see Alexa's eyes, the O of her mouth as my bullet, from my gun, entered her chest and silenced her forever. This plays over and over again in my head, like film that has been looped. Bang and death, bang and death, bang and the end of the world.

"GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU!" I don't

know if I am screaming at God, Joseph Sands, myself, or the gun. I snatch up the Glock in a single fluid motion, and I am firing it; the black steel jerks in my hand, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!

Then I hear the click of an empty chamber, a spent magazine. I am shaking, crying. But the Glock, it's still there. And I have not passed out.

Welcome back, I think I can hear it whisper. With a shaking hand, I push the button that will bring the target back to me. It arrives, and what I see fills me with a kind of exultation, tinged with sadness. Ten head shots, seven in the heart. I had hit everything I wanted to, where I wanted to. Just like always. I look at the target, then at the Glock, and I feel that joy and sadness all over again. I know now that shooting will never be the simple joy it used to be. There's been too much death behind it for me. Too much grief I can never forget.

That's okay. I know now what I needed to know. I can hold a gun again. Loving it is unimportant.

I pop out the magazine, grab my target, and turn to Bonnie. She is goggling at the target, and at me. Then she smiles. I ruffle her hair and we head out of the range, back into the shop. Jazz is sitting on a stool with his arms crossed. He has a faint smile on his face. His eyes now are all warm, no cold in sight.

"I knew it, Smoky. It's in your blood, darlin'. In your blood."

I look at him for a moment, and I nod. He's right. My hand and a gun. We're married again. While it may be a rocky re lationship, I realize that I missed it. It's a part of me. Of course, the gun's not youthful anymore either. It's aged now, and scarred. That's what it gets for picking me as its bride.

B ONNIE WAKES UPin the middle of the night, screaming. This is not a child's scream. It is the howl of someone locked in a room in hell. I hurry to snap on the light next to the bed. I see with a shock that her eyes are still closed. Me, I always wake when I start screaming. Bonnie is doing her screaming in her sleep. She is trapped in her dreams, able to put a voice to her fears but unable to wake from them.

I grab her and shake her hard. The screaming dies, her eyes open, she is silent again. I can still hear that sound in my head and she is shivering. I pull her close to me, not saying anything, stroking her hair. She clutches on to me. Soon, her shivering stops. Soon after that, she sleeps.

I disengage from her, as gently as I can. She looks peaceful now. I fall asleep watching her. And for the first time in the last six months, I dream of Alexa.

"Hi, Mommy," she says to me, smiling.

"What's up, chicken-butt?" I say. The first time I ever said this to her she had giggled so hard she got a headache, which made her cry. I'd been saying it ever since.

She gives me her serious look. The one that both did and didn't fit her. It didn't fit her because she was too young for it. It did fit her because it was Alexa to the core. Her father's soft brown eyes look out at me from a face stamped by both our genes, turned pixielike by dimples that were hers alone. Matt used to joke about how the mailman had dimples, and maybe he'd given me a special delivery, ha ha ha.

"I'm worried about you, Mommy."

"Why, baby-love?"

Those eyes go sad. Too sad for her age, too sad for those dimples.

"Because you miss me so much."

I glance at Bonnie, look back at Alexa. "What about her, babe? Are you okay with that?"

I wake up before she can reply. My eyes are dry, but my heart twists in my chest, making it hard to breathe. After a few moments, this subsides. I turn my head. Bonnie's eyes are closed, her face untroubled. I fall asleep watching her again, but this time, I do not dream. It's morning. I look at myself in the mirror while Bonnie looks on. I've put on my best black business suit. Matt used to call it my "killer's suit." It still looks good.

I have been ignoring my hair for months. When I paid any attention to it at all, it was to move it so that it hung over my scars. I used to wear it free and flowing. Now I have drawn it back tightly against my head. Bonnie helped me with the ponytail. Instead of hiding my scars from the world, I am accentuating them.

It's funny, I think to myself as I look into my own eyes. Doesn't really look that bad. Oh, it's a disfigurement. And it's shocking. But . . . taken as a whole, I don't look like I belong in a freak show. I wonder why I never noticed that before, why it's seemed so much uglier until now. I guess it was because I was holding so much ugliness inside. I like the way I look. I look tough. I look hard. I look formidable. All of this fits with my current view of life. I turn away from the mirror.