T. Parker - The Triggerman Dance

"Where did you get the new jacket?"

"Nordstrom, hon."

"It seems a little small."

"I'm probably gaining weight."

"Did Susan help you pick it out?"

"Yes."

"What color did Nicky get?"

"Same as mine," says Holt dispiritedly. "Blue."

Holt has concluded that "The Children's Hour" is a kind of derivative from the years when Carolyn was a healthy, beautiful woman, and she was always waiting for him in their bed when he came to it, always at one a.m. That was when Holt's workday was finished. He was tired but rarely too tired to make love to her, and she was always eager. They had at least one unbreakable date each day, and that was at one a.m.-work done, children asleep, a nightcap glass of wine for Vann, Carolyn half dreamy and toasty warm, the smell of sleep on her breath, her thighs so unbelievably smooth and soft, her center deep and slick. Whatever was holy about that time, Holt has decided, got translated into this: talk of the children.

"Did he call today?"

"No call. Busy with studies, I guess."

"I hope the Catholics don't get to him."

"?" He just looks at her, mouth open.

"Nothing worse than a lapsed Catholic."

"Oh, well, that's true, honey."

The fact that Holt and Carolyn were married in the Mormon Temple in Los Angeles does not even strike him as odd.

Carolyn's insistence on a living, college-age son-be it Patrick, Randy, Nicky, Steve-has worn Holt down over the years The fact that she hasn't seen this son since the day they were both shot and he died on the floor of a fast food place in Santa Ana; does not affect the march of Carolyn Holt's one a.m.'s. During "The Children's Hour," Patrick is alive and doing well at a good Eastern college-now apparently Catholic-though during the day, Carolyn might weep over his death. Or she might not.

She'll want another postcard soon, Holt thinks, and I'll have to mock one up.

"Terri's lips all healed?"

"Quite nicely."

"Those braces hurt her. I wonder if Dr. Dale could loosen them a little."

"I'll talk to him about it."

"Would you?"

"Of course. We're going bird hunting in the morning."

"You and Terri?"

"Yes. You know, down in Anza. We'll be back the day after sometime around noon. She wants to bring Lewis and Clark from this year's litter."

"Terri picks out cute names."

"I agree. And they're fine dogs. She's been working them for nine months."

"What about Sally?"

"Oh, I'll hunt with Sally, don't worry about that." "I miss those days."

Times like this hurt Vann Holt most, times when Carolyn is lucid and real, when he can communicate with the genuine Carolyn for a few sentences and taste something of what has been, realizing that she is still sometimes very present and very alive. The doctors explained her burned and broken brain matter as something akin to bare electrical wires clotted by wax- sometimes the signals will get through, and sometimes they won't. With a gunshot to the head, they had prophesied, anything can happen.

They talk until almost two, when Carolyn smiles and stretches the upper half of her body, then lowers the head of her bed back into sleeping position. Joni and Holt help turn her so the bedsores on her back-those perennial, agonizing plagues-can heal up and start again.

He kisses her goodnight-once on the lips and once on the forehead-then goes to his room, undresses and gets into the huge empty bed. He feels his heart beating hard in his side, and hears it clanging against his eardrums. It is the rhythm of rage.

He is soon lost to dreams, the same dreams he has had on October the fourteenth since he was twelve and hunted his first season with his father, dreams of birds rising in a blur of feathers and of pulling the trigger of a gun and watching as the birds- every one of them-fly untouched into the sky and disappear over a ridge ablaze with morning sun.

By six a.m. on October the fifteenth Vann Holt felt like a new man, clipping along ten thousand feet above the California desert.

The Hughes 500 was set up for five passengers and cruise at a quiet 130 mph. Holt had included five in his hunting party which he believes is two too many for safe and good shooting His fourth was Juma Titisi, a Development Ministry Official from Uganda who is interested in hiring security consultants- team of them, in fact. The fifth was an old friend of Holt's from his college days, Rich Randell, now in charge of Liberty Op overseas paramilitary accounts.

Lane Fargo sat beside the pilot, lost in a conversation about grazing rights on BLM land, acres of which slipped past them ten thousand feet below.

Next to Holt was Valerie, at the window, her hair partial! stuffed up under the red Irish cycling cap she wears to hunt bird She listened politely to the Harvard-educated Titisi, holding fort on the destructiveness of tribal rivalries in his nation.

Holt listened also, or appeared to, but his attention was on his daughter, of whom he is often in quiet awe. He nodded along, looking at her from just over a foot away, pleased at the confidence he has cultivated in her, amazed at the breadth of her knowledge after taking a degree in English Literature at the University of California, Irvine. How could she possibly be familiar with the policies of Buganda province's fickle kabaka, or the hydroelectric plant near Jinja?

"I've always wanted to visit the college at Kampala," she said. "All the different African religions fascinate me."

Smiling, the tall and noble-faced Titisi invited her to stay with his family and visit the school. "You might be disappointed in its size and architecture, but the programs are rich in heritage and many of the classes are conducted in English."

"See, Dad?" asked Valerie, turning to her father. " That's why I studied English."

"It's all clear to me now."

"Dad lobbied heavily for engineering or maybe a pre-med program, but how could I let all those good books go unread?"

"And now that you've read your Shakespeare and Joyce," said Titisi, "you can think about doing something to help your country, your world."

"I've got vet school applications out."

"Overcrowded and competitive," said Randell. "Much less than a 3.85 and you're out of the running. I know because my son tried."

"I got a four-o, about two million assisting hours, and two field champion springers bred, trained and handled."

Vann Holt loved the way a young person could say the most self-aggrandizing things without sounding that way at all.

"I don't think I can help my country," Valerie continued, "but I could help some sick animals. Though here I am, going out to kill little innocent birdies and eat them for dinner. Maybe I should go into poultry ranching, more in keeping with my carnivorous lifestyle."

"Maybe you should help me run Liberty Operations," said Holt. This was an old refrain, but he had seen her interest rise in the last year. In fact, he was already luring her into the world of private security and privatized law enforcement with an odd job here and there.

Titisi and Randell laughed, and Valerie grinned at her father. Fargo looked back with his usual dour face, one thick black eyebrow raised like a gust of wind was about to blow it off.

"Have you shot quail in California?" she asked the Ugandan.

"Never."

"There's nothing like it," she said. "Although I'm sure the lions you took in the plains were pretty exciting."

Titisi looked at her a little uncertainly, not sure if this young

California brat was chiding him for shooting large cats for "sport"-though he had only done it once-or approving the primal ritual of a young Ugandan killing a lion.

"Oh, I did take one, once. Do you disapprove?"

"Yes," said Valerie. "I don't think I could kill unless I was going to eat. But I'm American and you're African, so a difference of opinion is pretty likely. I wouldn't tell a Honduran to leave his rainforest in place either, though personally I'd rather have the forest than a mahogany coffee table. Plus, we don't have lions here, so I can't be tempted. They are pure magnificence though-at least in parks."