Ken Douglas - Nightwitch

“ That it?” She pointed to a machine that looked like a combination food processor and meat grinder.

“ Yeah.” He opened a drawer under the counter and took out various sized boxes.

She watched as his expression turned serious. His fingers were nimble and it was obvious he knew what he was doing.

“ You’re supposed to weigh the powder,” he said, “but I never do. I’ve done this so many times I could do it blindfolded and asleep.” He dipped a tablespoon into the bag and shook the black powder off, till it was level on the spoon. Then he poured the powder into a brass shotgun shell with hands still and steady.

Arty had lined up ten empty shells along a wooden workbench in his father’s garage, although technically it wasn’t his father’s anymore, he thought, wondering if his dad was in heaven or hell, and betting it was hell. Anybody that could beat his wife and kids belonged in hell, ’cuz that’s why God made it.

He also wondered about Carolina’s father, and why he was in town secretly. Why had he shot the gun off in her front yard? Was he shooting at the wolf lady? Is that why he was here? To protect her? Was he the man in the tent at the end of the clearing, or was it someone else?

Arty picked up the first shell and set it under the machine.

“ It looks like a drill press,” she said.

“ How do you know what a drill press looks like?”

“ We had one in the garage in Atlanta. It belonged to the landlord.” Her teeth chattered a little and Arty noticed the goosebumps on her arms.

“ Want me to get the jacket now?”

“ No, I’ll wait.”

“ This is the wad column,” he said, talking to take her mind off the cold, “It’s used to separate the buckshot from the powder.” He inserted the plastic wad into the shell. “You gotta get a tight seal or else the pellets don’t get maximum velocity. That means they don’t go out of the gun hard enough to kill anything.” He was talking like a TV doctor during an operation.

“ Next comes the dimes.” He squeezed ten dimes into the top of the twelve gauge shell. They barely fit and he was worried the shells would be too tight in the barrel and cause the gun to blow up in his face. But he’d gone this far, and he was convinced this was the only way to kill the wolf lady.

“ Okay, the final step,” he said as he pulled the handle down on the reloader, crimping and closing the shell. “Nine more to go.” He repeated the process nine more times, talking his way through each shell.

Once finished, he loaded the shotgun with five shells, then handed the rest to Carolina, who, without a word, put them in her backpack to keep Sheila company.

A squeal of brakes from outside told Arty his papers had arrived.

“ Can you ride a bike?” Arty asked.

“ Of course.”

“ Then you can ride my old one while I deliver the papers,” he said, as he put the boxes containing the buckshot and powder away. Then he looked for a place to hide the shells and decided on putting them in his dad’s tool kit, but he caught himself. His father was dead and he didn’t have to hide them or anything else ever again. He left them on the counter and said, “Let’s go fold some papers.”

“ Can you get me that jacket?”

“ Sure, follow me.” He thought about climbing in the window, but decided with his father gone, he didn’t have to. An eight-point-five earthquake couldn’t get his mother up before dawn. So he used his key and opened the front door, leading Carolina into the house.

Carolina tiptoed behind Arty as he made his way to his bedroom. All the lights in the house were off, but there were little nightlights plugged into the wall sockets, so it was easy to move around in the dark. She was right behind Arty when he turned on the light.

“ Mom,” he exclaimed and his mother opened her eyes. She had been sleeping in his bed.

“ Good morning, Arthur.”

“ I like to be called Arty now.”

“ You never liked it before.”

“ I do now.”

“ Okay, Arty, you didn’t come home last night, or the night before that, or the night before that either.”

“ Sorry, I had stuff to do.”

“ I didn’t say anything because of your father, but he’s gone now and all we have is each other.”

“ He has me, too,” Carolina said and Arty’s mother noticed her.

“ Well, who are you?”

“ Carolina Coffee.”

“ Your mother’s the painter?”

“ Yes, ma’am’

“ My name is Virginia, but you can call me Ginny.”

“ Thank you.”

“ Now, don’t you two think you’re a little young to be staying out all night?”

“ I wasn’t out all night. I was at Carolina’s.”

“ What do her parents have to say about that?”

“ They don’t know, Ginny,” Carolina said. “They’re divorced, so it’s just me and my mom, and she’s never home.”

“ Mom, can we talk about this later? I got papers to deliver.”

“ No, Arty, we can’t. We’ll talk now.”

“ We can’t, I’ll be late.”

“ It won’t hurt you to be late for once.”

“ I can’t be late, you don’t understand.”

“ Try me.”

“ Those people count on me. They depend on me to have their papers on their porches, before they go to work, or have their breakfast, or go to school, or a zillion other things, and I’ve never let them down. All those people know they can count on me. Not like dad, who no one could count on. I never wanna be like that. I never wanna let anybody down.”

“ I’m sorry, Arty. I didn’t know you felt that way. But the fact remains, you’ve been out for the last three nights and I need to know why?”

“ I have trouble in school,” Carolina said, “and my mom said she’d take me to Disneyland if I got all the state capitals on the test right. So Arty’s been at my house every night helping me, because I can’t do it by myself.” Carolina continued lying. “I just have to get them all right, and now I think I will, thanks to Arty.”

“ It takes three nights to memorize the state capitals?” she asked, her eyebrows going up.

“ Sometimes I know things, but I can’t put them on paper. Sometimes the letters get mixed up and it gets me confused. But if I know a thing real good, like my name, or the name of the school or the grocery store, I can get those right. But something I just learned, I can’t, so I have to know it real good.”

“ Florida?” Ginny Gibson asked.

“ Tallahassee,” Carolina answered.

“ Texas?”

“ Dallas.”

“ Louisiana?”

“ Baton Rouge.”

“ So that’s what you’ve been doing? Studying for a test?”

“ What else?”

“ And the test is tomorrow?”

“ So Arty won’t have to come over anymore.”

“ That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“ I have to help Arty with his paper route. That’s part of the deal. He helps me. I help him.”

“ But Arty doesn’t need any help.”

“ He will if he ever gets sick, or has to go somewhere, or wants a couple of days off.”

“ Then you could deliver the papers?”

“ Yes, ma’am.”

“ That would be nice. I didn’t think it was fair that he had to get up and do his route when he was sick. You would do that for him?”

“ Fair’s fair. He helps me when I need it and I help him when he needs it.”

Arty could only stand there with his mouth open. No way could he ever lie like that, and if his mother only turned to look at him she’d see it plain on his face. But she was staring at Carolina and thinking. Arty crossed his fingers behind his back for luck.

“ Okay,” Ginny Gibson said, “you two can do the paper route.” Arty sagged with relief. Then she said to Carolina, “Arty and I have had a lot of problems, but now with his father gone, I hope we can be a normal family. I don’t want to get in the way of any of Arty’s friends, but I don’t want any sneaking around behind my back. So if there are anymore tests, you tell me in advance. Understand?”