Joel Goldman: No way out

“Sure,” he said. His wife knew that he hadn’t used a seat belt since the state passed a law making it mandatory.

He was carrying a Glock 22. 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and had a 12-gauge Browning Maxus Stalker semiautomatic shotgun mounted on the rack behind his head, both of them loaded. It would be enough firepower if it came to that, but paled in comparison to his assault rifles, making him wish he’d brought ammunition for one of them. He laid the Glock on the seat next to him, turned the safety off, and put the F-150 in drive as a light rain began to fall.

Ask someone from New York or California to describe Kansas in one word and they’ll say it’s flat. West of Salina, they’d be right, but northeast of Topeka, they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s hill country, a rolling timbered landscape; some parts are like those around Lake Perry thick with woods, a refuge for white-tailed deer, bobcats, and red foxes.

Eldon favored the deer, putting out feeders to attract them, admiring the doe’s graceful, shy, quiet personality and the power of the big antlered buck, imagining a bit of his wife and him in the animals, happy to give them a safe haven when the archery and muzzleloader hunting season started in three weeks and the regular firearm season came in December.

He thought about the deer, his wife, and the home they’d built thirty years ago on that hillside in the woods, how their safe haven could have become a trap if the man in the Dodge Ram had gone north instead of south and followed him there to steal his guns. The narrow road dropping toward his house was the only way in and out, easy enough to cut off. The nearest neighbor was too far away to hear or see anything. The boat he kept docked was in for repairs, the lake as big as an ocean without it.

Each month, he shot hundreds, sometimes thousands of rounds of ammunition, practicing his marksmanship, putting his guns through their paces, noting each weapon’s idiosyncrasies from trigger pull to recoil, adjusting his aim and grip to compensate. But he’d never shot a man or an animal, never served in combat, never been under fire. Lessons learned in a self-defense class years ago were a faint memory. He wasn’t a paranoid survivalist who longed for battle. He was a man who loved his wife and his guns in that order and who wanted the government to leave him the hell alone. That’s all he was. If the man in the Dodge Ram came for him, he didn’t know if he could pass the test.

He turned on the radio, hoping a honky-tonk country tune would put him in a better mind, but switched it off when the hard-driving drums and guitar put him more on edge. The rain had picked up, a steady rattle that blurred his vision and wore on his nerves.

Highway 24 was a four-lane divided stretch, and he stayed in the right-hand lane holding at sixty, glancing at the F-150’s oversized side mirrors to keep a watchful eye on traffic behind him. There wasn’t much, and what there was had no trouble passing him. A convoy of semi tractor-trailer rigs roared and rumbled by, throwing sheets of water and road grit at him. He fought the wheel when a blast of wind threw the F-150 toward the rigs, his trailer shimmying behind him.

The semis well ahead, he looked in his side mirrors again, sighting a pair of headlights a quarter mile behind him and closing. They were too high and wide for a sedan, matching the dimensions of a pickup. He waited for a car going west to pass, hoping its headlights would illuminate the vehicle, but the median was too wide and the distance too great.

His exit, a left turn across the westbound lanes of the highway, was coming up in less than a mile. He wanted to change lanes to make the turn, but the other vehicle had gotten too close. He could make out its shape as it began to pull even. It was a pickup, the trailer’s taillights reflecting red off the Dodge Ram logo on the center of the grill. He grabbed the Glock, holding it in his lap as his chest tightened like someone was cinching a leather strap around him, his breath stuck in his throat.

Was it the man from the parking lot? How had he found him? What did he want? Would he roll his window down and shoot him through the glass or aim at his tires and watch as he lost control and ran into a ditch? Could he shoot him first? He felt like one of his deer, caught in the crosshairs, only he couldn’t outrun his pursuer, not pulling a trailer. He was certain of one thing. He wouldn’t let a thief decide his fate any more than he’d let some bureaucrat tell him to buckle his seat belt.

He laid the Glock on the seat, lowered his window, and reached behind him, yanking the shotgun from the rack, leveling the barrel on the window frame and releasing the safety, his finger on the trigger. The nose of the Dodge eased past. It was blue, not gray, a man behind the wheel, a woman in the passenger seat holding a baby, screaming at the driver, waving at Eldon like she was trying to swat a fly, the man leaning over looking at him, his eyes wide, flooring the Dodge, the truck bucking as it blew by him.

Stunned at what he’d almost done, Eldon stomped on his brakes, the F-150 swerving and spinning on the slick, wet pavement and the trailer whipping side to side behind him like a water-skier jumping the wake. The shotgun slid back inside the truck, the butt dropping on the cab floor between his feet, the barrel aiming under his chin. He grabbed the barrel, pulling the shotgun up and away from him with his right hand, his left on the wheel, fighting the swerve.

He let go of the barrel, trying to get both hands on the steering wheel, his fingers getting caught inside the trigger guard instead, clamping down. The shotgun fired two rapid deafening rounds, blowing a hole in the passenger door, filling the cab with smoke as the truck came to a stop straddling both eastbound lanes. Deaf and blind, he collapsed against the wheel, his chest heaving as the truck’s horn wailed.

The smoke cleared, and he sat up, having enough presence of mind to get moving before a semi doing eighty miles an hour rear-ended him into the next county. He reached his exit, easing the F-150 onto the county road, stopping on the shoulder to check the trailer hitch and his load.

The rain felt good, cooling him down, his breathing labored, the pain in the left side of his chest radiating into his shoulder, neck and down his left arm. The hitch was wobbly, but he thought it would hold until he got home, the canvas bags tossed around the inside of the trailer, piled on top of the footlockers. He climbed back into the cab and returned the shotgun to its place on the rack, rubbing his chest with the palm of his hand.

He knew he was in trouble, figured he was having a heart attack. The nearest hospital was in Topeka, a distance he didn’t think he could make, and, if he could, he didn’t trust a stranger to look after his guns. He’d die or he wouldn’t, but if he was going to die, he’d do it at home in his wife’s arms, not with some nurse telling him to fill out a bunch of forms before he saw the doctor. He put the truck in gear, eating up the county road as fast as the F-150 would take him.

The turnoff onto the gravel road leading to his house was at the top of a rise. He made the turn, his breath ragged. The cool chill from the rain had given way to a sickly sweat and queasy stomach. Combined with the pulsing pain in his chest, it was all he could do to hang on to the wheel. Even had he felt well, it would have been too dark for him to notice the pickup truck backed into the woods on the opposite side of the county road. The three men in the pickup waited until Eldon took off down the gravel road, the driver following him, lights off, relying on Eldon’s taillights to show him the way.

Eldon knew the road, knew each dip, curve, and turn as it wound through the woods, lower and lower toward his house. He’d come home drunk a time or two, navigating the passage without so much as a scratch on the paint, knowing better than to brag about it to his wife, even if she forgave more than most women would. But the paint was taking a beating as he sped past tree limbs and brush, getting too close. The truck careened from one side of the narrow road to the other until he rounded a bend, catching a two-hundred-fifty-pound, eight-point buck jumping across the road in mid-flight.