Randy White - Dead Silence

Looking around for the garbage bag, Will gave the man a look: Screw YOU!

“Kid, you wanna talk about a real sport? Here, I’ll show you.” The old guy had wheeled toward the bar, where there were wrestling photos on the wall, then stopped suddenly.

“Whoa… Holy Christ,” he whispered, “I just remembered something: My wife told me we’re getting a juvenile-delinquent kid tomorrow. Said he was gonna be living with us for a month, because she signed up for this stupid program down at church. Some foster-grandparent bullshit.” He had poked his big nose toward Will, the old man’s face now become a face with features. “You have anything to say on that subject?”

Will had used his sullen Why should I care? expression and looked at the floor.

“Are you the delinquent? Seriously, I’m asking.”

As the man moved the chair closer, Will knelt for the garbage bag, changing his expression to read That’s so crazy it’s funny.

Guttersen had pale, piggish blue eyes that lit up when he thought he’d done something smart. “I’ll be go-to-hell,” he said, “it is you! Christ! When she said an Indian kid, I thought she meant from freakin’ India. Like with a turban and a dot-you know, a tea drinker who might get pretty good grades in math.”

Will was looking around the room, thinking, I’ve gotta get out of here, as the man pressed on. “Her Tinkerbell friends wouldn’t have said Indian unless it was India. They woulda said Native American or Indigenous- something. But that’s what my wife meant-a juvenile-delinquent Indian.” The old man was grinning for some reason. “By God, you’re just as advertised. I can’t argue with what’s staring me in the kisser!”

Will had started up the stairs.

“Hey, where you going? I wouldn’t mind hearing about what it’s like robbing houses.”

Will kept walking.

Guttersen raised his voice when he didn’t get an instant response, a habit that would irritate the hell out of Will in the future. “I’m bored, for chrissake! That’s not obvious? Come back and have a seat. We still got half an hour of the radio show.”

Will had turned to look at the man. “You don’t want me here, mister. You’re afraid I’ll tell the church people I caught you trying to blow your brains out. If they hear that, they’ll strap you in a straitjacket and take you to the loony farm.”

“I suppose they might try,” Guttersen replied. “You gonna tell?”

“Not if you don’t tell the cops what I do for extra money.”

“I expect you’ve laid up quite a pile, working with a pawnshop. What do you do with all that money, buy drugs? Saving for college?”

In that instant, Will had realized something surprising: He could answer any way he wanted, even tell the old man the truth, an opportunity that would end when he walked out the door.

“I buy marijuana seeds sometimes,” Will had said, talking slow so he could feel what it was like not lying. “I grow it, then make a bunch more money selling tacote to rich kids. You know, weed.”

“ Weed, you call it. I thought the word you drug dealers used was grass. Or… maryann.”

“ Grass, sometimes. Smoke or tacote, they called it on the Rez-the reservation, I mean.”

Guttersen said, “I’ll be go-to-hell,” interested, but not as interested as he was pretending to be. Then the man ruined it with flattery. “I was impressed, you knowing about the Mercury dime. Most people, they’d drop a 1940-S in a Coke machine, not a second thought. You’re a go-getter for an orphan delinquent, I shit thee not.”

Will had almost told Guttersen something else true that he’d never told anyone: He was saving to buy Blue Jacket from the snooty Texans with their fancy ranch. Instead, Will had flashed his Whatever expression, then started up the stairs, telling the old man, “No need to shovel it so high. I’ll tell the church people I ain’t living here but won’t mention the gun.”

“Good. None of their damn business anyway.” The man had pushed his wheelchair to the stairwell, waiting until Will was almost at the top, to offer, “We still got thirty minutes of Garage Logic. Wouldn’t hurt to stay until the wife gets back from the hair parlor.”

“I got better things to do, mister.”

Guttersen didn’t argue-a surprise. Just sort of shrugged as he spun the chair, then settled in by the radio, his indifference saying Leave if you want, I’m not begging.

Will had stood on the stairs, thinking about it. He didn’t like the man-who would? But there was something comfortable about being with an adult you could tell to go screw himself and he’d say it right back, no hard feelings.

But the craziness with the gun was scary. And the wife sounded like most foster grandmothers, tight-cheeked do-gooders who worked so hard pretending to be sweet, they were a pain in the ass.

No thanks.

As Will reached the top of the stairs, though, he heard the old man call, “If you steal the jewelry, at least close the damn freezer door tight. Hear? But if you’re staying, there’s a can of beef jerky on the cupboard, and grab me a beer. Two beers, if you’re thirteen or older.”

It was a couple of months before Guttersen’s wife, Ruth, gave them permission to open the gun safe-Guttersen, of course, pretending he didn’t have an extra key-and drive to the shooting range. That’s where Will heard the pearl-handled revolver fired for the first time.

Loud, yeah, but as expected.

Back in Oklahoma, even shrinks and preachers packed guns. On the Rez, Christ, the Skins still had machine pistols hidden away from the days of the American Indian Movement. Will had grown up carrying a sidearm, provided by whatever ranch was paying him to ride fence. He could shoot.

Even so, he had to listen to Guttersen run his mouth, offering advice about the finer points of marksmanship, which Will had assumed was bullshit because competent shooters didn’t buy cheap weapons like a pearl-handled knockoff.

A misjudgment, he discovered.

“This shiny piece of junk’s got sentimental value,” Guttersen explained, shucking brass from the cylinder, then laying the gun aside. “It’s a fake peace-maker I used in my wrestling shows. Sheriff Bull Gutter and Outlaw Bull both. Good for close range, if you catch my meaning. But I woulda never used it in the field.”

When Will asked, “What field?,” the man didn’t answer, too busy locking the wheels on his chair, then producing a gun case from beneath his seat.

“This,” he said, “is what I used in the field. Not the sort of weapon I’d want some cop to snatch because they took it as evidence. Savvy?”

It was like that all the time, now, Geezus. Cowboy Bull and his Indian sidekick, Pony Chaser.

Inside the case was a pistol Will had read about but never seen, a custom. 45 caliber semiautomatic Kahr, polished stainless steel, with custom sights. A beautiful weapon, even though the gun had had some use.

“Where’d you carry it?” Will asked again, but Guttersen was loading rounds into a magazine, then turned his attention to a combat range. There were targets at twenty-five yards, fifty yards, and one target seventy-five yards away.

“If I had a rifle,” Will said, making conversation, “I’d take the far target and show you something.”

Guttersen shucked a round into the Kahr, and replied, “I’ll show you something right now,” then did.

Bull Guttersen could shoot.

It was another ten months before the man answered the question, “What field?,” confiding in Will something that even Guttersen’s wife was forbidden to mention: Bull’s wrestling career didn’t end in the ring, as he commonly told people.

Truth was, he had been crippled six years before in Afghanistan, at age fifty-one, after being recalled as a sergeant with his mortar unit in the Minneapolis National Guard.