Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

Mr. Wheelock tells me, “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you,” after he finishes the kiss. He smiles smugly to anyone who tries to look down on him.

This is how I always remember him.

“It’s cold,” says Luz. She’s moved in. That’s why she got in touch. Eighteen years old, she’s been coughed out the throat of social services onto the street.

“Knock much?” I ask.

“Sorry, I was bored. And I’m cold. Can you turn the heat up or something?”

“If you got turn-the-heat-up money,” I say. “Here, wear that.” There’s a sweatshirt from my college hanging from one of the knobs on my dresser. Fleece-lined. Real thick.

She pulls it on over her chubby body, but it still hangs nice and loose. “Put on some socks or something,” I say.

“I don’t have any.”

“What?”

“It was literally just summer, I don’t know,” she tells me, pouting. All her bravado from our pre-meeting is gone. She looks like a little girl with her arms crossed over her chest.

“We should go shopping,” I say.

“Oh. So you got shopping money?” Luciana shoots back.

“Ok, a pack of socks is cheaper than heating this drafty-ass Victorian, smartass. Go clean yourself up so we can get out of here. We can even see a movie or whatever if you want.”

Luciana shrugs and leaves, then I remove a gun from my bedside table. When I go to the city, I always take her with me. She’s a brass and steel Smith and Wesson that clicks soothingly when cocked. A metal machine. A perfect contraption.

I’ve had this thing since I was fourteen. The wooden handle, simultaneously slick with polish and rough with overuse, contains my initials. Mr. Wheelock etched them with his carving knife, giving me the relic on my birthday. Intricate engravings, curls and loops like flowering vines, cover the barrel, cylinder, and frame.

Over two pounds she weighs. It felt like rocking an infant child when I first held the revolver in my hands. There’s weight to it.

“Is that real?” Luciana asks. She’s burst into my room without invitation again. If she’s going to stay here, I need to get locks. This is one of Wheelock’s old places, left to me in a trust, and it’s nice but needs modernizing.

“Old as hell but works just the same. I practice with her every week at the range. She never fails me.”

“Why do you have it out?” she asks. “Shouldn’t that be behind lock and key? Or some glass display case? Are you an assassin?”

“I carry her with me whenever I go into the City. Just in case.”

“Just in case what?” she says. She crosses her hands across her chest in a way that reminds me so much of my indignant, younger self, I almost cry on the spot.

“Just in case I need to kill someone,” I say. “You should get a piece, too. I have eleven, most of them antiques, but a few modern enough for a kid like you. You can try one out. Revolvers are best because they don’t jam, but a baby Glock will serve you well as long as you practice.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” she says, and I tell her that she’ll change her mind about that. “You don’t know shit about me. You don’t know what’s been done to me. You don’t think I ain’t been through some shit? Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to kill.”

“Even if it’s you or them? You’d spare their life even if it was certain you’d lose your own?” I ask.

“Shut up!” she shouts, and walks out the room, slams the door. Gentle, tender, baby thing. My fledgling. Softer than me but just as bitter.

I want to tell her—know this:

The world plays out as games of power, who has it, who doesn’t. An invisible puppeteer pulls the strings of each person’s life, determining her fate based on race, gender, religion. Luz got a particularly unfortunate set of strings.

Imagine a large man gifted with athleticism and strength, favored in life because of his class and wealth and color. Now imagine a child, young and poor and thoroughly pathetic. See the two of them together, in a room, butting heads.

Now imagine the scene again, but this time the child has a gun, and the man does not. He steps back, suddenly fearful of her scrawny figure, her shaking frame, her tearing eyes. Everyone fears the bullet, no matter what gift the invisible puppeteer has bestowed upon him.

Something with that much weight in this world is to be saved and savored, so even though I was an anti-gun progressive when Mr. Wheelock handed me my gift, I could not say no to the revolver when I felt its heaviness in my hand.

He never knew the exact date on it, but said that it no doubt dated to the Civil War era and was likely used for an elite officer on the side of the Union. “Of course, you’ll never shoot anyone with it,” he said.

The wind sweeps through the valley quiet-like and unassuming, animating the leaves and branches of the trees. The maples and the birches dance with soul. Like the women in Baptist churches who holler and scream ’cause they think they are filled with the Holy Ghost.

I go here before every trip into New York, even in winter. It’s my portal. My wardrobe.

I like to watch the trees shimmy as I sit on the edge of the river bank, feet in the water, butt in the wet clay, wishing for a water moccasin to come my way so I can shoot the creature dead. I’ll watch it wiggle. Watch it convulse and carry on after I put bullets into its spiraling body.

I’ll step back then, keep up my aim, and carefully unlock the barrel from my revolver before inserting fresh bullets. Laws of the universe don’t fool me. I’ve always known that snakes live a long time after they die, battling on all warrior-like even once unhinged from this here mortal coil. Decapitated, the snake will still try to plunge its teeth into an unsuspecting person’s flesh.

Snakes are even more dangerous when they’re dead. Without any control over the chemical impulses in their bodies, they’ll release all their venom into a piece of prey, not having the sense or ability to conserve for later attacks.

I stand up and remove my jeans, letting the evening chill trickle down my thighs to my ankles as I shuck off the denim. Next comes my sweater. Finally my shirt. Looking over each of my shoulders first, I rid myself of my underwear. My body shivers and shakes as I submerge myself into the river.

On the train with Luz, I almost remember what it’s like to be a kid. The picture renders itself a little blurry, but I can just make out a creamy coffee drink in one hand and a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the other.

I take my thumb and smudge it along Luciana’s cheeks. “You went a bit overboard with the blush.”

“I always do,” she says. “That’s how I like it. I’m not tryna pretend like I’m some blushing virginal swan. I like the color, so I put it on heavy. If you have a problem with that, go sit somewhere else on the train.”

She checks her makeup in a small mirror that she pulls from her handbag. “Besides, we’re looking for clothes for me. Practical. Functional. It’s not like I want anybody to fall in love with me tonight or ever,” Luciana says, placing the mirror back into her bag. She crosses her legs and leans back into the cushioned seat of the Amtrak train.

“Sorry. I was just trying to be motherly, I guess,” I say.

She shrugs, rolls her eyes, and puts her headphones back on. The teenage trifecta.

That night, after we return home with eight shopping bags, high off the spell of Manhattan, I dream about him. It’s the day we met, and I’ve run away from home to see an exhibit on Dadaism at the MoMA. Saw an ad for it on the 2 train, and it’s the summer between seventh and eighth grade. The art presents itself as an indistinct mist, and only the sharp angles of the walls and room edges are clear to me in the dream. The dress I’m wearing is short, too short, but I’ve grown a lot in the last year, and I was never one to be too concerned about the latest fashions.