Chris Offutt - The Good Brother

“Hey, brother,” Ty said. “I thought you’d be gone by now. How’s your leg?”

“Better. Stiffens up when I don’t work it.”

“That was some bad luck getting shot on Skalkaho like that.”

“I reckon,” Joe said.

They walked behind Ty’s cabin to a redwood table turned gray from sun and snow. The steady rush of Rock Creek came across the grass.

“I hear you’re a Fed after all,” Ty said.

“What?”

“Got your snout in the fire trough.”

“Not anymore. I just quit.”

“And came here on a social call.”

“Not exactly.”

Ty sat with one leg extended on the picnic table. He seemed content to remain there for hours. A wren called from the woods and another answered. Joe struggled against the urge to explain his situation. He wanted to tell Ty about Boyd and Rodale, his family and the garbage crew, Abigail, and Zephaniah. He wanted to confess.

“I need a gun,” he said.

“Talk to Owen.”

“If I ask him for help, he might get the wrong idea.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m not a Bill.”

“Me neither,” Ty said. “I don’t take sides.”

“I know you sell them guns.”

“In the eighteen hundreds, the French armed the Indians with rifles. The Indians lost, but at least they went down fighting. Then they got put in camps as bad as the Japanese in California.”

Joe wasn’t sure what Ty was talking about, but he believed him.

“Have you met Frank yet?” Ty said.

“When I got shot. And at a picnic.”

“Take it from me, Frank is a frigging lunatic. In my line you meet all sorts. Sociopath, gun fag, religious nut, even environmentalists want guns these days. And sometimes you meet a genuine psychopath. Frank is special, like Custer. He can’t wait to die in a blaze of glory. So watch your ass around him.”

“He doesn’t like anybody but white people.”

“You figured that out, huh.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“Let me tell you, brother. Hatred is the cheapest pleasure there is.”

“One man blamed everything on the Jews.”

“They’re like a broken record. I always tell them they’ve got things backwards. First of all, Jesus was a Jew. And second, the Jews didn’t kill him, the government did. The government bribed Judas, arrested Jesus, put him on trial, and executed him.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“It’s hard to argue with since they’re against the whole alphabet soup.”

“What’s that?”

“CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, IRS, UN, FEMA. There’s tons if you buy it.”

“What made them get that way?”

“The end of the Cold War.”

“You lost me.”

“During the fifties,” Ty said, “the government wanted everybody to be afraid of the Russians. That brought on a bunker mentality which led to people stockpiling arms and food. When the Cold War ended, all that paranoia lost its enemy. The Feds filled the gap. Then what happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge proved them right,”

“Proved what?”

“It proved that the government had turned on American citizens.”

“You don’t sound like you believe all that.”

“I’m not a fanatic.”

“Then why are you in it?”

“The first thing any fascist government does is disarm the people, then take away civil rights. If the Jews had guns, maybe the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. If black South Africans had been armed, there’d be no apartheid.”

“You think guns keep peace?”

“Of course. That’s why our country doesn’t want anyone else to have nukes. Then the U.S. gets to tell the little countries how to act.”

Joe was wearied by Ty’s words, half of which he didn’t fully understand. The rest made sense to him. The hard part was trying to separate one from the other, and he wondered if Ty himself knew the difference.

“What I miss about Alaska,” Ty said, “nobody had time to worry about this kind of thing.”

“Why’d you go up there anyhow?”

“Same reason you came here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Ty said. “You’re on the run from something.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Show up in the fall with a bundle of cash. No friends or family around. Stay in your cabin all winter. It’s the same way I hit Alaska.”

“On the run?”

“Yeah. Ever hear of the Weathermen?”

“No,” Joe said.

“I didn’t think, so. It was a political group in the sixties. I had to leave the country in a big hurry and I went to Canada and just kept on going. Alaska gets so cold that car tires turn square, but it’s the most beautiful country I ever saw.”

“Then why stay in Montana?”

“It’s like Chicago all over again, brother. These people are as radical as the Black Panthers were. You know, a lot of people wrote them off for being racist, but they were feeding hungry children in the ghetto. Things aren’t as cut and dried as everybody would like.”

“What do you mean?”

“Radicals start change going. It was radicals who dressed up like Indians and threw tea in Boston Harbor. These people out here believe in a cause and I respect that.”

“I can’t figure what it is.”

“Freedom, brother. The only cause worth fighting for.”

“Freedom for what?”

“To live, man. To think. Thirty years ago, it was the Left calling for revolution. Now the hippies are the status quo, and the Right wants revolution,”

“What do you want, Ty?”

“I want the same thing I wanted thirty years ago,” he said. “The question is, what do you want?”

“I want a gun.”

“You’re in luck. Today, I got a real deal on a Chinese SKS. It’s the coming weapon, my friend. So cheap it’s practically disposable.”

“Something I can carry, Ty.”

“Big? Concealed? What?”

“I want one to keep hid, and it needs to put a man down to stay.”

“Snub-nose.38. An automatic is smaller and weighs less.”

“You got one?”

“Me, I take the Walther PPK, but this bunch of patriots out here will only shoot American-made, so that’s all I stock. The AK-47 is the finest weapon ever made. The revolutionary’s choice. That dog will hunt,”

“Pistol,” Joe said. “A simple goddam pistol.”

Joe followed Ty to his pickup. He dropped the gate and reached inside the topper, where several dozen automatic rifles lay beneath blankets. A two-tiered row of metal boxes held ammunition. He opened a case and passed Joe a shiny pistol. Joe released the clip. It was empty.

“That do for you?” Ty said.

“Figured it would be loaded.”

“What, you think I’m some kind of nut?”

Ty went inside his cabin and Joe felt as if he were watching the passage of wild weather. Ty returned with a duffel bag. Inside were four boxes of ammunition and two spare clips. Ty flicked the safety on and off, dislodged the clip, rammed it back, and showed Joe how to chamber a cartridge. He casually fired at a milk jug spindled on a sapling.

“Best target is a water balloon,” he said. “Fill them until they’re a little smaller than the human head. I know people in Texas who use a corpse. You get used to firing at a human, but there’s two problems.”

“What’s that?”

“Getting hold of a corpse, and getting rid of it later.”

He gave the pistol to Joe, who shot and missed the jug.

“Think of pointing your finger,” Ty said. “It’s pretty tricky with this short a barrel, though.”

“You hit it.”

“I’ve run thousands of rounds through every weapon you can name. Let me show you something.”

He reached in his back pocket for a bandanna and wrapped one corner around the grip of the pistol. He held it tightly with his right hand, lifted the opposite corner to his mouth, and clenched it between his teeth. He used his outstretched arm to aim the pistol, pushing it from his body while holding the cloth in his mouth. He squeezed the trigger. The stick holding the milk jug toppled.