Sorrow plucked at Laura as she paused to look at the boy, not merely because he was fatherless but because it seemed so unfair that a child two months short of his eighth birthday should already know how dangerous life was and should have to live in constant expectation of violence. She did her best to make sure there was as much fun in his life as possible: They still played with the Tommy Toad fantasy, though Chris no longer believed that Tommy was real; through a large personal library of children’s classics, Laura also was showing him the pleasure and escape to be found in books; she even did her best to make target practice a game and thereby divert the focus from the deadly necessity of being able to protect themselves. Yet for the time being their lives were dominated by loss and danger, by a fear of the unknown. That reality could not be hidden from the boy, and it could not fail to have a profound and lasting effect on him.
Chris lowered the binoculars and looked at her to see why she was not shooting. She smiled at him. He smiled at her. He had such a sweet smile it almost broke her heart.
She turned to the target, raised the .38, gripped it with both hands, and squeezed off the first shot of the new series.
By the time Laura fired four rounds, Thelma stepped up beside her. She stood with her fingers in her ears, wincing.
Laura squeezed off the last two shots and removed her ear guards, and Chris retrieved the target. The roar of gunfire was still echoing through the mountains when she turned to Thelma and hugged her.
“What’s all this gun stuff?” Thelma asked. “Are you going to write new movies for Clint Eastwood? No, hey, better yet, write the female equal of Glint’s role—Dirty Harriet. And I’m just the broad to play it—tough, cold, with a sneer that would make Bogart cringe.”
“I’ll keep you in mind for the part,” Laura said, “but what I’d really like to see is Clint play it in drag.”
“Hey, you’ve still got a sense of humor, Shane.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
Thelma frowned. “I didn’t know what to think when I saw you blasting away, looking mean as a snake with fang decay.”
“Self-defense,” Laura said. “Every good girl should learn
some.
“You were plinking away like a pro.” Thelma noted the glitter of brass shell casings in the grass. “How often do you do this?” “Three times a week, a couple of hours each time.” Chris returned with the target. “Hi, Aunt Thelma. Mom, you got four deaders out of six that time, one good wound, and a miss.”
“Deaders?” Thelma said.
“Still pulling to-the left, do you think?” Laura asked the boy.
He showed her the target. “Not so much as last time.”
Thelma said, “Hey, Christopher Robin, is that all I get—just a lousy ‘Hi, Aunt Thelma’?”
Chris put the target with the pile of others that he had taken down before it, went to Thelma, and gave her a big hug and a kiss. Noticing that she was no longer done up in punk style, he said, “Gee, what happened to you, Aunt Thelma? You look normal.”
“I look normal? What is that—a compliment or an insult? Just you remember, kid, even if your old Aunt Thelma looks normal, she is no such a thing. She is a comic genius, a dazzling wit, a legend in her own scrapbook. Anyway, I decided punk was passe.”
They enlisted Thelma to help them collect empty shell casings.
“Mom’s a terrific shot,” Chris said proudly.
“She better be terrific with all this practice. There’s enough brass here to make balls for an entire army of Amazon warriors.”
To his mother, Chris said, “What’s that mean?”
“Ask me again in ten years,” Laura said.
When they went into the house, Laura locked the kitchen door. Two deadbolts. She closed the Levelor blinds over the windows so no one could see them.
Thelma watched these rituals with interest but said nothing.
Chris put Raiders of the Lost Ark on the VCR in the family room and settled in front of the television with a bag of cheese popcorn and a Coke. In the adjacent kitchen Laura and Thelma sat at the table and drank coffee while Laura disassembled and cleaned the .38 Chiefs Special.