«Is your husband here, ma’am?»
«No, he’s in New York. On business. He’s gone on business a lot. That’s why he wanted me to carry the gun.»
«Well,» Miller said, «if you can use it, you ought to keep it. What is it, a thirty-eight?
«Yes. And I’ve never fired it in my life except on a target range once.»
Miller took the gun, fumbled around, and got the cylinder to open after a few moments. He checked to make sure it was not loaded. «Okay,» he said. «We got a gun. Who shoots good? I sure don’t.»
People glanced at each other. No one said anything at first. Then, reluctantly, Ollie said: «I target-shoot quite a lot. I have a Colt.45 and a Llama. 25.»
«You?» Brown said. «Huh. You’ll be too drunk to see by dark.»
Ollie said very clearly, «Why don’t you just shut up and write down your names?»
Brown goggled at him. Opened his mouth. Then decided, wisely, I think, to shut it again.
«It’s yours,» Miller said, blinking a little at the exchange. He handed it over and Ollie checked it again, more professionally. He put the gun into his right-front pants pocket and slipped the cartridge box into his breast pocket, where it made a bulge like a pack of cigarettes. Then he leaned back against the cooler, round face still trickling sweat, and cracked a fresh beer. The sensation that I was seeing a totally unsuspected Ollie Weeks persisted.
«Thank you, Mrs. Dumfries,» Miller said.
«Don’t mention it,» she said, and I thought fleetingly that if I were her husband and proprietor of those green eyes and that full figure, I might not travel so much. Giving your wife a gun could be seen as a ludicrously symbolic act.
«This may be silly, too,» Miller said, turning back to Brown with his clipboard and Ollie with his beer, «but there aren’t anything like flamethrowers in the place, are there?»
«Ohhh, shit,» Buddy Eagleton said, and then went as red as Amanda Dumfries had done.
«What is it?» Mike Haden asked.
«Well … until last week we had a whole case of those little blowtorches. The kind you use around your house to solder leaky pipes or mend your exhaust system or whatever. You remember those, Mr. Brown?»
Brown nodded, looking sour.
«Sold out?» Miller asked.
«No, they didn’t go at all. We only sold three or four and sent the rest of the case back. What a pisser. I mean … what a shame.» Blushing so deeply he was almost purple, Buddy Eagleton retired into the background again.
We had matches, of course, and salt (someone said vaguely that he had heard salt was the thing to put on bloodsuckers and things like that); and all kinds of O’Cedar mops and long-handled brooms. Most of the people continued to look heartened, and Jim and Myron were too plotzo to sound a dissenting note, but I met Ollie’s eyes and saw a calm hopelessness in them that was worse than fear. He and I had seen the tentacles. The idea of throwing salt on them or trying to fend them off with the handles of O’Cedar mops was funny, in a ghastly way.
«Mike,» Miller said, «why don’t you crew this little adventure? I want to talk to Ollie and Dave here for a minute.»
«Glad to.» Haden clapped Dan Miller on the shoulder. «Somebody had to take charge, and you did it good. Welcome to town.»
«Does this mean I get a kickback on my taxes? Miller asked. He was a banty little guy with red hair that was receding. He looked like the sort of guy you can’t help liking on short notice and-just maybe-the kind of guy you can’t help not liking after he’s been around for a while. The kind of guy who knows how to do everything better than you do.
«Noway,» Haden said, laughing.
Haden walked off. Miller glanced down at my son.
«Don’t worry about Billy,» I said.
«Man, I’ve never been so worried in my whole life,» Miller said.
«No,» Ollie agreed, and dropped an empty into the beer cooler. He got a fresh one and opened it. There was a soft hiss of escaping gas.