“The Gunslinger”
A Short Story from My Recent Novel-in-Stories Called Shot
A Preamble
If I have and weaknesses as a writer, and of course I do, my biggest flaw is that I am lousy at self-promotion. I was taught by my WWII hardass father that any time you are praising your accomplishments, you are in fact diminishing them. In short, you should let your work stand for itself and shut the “F” up. The problem with this approach is that in a literary world where there are more writers than cockroaches, if you don’t promote your work in some way, it will only be read by your immediate family, and there’s a good chance that even they may be too busy to take the time.
Why am I sharing this with you?
Over the next few months, because I will be on vacation frequently, I am going to take the time to promote my latest two books of poetry and fiction: Shot: A Novel in Stories (MadHat Press, 2021) and While the Undertaker Sleeps Collected and New Prose Poems (just released this May of 2023, again by MadHat). See Amazon links at the bottom of this Substack entry.
Shot had an interesting history. My agent was unable to publish it with a big house because the editors thought it was too “literary” for young adults and college students. Granted, all of the stories were published in good literary journals, and I do think of all of my middle-grade and young adult titles as being for adults too, but, “Too literary”? That phrase says much about where commercial publishing is at today, and how stupid many editors think young people are.
Anyway . . ., for one week, I will provide a sampling from my past books of prose poems collected in While the Undertaker Sleeps; the following week, I will include a short story from Shot. Hopefully, this generous sampling will encourage you to buy the books, and to tell others about them.
The below story, “The Gunslinger” is the first story from Shot and sets the stage for all the stories that follow. Shot includes thirteen stories, all beginning with the sound of a shot, then describing how twelve different characters experience it, characters whose lives will overlap with the lives of characters who have their own stories. In the literary world, we call this kind of book a short-story sequence. Famous ones are James Joyce’s The Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. An example of this kind of story can also be seen in movies like Crash and the insanely cool coming-of-age flick, Dazed and Confused, which you must see if you haven’t.
In “The Gunslinger” we meet Maura, a sweet young woman with low self-esteem, though she also possesses an attractive and likeable feistiness. Unfortunately, though, she’s taken advantage of by a predatory, rich cool kid named Alex, and things get out of hand. It’s told in short sections from their alternating points of view to show how differently they think about their relationship and the assault that occurs. It’s my way also of making you think and piece events together and decide whose side you want to take in the story, which isn’t hard from my point of view. Enough said.
The Gunslinger
The gray minivan reeked of cigarettes and fear.
The cigarettes belonged to Maura’s mother, but the fear was hers.
She turned the key and the engine coughed itself awake. The late afternoon sun—still hot—flashed menacingly off the hood.
Maura was going to buy a gun.
Unlike her friend Gabby, Maura knew nothing about guns, but just last summer Gabby had told her how a carload of boys had peppered her housing project with bullets while neighbors were outside barbecuing and making small talk. Gabby also said she knew where to get a gun if Maura ever felt threatened, which was why Maura was picking her up.
It was a short drive to the Dunkin’ Donuts located at one end of a strip mall. Maura could see Gabby standing on the corner, yelling at two guys in a yellow Mustang convertible. She wore skin-tight jeans and a snug white sleeveless top, her dark henna-colored hair drawn back into a ponytail. She was tall and lean, her body sculpted from exercise and weight training. She was a sprinter. That’s how she and Maura had met last summer—Gabby sprinting the 100- and 200-meter dashes, and Maura running long distance. Neither of them could afford a premier track camp, so their coaches finagled them scholarships. They practiced together for four weeks that summer and kept in touch through Facebook, sometimes meeting at the mall for lunch.
Maura pulled up behind the Mustang. When Gabby saw her, she shot the guys in the car the finger, and one of them called her a slut before they peeled away.
“Slut, my ass,” Gabby said, sliding into the front seat of the minivan.
Maura laughed.
“It’s not funny. These dumb boys think every cute girl has the morals of a rap diva. I’m a straight-A student on the fast track to something big.”
There was little doubt in Maura’s mind that Gabby was right about that. She was about to pull back onto the highway when Gabby grabbed her by the forearm and said, “Girl, why did you scrub yourself down?”
“What?”
“No makeup. You look like a nun.”
Maura felt herself smile, and that was nice, because for the last few weeks she’d been so depressed that she had trouble getting out of bed. And as for makeup, the truth was, she didn’t want to look pretty anymore.
“Don’t worry about today,” Gabby said. “These guys will want your money, and then we’re gone. They don’t need information. You understand?”
Maura nodded.
“No need to share. You want protection, right? You said the guy might hurt you.”
Maura nodded again.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, right?”
“No,” Maura said.
* * * *
Alex didn’t think much about it when he first saw Maura at the mall. He needed new desert boots. They were $150, but he needed them, so his mother gave him the money. It was nice to be able to spend money like that and not have to work crappy summer jobs to buy clothes. Instead, he had time to work out or to play Grand Theft Auto or to watch porn.
As he was leaving the shoe store, he saw her sitting in the food court on a bench by a water fountain. Looking at him. Not waving or approaching, just staring. He waved, but she didn’t respond, so he kept walking toward J. Crew. He needed new shorts and some T-shirts. He needed some kind of lightweight pants.
After he left J. Crew he saw her a second time, perched on the edge of another bench across from the store. Now this was getting annoying.
She actually looked good. She wore white short shorts and a blue sleeveless knit top, her long brown hair breaking across her breasts. She had one leg crossed over the other. She had nice legs. He remembered that, and also the green pendant that hung from her neck. The night of the party, after she had overreacted, he noticed it on the floor and had slid it into her pocket. That was nice of him, he thought.
But this was creeping him out, so he decided to talk to her.
“What’s up?” he said.
She kept staring at him, looking a little stoned.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’m cool with that.”
Still no response.
She looked sad, then angry, then sad again.
“I gotta go,” he said. “But let’s talk sometime, okay?”
He was about to leave when she said something, very softly.
“What?” he said.
“I said, Why?”
Now this was awkward.
“Like I said, Maura, let’s get together. Someplace quiet. But I have stuff to do now. I’ll call, okay?”
Still no answer, so he smiled and headed toward the kiosk that sold sunglasses. That was the last item he wanted to buy.
He didn’t see her again until after he’d paid for parking and walked through the steamy underground garage toward his red Audi, a present for turning eighteen. He wanted to get home, then go to the club for a quick dip. Dory Scheff said she’d be there around three. Dory was hot, and as far he knew, no one had gotten with her. She could be a bitch, but that was what he liked about her.
He placed a few bags on the hood while he opened the door. When he went to grab them, he spotted Maura leaning against a concrete pillar.
This was too much now. He tossed the bags into the back seat. He was going to talk to her, say it was creepy to stalk him. She had everything all wrong. If it hadn’t been for him, she would’ve been in real trouble.
He looked for her again, wanting to make things right, but she was gone.
* * * *
Maura was surprised where she and Gabby had ended up. She had expected a run-down neighborhood, with drug dealers and prostitutes hanging out on street corners. Instead, interspersed among yellow-brick, three-story apartment complexes were a number of well-kept two-family homes. Maura wouldn’t have chosen to walk there alone at midnight, but now, at 4 p.m., kids were playing street soccer, and a gray-haired black man was smoking a pipe on a front porch.
“I thought you said you lived in the projects,” Maura said to Gabby.
“Well, this ain’t exactly Beverly Hills. Just remember what I said, these boys will try to spook you, so ignore them. You’ve got the money, right?”
“Yeah,” Maura said.
Gabby led her up the stairs of a white two-family and motioned for Maura to follow her inside, where they found four boys about Maura’s age. Two were on the floor playing a video game, flanked by empty beer cans. On a nearby couch, a pale, thin kid wearing mid-calf black denim shorts and a black T-shirt waved to Gabby. He was sketching the two video players on lined pages of a spiral notebook. He was good. Beside him was a kid with close-cut blond hair, who was shirtless and heavily muscled, and next to him was a shoebox.
They all stopped and stared at the girls. They looked hungry. They looked like they wanted to have fun.
When the kid with the sketchpad saw them, he was up in an instant. “Welcome,” he said, jokingly bowing toward Maura.
“This is my cousin Lonny,” Gabby said. “This is his house.”
“You girls want somethin’ to drink?” Lonny said.
Maura felt her chest tighten, but she knew she couldn’t leave now.
“Just give us the gun and we’ll be on our way,” Gabby said.
Lonny’s lips widened into a grin and he shook his finger playfully at her. “And you used to be so much fun, cousin.”
“I was never fun like that,” Gabby said.
“Like what?”
“Like what you mean.”
The shirtless kid stood and approached, then stopped as if sizing them up. He knew he had a nice body. “No time like the present,” he said. He had the blank, unfocused eyes of someone on drugs, and Maura wondered what he was capable of. She knew what happened when guys got high.
“The gun, Lonny,” Gabby said. “Now, or I’ll tell your mom what you’ve been up to.”
“The money first,” Lonny said, so Maura got the $100 from her purse and handed it to him.
The shirtless kid opened the shoebox and took out a gun. It was smaller than Maura expected. Her first inclination was to run, until she remembered why she was there.
The kid surprised everyone by pointing the gun at the two girls.
“Get that outta my face,” Gabby said.
“It’s not loaded,” he said. “The bullets are in the box.” He scrutinized Maura, as if she were a bug he was about to squash. “You aim to shoot someone?”
“No, just scare him,” Maura said.
Maura could feel Gabby staring at her. She hadn’t exactly told Gabby the truth.
“How does it work?” Maura asked.
The boys laughed, and the shirtless one said, “You point it at someone and pull the trigger.”
“Yeah,” one of the kids on the floor said, “or sometimes it goes off by itself. I once shot a dude in the hand by mistake.”
“Yeah, a mistake,” Lonny said, and they all laughed again.
“Here,” the shirtless kid said. “Hold it.”
Reluctantly, Maura took the gun, surprised at how light it was. Suddenly she wasn’t so afraid. She felt as if she’d done this before, maybe as a kid. Maybe she’d held a toy gun, and it was as simple as that. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to put bullets in it. After a few seconds, it felt warm in her hand.
“That’s enough,” Gabby said, looking curiously at Maura. She took the gun from her and returned it to the box. “We’re outta here.”
Everything would’ve been fine except that one of the kids from the floor began to circle them. He feinted to the left, then to right, like a boxer. Then the shirtless kid did the same, poking Maura in the ribs. “Time to party,” he said.
Maura remembered another room, a girl’s bedroom, but not hers.
She looked at the box with the gun in it, but Gabby got there first and wedged the box under her arm. “You wannabe gangsta boys don’t scare us,” she said.
“Hey, hey,” the shirtless kid said. “That kind of talk won’t do.” He was mad now. He was going to do something stupid. That’s what guys did when they were mad.
Lonny got in the kid’s face. “Chill out,” he said, and then to Gabby, “Just scat, girl.”
“You really going to let ’em go?” the shirtless kid said.
“She’s family,” Lonny said, and that reminder calmed everyone long enough for Maura and Gabby to move toward the front door.
In the car Gabby said, “Who’re you going to scare? You said your mama’s boyfriend’s getting crazy. That you wanted the gun just in case.”
Maura had lied about the boyfriend.
“Does it matter?” was all she could say.
“Sure does, girl,” Gabby said. “I don’t want you shooting up your school or something crazy like that. Don’t make me sorry for helping you.”
“I won’t,” Maura said.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
* * * *
To Alex she was one of those girls you go through school never noticing. Not a geek or an outsider. Just a quiet presence, the girl barely visible at the edge of the class photo, too polite to push her way to the front. There was something sexy about that kind of shyness, so when Campbell McVeigh pointed her out, it got Alex thinking.
“Something’s changing with that girl,” Campbell had said.
“What girl?”
“The one by the water fountain. I think her name’s Laura or Maura, something like that. Really nice legs, but I don’t remember her ever wearing a skirt that short. It’s something that would’ve registered.”
The girl was sipping from the fountain, and Alex had to agree about her legs.
“Definitely a possible notch on The Gunslinger’s holster,” Campbell said.
That’s what Alex’s friends called him, The Gunslinger. He thought it was a stupid name, though it was cool to have that reputation, even if it was exaggerated. At first he thought girls would shy away when they heard about it, but the opposite seemed to be happening. Which was partly why he had approached the girl at the fountain.
She seemed startled by his presence and dropped a book onto the floor. When he picked it up, he bumped into her, and she blushed. That’s when he knew it was a done deal. Just a question of how to handle it.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling. “I’m a klutz.”
“Not what I’d expect from a jock,” she said.
So she has some spunk, Alex thought, and for the first time he looked closely at her. She was cute but, for some reason, missed being hot. Was it her nose? Her mouth? Were her eyes too close or too far apart? He couldn’t put his finger on it, couldn’t figure out why she’d been easy to overlook for so many years.
“You make it sound like a disease,” Alex said.
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t be running cross-country and track,” she said, but then she blushed again as if she wanted to take it back.
That’s where I saw her, Alex thought, remembering how the cross-country team practiced on the track circling the football field.
And so they agreed to meet at the pizzeria, where they talked about school and plans she had for the future. The usual stuff Alex had to listen to, knowing he had to go slow with this girl. A few more dates and then they’d go to his cousin Henry’s party. It was in another town. Most of the kids would be from Henry’s private school, and Henry’s parents would be in Europe, so they’d have the house to themselves.
On the third date he kissed her, not hard, teasing her with his tongue to see what she knew, which wasn’t much. Her tongue tasted sweet, like mangoes or blueberries—perhaps the aftertaste from a stick of gum she’d been chewing. He never touched her while they kissed, just leaned in innocently, not wanting to scare her off. It was a nice kiss, and for a moment he wondered if he might end up liking this girl. She was different—inexperienced but a little feisty, too. He learned a lot about her: that her father had split, that she thought her mother was prettier than her (which turned out to be true), and that they were having a tough time financially. The more he learned, the more he realized how unhappy and vulnerable she was.
So he asked her to Henry’s party, and she said yes. He told her to bring her bathing suit, and he promised her mother she’d be back by midnight. He did all the right things. He gave her mother Henry’s address and also his own parents’ phone numbers, knowing she’d never call.
So everything was set. What made it even better was that he was looking forward to the party. He was beginning to like this girl . . . Maura.
* * * *
Maura arranged the bullets on her bed into the shape of a fan. Although she didn’t plan on shooting the gun, she practiced inserting and removing the bullets. She felt powerful while pointing the gun when the cylinders were empty, but when full, the weapon seemed heavier, as if weighed down by the possibility of death. She held it at arm’s length, her hand uncontrollably shaking, which made her realize she could never actually shoot anyone. She stared at the gun, still amazed at how easy it had been to buy.
At one point, she decided to remove all but one bullet. She imagined standing over Alex, spinning the chamber, playing Russian roulette. She was about to remove that last bullet when she heard a knock. It was her mother calling her for dinner. Nervously, she placed the gun into the box and slid it under her bed.
Downstairs her mother was methodically chopping garlic for a Caesar salad. Plates of warmed-up macaroni and cheese rested on two straw placemats facing each other on the dinner table. Maura watched as her mother blended the garlic into the dressing and then dripped it onto the romaine lettuce.
Maura hadn’t yet told her mother about Alex dumping her. According to her mother, because Alex was rich, he was Maura’s “way out,” an opportunity to have the life she deserved, which obviously wasn’t the one she was currently living. Maura couldn’t bear to disappoint her mother. She was sick of seeing her nod off on the couch every night while drinking a glass of cheap Chablis and watching reruns of Beachfront Bargain Hunters—all the time wishing she could live in those exotic locations.
Her mother turned and carried the wooden bowl of Caesar salad to the table. She was smiling as she sat down. “So what do you and Alex have planned this summer?”
Maura forced a smile in return, trying to keep her voice from cracking. A number of lies flashed through her mind. “We haven’t talked much about it,” she said.
Her mother reached over and touched Maura’s wrist. “Whatever, it will be more exciting than what I’m doing. Oh, to be young again,” she said wistfully, tossing the salad and lifting it carefully onto their plates.
After supper and back in her room, Maura thought about yesterday afternoon, wondering why she had followed Alex to the mall. How like her it was to cower in the distance instead of yelling at him. How she hated that nagging weakness she felt she had inherited from her mother. She was athletic and smart but knew that her chances of becoming one of the cool kids―the ones who seemed so confident, so unafraid―were slim to none. It wasn’t as if she were ugly, and she could even be funny and witty at times, but she had never let herself get close to anyone, relaxed only when she could drift in and out of life on her own terms. To top it off, her father was AWOL and her mother dated older divorced guys who never stayed with her no matter how much she flattered them.
So Maura was surprised when Alex had asked her out, even more surprised that he was nice. She knew his reputation, but the other girls were wrong. She’d been kissed by a few boys, and Alex’s kisses were sincere. She even trusted him enough to confide in him about her father and to admit that she was jealous of her mother’s looks, and that, secretly, she thought her mother had driven her father away.
So how did she end up at a lousy mall, stalking him, able to mumble only one word, “Why?”
He probably laughed all the way home. She could almost hear that laugh, along with the laughter of the other boys, the ones at Lonny’s house and at Henry’s party. Those memories frightened her, but she wasn’t going to be scared anymore.
Alex was.
* * * *
If Alex were ever on trial—and he sometimes worried that Maura might bring it to that—this is what he’d say.
First, he wasn’t a creep. He took only what was offered. What did Maura think they were going to do at Henry’s party? Hold hands? Up until then, he had never tried to get with her, but it was only natural to take it to the next level.
The night of the party it was about eighty degrees, and everyone was drinking or smoking dope. He was surprised at how well Maura fit in, almost proud to be with her. Early on, she didn’t drink, but then someone handed her a rum and Coke, and she liked it. He told her to take it easy. These weren’t your normal rum and Cokes―more like glasses of rum with a shot of Coke. But Maura kept downing them, becoming more relaxed and talkative. That’s when he realized his night might get more interesting if the drinks kept coming, so he mixed them himself.
But then she had to make fun of the gunslinger thing, and that pissed him off. So he led her to the greenhouse, wanting to show her who was in charge. He started to kiss her, hard, and she pushed him away, so he slowed down, regaining her trust. They made out for a while, and then he steered her out of the greenhouse through a swarm of drunken kids toward the main house, finally ending up in Henry’s sister’s bedroom.
Things were looking good until she said she wanted to go home, and that didn’t seem fair. Rather than get mad, he was smart enough to back off. He’d been through this before. He coaxed her onto the bed and began kissing her the way he had on previous dates. She seemed okay with that and even kissed him back. But then she started to nod off, so he had to push the issue, jostling her awake until they eventually got it on.
Afterwards, she fell asleep, and while he was getting dressed, Henry and two other guys barged in.
“Whoops,” Henry said.
Then one of Henry’s friends said, “Seconds, anyone?” while another grabbed his phone to take a few pictures.
“Leave her alone,” Alex said, reaching for the phone.
“Well, you certainly didn’t,” Henry said.
Alex got in between them and Maura.
“You’d actually get your ass kicked for her?” Henry said.
Alex looked at Maura stretched out helplessly on the bed and decided the whole thing wasn’t worth a beating. “Come on, dude,” he said. “Can’t you see she’s wasted?”
“Isn’t that the point?” Henry said.
That’s when one of Henry friends, a big guy with a buzz cut who looked like he played football, said, “This is too messed up, Henry.”
Henry pondered that for a few moments, and then they all left.
Alex shook Maura awake and helped her to get dressed. He saw her pendant on the floor and slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans. She was having trouble walking, so he guided her downstairs and then to his car.
A little later, after she had puked a few times, they were parked outside a Dunkin’ Donuts. Alex went in and bought her a muffin and a large black coffee. He kept asking if she was okay, but she wouldn’t answer. Finally he gave up and drove her home, pulling into her driveway a few minutes before midnight, just as he had promised.
He was relieved, but also a bit rattled. He thought he had figured out Maura’s personality—what she was capable of—but now he wasn’t so sure.
* * * *
Maura had never been drunk before. But she liked these rum and Cokes. She knew she was high but wasn’t concerned. If anything, she felt more like herself. She even considered slipping into her bathing suit. She wandered around the pool, laughing at silly jokes and flirting with a few guys, feeling comfortable enough to poke fun at Alex’s reputation as a gunslinger. That wasn’t nice, but what an insanely stupid nickname.
Still, she didn’t want to get Alex mad. Every girl at school knew he was hot, and he’d been nice to her, so she had no problem trailing him to the greenhouse. They started to make out, though this time it was different. He seemed angry and pushed her against a glass wall. That scared her, so she fought back, but then Alex became the gentle and considerate Alex she thought she knew, so she gave in, even agreeing to follow him to the main house. She finished her fifth rum and Coke on the way, and that’s when the real buzz arrived. The poolside splashing and laughter became amplified, and the harsh floodlights made her see spots.
Disoriented, she started to wobble. When she almost fell, Alex squeezed her hand and led her toward Henry’s air-conditioned house, then upstairs to a bedroom. It had to be a girl’s bedroom because of the soft pink comforter and pink pillows that covered the bed. On the dresser were what looked like old music boxes. She was about to examine one when Alex pushed her onto the bed.
“No,” she said. “I’m really out of it.”
“So am I,” he said, but that didn’t stop him. She felt the weight of his chest on hers, and then he started to kiss her, but something didn’t seem right. She became woozy again and very, very tired. Who falls asleep when they’re kissing someone? she thought.
“I want to go home,” she said.
But he ignored her, trying to unbutton her blouse and unzip her jeans.
She pushed him away, but he kept at it. “No,” she said, as loudly as she could.
“Geez, Maura, calm down,” Alex said.
She should’ve kept yelling, but the five rum and Cokes had deadened her reflexes. When she tried to escape from underneath him, he ignored her, and that’s when her whole body seemed to go numb.
All she could say was, “Please don’t, Alex.” She repeated it a number of times, but he was too strong. She had always wondered about sex, never imagining it would be so rough or take so long.
After he was done, she pretended to be asleep, even when the other boys came in, followed by the clicks of cellphone cameras. Her next clear recollections were of throwing up into some bushes beside Alex’s car, then finding herself in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, where Alex wouldn’t stop talking. He made fun of some girl who had taken her top off and jumped into the pool; he said he didn’t even know Henry’s friends; he asked if she wanted another muffin. He didn’t look at her as he rambled on. She wanted to jump out of the car and run home, but she was in no condition to do that. Finally, at her house, he said, “Do you want me to walk you to the door?”
Do you want me to walk you to the door? Do you want me to walk you to the door? Was he serious?
After that night, he seemed to avoid her in the halls, and she waited one whole week for him to call and answer the question she’d been obsessed with, the one that jolted her from sleep every night: Why?
She knew of course what she was supposed to do: confide in her mother or a school counselor or call the police. But Alex was popular and his father was rich. He’d say they were both drunk, and everyone would ask why she’d waited so long to report it. She’d had seen on TV how women were treated when they came forward.
So all she was left with was confusion.
And anger.
* * * *
Alex wasn’t going to tell Campbell or his other friends about the party but they always expected a report, so he gave enough details to make them go away. He was aware something had gone wrong that night, and he needed to move on.
It was 9 p.m., still about seventy degrees—a nice night to take a run along the bicycle path that circled Echo Pond. That’s what he’d been doing since the weather had warmed up. He had even jogged there with Maura once, then made out with her in the woods nearby.
He was in front of his house, stretching out his back and hamstrings on the sidewalk, about to step into the street, when an old minivan rushed by, almost hitting him. He shook his fist and swore at the driver, but then gathered himself and jogged toward the path. Halfway through his run, he stopped at a water fountain and drank deeply. When he looked up, Maura was about thirty feet away, sitting on a large boulder that kids fished from during the day.
Faint light from a nearby lamppost made it possible to see her face, which was expressionless. She wore jeans, running shoes, and a white hoodie with the school’s insignia on it. She was facing him, her hands concealed in the pockets of the hoodie. He was surprised at how little she meant to him. Looking at her was like hearing an old song and not remembering why he had ever liked it. He thought about ignoring her and sprinting away, but he was curious.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a coincidence,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” she responded.
He placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. “I was going to call.”
“No, you weren’t.”
She was right about that. “Look, Maura, school’s over in a few weeks, so let’s be civil and remember the good times.”
A second later, he was sorry he’d said that. It was a line that had worked before, but he needed something special for Maura. He should’ve been patient. He should’ve sized her up, guessed at her intentions, then worked that angle. But it was too late now, so he decided to get tough.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve tried to be nice, but if you don’t stop stalking me, I’m going to get a restraining order. You know my father can make that happen.”
That’s when she showed him the gun.
* * * *
Maura knew about Alex’s nightly runs and his routine stop by the water fountain, so she wasn’t surprised when he appeared on the sidewalk in running shorts and a T-shirt. But she wasn’t prepared for what happened next. As he was stretching with his back to her, she started the minivan and in a moment of rage sped by, nearly grazing him.
Scared, she turned down the first side street she saw, where she shut down the engine and tried to calm down.
She was glad she hadn’t hit him. She didn’t want to make him a victim and ruin her plan. It was better to scare him. No one would believe that she had threatened to shoot him on the bike path, of all places, and if he told anyone, she’d already chosen a place to bury the gun. She would just laugh and act like he was crazy.
After regaining her composure, she drove to an empty parking lot by the path and walked toward a large boulder near the pond, not far from the fountain. That’s where she waited, feeling the weight of the gun in the pocket of her hoodie.
She wasn’t surprised when he approached, or when he spoke casually to her, as if he were still in control. The Gunslinger, she thought, a rush of anger seizing her.
But there was also something pathetic about him. He was so clueless that, for a moment, she almost ditched her plan. But how could she forget that night, how long he had kept at it, how often she had protested? How could she forget walking the gauntlet of his friends as they leaned against their lockers, smirking at her, or how the huge banners decorating the walls and congratulating the “Class of 2018” seemed, with their optimism, to mock her? And then he had to make that comment about the “good times,” as if she were a little girl who could be bought off with a happy memory. She had no choice but to wave the gun in his face.
* * * *
“Whoa,” he said. “Is this a joke?”
It must be a toy gun, he thought.
But upon reaching her, he realized the gun was real. He thought about running but then remembered that this was Maura holding the gun, and he knew the kind of girl she was. She had confided her fears and insecurities to him. She had trusted him. She didn’t have the guts to shoot anyone, he thought. She was just trying to frighten him. Yeah—that had to be it.
He moved closer to her. “No need to wave that gun if you want an apology, Maura,” he said, trying to sound as calm as possible.
“I want you to kneel,” she said.
He decided to go with his hunch. “I won’t do that, Maura. I’m leaving, so you might as well put the gun away.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.
But he turned anyway and started toward the bike path. That’s when he heard it: a metallic click.
At first he had trouble catching his breath, but then he realized the gun was indeed empty and that his hunch was right. Maura was angry, but she wasn’t crazy.
So he kept walking, imagining what a gunshot might actually sound like.
Two more empty clicks broke the silence.
He smiled.
Would it be like fireworks, he thought, a hammer hitting a board a few inches from his ear, the crash of a boulder dropped from an extreme height?
He moved farther away, confident that he would never hear one of those sounds.
But then he did.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories