Page 184 of American Hellhound
Outside the truck, the air smelled of crisp fall things – crispy leaves, wood smoke, the promise of snow in the months to come – and also of something wilder, denser, greener. A farm smell.
Ghost put down the tailgate, and began removing things from the duffel, laying them out in the bed of the truck. Gun, after gun, after gun, after knife, after box of ammo.
“Crap,” Maggie said, surveying it all. “Do we need all this?”
“Yep.” He sent her a smirk. “Welcome to boot camp, baby.”
~*~
“The thing about it is,” Ghost told her before they got started, “the other guy’s always gonna have a gun. So you have to ask yourself: ‘Do I wanna die? Or do I wanna fight?’”
Put that way, there wasn’t much of a decision to be had.
She was scared at first. The noise and the recoil and the knowledge of what a weapon could do – whatshe’ddone with one last night. When she lined up her sights, she saw Chuck the redneck in her mind’s eye, replayed his grunt and his fall and the spill of bright blood across her bed. God, she’d never be able to sleep in that bed again as long as she lived.
Ghost was a good, and oddly specific teacher, though, and before long she was caught up in the minute details of the process. Stance, grip, sighting, loading. He taught her the makers and calibers of each gun he’d brought. Showed her how to empty the spent cartridges from the .38 and put new ones in. Taught her to rack the slide on the 9mm, to eject the mag and load it up with new rounds. She had a whole new vocabulary now: hollow-point, shell casing, safety. She knew what cordite smelled like, after.
They practiced until she could take down an entire row of beer cans. Until she could hit within the innermost ring of the paper bullseye targets every time.
And then it was on to knives. How to open and close them, how to hold them, where to use them on a man.
By the time the lesson was over, and they’d packed up the duffel, Maggie was sweating despite the cool weather. She was pleasantly tired, her muscles burning after their pretend-grappling with the knife.
“Do I pass muster, Sarge?” she teased.
But Ghost wasn’t smiling. “Come on. I wanna show you something.” She noted he tucked his Colt 1911 in his waistband first. Force of habit, or precaution? She wasn’t sure there was a difference anymore for him.
He led her into the barn – big box stalls strung with cobwebs, bundle of rakes and forks in a corner, rotted hay bales, inches of dust and the lingering tang of animals in the air – and to a wooden staircase in the rear corner.
“Watch out, there’s no rail.”
“Okay.”
The stairs led up into the loft. With its high, vaulted ceiling and incoming beams of sunlight, it had the air of a cathedral about it. A dusty, hay-strewn place of worship.
Ghost took her to the window and sat down, legs hanging over the edge. He swept off the floor beside him, dust flying, and Maggie sat down, her stomach swooping as she dangled her feet out into the open air. The barn had looked tall from the ground, and now it looked even taller as she stared down at the grass below.
“Afraid of heights?” he asked.
“I didn’t think so, but…” She was sure she’d break one or both of her legs if she fell.
His arm went around her waist. “I’ve got you.”
She leaned into his side.
“Look out there.” He pointed straight ahead.
She’d been so worried about pitching headfirst out of the wide opening she hadn’t bothered to scope out the view. She did now, though, andwow.
From up here, the rolling pastures looked like a gently-moving ocean, deep green and soft brown, all of it alive in the wind. She could see copses of trees, the hardwoods brilliant in yellow, and orange, and red. The house didn’t look so sad from a distance, its rust-streaked roof almost charming. The sky arced above them, a washed-out blue smudged with cirrus clouds.
“This was always my favorite spot,” Ghost confessed, tone wistful. “Still is, I guess. I come up here and sit sometimes when I need to clear my head.”
“It’s beautiful,” Maggie said. “I just…wow.”
“When I was a kid,” he continued, “and we had cows, they’d all cluster up down there.” He pointed to the ground below. “I’d toss handfuls of alfalfa at them.” He grinned. “They’d moo at me, begged like dogs.”
She smiled to think of Ghost at Aidan’s age, curly-headed and skinned-kneed.
