But the odds against striking two people in the heart? Monumental.
He’d seen it happen to Meg, so he found it impossible to believe it had happened to Fen. The significance of that cocked automatic in Mrs. Tustin’s hands had taken time to penetrate his shocked mind. She, of course, couldn’t know how dangerous that was, but Tustin did. He couldn’t have been so stupid or upset as to knowingly leave the gun like that without a reason — perhaps to prove that the gun would fire when dropped.
The weapons expert found the sear filed down. Novachek found the file at Tustin’s house, the matching metal still embedded in the teeth. Less than a pound and a half of trigger pull instead of the normal four pounds or so. Damned gun would go off if you sneezed in the room.
All of which said Tustin had killed Fen Dexter deliberately, standing below him on the water’s edge. And then, to make his dropped gun story believable, doctored the automatic to fire easily — never considering who might be in the way when it went off.
No protection against the fools of the world, Meg liked to say.
The mist in the valleys was thinning, disappearing; antlike traffic was taking over the empty roads and highways. A new day beginning.
He trimmed the Cessna for a slow, circling descent. As much as he’d like to, he couldn’t stay up here forever, even though down there—
— down there were not only sadness and grief, but warm memories, work to be done, a life to be lived — and Christine.
He smiled and said aloud, “I think you finally made it, matchmaker.”
And would swear forever he heard, so clearly that his head swiveled to look at the empty seat beside him, that good-humored, sometimes smug, often needling, but always affectionate voice: Time to get on with it, Klauder.
What Comes Our Way
by Dan Crawford
There are nights when you don’t go out. You can tell by the signs. He comes for somebody in particular, but you don’t know who. And it may be if he doesn’t see you out he might not think of taking you. Because maybe he makes up his mind right then and there who goes and who doesn’t. So you don’t go out. Only sometimes you’ve got to.
Yes, the Death Coach rides in our county. I see you smile. No, I don’t think you’re laughing at me. You didn’t smile that kind of smile. You just think it’s quaint, an old kind of superstition that we back in the country still have a mind to.
But let me tell you, there’s many an old woman, and old man too, will tell you they don’t believe any such thing, and at night she dreams of the Death Coach coming to the door by night and going away empty. And maybe there’s a last dream that ends different. Only nobody ever tells that dream because it is the last one.
So you don’t go out when you hear the owl screech just at sunset, and the cats yowl to go out the same time the dogs whine to come in. Because they know, and if you can read the signs, you’ll know, too. There’s a lot to the clouds, and a color in the sunset, that lets you know the great coach is coming by night, coming for the soul of one or another, with fear shooting out the black eyes in the skull of the coachman.
I’ve heard stories about folks getting away from the Death Coach, but I expect those are just stories. You can’t really hide from death, I guess, any more than you can hide from trouble. They both know where they’re meant to go, and you just have to take what comes your way.
It was some years back that trouble came our way: lots of trouble, all together. The spring was so wet that most folks couldn’t get anything planted until June, and the summer was so dry that it didn’t matter that they did get it planted. Milton was working the farm part of the time and going into town to handle the accounts for Hughes’ Grocery. After a while, though, Hughes couldn’t pay him any more, because though there was plenty to write down in the accounts, none of it was about money coming in.
So he kind of slouched around the farm, maybe fixing a fence once in a while, or making a new scarecrow to scare off crows that had more sense than to come around where there wasn’t anything for them anyhow. And some days he’d get tired of pretending to work, and he’d say to me, “Keshleen, a man can’t sit around and just watch his life dry up out there. He’s likely to go out and do something desperate.”
I knew what he meant, and I never blamed him for a second. I’d just tell him how it would make all the difference to Robynn, who everybody knew was the smartest little girl in the state. How she worked so hard on all her schoolwork and was going to be somebody someday, but not if everybody knew her dad had done... whatever it was he was planning to do.
His eyes would kind of pinch up at the sides, and if Robynn was around I’d point to her, and if she wasn’t, I’d go get that Sunday school picture of her. And he’d look at that face, and then he’d sigh. “I guess, Keshleen, that we’ll just take what comes our way.”
Things came our way. There was a man came through, offered to buy the place, and even gave us a down payment. But that was all the money we ever saw from him because he was in bankruptcy a week later. We got free groceries now and again because Hughes would call on Milton and have him straighten out the books about once a month. But then Hughes went bankrupt and the store went to some man who didn’t know Milton at all.
There was a little crop. I put up what I could, but there was a big storm in November knocked down a tree. It missed the house, thanks be, but it did knock the porch to pieces, and sent floorboards down into the cellar. We lost a dozen jars of tomatoes and three of peaches. That was the first storm of the season, and there were plenty. Freezing rain and ice: there were days in a row when nobody could get around. Robynn was studying hard for her first spelling bee; she was just old enough to be in the youngest level. But they had to cancel four times because of the weather. That’s hard on somebody so young. I had to tell her, “It’s rough, honey, but we have to take what comes our way.”
Then it snowed, a deeper snow than anyone had seen in the county in years. There was nothing else to do, especially, that day, so Milton and Robynn and I went out with an old box from the shed and used it like a sled all around the place. Robynn hated to come in at all, and I couldn’t see much to go in for at that: mighty little warmth and less food.
But Milton was getting worn out. Lean as the holidays were, they were still holidays, and we had things to do. After Robynn went off to bed, we trimmed the tree. There wasn’t much in the way of presents. Milton had carved her an animal that was sort of a duck if you squinted a little. He never had any hand for that work. I’d scraped up some flour and raisins to make a kind of cookie. Those cookies weren’t much to look at either, now that I think about it. But at least there were plenty of them.
“I’ll just peek in and see if she’s been peeking out,” I told Milton when he sat down to try to heat his hands against the little smoke in the fireplace. I stepped on over to her room.
She wasn’t there.
I closed the door and went around to the back room where Milton had nailed up boards and tarpaper to cover the holes the porch had made when it fell in. The coat pegs were there. Robynn’s coat wasn’t. Her boots and that old box were gone, too. While the grownups were busy, she’d slipped out to go sliding some more.
“Milton,” I said quietly, like I didn’t want to wake up our girl. “Milton, I see where some branches have blown up against the shed. I’ll just fetch them in, and we can have a good fire tomorrow.”
He only nodded. He was worn out after a long day chasing around in the snow and no supper. I didn’t believe I’d bother him with this at all.