A Touch of Death Ch. 05

In a blink I was standing in front of a man. He was white and tall, dressed in a western shirt and dark brown cowboy hat. He towered over me with a grim expression. I could feel the gun in my hand, down at my waist. It felt huge.

"It's time," the man said. "Show me what you've learned."

He turned me to face to the left and I saw a crude target attached to several bales of hay about fifteen feet away.

If I could've fallen to the ground in relief, I would have. I wasn't going to have to kill someone.

Instead, I saw the hands holding the pistol rise in front of me and aim at the target. The hands were small, smaller than mine. A child's hands.

"A gun's always loaded," a young boy's, Ty's, voice said. "I gotta treat it like that every time."

"Good," the man - his father? - said with satisfaction. "What keeps a loaded gun from going off when you don't want it to?"

"The safety."

"That's right, the safety. Take off the safety, son." It was his dad.

I watched Ty's hands as he held the pistol in a two handed grip and used his thumb to snap down a lever on the side of the pistol. It seemed hard to move but it finally did.

"Tell me when you pull a gun on a man," Ty's dad said.

"When I have to shoot him, Daddy." He said it so matter-of-factly.

"Cock the hammer and tell me what you do when you shoot a man," he commanded.

The hammer was even harder to pull back for Ty's young thumb. If I had to guess by hands, Ty was no older than ten. With two distinct clicks, it pulled all the way back.

"If I shoot a man, I shoot to kill," Ty said. I shivered at the calm tone a little boy said that with.

"Why not just wing him?"

"Never pull a gun unless you intend to use it and never use it unless you shoot to kill."

"That's didn't answer my question. Why shoot to kill?"

"Because he might kill you if you don't."

"Good enough," Ty's dad said with satisfaction. "The pistol's going to jump in your hand. Let it. Look down the sights. Put the dot on the target and between the sight posts."

The top of the pistol had two little metal bumps with a space in between them on the rear of the barrel and a bump the same size with a red dot on it at the front of the barrel. Ty lined them up so the red dot was on the center of the target and the front bump was centered between the two rear ones. "Ready."

"Squeeze the trigger slowly. Let the shot come as a surprise to you. That's the only way to not jerk the barrel up and miss."

I felt Ty's finger squeeze the trigger and the terrible bang startled the hell out of me. A bright flash and an explosion of sulfurous smoke. The slide jacked back and a gleaming brass object flew up and to the right before I could get a good look. It slammed back forward just as fast.

Ty handled it better than I would have and just let the hand holding the pistol fly up a few inches before bringing it back down to point it at the target. My ears were ringing. They should've been wearing earplugs!

When the smoke cleared, I saw a black dot marring the white an inch below the center of the target.

"Safe your pistol," his father commanded, "and set it down."

Ty used his thumb to click the safety up before laying it on the grass with the barrel pointing at the target. He turned and faced his father.

The look of satisfaction on his father's face was only in view for a moment before he crushed Ty to his chest with both arms wrapped around him. "You done good, boy. I love you."

"I love you, Daddy."

I blinked my eyes to clear away the tears and stared at the pistol still in my hands. That was scary and way too personal for me to have seen without permission. I felt like a voyeur.

The sound of the shower ceased. Oh, crap.

I slapped the pistol back on the clothes and dropped Ty's shirt over it before grabbing my own clothes and bolting up the stairs onto the deck.

By the time he sauntered up the stairs a minute later I was fully dressed and leaning casually back in my seat. "So," I asked, "did you come out naked?"

He smiled at me in a way that melted my insides. "You should've hung around to find out."

"Maybe next time," I said mysteriously.