The Almost Sisters(67)
I felt my hands on it, and the metal felt so cold it burned me, like it was iron and I was half fairy. It bucked once in my grasp like an animal, and the roaring boom, when it came, was louder than planets crashing. In the ear-ringing, awful wake of it, in the stink of smoke and chemicals, I couldn’t tell if I’d been in time.
I had to actually look, look with my watering eyes, to see that the barrel was pointing up, as if Martina Mack and I had conspired to pepper that fat, smug moon with buckshot, right in his pale face.
Then the air was only boiling summer air again. I shivered in it, drenched in my own panicked sweat. The kids were already sprinting away in two directions. Hugh’s T-shirt glowed as white as the tail of a deer in full retreat. They had abandoned the grocery bag, spilling its remaining rolls of Charmin onto the grass. Did Lav know I was here? Or had she just seen a dark shadow moving to block Martina Mack’s scraggly head? Catwoman versus Swamp Hag.
The gun’s unearthly boom was still ringing in my ears, but now, from very far away, I heard dogs going crazy. Martina did not have three or four. I’d been wrong. She had at least a thousand, all hellhounds judging by the rising noise. They were deep in the throes of whole-body barking, near hysterical with joy or fury, who could tell? The raucous chorus got louder as my ears cleared, and I could see the dogs pushing and jostling in my peripheral vision. The screen door had clicked closed behind Martina, or I might have been swarmed by them.
Martina Mack snarled, her pearly dentures gleaming uniform and square, and yanked at her gun with her veiny claws. She was a thousand years old, though, and I was so swamped with adrenaline that I had superstrength. I yanked back, the force of my pull ripping it right from her hands. She cried out, an outraged squawk under the dog noise.
“Are you insane?” I yelled into her face, and my voice sounded far away because of the noise of that shotgun in my ears and the ceaseless clamor of the hysterical dogs. “Are you fucking crazy?”
This woman who had just shot at children blanched at the profanity, then launched one of her own. “Those li’l shits was trespassers! I had every right!”
“To shoot? To shoot at kids? Was your own life in danger from the Charmin double rolls, Martina?”
I had a white-knuckle grip on her stupid, stupid gun, and I was screaming over all the noise, screaming so hard the words hurt my throat. I took a step back, trying to calm down.
She turned to the screen door and shrieked, “You dogs! Shut it!” The barking stopped. Stopped flat. “Sit your butts!” and they promptly sat. I could see them watching us through the screen. There were only three after all, which seemed impossible, given the huge racket they’d been making.
We glared at each other, Martina Mack and I, so upset that our chests heaved in tandem.
“Give me back my gun,” she said.
“Why?” I snapped. “I don’t see any babies to shoot. You want to go find Bambi?”
She held her hands out, adamant. “Give it.”
I cracked the shotgun open and removed the remaining shell. It was strangely light in my hand. I held the gun out to her, unloaded.
Martina snatched it, saying, “What kind of a grown woman brings a gang of teenagers out into the night to torment a old woman!”
I was so gobsmacked by this that my jaw unhinged. “You think I brought them here to roll your house?”
“Looks like,” she said.
“I didn’t bring those kids! I heard Lavender sneaking out, so of course I came looking for her so I could shoot her with a gun. Oh, no, wait. Actually, I didn’t, because that’s insane. I came out to find her and take them home.” It wasn’t completely true, though, was it? I had paused and watched, charmed, for a long, complicit minute. I added a true thing that made me feel better. “Once I saw what they were up to, I had every intention of making them come apologize to you in the morning. I still do. They will be along right after breakfast to clean this up—assuming you can agree not to bury land mines all over your yard to blow their feet off.”
She cradled the gun to her chest, her face sour with disbelief. She really thought I’d formed a team of teenage vigilantes to roll her yard.
“Martina?” called a quavery voice from off the left. It was her equally elderly neighbor, Mrs. Teasedale. She was a Methodist, but I knew her to speak to. “Are you okay? Should I call the police?” She said “police” with a long o, the emphasis landing on the first syllable.
“We’re fine, Fanny! Go on back inside!” Martina hollered at her.
“What’s all that white stuff in your yard?” Fanny Teasedale called.
“We’re fine!” Martina said, a vicious shriek this time, and Mrs. Teasedale retreated.
Probably to call the PO-lice, if another neighbor hadn’t beaten her to it. Whichever officer was on duty was probably heading in this direction. Please, Jesus in heaven, let it not be Cody. “You better clean it up right now your damn self, or I will have you arrested.”
I leaned in toward her, uncomfortably close. “Do it. I can’t wait to tell the judge how you got up out of bed and took the time to put your teeth in. How you hushed your dogs first, so the barking wouldn’t scare the kids off. How big and high the moon was and how both of those dumb-ass kids were wearing summer colors. You saw them, you saw exactly who it was, and you knew what they were doing. You weren’t feeling in danger, not a bit, and you weren’t aiming at the sky to scare them off either. I saw you. You meant them harm. So please, get your grandson to arrest me, and best of luck with that. I’ll use my phone call on the chief, tell him what you did, and you and I can sit out the morning in the cell together. Dibs on the cot.”