“You still don’t understand. He’s capable of anything. This isn’t just for the diamonds, or the indictment that somehow he blames you for, or even the fact that you have me and he doesn’t. You played a dirty trick on him when he was just three years old, and he’s never forgiven you.”
Runyan shrugged as he started the engine. When Art was three? What difference could it make now? He took off the handbrake and put it in drive. Above and behind them, one of the bedroom windows burst outward as Art rammed the stock of a 30.06 deer rifle through the glass. He reversed the weapon, threw it to his shoulder, fired just as Runyan started around the far end of the traffic circle. A starred hole appeared in the rear window at the same instant they heard the thud of the rifle.
“Holy shit!” yelled Runyan. “He does hate me!”
He goosed it, the car fishtailing out of the turn-around as a second slug creased the hood. Then they were into cover as the road went down through the sheltering hardwoods. Runyan wiped his face with his hand, but tried to be casual when he spoke.
“He always was a lousy shot.” It came out tense and excited. All of a sudden he wanted desperately to know.
“What trick?” he asked Louise.
“What?” She was emerging from under the seat slowly, like a turtle unfolding from its shell when the danger has passed.
“When he was three years old. What trick did I play—”
“Oh. You were born.”
For a moment Runyan stared at her blankly, then he started to laugh. They were running out across the flat at the foot of the hill. By looking back, Louise would be able to get a last glimpse of the house. She started to turn, but Runyan put a hand up against the side of her face like a horse’s blinder, blocking her view. He gently turned her face forward again.
“You want to be turned to a pillar of salt?” he asked.
She stared at him hard for a moment, suddenly solemn, then nodded slowly in agreement. As he turned into the main road, she sighed.
“I never did get my stories.”
Runyan, with a flourish, pulled her folded stories from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed them to her. She grabbed them with a little exclamation; but then she just sat there with them clutched almost absently in her hands as he drove them away from there.
Sat there and wondered if she was going to cry and wondered if she felt this way out of sadness or out of joy. Then she thought, Maybe this is the way it always is with endings. And with beginnings.