“That’s okay, Mom.”
“It’s not. But I realized something. Your dad was right. You shouldn’t have to fight if you’re smart enough. There’s always going to be a bully around, so you have to figure out how to deal with guys like Kevin. You need to be smart. You need to be confident in yourself.” I gave him a small smile. I felt awful for how I had acted. All this time, I had wanted James to trust and respect me. I screwed up. “Pick up the gun,” I said. “This is how you aim.”
I showed him the front and rear sights and how to center them. I told him to aim at the TV, the plant by the window, the fireplace.
“A gun is a very powerful weapon,” I said. “Whenever you feel scared or vulnerable, I want you to remember that you know how to use a gun. That makes you a little more powerful. If you feel powerful, it’s gonna come out your pores and everyone else will feel it too. I guarantee you that guys like Kevin will take a powder. And if it ever got more serious — probably never will — but if it did, you’ll be the one left standing. I promise.”
“Okay,” he said in a small voice.
“In the meantime, stay out of Kevin’s way.”
He nodded and smiled.
“Now go get some sneakers on and go find your dad. We’re going shooting.”
He jumped up and ran toward the garage.
I picked up the shiny gun lying on the table. It was heavy like a brick. I loaded the bullets into the chamber with soft clinks. Today we would kick up rocks and look for snake holes. We’d eat salami sandwiches while sitting on boulders. Then I’d lean against the car and fire the gun, even though it might blow my arm out of joint. Casey would be able to shoot it on his own. James would have to wait. I couldn’t support him the way my dad supported me. He’d be able to do it himself one day.
I walked out to the porch to check the sky. Blue. No clouds. Birds flapped between the trees. Just like in the commercials advertising the new housing developments. I held the gun behind me. Kids shouted up and down the street so I was careful not to let the shiny metal catch their attention. I leaned against the wall, the gun still at my back, my finger dusting the trigger. A boy playing in the street scooted in front of our house. He was throwing a football to some friends I couldn’t see, but I could hear their shouts. He was a big kid with a hell of an arm.
“Motherfucker,” I mumbled. It was Kevin.
I watched him move, swagger. Not a care. I pulled the gun in front of me. I held it in my palms, adjusting it to catch the light of the sun. I bounced a few rays into Kevin’s eyes. He glanced over, involuntarily. But the glance became a stare. I watched the recognition change his face, ebb his pride. He turned away and threw the football again. I shot another beam of light into his eyes. He struggled to catch the football. He looked nervously toward me. I held the gun up, so my message was clear. I nodded my head. I pointed my finger at the gun, then back to him. He swallowed. His friends shouted for him to throw the ball. He looked away and tossed it. If he looked back again, I was already gone.
Murder is academic
by Felicia Campbell
Mount Charleston
Millicent Margrave, known affectionately to her students as M, an Associate Professor of Political Science, is sitting in Bagel Nosh on Maryland Parkway, a half-block from the university, reading the paper and licking the cream cheese off her pumpernickel bagel. It’s 1984 and a serial killer stalks Las Vegas. So far, six women, ranging from their mid-thirties to late their late-forties, all writers and teachers, have been targeted. All have been smothered in black plastic bags. Each has had the thumb and first two fingers of her writing hand severed. The middle finger is placed in the victim’s mouth, which is sewn shut around it, while the thumb and index finger are thrust up the vagina. They are otherwise not sexually molested. The last detail has not been made public. The little city of some 600,000 persons is in an uproar.
She is chilled by the account of the most recent murder, fully aware that she fits the profile of the victims, as she is well known for her high-profile, ultra-liberal writing. While her colleagues who want to pretend they are in the Ivy rather than the Cactus League look askance at her work as not traditional enough, her student following is as varied as the city’s population, including, among others, mobster’s kids, a couple of very savvy hookers looking more like Midwestern college girls than the campus’s traditional coeds who delight in looking like hookers, and an assortment of ex-cons, with a sprinkling of current con men.
She acquired the ex-cons when the university in its infinite wisdom briefly decided that all ex-cons should report to a specific advisor who would keep tabs on them, and she had volunteered, angry that they should be singled out after they had paid their debt to society and fearful that some asshole who would make their lives miserable would be appointed. She is particularly fond of a couple of them who know her troubles with her dean, and pleaded to be allowed to teach him a lesson in the parking lot. “We won’t hurt him. We’ll just teach him to respect you.” She refused, of course, but finds it neat that someone wants to look out for her. She’s pleased when she looks up to see them approaching her table. Somehow they always seem to know where she is. The two Es, Ed and Earl, sit down in the empty chairs across from her and proceed to lecture her on her personal safety, particularly insistent that Moose, her giant mastiff, is not enough protection, and that she needs to buy a gun, a street sweeper preferably, which has so much fire power she can’t miss and will turn whatever marauder is foolish enough to invade her space into hamburger. As ex-felons, they can’t buy it for her, but they can help her pick it out. She promises to think about it.
The veteran of three marriages, one to a fellow political scientist, one to a casino pit boss, and one to a black activist, she is the mother of three grown children, one by each husband. Although her body has begun to thicken and she is no longer beautiful in the traditional sense, she is still striking and has lost none of her charisma.
“We’re serious, Dr. M. We worry about you. You trust too many people,” says Ed as he leaves. “We’ll do our best to keep checking on you.” She assures them that she will be careful and smiles as she waves for the waitress, thinking how sweet they are and how much more she likes them than her administrators.
Millicent Margrave thinks of herself as M and prefers to be called such. “Just call me M,” she will say with a toss of her head. “That’s the letter M, not Em as in Emily.” She takes a certain delicious pleasure in identifying herself with James Bond’s runner M. She loves the Bond novels, but thinks him something of a fuck-up.
She is an avid reader, too intelligent to ever subscribe to dialectic of any sort. She is in fact far too intellectually curious to do well in an insecure provincial university. That she is there at all is the result of circumstance. Chet, her first husband, finished his degree while she was pregnant and hadn’t yet finished hers, and he managed to get hired at what was then semi-affectionately called Tumbleweed Tech.
The young campus was legendary for its faculty suicides. The acting dean who hired her ex in the ’60s after a telephone interview had driven around and around the campus, then five buildings in the middle of the desert, for weeks, psychologically unable to get out of the car, eventually shooting himself in it in front of Grant Hall the week before their arrival. Chet’s contract rather bizarrely noted that he was a replacement for Mary Ledger. Mary had finished herself off with sleeping pills and booze the previous semester. A new hire, a Shakespeare scholar, killed himself before arriving on campus, which she and Chet giggled was very efficient of him.