Homer stared at him. “Sweet jumping Jesus Christ.”
Roger was still laughing. He took out the big revolver and started plugging the empties out. “Would’ve been a mite fancier if you boys had the foresight to set up a half-dozen whiskey bottles on the fenceposts. That’s the way they usually shoot that scene.”
Mathieson reloaded the Police Special. “You crazy buffoon. Damn near gave me cardiac arrest.”
“That’s what you’re here for, ain’t it? Learn to grapple with the unexpected, like?”
Homer came back. He looked stunned. “You put all five of them in the black.”
“Did I now. Well how about that.”
Homer shook his head in awe, still staring at Roger. “Sweet jumping Jesus Christ. And I always thought they had stunt experts with rifles behind the camera doing all that stuff for the actors.”
“That’s me, old son. How’d you think I started in this bin-ness? Stunt ridin’ and stunt shootin’. I wasn’t always an actress, you know.” He turned to Mathieson. “Now you didn’t do too good, did you.”
“I’ve never been much of a hand with guns.” His ears were ringing and whistling.
Homer said, “I’ve tried all the usual tricks. Hard to tell what he’s doing wrong. I’ve about run out of ideas.”
“Probably not bringin’ the focus down,” Roger said offhandedly. He took Mathieson’s revolver and sighted experimentally at the target. “Good square sights on this piece. Shouldn’t be no trouble. You sighted this, Homer?”
“Benchrest at a hundred yards. I ran a box of shells through it. Good tight group. Nothing wrong with the sights.”
Roger cocked the hammer and the racket startled Mathieson when Roger began firing like a gunslinger. The bullets chewed splinters visibly out of the mangled center of the target.
In the sudden uneasy silence that followed the shooting Roger snapped the cylinder open and punched the hot cases out onto the little brass pile by Mathieson’s feet.
“Here. Load it up and let’s see if we can’t clear up this little problem.”
Mathieson fumbled cartridges into the cylinder and began to lift it toward the target; he heard Roger’s steady talk: “Now gentle down, take it easy. You want the front sight level with the rear notch. A straight line across the top. OK? Now you want the target on top of the front sight. Good so far?”
“Fine.”
“Take in some air and hold your breath where it’s comfortable. Squeeze easy.”
He had his eye on the target and the sights wavered a little and he relaxed the pressure until they steadied. When it went off it surprised him, as it was supposed to.
“Low and left,” Homer remarked.
Roger moved around him to his left side. “Try it again, old horse.”
He lifted it, cocked it, dropped his right wrist into his left hand …
“Oh for Christ’s sake.”
“’S the matter?”
Roger was turning toward Homer. “He always shoot like that with one eye shut?”
“I don’t—”
“No wonder.” Roger threw up his hands. “Both eyes, you dumb dude.”
“But you can only use one eye to—”
“Both eyes, old horse. Focus on that front sight. Not the target—the front sight. You can still see the target back there but it’s the gun you’re aiming, not the damn target. Focus on the sights and that way you know where the gun is. Homer, who taught you how to shoot?”
Homer’s mouth was pinched resentfully. “Army.”
“That figures.”
The essence of magic is simplicity: This was magic—he emptied the revolver and each of them went home dead center; he lowered the gun slowly in disbelief. Roger shot a crafty sidewise glance in Homer’s direction. “I think he’s gettin’ the idea. Old horse, load up and try it again.”
He emptied the cartridge cases onto the pile and bounced the unfamiliar weight of the revolver in his open hand. “I don’t think so.”
Homer pivoted toward him. “Say again?”
The thought formed in his mind as he expressed it; it took him by surprise: “It’s something I can do if I have to. That’s all I need to know.”
Homer’s puzzlement turned into accusation. He addressed himself to Roger: “What’s the matter with him?”
“Better ask him.”
Mathieson put the empty revolver in Homer’s hand. Before he walked away he said, “Nobody’s making a killer out of me.”
2
They were eight at dinner and Vasquez presided with a movie monologue filled with Byzantine digressions: He was encyclopedic, wistful, opinionated and almost sycophantic when he spoke names like Cooper and Welles.
Roger refused to be baited and Vasquez’s frustration led him into outrageous overstatements. Roger stirred in his chair. “Movies are my living, not my life. I don’t go to the things unless I have to.”
Vasquez scowled belligerently at him. “Amazing.”
Roger stood up, detesting straight chairs. “You younkers take off. We’ve got grown-up talking to do. Only bore the hell out of you.”
Ronny and Billy glanced at each other like French underground conspirators and sped from the room. Amy said, “Those two together go like a match and a stick of dynamite. Don’t be surprised if this house gets demolished.”
Jan laughed—to Mathieson it sounded brittle. Homer stood up. “You going to want me?”
Vasquez said, “An extra viewpoint never hurts.”
In the big front room Roger slumped into a Queen Anne chair. Amy sat down on the floor and leaned her head back against his knee. Homer perched on a small chair by the wall as though expecting to bolt the room. Mathieson took a place beside Jan on the couch; she gave him a glance and, hesitantly after a moment, her hand. It was cold.
There was a bench seat built into the bay window and covered with velvet upholstery. Vasquez sat straight up, centered on it. Casually he had positioned himself precisely at the focus of intersecting attentions, giving himself command of the scene.
In the corner of his vision Mathieson picked up the quick amused smile that fled briefly across Homer’s tight cheeks; probably he was accustomed to Vasquez’s seances and expected pyrotechnics tonight. But Mathieson couldn’t imagine Vasquez producing anything spectacular this time; the situation was too glum.
Vasquez began politely: “I commend your efficiency. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to break away on such short notice.”
“You had it all set up—Homer with that U-Haul truck. All we did was follow the script.”
“Nevertheless. You must have had difficulty breaking your commitment to the producers. The program you were filming.”
“Taping, not filming. Television horse shit.”
“How did you manage it?”
“It’s one of those documentary things. The life of the working cowhand. You know the kind of crap. All I was there for was the narration. Hell, I just called this kid up in Vegas that does nightclub impressions? You know, Cagney and all. Kid’s pretty good, does me better than I do me. Then I told my manager to clear it with the producers. Amos got a tongue like old-fashioned snake oil, he’ll sell it to them. That kid’s real good. It’d take a voice-print graph to tell it wasn’t me talking. Nobody’ll ever know.”
“Ingenious,” Vasquez said. “The fact remains, your lives have been egregiously disrupted. It’s an error for which I share blame. Among other things I’d like to try and ascertain what the appropriate redress might be.”
Roger said, “You and me, we share the same bad habit—puttin’ on airs. Mine’s harmless—I’m a professional Texan and I talk like one. But we’d get along a little faster if you’d come down off the Oxford Dictionary and talk plain English.” He glanced at Mathieson. “As far as blame goes, I’d just as soon not waste half the night arguing about who among us ought to put on sackcloth and ashes. Let’s us get down to the business at hand.”