The loudest sounds are small. The sound of snow crunching under the tires of Jubal’s Crown Vic, the thunk as he shoves the transmission lever out of drive and up into park.
“Here,” he says, nudging it out of the clamp. “Just in case.” He slips the safety off and pumps the wooden handle, chambering a shell. This is the second weapon he’s armed in the car, definitely not standard operating procedure. Guns are for outside, for wide open spaces, not the close quarters of a state surplus police interceptor.
As he moves around the front of the cruiser, I realize that he hasn’t called in on the radio. We’re here cowboying well outside the law, even for Coal City, where he, like our father before he died, runs the show.
Across the yard, Jubal knocks one last time, turns the dull steel knob, and steps back as the door slowly tips open on its own. Weatherman’s trailer is canted slightly forward on its blocks. He squeezes the gun in both hands, holding it out in the classic Weaver stance–the one taught in academies everywhere, the one taught to us by our father when we were old enough to know what we were doing–and steps inside.
Early last week, Jubal called me at my office–really the office I share with the rest of the first and second grade team. There are eight of us in all; I teach art, music, and movement, which was called playtime when I was that age. It’s the same school where my mother–not Jubal and Katy’s–taught for years, though she taught pre-kindergarten, all subjects, and wiped noses and butts besides.
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In my office, Judy Martin handed me the telephone, which I wiped against my pant leg before putting it to my face. Our lone extension is permanently discolored with Mary Kay and carries the scent of White Shoulders.
I heard him exhale through his nose. “Katy’s missing again,” he said. “Mom just called me.”
