Radical (5 page)

“Can I come?” I ask.

“You have schoolwork to do,” Mom says.

“I can do it later.” It’s distance learning. I can do it anytime.

Dad hesitates. “School first,” he says, looking at Mom like that will win him more points. “Next time.” And they’re out the door.

“Nice to see him excited, making new friends,” Mom says, like Mark’s happiness is all that matters. She scowls at me. My face must be showing just how much Mark’s happiness does not matter to me.

“I don’t need a lecture right now. I’ve got to clean my gun and put it away. And then I’ll do one of the lessons,” I add as an afterthought.

I get the rifle and my cleaning supplies from the workshop and set up on the porch.

Once all my supplies are laid out, I pull the bolt back and double-check that the magazine is empty. Then I activate the bolt release and pull it to the rear and off the rifle. It would be better at the kitchen table or the workbench in the workshop, but there’s no breeze in the workshop, and I’m not going back in the house, where Mom will nag me about school.

She’s inside at the table, crunching numbers and paying bills, but mostly she’s making stacks of the bills we can’t pay and recording figures in her grand-plan notebook, always calculating how long it will take us to be in our own place again. Today she’s muttering too much. If Dad gives any money to Mark for the club, she’s going to lose her shit.

I clean the bolt face with hand sanitizer and a toothbrush. One of the preppers on YouTube did a video on off-the-grid field hacks, and hand sanitizer was one of his tricks. It works so much better than the expensive stuff, and you can find it everywhere for cheap. If we were on the run, we might have nothing better than soap and water. Lubricant might have to be oil or transmission fluid pilfered from an abandoned car, or a bit of industrial grease scrounged along the way.

I put the bolt face on the towel next to me and grab a rod and patch to clean the bore.

“Dammit,” I hear Mom say in the kitchen.

I wait for more, for the sound of erasing or any indication if that was a “dammit” because the math got the best of her, or if the magic line she’s racing toward is creeping away again. I hear Mom’s deep sigh and more shuffling paper. A not-enough-money “dammit.”

I put the rifle and all my supplies on the edge of the porch and brace myself before going inside.

She’s shuffling the bills. Moving things from one pile to another, until three bills remain. She puts two into what are obviously wait-for-next-paycheck, or maybe the paycheck after, stacks. She rubs her eyes like they’re full of sand. One last bill sits on the table in front of her.

We canceled everything we could before giving in and moving out here. They should just cancel Mark’s truck insurance, since his truck is always busted. Other than that, there’s not much left to cancel.

She’s looking at our cell phone bill. We wouldn’t have phones at all, but when Mom said they had to be canceled, I agreed to pay half. But it looks like half is still pushing it. I can’t lose my phone. It’s my most reliable Internet. The only one that’s really private.

I go upstairs and close the door to the room I’m using as quietly as I can. The starched and ironed curtains have flowers in faded pinks and yellows and blues embroidered around the edges, faded nearly white in the folds that get more sun. Aunt Gracie made them. She made the quilt on the bed, too. The room still sort of smells like her. She’s been dead for years, but, even though Uncle Skip hasn’t slept in here since she died, I think he only cleaned out her stuff so I could have this room. It’s like him to hang on to things, to the bits of people who are gone. Grammy’s sewing machine is in the barn, too.

There are still outlines on the mirror where Aunt Gracie stuck photographs into the frame — twenty years of dust leaving a cloudy ring to memorialize their absence. Behind the mirror is a key, taped as far back as I can reach.

Under the loose floorboard in the closet, pushed back as far as it can go, is an old lockbox I found at a secondhand store. I unlock and open it. I count out enough for the whole phone bill, count what’s left, and add a little more to the phone-bill stack. Then I put everything back, hide the key in a new location, and then I’m standing in front of Mom.

I don’t say anything. I just put the money on the table, over the phone bill. Enough to pay what we owe and then some.

She should be grateful. Instead she looks at the money like I just spit on the table, or like I’m trying to make her feel bad.

I leave it there and go back out onto the porch. She’ll take it. She has to. We need our phones. Especially Mom and me.

It hurts to give her my money. But it would hurt worse not to.

I sit on the porch, legs hanging over the edge, recalculating my purchasing order for my pack. Dad never stops feeling like a guest here, so we’ll go as soon as Mom says we can afford it. Probably to an apartment. In a crappy neighborhood. I stare at the trees beyond the barn, listen to the birds. Feel the breeze, cool across my bare arms. I hope it takes years.

I listen to Mom in the kitchen while I use the rod to run a patch with solvent through the bore. Then a few swipes with the brush, followed by clean patches until one comes through looking near as clean as when it went in. And finally, one last patch lightly soaked in oil to preserve the bore.

We’ve got other guns, better guns. But when it comes down to it, I like the feel of this old Remington best. It’s not going to take down a deer or anything bigger than a squirrel at long range. But I love this gun. I trust this gun. She jams for Mark and Dad, but she works for me like she trusts me. Maybe because I baby her, or because I can feel how she moves.

I wipe my fingerprints off the bolt, reinstall it, dry fire to make sure everything works, and then start wiping down all the exposed metal with a clean rag. Toxic fingerprints can eat away at the metal. An old T-shirt is perfect to get in deep, make sure it’s well cleaned.

Dad’s truck comes down the drive.

When he gets out of the truck, Mark’s not with him. I’d make a joke about it, but I don’t feel much like joking. Mark hasn’t done anything in months. He doesn’t work. He doesn’t train. He doesn’t help out around here. But he wanted to go to the club, so we went. And now he wanted to go back to the club, and Dad took him.

Dad stops with his foot on the bottom step and looks at the rifle in my hands.

“Just cleaning it before putting it away.”

He holds out his hand for the rifle. Giving it to him feels like the last time I’m going to hold it. He opens the bolt, uses his thumbnail near the chamber to reflect light in, squints down the bore. He nods approvingly. “You take good care of it.”

My throat closes around the lump of pride and anger and frustration all balled up there. I’ve been waiting so long for him to wake up and take this seriously, take me seriously. If I’d found Clearview, there’s no way Dad would have agreed to go out there. But Mark emerges from hibernation and he immediately gets what he wants. Whatever he wants. Dad always chooses Mark. They both do.

“When you’re done, put your rifle away. Then give your mother a hand with dinner, okay?”

My rifle. He’s never called it that before. “Okay.” He barely touches the back of my head as he walks by, just enough for my head to follow his hand and leave me leaning when he’s gone.

“Where’s Mark?” I hear Mom ask.

“Daniel will drop him off later.”

“Haven’t seen him excited about anything in a long while,” Mom says. “But I spent half the afternoon trying to figure out how to pay the bills. The extra gas, his insurance and truck repairs, all of that adds up. He’s going to need to find
something
.”

I can’t make out what Dad says, but Mom responds, “I’m busting my butt at temp jobs, staying with Lorraine all week, and then coming home and busting my butt here on weekends.”

“You’re not the only one busting your butt. I’m out there —”

“What? You’re what?”

“For crying out loud, Charlotte!” That’s Dad’s all-encompassing response when he’s frustrated.

Mom slams a cabinet, her response when Dad goes for the
crying out loud
.

I can hear their voices, their movements through the house, and a door slams upstairs. Another fight.

My Glock could use a good cleaning, too.

I break it down and start with the solvent.

I can still hear their voices now and then through an open window upstairs, but not what they’re saying, not from this side of the house.

Eventually Mom comes back downstairs, back to the kitchen, starting dinner, from the sound of it. Mainly she’s slamming stuff around the sink. No way I’m going in there.

I’ve got the Glock almost back together when a truck comes down the driveway.

Mark, Daniel, and some other guy.

“Hey,” Mark says, bounding up the steps past me as the truck pulls away.

“Want me to leave this stuff out for you?” I ask.

He pauses with his hand on the screen door and looks over his shoulder. “Nah, I’ll do it later.”

No, he won’t. His gun will continue to collect crud because he’s lazy. Lazy and irresponsible, but he’s a boy, and that’s all that matters.

I put all the cleaning stuff back in the workshop and then head into the house to lock my rifle and Glock back in the gun locker.

“Wash up,” Mom says, before I’ve even got my boots off. She hates the smell of the oil and solvent. On days when Uncle Skips lets me work on cars at the station, she makes me strip down in the laundry room and put everything right in the washer. The laundry room soap smells like cheap pine, a manly smell Dad and Mark won’t balk at using. Instead I just go upstairs and take a fast shower.

On the way back downstairs, I can hear Mark yammering away at Mom and Dad.

Mom hands me the knife, and I take over cutting up the vegetables for the salad. It looks like the rest of dinner is almost ready.

“And Daniel said he can pick me up this week so I can start right away,” Mark says. “As soon as I can, I’ll pay the insurance on my truck. But until then —”

“It needs more than insurance,” Dad says. “Better talk to Skip about the repairs when he gets home. Maybe you can work off some of it.”

Last week Mark would have sneered and sulked at that suggestion, but today he’s all eager beaver, ready to agree to anything.

Mom takes her usual seat across from Dad. I put the salad on the table and fall into my place. Dad says grace, and then the conversation continues as if it never paused.

“So, he wants to join,” Mom says, nodding toward Mark. “What about you?” she asks Dad. He just shrugs and eats his dinner. But Mom’s waiting for an answer.

Eventually he puts down his fork, takes a sip of his iced tea, and looks directly at Mom. “I’m not sure yet. Right now all they’re asking is that I consider it and maybe help them build the tactical course.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Mom says. She shakes her head, taking a bite of her chicken. She probably knows she won’t win if he’s already made up his mind, but she’s not giving in yet. Not without some face-saving concessions.

“It’s like an obstacle course, with different targets you have to shoot,” Mark says. “They’re going to build one in wooded terrain, and one that simulates close urban combat. And then maybe —”

“For what? To train people to be killers? I don’t —”

“No.” Dad gives Mark a
pipe down
look. He didn’t plan on giving her enough info to nitpick the details. “It’s like a fancier range.”

“And members can work on survival techniques or hike the trails. It’s so cool. And they’re going to organize into . . .” At Dad’s glare, Mark stops talking.

Mom stares at Mark, then at Dad. “And they want you to build these tactical training courses?”

“Maybe. If I want, and if we can agree on the plans,” Dad says. “And the price.”

“I’m joining.” Mark helps himself to more of pretty much everything. “I don’t care what you do, but I’m in.”

Mom leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “With what money? Whatever this ends up costing,” she says, ignoring his repeated protests that there are no fees, “you’ll also need gas, ammunition, truck repairs and insurance, and whatever else.”

“I’ll make money. More than enough.”

“How?” Mom asks.

“Daniel’s been working steady for one of the other members. Landscaping. Construction. Painting. Sometimes other stuff. Good money.”

“Oh, well,” Mom says, “if Danny Trace says so . . . Isn’t he the little genius who talked you into lighting your farts on fire?” I stifle a laugh. Mark set his pants on fire and then couldn’t sit down right for a week.

“He said a few of the other members hire guys from Clearview, too.”

When Mom doesn’t change her position, Mark says, “I’m an adult.”

Mom just snorts at that. “You think we should let him join,” she asks Dad, “before checking it out more?”

“Steven is a good man,” Dad says. “I trust his judgment. He has his son there.”

Mom’s not won over yet.

“Can I eat, please?” Dad asks, meaning he doesn’t want to discuss this anymore in front of us.

No one asks if I want to join. No one even seems to acknowledge the possibility. And, unlike Mark, I could probably pay my way. Not that I would.

After dinner, I would normally be on cleanup, but Mom sends me off to do some “homework” so she and Dad can talk without me there. I get the workbook and go out to the side porch, just around the corner so they won’t see me if they open the screen door.

“They seem genuine about building something good,” Dad is saying. “They’re all part of the organizational committee. I would be, too. They’re still working out what this will be, and we could have a say in that.”

“We?” Mom asks.

I can’t hear Dad’s answer, assuming he said anything at all.

“And what could this be?” Mom asks.

“Friends, work, maybe more. A fresh start. Can’t hurt to be better prepared.”

“Prepared for what?” Mom asks. When Dad doesn’t answer, she asks, “Am I going to have to start sniffing
your
clothes for bomb residue, too?”