Page 43 of Shrapnel

Jamie showed him where the safety was and how to sight the gun. “Don’t lock your elbows and keep your eyes open. There will be a recoil, but it won’t be too strong. I’m right here.”

To demonstrate that, he stepped up behind him and pressed his whole front against Owen’s back. He could feel Jamie’s belt buckle digging into his back, just above the waistline of his jeans. His hands began to tremble and he tried to focus on the heavy weapon in his hands and not the warmth seeping up his back. Or the way Jamie’s hips canted to his.

Owen wasn’t a touchy guy. He wasn’t used to people all over him like this. It should be annoying, but instead, he was hyperaware of everything Jamie did. Of every minute movement. If he focused, he could feel the lightthump thumpof Jamie’s heart beat up against his back. It was so slow and even, nothing like the erratic way his own heart was bouncing around his chest. With every other thump Jamie breathed, his breath curling up and over the back of Owen’s neck and tickling his ears, making him shudder.

Jamie’s long fingers lifted Owen’s arms by his biceps, leveling the gun at the sign in front of him. Jamie’s hands retreated and surprised Owen by sliding up his cheeks to press over his ears.

“I don’t have ear protection for you,” he explained.

Owen swallowed, the pressure of Jamie’s hands over his face was unsettling. The tips of his fingers slid into Owen’s undercut, firmly pressing his palms against Owen’s ears until all he could hear was the rush of blood. Those hands were gentle, but he could feel the strength behind them. The strength to kill mixed with the gentleness to make sure Owen had a good breakfast in the morning. A strange feeling roiled in his stomach, like a thick seed in a blender, and he didn’t know what it was.

Licking his lips, he looked down the sight of the gun. The cartoon face of the woman running for Congress looked back at him. Jamie had colored in one of her teeth and given her an eye patch. He aimed for the patch.

The trigger was harder to pull than he thought. His fingers tightened and the gun stayed silent. He squeezed harder, and then harder again. Finally, the gun kicked.

He was so surprised by the noise that he jerked back. Jamie was there, steadying him. One arm wrapped around to hold him up. As he said, the recoil in his arms was there but it wasn’t bad. He could feel it reverberating in his hands and arms, a tingling sensation all the way down to his nails.

Jamie removed his hands. “Not bad, O Face.”

He had winged the sign, taking the closest corner to the eye patch off. “That was…” he began, looking down at the gun. His heart was pounding and the acrid scent of what he assumed was gunpowder clung to his nose. A shell was on the ground by his feet and reached to touch it. It was still hot from the miniature explosion that took place in the barrel of the gun, he wondered at it for a moment.

“Awesome,” he finished, beaming at Jamie. “It was fucking awesome.”

They spent the next hour shooting. Jamie wouldn’t let Owen shoot any large calibers, but Owen was content to keep practicing with the 9mm and the .38 special Jamie kept in his ankle holster. While he realized the 9mm as a semi-automatic was more practical, he loved the revolver. It fulfilled all his old west fantasies to spin the cylinder and snap it into place.

The loud bang from the guns was ringing in his ear as he watched Jamie deftly handle the weaponry. He had felt those long fingers, he knew how quick and strong they were. He marveled as the digits ran over the barrels of the guns, picking up smudges of grease and a sprinkling of gunpowder.

Jamie was showing him how to load the magazine when Owen had a thought.

“Why guns?”

“Huh?” Jamie looked up, hands still effortlessly sliding brass into the slide.

“I mean, Elijah’s got the knives and Roland punches people. Why did you choose guns?”

Owen expected some kind of flippant response, but Jamie pressed his lips together, considering the question. An unspoken tension rose in his shoulders. One Owen instinctively know Jamie would never voice.

Silently, Jamie loaded the 9 mm and lifted it. Without blinking he squeezed the trigger twice.

Sunlight spilled through the two holes where the future congresswoman’s eyes had been. Jamie contemplated it for a moment before lowering the gun.

“Guns are easy,” he said. “Knives can fail if the arm holding them isn’t strong enough. They can slip and slide. Break. But guns? Even at the end of my strength, when I can’t see and death is so close, I can hear him rasping at the nape of my neck, I can still pull a trigger.”

Again, he lifted the gun, emptying the clip. Holes appeared in the defaced photos nose, mouth, and ears.

“It’s so easy even a child can do it.”

Owen wasn’t looking at the gun or the target, he was looking at the grim set on Jamie’s face. There was a memory shadowing his eyes, drifting by like a fast-moving cloud, one moment it was there and the next it was gone. But Owen had seen it. He had started looking at Jamie and he could finallysee.

He reached out and slid his hand around Jamie’s. They were cold and clammy despite the warmth from the sun. He held them until Jamie turned to him.

“I’ll help you on one condition.” Owen didn’t know what he was saying. His lips were parting and words he was sure he hadn’t been thinking were spilling out.

“Hang out with me. No guns, no Weavers. Just us.”

Jamie blinked once before his lips curled crookedly. “Just us?”

“Yeah.”