seventy-four

Now that my question was answered, Anya and I took time to pick a bouquet of wildflowers for Thelma’s table, as we worked our way back to the car with Gracie in tow. I looked up to see an old man come out from the office and shuffle toward us. His scuffed shoes were covered with dust. The Dickies worksuit he was wearing had seen better days, and the stains and small tears on it proved the coverall had earned a rest. A faded John Deere cap, once a bright green, was jammed down on his head. He moved with purpose as if he wanted to talk to us.

Once the man drew near, he raised his head. Our eyes locked. A dull weakness started in my legs as Milton Kloss angled toward us. I spotted the revolver in the holster under his arm. He was still twenty feet away.

Surely he didn’t plan to shoot me where I stood. There would be too many witnesses!

If that was his plan, there was nothing I could do. Nothing. I was unarmed. But I could protect my daughter. It was highly unlikely that Milton would hurt her. Especially if she was out of his reach.

“Anya, honey? No questions, okay? Listen carefully. Take Gracie with you. Go stand over by the clerk. Over there at the front desk. Get moving, now, and don’t come back until I say so.”

The urgency in my words caused her to start walking, Gracie at her side. But halfway there, Anya stopped to glance back at me. Using my hands, I shooed her away. She moved forward reluctantly. Turning my back to her, I faced Milton.

“Rupe told me you were asking questions.”

“Rupe? The guy behind the counter?”

“Nah. Rupert McLean. The young one who takes care of the lines. Those corrals where the shooting occurs.”

“Oh.”

“Rupe cleans the butts. The packing behind the targets is where the bullets are lodged.”

“I know what the butts are. I’ve been to a shooting range before.”

Milton raised a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it, as if the tension were unbearable. His gaze traveled a semi-circle, stopped when he noticed Anya, and then returned to me. “Your girl?”

“Yes.”

“How old?”

“Thirteen.”

His face puckered up and his mouth trembled. “Pretty thing. Reminds me of Brenda at that age. All legs and arms and hair. Bet you love her to pieces.”

“Yes, I do.” It was as if someone had instantly frozen me, the way a villain might level a weapon at a superhero. I can’t recall ever feeling so cold, so helpless.

“I loved my daughter, Mrs. Lowenstein. Loved her desperately.” His eyes, an indeterminate color, were wet. Using the back of his hand, he wiped at them. “Once, when I was a young ’un, my dog got bit by a raccoon. Don’t you know that blasted coon had rabies. My dog got it. My pa made me shoot my dog. My own pet that I loved more’n anyone in my whole family. Said I owed it to my family and to the dog to end it before anyone else got hurt.”

The edges of my vision turned black. A buzzing started in my ears. He meant to kill me! Shoot me where I stood! I set one hand on the quarter panel of my car to steady myself, but I must have turned green, because Milton Kloss asked, “You okay.”

“A little woozy.”

“You’ve got a bun in the oven, don’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re expecting.”

“Yes.” Was this an admission to seal my fate, but it surely wasn’t a secret.

“Chad got you pregnant.”

“Right.”

“You cannot imagine how much I wanted to be a grandpa. It was all I dreamed about. I kept thinking, she’ll get pregnant and she’ll straighten up. She sure will. When there’s a baby involved, it’s bound to change her ways. But it didn’t, did it?”

My fingers ran along the hot metal of the car hood. I couldn’t believe I was going to die in the middle of a parking lot. What a way to go. I thought about trying to grab a handful of dirt to toss in his eyes, but then what? I was unarmed. If he was any good with that gun, he could easily turn and shoot Anya. From the sounds of it, he came here often.

I couldn’t see a way out of this.

“Of course, being pregnant didn’t change nothing. Not a thing. She didn’t even tell us she was expecting! She called me right after the shooting and said she’d been in a bad accident. I was in Chicago, so I told her to go home and stay put. My plane was in for scheduled maintenance, so I rented one from a fellow I know. I flew to Springfield. Picked up my car at the airport and drove down to our house to meet up with Brenda. Wanted to talk things through.”

He stopped to sigh. “Brenda was higher than a kite. Couldn’t talk straight. Wouldn’t tell her mother what happened, just went straight up to her old room. Carla took her a cup of hot chocolate, hoping to talk. Brenda was sitting there on the bed. With a mirror. Had a rolled up dollar bill in one hand. Running it over the surface like it was a vacuum cleaner hose. So Carla calls me on my cell phone and asks, ‘What on earth could she be doing?’ I hated to tell my wife. It was awful.”

I shook my head. Despite my being afraid of him, I could empathize with his misery. “I can’t imagine it.”

“You wouldn’t want to. Nothing mattered to Brenda but her next fix. Nothing at all. You know she stole all the money out of our household account? Ran up our credit cards to the max so she could sell stuff and get money for drugs? Even took poor Carla’s rings, the ones she inherited from her mama, and hocked them. Swiped our DVDs, took my watch. Anything she could get her hands on. She was like that mad dog. She was crazy and sick and it wasn’t going to end ever!” With that, he choked on a sob. “I pity you, Mrs. Lowenstein, if that ever happens. If you ever see your whole world fall apart. If you ever know your little girl has turned into a monster and the only way you can stop her from hurting someone else is to … stop her yourself ? What would you do? What?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said.

From her spot at the counter, Anya turned slightly toward us. Watching. Staying vigilant.

With a long, low sigh, Milton slowly withdrew his gun from the holster and rested it against his knee.

Anya must have seen the gun because her expression changed. Turning to the kid behind the counter, she pointed at Milton. I didn’t need to hear her to know what she was telling the clerk. The boy rotated to face us, and his face went white.

Milton resumed talking, this time waving his gun in the air. “This was all her fault, Carla’s! If she hadn’t been in that accident, none of this would’ve happened. But how could I be mad at Carla when she’s been sober all these years? So then I was angry with Chad. How come he couldn’t control her? I was mad at everyone but the person who deserved it.”

“I kept praying,” and the man’s voice broke, so he started again. “Going to church and praying Brenda would change. I asked God to let her see how she was hurting other people. I kept thinking she would change. But then I realized. She was just like that dog of mine, don’t you see?”

The boy was leaning inside the doorway of the shed. Anya had her hand over her mouth. Gracie, bless her, faced the opposite way. I was glad about that. I didn’t want her to get the raw end of this deal by trying to rescue me.

“I was running for public office. Telling folks I’d do the hard jobs. The ones that had to be done. Making cuts. Balancing our local budget. But a hard job was right there before me. Staring me in the face. I was the only person who could do it. If I let her keep going, I’d be passing the buck. I brought her into this world. It was my job to do what was right. Hard as it was.”

“How did Brenda wind up in that house? So far from your place?”

“Carla helped me get her into my car. That girl was stumbling like a drunk. I told Carla I knew a place where Brenda could sleep it off. See, I knew that place was in foreclosure and empty, because I’m on the bank board. So I took her there, thinking we’d talk the next day. But then as I was driving, I heard the news report. Heard how she’d shot you and that man. Left you both to die.”

He sniffed and used his sleeve to wipe his eyes.

“I had to do the hard job. I had to stop her. No one else could do it, so I had to. So I did it. Fast and clean. Then she looked so little, so young that I wrapped her up. I had a few casings in my pocket. I’d picked them up after watching Chad and Louis here at the range. So I sprinkled them around and pocketed my own spent casings. Then I realized if I plugged that blanket in, no one had to know I was down here. But I couldn’t just leave her! I couldn’t, so I stopped halfway to the airport and made a call. I wanted them to find her and to blame Chad. They did.”

A man stepped out of the office. His cell phone was in one hand and he was talking and waving his other hand. Probably calling nine-one-one, not that it would do any good. We were so far from help. I knew from experience how long it could take for an ambulance to come. By then, I’d be dead.

I wanted to move away, to run to the shed, but I stood rooted to the spot. The longer Milton talked, the more time I had to live.

He wiped his eyes again. “Here’s the worst of it. You get this smidgeon of hope, and then it’s dashed. Again and again and again.”

“I think I understand,” I spoke slowly and looked Milton in the eye. “My dad had a problem, drinking. I kept thinking if I said or did the right thing, he’d change.”

He nodded. “I think you do understand. That’s exactly right. That’s the way it is. Did he?”

“No. In fact, after he died we learned he’d been in multiple car accidents. I don’t know if he hurt anyone, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he did.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Exactly what I’m saying!” The hand by his side still held the gun. I tried not to focus on it. Not to draw attention to the weapon. Maybe he’d forget he held it. Slowly, he rocked back onto his heels and rested his weight on them. He turned his head in Anya’s direction.

“That little girl of yours. She’s a sweetheart. You don’t let anything happen to her, you hear? Or that baby? Promise me.”

My mouth was so dry I could barely croak out the words: “I promise.”

With that, he raised his gun to his head and blew his brains out.