A black car was in his driveway.
Johnny let off the pedal and slowed his Dodge Ram down on the gravel road up to his home. At that moment, he knew one thing.
He wasn’t crazy.
The black Crown Victoria was parked in his driveway, and the two men inside of it were alternating between talking and looking at his truck. He immediately flipped open his glove box, and his shiny, snub-nosed revolver was waiting for him - alongside an older digital camera. Johnny tried to clear his mind for a moment, then pulled the revolver out. He tucked it into the front of his pants and continued on toward the house.
He passed the Crown Vic in his driveway, not even giving them the satisfaction of a glance. He stopped the truck and let it idle in the sun, then looked at the clock on his radio.
It was almost noon.
He turned the truck off and shot a glance in his mirror. The men were still in the black car, clearly waiting for him. As his heart pounded in his chest, he had but one thought on his mind.
Sydney.
He took a deep breath and looked away from the mirror. Inside the glove box, the digital camera beckoned to him, so Johnny took it into his hand. With a flick, he turned it on and set it to “Record.”
Johnny climbed out of the truck and began walking calmly toward his front door. On cue, the two men exited the car together - the balding one from the passenger side and a tall blond specimen from the other. The balding man flicked out a cigarette and approached him.
“Excuse me, Mister Barnes...”
Johnny ignored him and kept walking toward his front door. He jangled the keys in his free hand and got the one for the house.
“Mister Barnes, my name is Hector Graves. I’d just like to talk with you-”
“Got nothin’ to say.”
Johnny kept his hand wrapped around the digital camera, hoping like hell that it was picking all of this up.
“Oh, come now, Mister Barnes...”
Johnny stopped. He looked toward Hector and slowly opened his hand. Hector studied it for a second, and then Johnny smiled at him.
“Gotcha you sonofabitch,” he said.
Hector looked at the camera, then back at Johnny, and then to Dane. Johnny raised the camera and pointed it at the balding man.
“Say CHEESE!” he yelled, pointing the camera at Hector with the camera rolling. Dane was immediately back in the car and Hector held his hands up to obscure his face. Johnny started backing toward the door, and his hand found the doorknob.
“YEAH, that’s what I THOUGHT! They think I’m CRAZY... WELL, WHO’S CRAZY NOW?”
“Hey! Put that camera down! Stop!” replied Hector, as he backed toward the car with his hand in front of his face. “We just have some questions-”
“YEAH? Well I got a few THOUSAND questions myself!”
Johnny’s keys turned in the lock and he wanted to go inside, but he realized that he might finally be able to get some answers. He stared down Hector, who was climbing into the passenger seat, and he started marching toward the car.
“You work for them, dontcha? DONTCHA!?!”
“Let’s go!” barked Hector as he shut the passenger door, but the window was still down. Johnny was almost upon the vehicle.
“That’s right! RUN! Run like roaches in the light! You FUCKIN’ TRAITORS, FUCKIN’ COWARDS! You’re WORSE than THEM, you SONSABITCHES!!”
The Crown Vic peeled out of the driveway, just like Kelvin had an hour earlier. Johnny chased after the car, the camera rolling the whole time.
“THEY’RE ELVES, GODDAMMIT!”
The black car skidded to a sudden stop.
Frantically, Johnny turned and fled back into the house, deadbolting the front door behind him. He ran to the kitchen table, set down the camera, and picked up the phone. He started to dial Kelvin, when a pounding on the front door caused him to press the wrong button.
“Open the door! John! John, open this door! We NEED to talk!” yelled Hector.
He cursed and hung up the phone to dial again. At this moment, Johnny wished that he’d allowed his son to have a cell phone, so that he could warn him while they were still on the road. Without it, he needed to call Kelvin’s dorm room and leave a message on the answering machine. He dialed Kelvin’s number and waited interminably as the phone rang once.
“John! Open up! NOW!” Hector pounded on the front door again.
The phone rang a third time.
“C’mon ... c’mon!” Johnny moaned while pulling the revolver from his trousers. He flipped open the cylinder and saw that it was fully loaded - six rounds.
He flipped the cylinder shut and peered out at the pounding front door, ready to unload on anything that came through.
The answering machine picked up.
“Hey, this is Kelvin, and you know what to do ... so-”
“KELVIN! KELVIN! SHE’S NOT SAFE! THEY’RE RIGHT OUTSIDE! SYDNEY! SYDNEY!!” Johnny yelled to the machine, before a bit of motion caught his eye. The tall blond driver was slinking around the rear of the house. He dropped the phone, raised his gun, and fired wildly through the back window. As the glass shattered, the driver dove to the ground and soon the revolver clicked empty.
“SHIT!”
Johnny’s ears were ringing from the report, and he quickly scanned for any sign of the blond driver. Seeing none, he waved the empty gun toward the front door and backed through his dining room. As he made his way toward the kitchen, he skirted around the table and momentarily saw the old yellowed article he’d been looking at when Kelvin and Audrey left.
He thought of them both and he thought of Katie. He paused and looked back at the door, but the thumping had ceased, because all he could hear was a persistent ringing in his ear.
SHELLS!
Johnny regained his focus and twirled through the kitchen and toward the laundry room. As he turned the corner, he tried to brush the light switch with his hand, but missed it and continued on toward the cabinet above the dryer. The unlit room made it hard for him to see as he flung open the cabinet, but he instinctively knew where the box of shells was hidden.
He reached up and toward the back of the cabinet with his left hand and wrapped it around the old box, squeezing it open as he pulled it out.
A loud noise startled him and he froze. He tried to listen, but between the ringing in his ears and his pounding heartbeat he couldn’t isolate the sound.
Reload! RELOAD!
Johnny broke open the box on the top of the dryer and about half of the .38 rounds spilled out, some rolling in a drunken arc on the white metal surface. A few rolled off the dryer and onto the floor, but Johnny only needed six, so he grabbed some with his left hand and broke open the cylinder on his revolver again. He thumped down on the ejector and popped out the still-smoking rounds, then quickly slipped some fresh ones into the chambers. He got two rounds in, when some movement caught his attention and caused him to freeze.
Hector was standing halfway in the laundry room doorway, with the barrel of his nickel-plated pistol steadied on Johnny’s chest.
“DROP IT!” The man barked with authority.
Johnny froze. The ringing in his ears was still there, but he couldn’t hear it over his heartbeat anymore.
He dropped the remaining shells in his left hand, still holding the opened revolver in his right. The man in the doorway repeated his demand, and his face reddened. Johnny could see, even in the dim room, that the man’s veins were bulging at his temples, and the muscles of his jaw were clenched tight. Clearly, he was ready to fire.
Johnny blinked once, but the normally instantaneous and unnoticeable action seemed to take a long time. As his eyes opened, Johnny saw the man for what he was.
A threat to him.
A threat to him was a threat to Kelvin.
A threat to Kelvin was a threat to Katie.
He promised Katie - so long ago - that he would help her. That he wouldn’t let them hurt her baby. He promised her, and he’d kept it. Twenty-two years he’d kept it.
He wasn’t about to break that promise now.
Hector’s voice interrupted his recollection.
“Drop the gun, John. I don’t want to hurt you. Come on. I just want to talk. Don’t be a cowboy...”
That word resonated with Johnny, but everything seemed to slow down, and a strange calmness overtook him. He peeked at the clock on the wall. It was high noon.
At this moment, this eternal moment, he remembered Katie’s beautiful face. It was the clearest image of her smiling face that he’d had in years, and Johnny recalled the first time he’d ever seen her.
#
Ten-year-old Johnny saw the little blonde girl with blue eyes and freckles on her nose come walking up his driveway, looking for someone to play with. He stopped shooting at the imaginary Indians in the field and holstered his toy pistol before waving to her. She waved at once, smiled again, and walked over to him.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked.
“Shootin’,” Johnny said as he quickly drew his gun and targeted a lone tree stump at the edge of the fence. He pulled the plastic trigger, and the hammer fell on the empty cap gun with a click.
“POW! Got him!” he exclaimed.
The little girl looked at him and giggled.
“Got him?” she looked over at the stump. “You’re funny.”
“Nope,” he replied. “I’m a cowboy.” He pointed to the gold-colored plastic star that was clipped to the pocket of his plaid shirt.
“A cowboy, huh?” she asked. “What’s your name, cowboy?”
“Johnny...” he said, returning his eyes to the sights of his toy revolver and looking for any more threats moving through the tall grass. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Kathryn, but people call me Katie.”
Johnny grinned. He didn’t see many kids around here, much less kids his age, so he tried to make friends when he could.
“Howdy, Katie.” he said. “Wanna shoot Indians with me?”
She laughed. “Nah, I don’t like to shoot.”
He shrugged and set his target dead in his sights.
“Well, I’m shootin’,” Johnny said confidently, spinning the gun on his finger. “That’s what cowboys do.”
#
The man in the doorway barked at him once more, but Johnny was through listening. A smile spread across his lips as he looked down at his revolver. It was still broken open, and he saw there were two good rounds in the cylinder. Johnny realized what he had to do.
A quick draw. It would be dangerous, but not impossible.
’Cause that’s what cowboys do.