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465. UNCLE WILL Shelly came down from tucking in the Keller young. All but one of them. She looked with worried eyes at her husband, who was industriously scouring a glass baking dish. He'd been working on that same dish, trying to scour out the corners where baked contrariness lived, until he looked at his wife, dropped the scrubber back on its rubber holder and pulled the plug from the drain. He rinsed the baking dish, carefully, precisely, placed it in the drain rack, turned and leaned back against the white-enamel sink, sighed. "Do you know," he said quietly, "I just spent most of a half hour trying to scour a casting flaw out of a glass dish?" Shelly gave him The Look, and he nodded. "I know. I'm worried too." His eyes drifted to the left, looking through the wall to the back pasture, where he figured Marnie would be. He was almost right. Marnie rode slowly, her mind busy: she trusted her Goldie-horse to pick her way in the dark, and besides, this late, she wasn't in any hurry to get anywhere. She was restless, but she was introspective, impatient to find an answer within herself. Her Daddy once said of his Mama, "She told me once, 'I get me into it, I get me out of it,' and she's been of that mindset all of her life." Marnie considered this as well. She didn't get herself into her situation -- her face still felt half numb, she was a fright when she looked in the mirror, her fellow students were either staring, fascinated by the sight of her bruising, of the two stitches on her lip -- the others avoided her as if she had leprosy. She tended her school day as she always did: her work was on time, complete, absolutely neat and tidy, her signature on her lessons was steady, unchanged from before The Night. She knew she was stared at, watched, whispered about, and she quite honestly did not give a good damn. Part of her was suddenly very hard. The rest of her hid within the hard shell. She'd come home, she'd had supper; Shelly listened, waited, seemed almost ready to speak, but hesitated, looking almost guilty when Marnie looked at her. Linn was more straightforward. He looked at her and said 'Walk with me,' and he handed her the carved-leather gunbelt he'd had made for her. Marnie recognized a significant gesture of trust. She belted the rig around her lean waist. They walked out the front door, onto the broad front porch, stopped. Linn took a long lung full of the fragrant late fall air, exhaled, his breath steaming in the stillness. "I need your advice," he said quietly. Marnie looked at her long tall Papa with honest surprise. "Darlin', I killed my first man when I was nine years old, and I used the twin to the revolver you're wearin'. Some fellow brought a submachine gun to the gunfight and had Mama not been wearing both a boned corset and her body armor, she'd be deader'n hell right now." Linn's voice was quiet, his eyes veiled as he stared toward the granite mountains. "You performed better under stress than most grown men. You were practiced and you were ready and when it hit the fan, you did very well indeed." Linn turned, faced his daughter squarely, reached for her hands, held them gently. He looked deep into her soul and said, "Darlin', I am pretty damned proud of you." Marnie nodded, swallowed. "Thank you, Daddy." Linn didn't let go of his daughter's hands, but neither did he tighten his grip to prevent their escape. "It is no easy thing to take a life," he said carefully. Marnie shook her head, looked at her Daddy, her jaw sliding out a little -- just like her Gammaw, he thought -- and Marnie said "No. No, Daddy, it's easy." She blinked twice, quickly, her expression troubled. "Everyone and their uncle tells me it's a hard thing to kill and it's not." She looked almost defiantly at her Papa. "I killed the man who was going to kill me and it was easy. I slept well that night because it was the right thing to do." Linn shook his head. "Dear God," he whispered, "you are my daughter, all right!" -- Marnie raised an eyebrow -- "y'see, when I killed the man who tried to machine gun Mama to death, he dumped a stick mag into her, I grabbed Granddad's revolver from its display case in Mama's office and I ran out -- he dumped the empty mag and I dumped three rounds of .38 Smith and Wesson right through the bridge of his nose." His own jaw eased out and he stared at the grey painted floor boards. "Everyone told me it was such a hard thing and it's not." He looked at his daughter, nodded. "It's not hard. It was the right thing to do and I slept well that night, and I used exactly the words you just spoke to me." "I did the right thing, Daddy." "Damned right you did," he agreed. "You'll run into people who'll tell you otherwise. Don't argue with them. Walk away if you can. Turn your back on them and walk away. I did." "Daddy?" "Yes, darlin'?" "Remember when I was a little girl, you'd hold me and rub noses with me and call me Princess?" Linn nodded. "Would you do that again?" Linn released Marnie's hands, caught her under the arms: a lean man is a strong man, and Linn was lean and wiry: he lifted his little girl easily off the porch boards, brought her up, fast, almost tossing her up, then caught her with one arm under her backside and the other around her: she ran her arms around his neck, he lowered his neck, rubbed her nose with his, gently, and she felt his belly laugh against hers. "I love you, Princess," he whispered. "I love you too, Daddy." "I think your Mama has ice cream for dessert." Marnie sighed, laid the uninjured side of her face against her Daddy's shoulder. "You just spoke my language," she murmured. "It's the song of my people." Marnie excused herself after washing the dessert dishes, slipped back outside, snatching up her jacket as she did. She stopped at the front door, turned, frowned. She walked back over to her Daddy, who was watching her speculatively. "You said you needed my advice." "Liiinnn," Shelly said warningly, and Linn raised a forestalling hand. "Marnie, you're pretty damned good with that Victory model revolver, but the .38 Smith & Wesson carries less go-power than my .36 percussion. I think you need something in a more serious caliber." "I'll take a .357," Marnie said without hesitation. "A 27, like Uncle Will wears." "Linn, that's too big," Shelly protested, and Marnie gave her a hard eyed glare. Linn nodded thoughtfully. "I think we can make that happen." Marnie nodded, once, slowly, then turned, picked her jacket off the back of her chair, thrust one arm into black denim, then the other arm. Father and mother watched their thirteen year old daughter go out the front door. Linn rose, went to the sink, began scouring the glass baking dish. Marnie took a long breath of the night air. "Goldie," she said out loud, "Uncle Will once told me about getting a phone call at oh too early in the morning." Goldie stood, ears swinging slowly, blowing big clouds of moisture into the air. Marnie looked up at the stars overhead, saw one streaking through the high mountain air with a silver finger, then disappearing. "He said when someone called and said 'Can you come over? I need to talk,' and they'd sit on the back steps and drink coffee and talk in quiet voices until the sun reached up with red fingers to chin itself up over the horizon." Marnie took another long breath. "Yup, girl. We're going to pay Uncle Will a visit." Chief of Police Will Keller's front door opened as Marnie raised her knuckles to knock. "Figured it was you," Will grinned. "Come on in." "How'd you know it was me?" she asked with honest surprise. "Your Gammaw is the one with the second sight, not me. I heard Goldie's hooves and figured there's only one living soul who would ride over here. Well, two, but your Gammaw calls ahead." Marnie spread her arms dramatically: "Does yas knows me or what?" and they both laughed. "Come on in. I've got hot chocolate and cookies." "And I just had ice cream," Marnie groaned. "Got any duct tape?" "So you can tape the cookies to your backside? That's what your Gammaw complains about." "He knows me," Marnie said in a complaining voice, and Will laughed again. Marnie waited until Will set two steaming mugs of hot chocolate, with a single big marshmallow in each, on the red and white checkered tablecloth: he followed this with a package of cookies. "Your Gammaw would have a batch baked," he apologized. "Sorry for the store bought." "You don't hear me complainin'," Marnie mumbled: she dunked her cookie long enough to soften it, hopefully not so long as to cause it to fall apart. Will watched as she nibbled delicately at the softened chocolate chip cookie. "How are your teeth?" Marnie swallowed, set the cookie down on the saucer. "That," she admitted, "is one question nobody's asked me yet." "I know what it is to get hit in the face," Will explained. "If you don't mind me sayin', you do look a fright. Did you go to school like that?" Marnie raised an eyebrow, lowered her head a little. "Uncle Will," she said patiently, "I didn't have much choice in the matter!" "You could have worn a paper sack over your head," Will offered with a straight face. Marnie sighed. "I wonder if Grampa was the commodion. Seems like every one of us is as full of it as a sack full of politicians." "It's a gift," Will said, leaning back and hooking his thumbs under his suspenders like a pot bellied politician making a speech. "Yeah. My teeth hurt, my cheek bone hurts, it hurts to talk, it hurts to smile, and I was offered a fresh leech to suck the blood out of my bruises." "That actually works, y'know." "I'd have to wear that paper sack so people wouldn't get sick looking at me." Will nodded. "I reckon so." "Daddy said I need something with more authority than the Victory model." Will nodded. "I tend to agree." "He asked my opinion on the subject." "And?" "I told him a model 27, like yours." Will nodded slowly. "As I recall, you can shoot this one pretty well." "You recall correctly." Will rose. "Come with me." They went into his bedroom -- it was changed entirely since his wife Crystal's death -- Marnie watched him lift a colorfully-geometric patterned rug hung as a wall decoration, keyed in a series of numbers, opened a safe. He reached in. "Peel yours off the gunbelt," he instructed. Marnie did. He handed her a revolver in a carved, background-dyed holster. "Try that on." Marnie threaded her gunbelt through the jeans loop on the left side, wrapped it around, unfast her jeans belt: she drew it free to just under her arm, then lay gunbelt and jeans belt together, ran them both through the S. D. Meyers Jordan holster: she leaned the holstered revolver against Will's square wooden bedpost, pressed her weight against it until she got her jeans belt, then the gunbelt snugged up and fast up. She stepped away from the bed, dropped her arm over it: she moved the holster a fraction of an inch, dropped her arm again. "Here," Will said. "You'll need these." He handed her two speedloaders in a matching, floral carved, background dyed two-holer speedloader case. Marnie unbuckled the gunbelt, threaded on the speedloaders, buckled again. He handed her two more loaded speedloaders. "Those," he said, "are social loads. I carry these on duty. Best I've found." She nodded. "I'll use the same." "That's not what I shoot the most of," he admitted. "I know." "That one likes wad cutters in magnum brass really well. The old PPC load will cut cards edgewise at twenty feet until you get tired of it." Marnie's expression was solemn. "That's what I'm looking for." She looked at her Uncle, blinked. "Thank you." Will lay his hands gently on her shoulders. "Darlin'," he said, "we've only got one of you, and I prefer a universe with you alive and well in it." She nodded. "When I come a-runnin' up on you the other night --" Will hesitated, frowned. "I need some more cookies." They returned to the kitchen table. Will sat carefully, almost flinched, and saw Marnie's concerned look. He chuckled a little. "Years ago," he said, "I thought I'd wear sneakers. Put on a pair I thought were ... well, name brand, had kind of a deck sole on 'em, I went out with pliers to crimp the downspout extension so I'd not get water in the basement again." His expression went from amused to almost grim. "Came back in with wet shoe soles. Crystal, rest her soul, was such a tidy soul ... I was an unmitigated slob when we met and she tuned me up, I relaxed her a little, things were so good until she got ... bad ..." Marnie did not miss the sadness in the man's eyes. He shook his head. "I'm sorry. Old men have long memories. Anyway I went downstairs to be neat and hang the pliers back on the pegboard, and wet sneaker soles on painted wood steps, both feet shout out ahead of me and BOOM right down on the edge of the step and broke my tail bone." He looked wryly at his niece, who was carefully sampling her cooled cocoa. "It's ached ever since. Rain, snow, I'm better than the National Weather Surface, but I have to sit down kind of careful on these chairs." "Ow," Marnie said sympathetically. "I think I said that," Will said speculatively. "It hurt too bad to say much. Of course it didn't help any when Crystal called Willa and said 'Hey Willa! Guess what! Will broke his butt!" Marnie's face reddened: she reached back, pulled out her bandana, got it over her face before she half-coughed, half-laughed, and managed to catch the cookie splatter rather than spray her Uncle Will's neat red-and-white tablecloth. "How's your Daddy set for linotype?" Will asked, dunking a cookie of his own. "We've got a five gallon bucket yet." "You'll need more, trust me. Let me see what I can scrounge. The Gazette scrapped out its press and I got all the linotype. You can use way softer an alloy with the full wadcutters. Got a mold?" "For the semi wads." Will raised a finger, rose: Marnie nibbled a cookie while she waited, while Will descended the basement stairs, came back with a cast iron mold. "Here you go, darlin'. Good old Lyman, best made." Marnie smiled, flinched. "Thank you, Uncle Will." Will sat back down. "You'd think I'd get me one of John Wayne's whorehouse pillows to set on." "I'll see what I can find." "Do that, an old man will thank ye for it." He leaned his elbows on the table, wrapped one hand over the opposite's knuckles, leaned his iron grey mustache into his clasped hands. "Now let's talk about you." Marnie swirled the last of her cocoa, downed it, bit what was left of the marshmallow and swallowed it as well. "Nobody," she said slowly, "asked me what it was like to kill someone." Will nodded a little: he knew it was time to listen, he knew it was time for Marnie to talk. At least I've learned that over the years, he thought, his eyes on his niece. "They'll ask how I'm doing, or maybe how do I feel, and what do I tell them?" She looked at her Uncle -- he saw intensity, but he did not see self doubt, he did not see self accusation. "I was grabbed, a guy tried to drag me away between the cars into the shadows, the guys with him were yelling encouragement, telling him he needed to grab my --" Marnie stopped, her shoulders rising as the memory came back like the noon freight. Her hands were fisted, pressing down hard on the edge of the table. "He was going to rape me, Uncle Will," she said, her voice low, tense. "Him and the others." Uncle Will nodded, just a little. "All those hours with the Valkyries," Marnie said softly. "All the practice with the dummy gun, all the disarm drills, all the hand to hand practice." She looked up, her pale eyes intense. "I didn't have to think, Uncle Will. No doubt. No hesitation. I grabbed his thumbs and peeled his hands back, I came around and his first hit caught me out of nowhere. Didn't see that one." She stared through the tabletop at the memory, her fists still clenched, and Will felt her tremors through the tabletop she was pressing down on. "That first hit knocked the dust out of my brain. Every extraneous thought, gone. From that moment on it was one thing only." She looked at her Uncle, her eyes pale, hard, as shining and as white as the frozen heart of her Gammaw's mountain glacier. "I was going to kill him, Uncle. I have never hated in my life but I hated that night. I hated him and I hated him hard and I was going to kill him and then he hit me the second time and from then on there was no thought." "I watched the video," Will said quietly. "You were a most efficient fighter." "I hit him where I could and just as hard as I could," she said slowly, "and when I got him down and he said to kill her I broke my focus because I'd honestly forgotten the others were there. "I looked up and they both had guns. "The one was moving in close and I grabbed just like I've practiced and it worked. I remember there was no holdback at all, I was going to twist and yank just as hard as I had to and if that meant rip his finger off so be it and the other guy was raising his gun and I grabbed the slide and shoved the receiver forward and I didn't want to lose a round but I had to guarantee I had one in the chamber and I brought it up and I remember the front sight was sharp and clear and I put it right where I wanted to hit and then I raised the back sight just a little and the gun fired and he went down faster than I thought it was possible --" Marnie's eyes were wide, her breath coming fast: Will let her stare at her memory, then he clapped his hands. Marnie jumped, blinked, startled. "I just relived it, didn't I?" she asked in a small voice. Will nodded. "You were in a fight for your life, Marnie." "Yes," she agreed. "I was." "You had to keep yourself alive." "Yes. I did." "Marnie, did you do the right thing?" Marnie's eyes were still very pale as she looked at her Uncle. "Yes," she said without hesitation. "Yes, I most certainly did." Will nodded. "You're right," he said with the same certainty in his own voice. Marnie blinked, closed her eyes, turned her head a little, frowned. "Gammaw said I would not have to testify for 72 hours." "That's what we give a lawman." "I'm not a lawman." "You will be." "I'm only thirteen." "You're growing." Marnie nodded. "Marnie, there are evils in this world that try to destroy us. We saw it in your Great Aunt Sarah -- remember reading about her? -- Willa told me evil tried hard to destroy her, not just kill her, and it didn't work, and because they failed, our line will live to Armageddon and fight in the final battle at the end of the world." "Har-Mediggo," Marnie said thoughtfully. "Ragnarok. The Last Battle." Her bottom jaw thrust stubbornly forward. "I'd like that." They sat together in the shadowed kitchen, and night's hush grew long in the widower's house, until finally Marnie raised her head from staring at the tablecloth and said, "I don't think we talked about all that much." Will smiled. "We talked," he said. "We can talk more." "Later, maybe." Marnie stood, as did her uncle Will. She took his hands, looked up at him, realizing with some surprise just how alike he and her Daddy actually looked. "Thank you, Uncle Will." She lowered her arm, laid it over the checkered walnut handle of her .357. Will bit his bottom lip, considering, then went slowly to one knee, both his niece's hands in both of his. "Darlin'," he said, "there's only one of you. Only one of you has ever been made, or ever will be. In all of Eternity, all of Infinity, all of Creation itself, only one of you." "I'm a limited edition?" Marnie smiled gently. "You're damned right," Will growled, the corners of his mustache rising to display his canines, the way he did when he wanted to emphasize a point. "A pearl of great price, of whom I am very proud." "Uncle Will?" "Yes?" "That means a lot to me." He nodded, opened his arms: she leaned into him, and Uncle and Niece held one another for several long moments. Will listened to Goldie's hoofbeats receding, sharp on hard pavement, then gone as she rode the long diagonal onto the unpaved field beyond. Suddenly Will realized how empty his house really felt.