I want to run, but I know I can’t run fast enough if this goddamn lunatic actually shoots.
There’s a moment of silence.Then the gun barrels lower, and I put my hands down slowly,definitelyshaking.
“Sorry,” a man’s voice says, creaky with age.“I didn’t know they were gonna send a girl.”
Not what I was expecting to hear.
“Were you gonna shoot a man?”I ask, still flabbergasted that a shotgun was his first move.
“Nah,” he says, and then he sighs, pushing the door open wider.“I just wouldn’t feel so bad.”
I don’t have a response forthat, because I’m pretty opposed to pointing a gun at anyone, but I don’t particularly want to have that argument right now.He leans the shotgun against the wall, and I finally get a good look at him.
He’s wearing brown canvas pants and a blue flannel shirt, along with reading glasses and slippers.I can’t tell how old he is, but he’s up there — in his seventies at least, probably eighties, his face deeply lined, his short hair steel gray.
“It’s not even loaded,” he says.“You here to tell me to get out?”
“Pretty much,” I say, because there’s no point in sugarcoating this to someone who just pointed a gun at me, loaded or not.
“I ain’t leaving,” he says, and pushes the door all the way open.Then he turns, slowly, and walks further into his house like he’s expecting me to follow him.
He moves carefully and stiffly, but he seems pretty in control of all his faculties.I step to the threshold and stand there, peering into the darker inside of the cabin.
“You’re under mandatory evacuation, you know,” I call after him.
“I fought in Korea,” he calls back.“Try to take me.”
I sigh and lean against the door jamb.I hear the sink run for a moment, and then he comes back, still walking carefully and carrying two glasses of water.He hands me one, and I take a sip.
“Thanks,” I say.“The smoke bothers my throat.”
“Mine too,” he admits.
“It’s much less smoky in Ashlake,” I say, lifting my eyebrows.
He smiles at me and shakes his head a little.
“I’m not leaving,” he says again.“But you can come in.I need to sit.”
He doesn’t wait for my response, just walks back into a front room, puts his glass of water down, and then lowers himself carefully into a plaid easy chair.I lean in through the front door, watching, not quite sure how to proceed.
On one hand, I don’t go into strange houses, as a general rule.It’s too easy to imagine a horror story.
On the other hand, I can out run this guy if I need to.I walk inside gingerly, looking around at the pine interior.
“Sit,” he says.“I don’t bite.”
I sit gingerly on a plaid couch thatalmostmatches the chair, glass of water in hand, and I wonder how to talk a guy sixty years older than me into doing something he doesn’t want to do.
“Look, you should really leave,” I say, because that seems like a good place to start.He watches me.“There’s a fire crew working down below, and they’re doing their best, but...”
I trail off for a minute, because I don’t know what thebutis going to be.
“But fires are unpredictable and beyond all human control,” he says.
I push my greasy, gross bangs off my face.
“Yeah.That,” I say.
