Showdown

Eight years old the first time his Daddy puts a gun in his hands. Doesn’t let him shoot it, not then. His Momma’s voice carries across their Mississippi kitchen, her lemonade-fresh tone saying, “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Randy. He’s never gonna learn how dangerous they are.”

She’s right and wrong all in the same breath.

Randy Hayes is a military man. A good man. One of the better ones. He Misses the wonderment in his little boy’s blue eyes because he’s busy insisting, “’Course he will. S’easiest thing t’learn ’bout ’em.”

Hollis is eleven when his daddy, the army sergeant, puts a piece in his hand and lines him up with a target.

“Now, ya gotta squeeze the trigger, not pull it. Understand?”

A little blond head nods. Sure, he gets it. And he’s a little too eager to do it.

He’s at an age where he thinks holding a gun puts him across the line from boy to man.

When he’s given the go-ahead, he pulls that first trigger. Feels the reverberation of gunpowder exploding at his fingertips. Feels a kind of power no child should know exists.

At the end of the session his daddy tells him, “Most important thing to ’member is t’never point a gun at anyone’s head. Ever. That ain’t a shot y’can take back.”

Little blond head nods again. But his fingers are flexing, hands pulling at one another. Mesmerised.

A switch is flipped.

Hollis is in his twenties. It’s a question he doesn’t expect he’ll ever hear. And it’s sitting out in the open now, waiting impatiently for an answer.

“Could you shoot a man? If you had to?”

Needs a minute to think about it when he’s asked. Has to think about it, but ultimately nods to the man who’s hired him and says, “Yeah.”

His Daddy’s rolling in his grave.

His Momma’ll never know just how much shit her son’s gotten himself into.

It’s more than a decade later when he trades in just about every dollar he has to be a whole new kind of shooter.

It’s always been like this: Hollis figures anyone in his line of work has to know the risk they’re taking. Not one of the men he’s put a bullet in over the years has been on the right side of the law. It’s a warped way to justify the ugliness of it all, but it works for him. Keeps his feet moving into the next day.

He’s even stopped having night terrors about the emptiness in a man’s eyes when life drains from his face.

For the most part, anyway.

The business he’s running isn’t the sort that’s concerned with morality. Anyone looking to buy a gun is looking not to be asked why. Hollis reasons that’s alright, keeps telling himself everyone has to answer for their own sins in the end.

He’s got more than enough of his own to account for.

Out the back of the Bull's Eye, Hollis has the open sign flipped and he’s shooting cans off a wooden rail with a pristinely polished Smith & Wesson K22. The only interrupting presence he’s expecting is his girl's. Maybe the neighbours wondering about all the ruckus.

But a man he doesn’t recognise comes around the corner.

Polished shoes and a crisp shirt. Not the sort Hayes has ever kept company with. He’s walking like he’s got broken ribs, and that’s the part that catches the gunman’s attention. “Can I help ya?” he asks.

“I’m looking to purchase a gun.”

More often than not, a customer wanders in through the front door and – yeah – they’re looking to buy a gun. But they know how it sounds, too, so their request always comes with unnecessary justification. Some want a gun for personal protection. Some fancy themselves hunters. Others are a little more discrete about their reasoning, but still feel compelled to offer some explanation. On the sign for the shop is the head of an angry bull, one eye turned into a target and the other, well, people tend to feel like it's judging them anytime they're within view.

Hollis wouldn’t call himself the brightest bulb in the box, certainly wouldn’t say his read on people is always right. But there’s something about the man with him now that’s disconnected. Like what he sees doesn’t affect the way he lives his life. Like he could watch a brain be blown to bits and not even blink.

Doesn’t settle quite right with him.

“I think I’m gonna say—” and Hollis squeezes the trigger one more time, sends a third tin can scrambling backward with a familiar little tune, “You don’t look like someone I wanna sell a gun to.” The one he’s holding gets pseudo-holstered, tucked into the back of his belt. Three bullets still sitting in the chamber.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” the visitor says. There’s a threat wrapped between the syllables. One that even Hollis understands.

“I’m the one holdin’ the gun, last I checked. and I’m willin’ to bet I’ve got the quickest draw in this whole place,” and he’s lucky that men like the one he's facing are never too interested in gambling unless it's on the stocks.

Blue eyes meet blue, and the intruder allows for a momentary showdown, one sort of criminal against another, before he acquiesces and retreats back around the side of the building without another word.

Hollis is left thinking maybe it wasn’t his brightest move. There was something cold in the stranger’s eyes that makes him wonder if he’d be the sort to set the storefront aflame over just the one encounter.

Still, he won’t have a hand in whatever type of massacre a man like that’s aiming at. Isn’t a man of morality, but he’s got his code of ethics.

He’ll point a gun right between a man’s eyes. But not a man who isn’t expecting it. The rich ones never quite feel the same way.