Echo Burning

good as you’ll get for eighty bucks, anyway.”
    “The man in the store said it was ideal.”
    “For what?”
    “For a lady. I didn’t tell him why I needed it.”
    He hefted it in his hand. It was tiny, but reasonably solid. Not light, not heavy. Not heavy enough to be loaded, anyway.
    “Where are the bullets?” he asked.
    She stepped back toward the horses. Took a small box out of her bag. Came back and handed it to him. It was neatly packed with tiny .22 shells. Maybe fifty of them.
    “Show me how to load it,” she said.
    He shook his head.
    “You should leave it out here,” he said. “Just dump it and forget about it.”
    “But why?”
    “Because this whole thing is crazy. Guns are dangerous, Carmen. You shouldn’t keep one around Ellie. There might be an accident.”
    “I’ll be very careful. And the house is full of guns anyway.”
    “Rifles are different. She’s too small to reach the trigger and have it pointing at herself simultaneously.”
    “I keep it hidden. She hasn’t found it yet.”
    “Only a matter of time.”
    She shook her head.
    “My decision,” she said. “She’s my daughter.”
    He said nothing.
    “She won’t find it,” she said. “I keep it by the bed, and she doesn’t come in there.”
    “What happens to her if you decide to use it?”
    She nodded. “I know. I think about that all the time. I just hope she’s too young to really understand. And when she’s old enough, maybe she’ll see it was the lesser of two evils.”
    “No, what happens to her? There and then? When you’re in jail?”
    “They don’t send you to jail for self-defense.”
    “Who says it’s self-defense?”
    “You know it would be self-defense.”
    “Doesn’t matter what I know. I’m not the sheriff, I’m not the DA, I’m not the judge and jury.”
    She went quiet.
    “Think about it, Carmen,” he said. “They’ll arrest you, you’ll be charged with first-degree homicide. You’ve got no bail money. You’ve got no money for a lawyer either, so you’ll get a public defender. You’ll be arraigned, and you’ll go to trial. Could be six or nine months down the road. Could be a year. Then let’s say everything goes exactly your way from that point on. The public defender makes out it’s self-defense, the jury buys it, the judge apologizes that a wronged woman has been put through all of that, and you’re back on the street. But that’s a year from now. At least. What’s Ellie been doing all that time?”
    She said nothing.
    “She’ll have spent a year with Rusty,” he said. “On her own. Because that’s where the court would leave her. The grandmother? Ideal solution.”
    “Not when they understood what the Greers are like.”
    “O.K., so partway through the year Family Services will arrive and haul her off to some foster home. Is that what you want for her?”
    She winced. “Rusty would send her there anyway. She’d refuse to keep her, if Sloop wasn’t around anymore.”
    “So leave the gun out here in the desert. It’s not a good idea.”
    He handed it back to her. She took it and cradled it in her palms, like it was a precious object. She tumbled it from one hand to another, like a child’s game. The fake pearl grips flashed in the sun.
    “No,” she said. “I want to learn to use it. For self-confidence. And that’s a decision that’s mine to make. You can’t decide for me.”
    He was quiet for a beat. Then he shrugged.
    “O.K.,” he said. “Your life, your kid, your decision. But guns are serious business. So pay attention.”
    She passed it back. He laid it flat on his left palm. It reached from the ball of his thumb to the middle knuckle of his middle finger.
    “Two warnings,” he said. “This is a very, very short barrel. See that?” He traced his right index finger from the chamberto the muzzle. “Two and a half inches, is all. Did they explain that at the store?”
    She nodded. “The guy said it would fit real easy in my bag.”
    “It makes it a very inaccurate weapon,” he said. “The longer the barrel, the straighter it shoots. That’s why rifles are three feet long. If you’re going to use this thing, you need to get very, very close, O.K.? Inches away would be best. Right next to the target. Touching the target if you can. You try to use this thing across a room, you’ll miss by miles.”
    “O.K.,” she said.
    “Second warning.” He dug a bullet out of the box and held it up. “This thing is tiny. And slow. The pointy