Life Expectancy

The greeting on the mat at her front door did not say welcome but commanded go away.
        Through the falling snow, I could barely see her house, a pale shape in a paler landscape.
        As I followed our driveway to the county road, movement at the Lamm place caught my attention. From the dark hole of her open garage came a rushing shape that at a distance first appeared to be a large pickup truck with headlights off.
        For more than thirty-eight years, Nedra had driven a 1960 Plymouth Valiant, arguably the ugliest car ever produced by Detroit, which she maintained in pristine showroom condition, as if it were a classic of automotive design.
        As the oncoming vehicle reached the end of her driveway and raced onto Hawksbill Road, parting the veils of snow, I identified it as a black Hummer, the civilian version of the military Humvee. Big, fast, with four-wheel drive, undeterred by snow and ice, the Hummer turned neither left nor right but, lightless, crossed the highway toward us.
        "What's he doing?" Lorrie wondered.
        Fearing a collision, I braked, halted.
        The Hummer slid to a stop at an angle across the driveway, blocking our exit.
        The driver's door flew open. A man got out. He had a rifle.
        Tall, broad shouldered, given additional bulk by a fleece-lined thigh-length leather coat, the man wore a toboggan cap pulled down over his ears and low on his forehead.
        I noticed no additional fashion details because I fixated on the rifle, which looked less like a hunter's gun than like a military piece, with an extended magazine. Stepping in front of the Hummer, only fifteen feet from the Explorer, he raised the weapon either to intimidate^ or to kill.
        The average baker might have been confused and paralyzed by this development, but I was primed for action.
        As he brought up the rifle, I jammed my right foot on the accelerator.
        He had started this, not me, so I had no compunction about responding with overwhelming force. I intended to crush him between the vehicles.
        Instantly realizing that he might place a bullet between my eyes but could not stop the Explorer, he dropped the rifle and scrambled onto the hood of the Hummer with an alacrity suggesting significant monkey blood in his family tree.
        As he reached up toward the rack of spotlights above the windshield, perhaps intending to pull himself onto the roof, I cut hard to the right, to avoid a now-pointless collision. The Explorer's bumper roughly kissed the Hummer, offended metal shrieked, dancing sparks lived briefly in the descending snow, and we were out of there.
        I angled across the front yard, grateful that the ground under the snow had weeks ago frozen almost as hard as pavement and would not be churned into sucking mud.
        "What was that about?" Lorrie asked.
        "Beats me."
        "You know him?"
        "I don't think so. But I didn't get a really good look at his face."
        "I don't want a really good look at his face."
        The drooping boughs of the immense deodar cedar were laden with snow, rendering it a looming white form against a white background. Cataracts of falling snow further obscured it. With not a second to spare, I pulled the wheel hard left, barely avoiding taking a header into the tree trunk.
        For a moment I thought the Explorer would roll, but it didn't. We thrashed through the perimeter of the cedar. Branches scraped the roof and the passenger's side, and cascades of snow poured off the boughs, across the windshield, blinding me.
        Most likely, even as we'd roared past him, the gunman would have rolled off the Hummer and snatched up the rifle. I wouldn't even hear the high-powered round if it smashed out the rear window, punched through the headrest, and blew open my skull. Or Lorrie's.
        My heart seemed to clench into a fist and thrust into my throat, beating there with such force that I had trouble swallowing.
        I switched on the wipers, front and back, and the blades swept the snow away, swept the night into place once more, as we reached the highway.
        We crossed the drainage swale with a jolt and swung right into the southbound lane.
        "You okay?" I asked.
        "Watch the road. I'm fine."
        "The baby?"
        "He's pissed-someone tryin' to shoot his mama."
        Turning in the passenger's seat as far as her safety harness and her