Lightning

her.
    "What's all this gun stuff?" Thelma asked. "Are you going to write new movies for Clint Eastwood? No, hey, better yet, write the female equal of Clint's role—
Dirty Harriet
. And I'm just the broad to play it—tough, cold, with a sneer that would make Bogart cringe."
    "I'll keep you in mind for the part," Laura said, "but what I'd really like to see is Clint play it in drag."
    "Hey, you've still got a sense of humor, Shane."
    "Did you think I wouldn't?"
    Thelma frowned. "I didn't know what to think when I saw you blasting away, looking mean as a snake with fang decay."
    "Self-defense," Laura said. "Every good girl should learn some."
    "You were plinking away like a pro." Thelma noted the glitter of brass shell casings in the grass. "How often do you do this?"
    "Three times a week, a couple of hours each time."
    Chris returned with the target. "Hi, Aunt Thelma. Mom, you got four deaders out of six that time, one good wound, and a miss."
    "Deaders?" Thelma said.
    "Still pulling to-the left, do you think?" Laura asked the boy.
    He showed her the target. "Not so much as last time."
    Thelma said, "Hey, Christopher Robin, is that all I get—just a lousy 'Hi, Aunt Thelma'?"
    Chris put the target with the pile of others that he had taken down before it, went to Thelma, and gave her a big hug and a kiss. Noticing that she was no longer done up in punk style, he said, "Gee, what happened to you, Aunt Thelma? You look normal."
    "I look normal? What is that—a compliment or an insult? Just you remember, kid, even if your old Aunt Thelma looks normal, she is no such a thing. She is a comic genius, a dazzling wit, a legend in her own scrapbook. Anyway, I decided punk was passe."
    They enlisted Thelma to help them collect empty shell casings.
    "Mom's a terrific shot," Chris said proudly.
    "She better be terrific with all this practice. There's enough brass here to make balls for an entire army of Amazon warriors."
    To his mother, Chris said, "What's that mean?"
    "Ask me again in ten years," Laura said.

    When they went into the house, Laura locked the kitchen door. Two deadbolts. She closed the Levelor blinds over the windows so no one could see them.
    Thelma watched these rituals with interest but said nothing.
    Chris put
Raiders of the Lost Ark
on the VCR in the family room and settled in front of the television with a bag of cheese popcorn and a Coke. In the adjacent kitchen Laura and Thelma sat at the table and drank coffee while Laura disassembled and cleaned the .38 Chief's Special.
    The kitchen was big but cozy with lots of dark oak, used brick on two walls, a copper range hood, copper pots hung on hooks, and a dark blue, ceramic-tile floor. It was the kind of kitchen in which TV sitcom families worked out their nonsensical crises and attained transcendental enlightenment (with heart) in thirty minutes each week, minus commercials. Even to Laura it seemed like an odd place to be cleaning a weapon designed primarily to kill other human beings.
    "Are you really afraid?" Thelma asked.
    "Bet on it."
    "But Danny was killed because you were unlucky enough to wander into the middle of a drug deal of some kind. Those people are long gone, right?"
    "Maybe not."
    "Well, if they were afraid that you might be able to identify them, they'd have come to get you long before this."
    "I'm taking no chances."
    "You got to ease up, kid. You can't live the rest of your life expecting someone to jump at you from the bushes. All right, you can keep a gun around the house. That's probably wise. But aren't you ever going to go out into the world again? You can't tote a gun with you everywhere you go."
    "Yes, I can. I've got a permit."
    "A permit to carry that cannon?"
    "I take it in my purse wherever we go."
    "Jesus, how'd you get a permit to carry?"
    "My husband was killed under strange circumstances by persons unknown. Those killers tried to shoot my son and me—and they are still at large. On top of all that, I'm a rich and relatively famous woman. It'd be a little odd if I
couldn't
get a permit to carry."
    Thelma was silent for a minute, sipping her coffee, watching Laura clean the revolver. Finally she said, "This is kind of spooky, Shane, seeing you so serious about this, so tense. I mean, it's seven months since… Danny died. But you're as skittish as if someone had shot at you yesterday. You can't maintain this level of tension or readiness or whatever you want to call it. That way lies madness. Paranoia. You've got to face the