Relentless

contains all their holdings.
    Tray professes not to believe Ewen on either point. A short discussion ensues between them.
    I cannot take my eyes off the gun. The weapon gleams like a magic object, like a sword once frozen in stone but pulled free, except the sorcery in this case is a dark variety.
    Yet I do not realize that it might be used. The weapon is an object of wonder, magical because of its appearance alone, and does not need to function in order to cast a spell.
    Because of the through-the-house music system and many lively conversations, the guests elsewhere do not hear the quiet drama in the living room. They do not remain out of the loop for long, because Tray soon makes some noise.
    Kenton’s sixteen-year-old daughter, my cousin Davena, stands beside an armchair.
    After calling Ewen a liar, Tray says, “Hey, Davena, you’re all grown up and pretty. When did that happen?”
    Davena smiles nervously, not sure what to say. When she smiles, a dimple forms in her right cheek. Her ears are delicate and smooth, like blown glass.
    Tray shoots her twice, and she falls dead over the footstool, her face in the carpet and covered by her hair, bottom in the air, skirt tossed up and panties revealed.
    Although the word “dignity” is not in my vocabulary yet, I know this is wrong. I want to pull her skirt down, lay her on the floor, on her back, and smooth the hair away from her face.
    Strangely, I do not think of her as dead, not right away. That is a recognition from which I rebel.
    I do not want Davena to look foolish or clumsy, because she is in fact smart and graceful. No matter how much I feel that I should attend to her, arrange her in a more suitable fashion, I cannot move.
    The gunfire draws shouts of surprise from other rooms.
    Some people try to flee.
    But Tray has come with two friends. They kick through the back door into the kitchen, through the side door into the dining room.
    People scream, but the farmhouse is far from any neighbor.
    My father, also in the living room, must realize the time for effective resistance is quickly fading. He seizes an eighteen-inch bronze statue of a farm boy and his dog, and rushes Tray, winding up the art work to swing it when he is close enough.
    Tray shoots him in the face. And shoots him twice again as he lies dead on the floor.
    I watch it happen, turn away.
    Resorting to the magical thinking that children use to cope with trauma, I tell myself that my father will be okay until the ambulance arrives. The medics will rush him and Cousin Davena to the hospital, where both will be revived in the nick of time—revived, healed, home soon.
    In the nick of time. The right thing always happens in the nick of time. Every storybook says so.
    No one goes out through any window before the three gunmen have control of the residence.
    They herd the family into the living room and dining room. They make everyone sit either on the furniture or on the floor.
    Tray goes to work on Ewen again, demanding the location of the secret safe, the fortune in coins that does not exist.
    Ewen offers to take Tray to the brothers’ store and open that—the only—safe.
    Tray thinks the risk is not worth taking when a Midas trove is hidden in this very house.
    I am not listening to much of their argument, and I am so young, with the limited perceptions of an ordinary child, yet I sense Tray does not really believe in the secret treasure room. This is a story he invented to induce his buddies to come there with him.
    In truth he has one and only one intention: to kill us all. Some atavistic part of my brain, afire with primitive wisdom older than I am, brings me finally to the recognition that two are dead and that others will be killed soon.
    With Davena and my father murdered, the men who came with Tray have nothing to lose. As accomplices and kidnappers, they are already candidates for death sentences or life in prison.
    Later, police will determine that Tray and the other two were amped on methamphetamine—and in a mood to make a sport of violence.
    In frustration, Tray uses the butt of his weapon to smash Ewen’s face, then shoots him in the stomach.
    By this time, I am no longer turned away from what is happening. I am so afraid, but for some reason I feel that I must watch.
    Tray no longer has any interest in the secret trove of inventory that he has known does not exist. He is Fate, and exhibiting the cold enthusiasm of a serpent going egg to egg in a henhouse, he moves