Shallow Graves

to them. That’s so neat! What’s it like?”
    “I didn’t score that many. I wasn’t that good.”
    “Sure you were!” the boy countered. “I’ll bet you saved the team. When was that? A couple years ago?”
    “More like twenty.”
    Sam rolled his eyes. “Holy cow, you’re older than my mom. You don’t look old.”
    Pellam laughed. He’d forgotten how completely kids nuked your careful adult delusions.
    “Hey, Mr. Pellam, can we like practice passing sometime? My mom tries but she’s a girl and all, you know. Maybe you and me could practice, you could give me some tips. My dad, well, he’s busy a lot of the time. All he cares about is his job.”
    Pellam knew enough not to get into that one. He said, “We’ll see.”
    “My mom’d like it if you stayed around for a while. She likes you, I can tell.”
    Or into that one either.
    They came to a ridge that overlooked the parking lot where Marty had died. The lot was about three hundred yards away. There was only one other high point that Pellam could see that had a view of the lot and that one was five hundred yards. Not an impossible shot with a good scope but this would be the more likely spot for a sniper. Also, this faced the rear of the parking lot, and, if Marty had parked head in, would offer the car’s gas tank as a target.
    Still, it’d be a bitch of a shot in any kind of breeze, and on a warm day—as that day had been—heat waves from the valley beneath would have blurred the line of sight.
    “Okay, Sam, go to work. Find me what you can.”
    The boy wandered back and forth for ten minutes, retrieving two mashed Coors cans and a quarter (“It’s yours, son”). Suddenly he shrieked and ran up to Pellam with a .22 long rifle cartridge in his hand.
    “Nope, too small. I’m looking for centerfire. You know the difference?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Firing pin hits a .22 on the rim of the shell. So they’re called rimfire. Bigger calibers hit the percussion cap in the center. They’re called centerfire.”
    “Wow, that’s neat.”
    “Come here, I’ll show you.” Sam frowned, then his eyes went wide, as Pellam opened his jacket andpulled a gun from his waistband. It was an 1876 Colt, steel with dark rosewood grips.
    “Wow,” the boy whispered.
    Pellam kept the gun pointed at the ground. “Always pretend a gun is loaded, even if you know it isn’t, and always pretend that it could go off at any minute. So you never point it at anything unless you’re prepared to shoot it. Got it?”
    “I got it. That’s a cowboy gun.”
    “It’s a Colt Peacemaker, a .45.” He opened the thumb cover and with the ejector rod eased the shell out. He held the end up for the boy to see. “There, that’s the cap in the center. The pin on the hammer hits the cap and that sets off the powder.”
    “Can you take me shooting, Mr. Pellam? Please?”
    “Let’s talk to your parents about it. Maybe.”
    “Shoot something. Will you?”
    “Not now, Sam. It’s not a toy.” He put the gun back in his waistband. “Let’s find me my cartridges.”
    With even more enthusiasm the boy swept the detector over the ground. Pellam wasn’t paying much attention to him, he was looking at the dark patch of plowed-over earth in the distance, the parking lot, where Marty’d died a horrible death. He didn’t notice the boy stoop down and pick up something then come racing over to him.
    “Look what I found, Mr. Pellam. Look!”
    Sam dropped the two cartridges into his hand. They were .30 caliber, though the length was odd, stubbier than a .30-30 or .30-06, bigger than a Garand.
    “Good job, Sam.” He patted the beaming boy on his shoulders. “Just what I’m looking for.” He dropped the cartridges into his pocket.
    “You show me your collection someday, Mr. Pellam?”
    “You bet, Sam. Time to get home.”
    “Aw . . .”
    Together they walked down the mountain, swapping fishing stories.
    THAT NIGHT, SAM upstairs, and Keith still at the company, Meg Torrens ate a turkey sandwich with cold cranberry sauce and drank a glass of white wine, reading the headlines and the first paragraphs of all the stories in the New York Times.
    She heard the clicks and tiny pops of the hundred-year-old house, the muffled roar of the furnace coming on—something reassuring about the way its simple brain kicked the machinery on and coursed hot water through the pipes. It would shut off and there’d be moments of complete, muffled silence.
    She finished the Arts section,