“Eisenhower or Mamie?” Tay asks.
Burt finally leaves to go back to work. Tay and I keep shooting. She stops occasionally and comes over to where I’m standing and gives me tips on form and balance. After a while, I feel as if I’m getting better as I go, even though I still feel as if I’m on training wheels.
“I still don’t like guns,” I say.
“You think I do?” Tay says when we’re finished. “Burt just feels very strongly that owning one, and being proficient with one, is the cost of doing business around here.”
“His business, or Briar Crockett’s?” I ask.
“Both,” Taylor McCarter Webb says.
There’s a small coffee shop that’s part of the club. We sit down at a table there and are served coffee that isn’t very good. But I remember my father always saying that bad coffee is better than none.
“I’m worried about Burt,” Taylor says. “More than I ever have been before, even though I try to keep it to myself. I’m exactly like that woman at the parish hall talking about being fearful for her daughters. I’m scared now every time he walks out the door.”
“Come on,” I say. “It’s not just my life I trust with Burt, or yours. I trust his, too.”
“But he’s put himself and his face right out front in this war,” shesays. “And you know this is a war we’re starting. My husband’s face is totally out front just as much as Helene Mayes’s is. People still don’t know her around here. But they sure know Burt.”
Taylor drinks some of her coffee and winces. “Wow,” she says.
“Right?”
“They must have missed the memo here on good coffee being easier to make than ever,” she says.
I’m scheduled to go from one kind of workout here to the one I’ve got back at home with Vince, but I don’t get up to leave just yet.
We sit in silence for a couple of minutes, the muffled sound of guns being fired from inside making its way all the way out here.
Finally, Taylor says, “What if all of this doesn’t work, Silas? What if, no matter what everyone tries, the other side wins in the end?”
I smile at her.
“You’re sitting across from somebody who’s made a career out of his side winning,” I say. “At least until lately. And my face is on this as much as theirs are.”
“Promise me something,” she says. “You’ll look out for Burt every chance you get, as much as he’s looking out for you.”
“You know I will.”
She reaches down for her purse, next to her on the floor, her face serious, almost solemn. This is the purse with the SIG Sauer inside, the one I’d seen her firing like a pro for the past hour.
She pats the purse, and I know what she’s really doing is patting the gun.
“I wouldn’t just use this to defend myself,” she says quietly. “To be the defensive shooter I was taught to be.”
I wait, knowing she’s not done.
“Silas, I’m worried about you,” she says. “In a way I haven’t worried about you since you nearly died in that accident.”
She pauses again and takes a deep breath. Her eyes are suddenly very big, very bright.
“Burt knows how to take care of himself,” she says. “Taking care of himself is part of his job. It’s not just what he does, Silas. It’s who he is.”
I wait, sensing she’s still not through. She’s not.
“But you’ve gone out of your way to put a target on yourself as sure as you were a target inside this range,” she says. “You told me what Briar Crockett toldyouabout this not being a game. Well, the bastard was right. It’s not. And if he continues to be a threat, I believe that he’s going to come at you first.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I say.
