AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Fifteen
Nick Wilson pulls his car intothe parking lot of Straight Shooters of West Palm Beach, located near the intersection of Dixie Highway and Forty-fifth Street, and shuts off the engine. “Okay. Everybody out.”
Ben immediately scrambles out of the backseat, racing toward the front door of the squat ecru-colored building.
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” Dani asks her husband. Despite his threatening to do this for weeks, she’d kept hoping he’d think better of the idea. She glances back at Tyler. The boy has remained seated, his eyes reflecting a similar concern. In fact, he looks terrified.
“I thought we settled that once and for all this morning,” Nick says, his voice weary.
“I know, but…I’m thinkin’ they’re still so young, and Ben’s no bigger than a minnow in a fishin’ pond….”
“He’s as tall as required, and you’re never too young to learn how to defend yourself. What’s happening back there, Goldilocks? Why are you still in the car?”
Tyler hesitates. “I can’t undo my seatbelt.”
“Really?” Nick leans over the top of the seat, reaches behind him, and unsnaps the belt. “Was that so hard?”
“Nick, honey,” his wife whispers as Tyler is closing the door behind him, “you know he doesn’t like it when you call him Goldilocks.”
“You trying to tell me how to talk to my own son?”
“No. I’m just sayin’…”
“Well, don’t. Just shut up and get out of the car.”
Dani’s eyes fill with tears. The last thing she wanted to do was upset him all over again. Her cheek is still stinging from the slap he delivered this morning when she’d suggested possibly going to the beach instead, a slap so hard her ears are still ringing.
“What happened to your face?” Tyler asked as she was preparing breakfast.
She tried to shrug it off. “I walked into the side of the bathroom door. You know me, I’m so clumsy.”
“You’re not clumsy,” Tyler said.
“Come on, everybody,” Ben calls now from the front door of the gun shop.
“Don’t question my judgment in front of the kids ever again,” Nick warns as he comes around the passenger side to grab Dani’s elbow and pull her from the car.
What’s the matter with me? Why do I deliberately provoke him?Dani wonders as he slams the door after her, then stops suddenly.
“Shit,” he says.
“What?”
“Tire’s looking a little flat.”
“Really? It looks okay to—” She stops when she realizes Nick is already walking away.
The sign on the front door reads,No loaded firearms please,an irony that manages to elicit a small smile from Dani despite her discomfort. The smile tugs at her wounded cheek.
The first thing she sees upon entering the enormous square-shaped room is a giant stuffed grizzly bear with an accompanying sign warning visitors not to touch.Why?she wonders.Will it bite?She quickly discovers that the whole place is filled with the stuffed remains of dead animals: dozens of antelope heads mounted on the walls, entire bobcats, ibexes, and wolves standing guard at multiple intervals along the concrete floor.
And guns. Guns of every shape and size. Guns everywhere: on the walls, on the shelves, in countless display counters throughout the store. The tune to “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” begins wafting through Dani’s brain.
Here a gun, there a gun, everywhere a gun, gun.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Nick says, interrupting the silent refrain and approaching the long counter that loops through the middle of the room. Two men stand in the middle of the loop, serving customers on both sides.
Dani marvels that, at just past ten on a hot and humid Saturday morning, the place is already crowded.
