Chapter 8
They planted the bait field the next morning.
It felt strange to Francis, doing it. All of them out in the turned earth under a pale spring sky, dropping seed into the ground the old way, by hand, corn and beans and squash and the precious potatoes, Ruth walking the rows and correcting spacing and depth, teaching as she went,
and the whole time Francis knew what they were really doing.
They were planting a flag. Growing a target. Making the thing that would turn green in July and shine like a beacon across the whole dead plain and call Stanley Macklemore's trucks down on them.
Growing the battlefield.
But you could not fight the harvest war without a harvest, so they planted, and there was something in it anyway, some deep old human thing, hands in the dirt, seed in the ground, the oldest act of hope there was.
Even the children helped. Junior and Sofia dropped bean seeds into the holes Francis punched with a stick, and Nell, who turned out to know planting from her own dead farm, worked a whole row herself, silent and steady, and Francis watched the girl put seeds in the ground and thought,
that's healing, right there, a person who lost everything putting life back into the dirt.
By afternoon the field was in.
And that evening, Francis went to Ruth with a thing he'd been turning over.
"I need to learn the gun," he said.
Ruth looked up from where she sat cleaning the Glock by the fire, which she did every night now, out in the open, part of her routine.
"Do you," she said.
"I've never fired one," Francis said. And it was true, and it embarrassed him a little to say it, this deep into the end of the world.
"Not once. In the city I had a kitchen knife and then Earl's folding knife. Out here I've had Nathan's rifle near me but I never had cause to shoot it, and truth is I wouldn't know how past pointing it. I've been the grey man. The knife man. The one who runs and hides and talks his way out.
And that got me here, and I'm not sorry for it."
He met her eyes. "But I'm about to walk out onto Combine ground alone. And I might have to raise a fight. And a man who can't shoot, out there, is a man depending entirely on never getting caught. I'd like a second string to the bow. I'd like to at least know how,
in case knowing how is the thing that gets me home."
Ruth studied him a long moment.
"That's smart," she said. "That's smarter than most men manage. Most men your age either think they already know how because they watched movies, or they're too proud to admit they don't."
She set the pistol down. "A man who says teach me, I know nothing, is a man who might actually learn. All right. Tomorrow. We'll burn a few rounds. It hurts me to spend the ammo, I'll be honest, every round's a round gone forever. But a leader who can't shoot is a worse waste than a few bullets.
We'll do it."
"I'll come," Nathan said, from across the room. He'd been listening. "Two teachers are better than one, and I've got a thing to show him anyway."
So the next morning, the three of them walked out past the fields, well past, to a low spot against the base of the south ridge where the ground would catch the rounds and the sound would be muffled and thrown away from the road.
Francis had thought hard about that. A gunshot carried for miles.
But they had to learn sometime, and better here, controlled, in daylight, than to have the first shots any of them fired be the ones that mattered.
Nell came too, uninvited, and posted herself up on the ridge as a lookout, rifle across her knees, watching the whole plain while the grown-ups made noise, and Francis was glad of it,
because the girl's eyes were the best on the farm and he did not like the idea of making gunfire without someone watching the horizon.
Ruth set it up like she'd done it a thousand times, which, Francis supposed, she had.
She stood him at a distance from an old fence post they'd propped a board against, and she did not let him touch the gun for a long while. First she talked.
"Everything about a gun is the safety rules," she said. "Everything. Because a gun doesn't care if you love it or fear it or respect it. It goes off when the trigger moves and the trigger doesn't know whose finger it is. So. Rules. You will say them back to me before you ever put your hand on it."
And she taught him the rules, the old four, the way Dale Crotinger had surely once taught her, though neither of them said that name.
Treat every gun as if it's loaded, always, no exceptions, even when you just checked it, even when you know it's empty.
Never point it at anything you're not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger, straight along the frame, until your sights are on the target and you've decided to fire.
Know your target and what's behind it, because a bullet goes through and keeps going and doesn't stop being your fault when it comes out the other side.
Francis said them back. Then said them back again. Ruth made him say them a third time before she was satisfied.
"Those aren't suggestions," she said. "Those are the difference between a gun that saves your boy and a gun that kills him by accident because you got careless in a warm kitchen one night. More people died in the old world from careless than from murder. I mean that.
Careless killed more kids than any killer ever did. You put your finger on that trigger by habit, you sweep somebody with the muzzle because you forgot, and you'll have done Macklemore's work for him."
Her pale eyes were hard. "You will never be careless with a gun near my grandkids or your boy. Never. Swear it."
"I swear it," Francis said. And meant it. He'd seen what a moment's carelessness cost. He'd knelt in the blood of it.
Only then did she hand him the Glock.
Empty. She'd cleared it in front of him, locked the slide back, showed him the empty chamber and the empty magazine well, handed it to him open so he could see for himself that it could not fire.
"Feel it," Ruth said. "Get to know it empty before you ever load it. Where the trigger is. How it sits in your hand. Where your finger goes when it's not on the trigger, along the frame, there, feel that little shelf, that's where it lives until you're ready. Point it at the board. Not at me,
not at Nathan, not at the sky, not at the ground by your feet, at the board, the thing you're willing to destroy. Line up the sights. Front sight, that little post, sit it right in the notch of the rear sight, level across the top, and put the top of that front post where you want the bullet to go."
Francis did it. Empty. Over and over. Raising the gun, finding the sights, front post in the rear notch, level, on the board. Finger along the frame. Ruth corrected his grip, moved his support hand up higher, wrapped his fingers tighter, got his thumbs pointing forward.
"High and tight," she said. "Both hands doing work. The gun's going to try to jump when it fires, and your job is to hold it down so it comes right back on target. Grip it like you mean it. Like you're mad at it."
Nathan watched, arms crossed, nodding now and then.
"She's teaching you right," he said. "Better than the Army taught me, honestly. Whoever set her up knew their business."
"Somebody did," Ruth said, flat, and left it there.
When she'd drilled him dry-firing until his arms ached, until the motion of raise, sights, press was starting to feel less alien, only then did she load it.
She put in just two rounds. Two.
"Two," she said, at Francis's look. "That's all you're getting today, and it costs me to give you that. We're not making a marksman. Nobody makes a marksman on two rounds. We're making a man who's felt it go off in his hand, so the first time it goes off for real it's not a total shock.
That's all today can be. Two rounds, so your body knows what's coming. The bang, the jump, the way it kicks. So you don't flinch and drop it when it counts. Now. Load it, the way I showed you. Talk me through it."
Francis loaded it, narrating every step the way she'd made him. Magazine in, seated hard with the heel of his hand. Slide back and release, chambering a round. Finger off the trigger, straight along the frame. Muzzle at the board, always at the board.
"It's live now," Ruth said quietly. "Everything's different now. Every rule matters ten times more. Sights on the board. Finger comes to the trigger only when you're ready. Take up the slack, feel the wall, and then press straight back, don't jerk, press, and let it surprise you a little.
Go when you're ready."
Francis found the sights. Front post, rear notch, level, on the board.
He brought his finger to the trigger. He felt the slack, and the wall behind it.
His heart was going hard, which surprised him, this deep in, a man who'd faced three men with a pipe and a warlord with fifteen guns, and here his heart was slamming over two bullets and a board.
He pressed.
The gun went off.
It was louder than he expected even out here in the open, a hard flat crack that slapped off the ridge, and the gun jumped in his hands, snapped up and back, harder than he'd braced for, the recoil rolling up through his wrists into his arms.
The board jumped too, a chip flying off the top corner of it, and the empty case spun away bright and hot to his right.
Francis lowered the gun, finger coming off the trigger, muzzle back to the board, breathing.
"That's it," Ruth said. "That's the whole mystery. Now you know. It's loud, it kicks, and it's not magic. You caught the corner of the board, which for a first live round with a forty is better than most. You pulled a hair right, probably milking the grip or anticipating the kick. Normal.
Everybody does it. One more. Same as before. Sights, finger, wall, press."
Francis raised it again. Sights. Finger. Wall.
Press.
The second round felt different. Not less loud, not less kick, but less shocking, because his body knew now, and he rode the jump better, brought it back down faster, and the board took the round closer to center, a hole punching through the old grey wood.