Chapter 51
Thomas noticed the revolver on Rachel’s eighth morning at the farm. She was repacking her belongings after airing them in the sun, and the weapon lay at the bottom of her pack beside the plastic bag of ammunition. Thomas paused in the shed doorway where she’d spread everything across a workbench.
“That’s a decent piece. Old, but decent,” he said.
The metal felt colder than the air. Rachel held it with both hands and kept the barrel pointed down. Its weight pulled at her wrists, making her aware of every small movement. She didn’t like how easily it turned from an object into a decision. The shed seemed quieter with it in her hands.
“I’ve fired a gun exactly once in my life. Twelve rounds at a paper target fourteen years ago during a half-day department training,” Rachel said.
Thomas studied the revolver, then looked at Rachel with the steady attention he brought to most things.
His face gave away little, but the pause felt deliberate.
He seemed to be taking measure of more than the weapon.
Rachel kept still and waited, aware that any explanation would sound thinner than the truth.
“Carrying something you don’t understand creates its own danger. It may be worse than not carrying one at all. The ammunition stays over there. We’ll start with it empty and keep it that way until you can handle it without wondering which end does what,” Thomas said.
The training happened that afternoon behind the barn. Thomas cleared a space on a rough wooden table and laid the unloaded revolver between them with the cylinder open. The ammunition remained on the shelf at first.
“First rule: assume it’s loaded even when you know it isn’t. Check anyway every time. Your turn,” Thomas said.
Rachel picked up the revolver. It was heavier than she remembered.
The grip sat awkwardly in her palm, too solid and too unfamiliar.
She kept her finger flat along the frame because Thomas’s warning had already settled into her nerves.
For a moment, all she could hear was the small scrape of metal as she opened the cylinder.
She turned the cylinder, checked each empty chamber, and set it back on the table.
“Again. Slower. Look at each one like your life depends on it, because someday it might,” Thomas said.
She repeated the check until the movement became smoother and less hesitant. Thomas watched without interrupting.
“Second rule: the muzzle points at nothing you aren’t willing to destroy. Always. Even unloaded. Even when you’re certain. Finger outside the trigger guard until you’re ready to fire. Not resting on it. Outside,” he said.
Thomas retrieved cartridges from the shelf and brought them to the table.
Rachel practiced loading the chambers, closing the cylinder, aiming at the bank, and unloading.
Each sequence took longer than it should’ve.
Her fingers fumbled the cartridges. When she dropped one, she picked it up and started over.
“Loading under pressure means doing it the same way every time. No variations. No shortcuts. Muscle memory is the only thing that works when you’re scared. Better. Again,” Thomas said.
By the time Thomas was satisfied, Rachel could check the cylinder, load, aim, and unload without looking at her hands. The motions were deliberate rather than graceful, but they were consistent.
“Now we try it with noise,” Thomas said.
He led her to the earthen bank fifty yards behind the pasture, well away from the house and livestock. The ammunition came with them in six cartridges from the plastic bag. Thomas gave them to her one at a time.
“These are too scarce to waste. You get six shots. Make them count,” Thomas said.
Rachel loaded the first cartridge, closed the cylinder, and raised the revolver toward the crude target Thomas had drawn on the bank with a piece of charcoal.
Her hands were steady. Her breathing wasn’t.
The first shot cracked against the hillside with a force that startled her badly.
The recoil shoved the barrel upward, and the bullet struck three feet above the target. Her ears rang.
“Again. Lower. You’re anticipating the jump. Let it happen and bring it back down,” Thomas said.
The second shot hit the bank near the target’s edge. The third was closer. The fourth grazed the charcoal line. By the fifth, she’d put three of the five shots somewhere on the crude circle, and Thomas accepted the improvement without praise. The sixth shot stayed in the cylinder.
“Hitting a stationary object at twenty yards doesn’t make you a gunfighter.
It makes you less likely to shoot your own foot or the person standing next to you if you ever have to use this.
The goal is simple. If you fire that weapon, I want you to hit what you’re aiming at and nothing else. Especially not the girl,” Thomas said.
Rachel unloaded the last cartridge and handed the empty revolver back to Thomas. Her palm ached from the grip, and her ears still hummed from the shots. She disliked the weapon more now than she had before holding it. Its weight, noise, and finality felt wrong in her hand.
“Good. People who enjoy these things make me nervous. It’s a tool. Nothing more. You respect it without liking it, and you’ll probably use it correctly if the time comes,” Thomas said.
They walked back toward the farmhouse together, the unloaded revolver in Rachel’s pack and the remaining ammunition secured separately inside the pack after Thomas returned the weapon to her.
The afternoon had begun its slide toward evening, and the kitchen chimney carried the smell of whatever was simmering for the evening meal.
Sophie had been splitting kindling near the woodpile.
She stopped mid-swing, the hatchet freezing above the log, and her eyes fixed on something beyond the fence.
Rachel followed her gaze. A woman stood at the gate with two small children pressed against her legs.
The woman held an empty grain sack in both hands, her fingers twisted into the fabric.
She hadn’t knocked or called out. She simply stood there, waiting, while her children stared at the farmhouse with the hollow focus of the chronically hungry.