RSS 2.0 FeedAn Old .22
It was a blistering Sunday in July, the air so ripe with humidity that the moisture seemed to seep directly through your shirt, your skin turning as slick as a seal’s back. Winifred had crossed his mind that very morning, but when the phone rang, Harley was surprised to hear her voice.
“Harley? That you?” Her voice was a shrill, high-pitched cackle. Winifred looked rather like a large bird: her facial features bony and concave, her small head adorned with a patch of rusty brown hair. Surprised as he was to hear her voice, Harley did not respond right away.
“I said, Harley, you there?”
“Uh-huh.”
”Well ain’t ya’ comin’ over today? It is Sunday after all.”
“Well…I didn’t know as you were expectin’ me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be expectin’ you? You been callin’ on me on Sundays for as long as I can remember.”
It had, in fact, been well over a year since he had seen her, the 29th of February to be exact. Harley remembered the date. He missed those Sunday visits, sitting on her shaded porch on long, lazy summer afternoons, or maybe sipping a cup of hot coffee on the parlor sofa if it was winter and a cold snap was on. Sometimes they would sit right through the afternoon; then Winifred would suddenly take notice of the time and scurry up some dinner so as not to be late for evening services.
Winifred had been around ever since he could remember. Her Daddy’s land was directly across the road from the plot owned by Harley’s Uncle John. John Stevens had raised Harley like a son, no different from his own son, Albert. That road was rough and pocked with large potholes back before the county had come and put down the hard surface. Cars made their way slowly up the hill, moving from one side of the road across to the other in search of level ground, kicking up a fine cloud of dust on a dry, summer day.
Harley kept a picture of himself standing by the side of that road on just such a day with Winfred on one side of him, Albert on the other, and a rusted old baby buggy in front of them. Harley was about eight or nine best he could recall. That would have put Albert and Winifred at about eleven. You never would have known that from the picture since both of them stood more than a head taller than Harley.
He remembered the day as clear as if it were yesterday. They had been playing dress up, at Winifred’s insistence, of course. She was bossy and demanding even back then. Harley had been made to sit in the buggy with an old blanket tucked around him even though it was hot as blazes. Winifred pushed the buggy along the side of the road, Albert trudging alongside reluctantly.
“I’m tired of playin’ mama and poppa, Winnie. Cain’t we do somethin’ else?” Albert had pleaded. Winifred just ignored him, continuing along the road with her chin held high under one of her mother’s dress bonnets.
“And I bet Harley is tired of bein’ the baby. Ain’t ya’, Harley?” Harley didn’t dare answer. Uncle John had come and snapped the picture right after that. Winifred, tall and gangly, was smiling broadly. Albert was still pouting. Harley squinted against the sun.
Although he didn’t have a picture, Harley could remember just as vividly an encounter that had taken place just a few years later. He was walking with his slingshot in the woods, looking for something to shoot at. As he came over a rise, he spotted Albert and Winifred lying in a clearing in the shade of an old dogwood whose fallen petals spread like a blanket over the mossy soil. Winifred’s blouse was undone, and Albert was tugging at the clasp on her brassiere. She saw Harley, pushed Albert away and stared up at the intruder with a defiant smile.
“You spyin’ on us, Harley?” she said sharply. Harley turned and ran, hot-faced with shame. It was the first time he had seen them as a couple although he should have seen the signs. He knew he had no reason, but he felt more than a little jealous.
There was another long silence on the telephone line. “Why, all of a sudden, am I supposed to send you an engraved invitation just to come up and see me?” Winifred protested at last.
“Well, then, I’ll be over after a while.”
“Good. I’ll get the tea made.”
Harley held the receiver to his ear for a moment after he heard the line click dead then looked at it oddly and shook his head before replacing it on the cradle. He wondered whether Winifred wasn’t beginning to lose her senses, crowding eighty as she was. But, no, last time he had seen her, she was still sharp as a tack, still ornery, too. She was the one, after all, who had started all the trouble back over a year ago.
It was around dusk after a brilliant, mild afternoon, one of those days when you could almost hear the buds stretch open and the birds sigh as the Virginia hills begin to awaken after a short winter.
“Harley, get up here right away,” Winifred barked into the telephone. “And bring your gun, somethin’s rootin’ around out back of the porch. Sounds like somethin’ big.”
“Well, can you see anything?” Harley replied in his ponderous drawl.
“I ain’t goin’ out there lookin’, an old woman like me. Might be a bear, maybe a prowler. Just get up here quick.”
Harley flicked on the high beams as his pickup bounced up Winifred’s narrow driveway, gravel crunching and spraying under his tires. He hoped the lights would scare off whatever might be nosing around although he figured it was just another false alarm. It wasn’t unusual for Winifred to call him like this all in a tizzy about nothing at all. He parked under the carport and, rifle in his hands in front of him, circled the low, white clapboard house. Seeing nothing amiss he rapped three times on the front door.
“It’s me. Harley. Lemme in.” Winifred opened the door slightly and peeked through the crack.
“’Bout time you got up here. Find anything?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, ma’am. Positive.”
“Well why don’t you come in for a bit in case it comes back.” Harley stepped into the foyer and took off his hat. Winifred narrowed her eyes and watched him suspiciously.
“Where’d you get that gun?” she demanded.
“Whuut?” Harley replied distractedly as he unloaded shot from the chamber.
“I said where’d you get that gun?”
“Oh, had it for years. Picked it up at a pawn shop outside of Quantico. Wife of some Marine sergeant needed to raise some cash to bail her old boy out of jail, at least that’s the way the pawnbroker told it. So she off and sold his best rifle.” Harley chuckled fondly. “Bought it right cheap, too.”
“Harley James Coy! Your Uncle John didn’t raise you to be no liar. And he didn’t raise you to be no thief, neither. What you doin’ with my Daddy’s rifle?”
“Your Daddy’s rifle? What on earth are you talkin’ about Win?”
“You know full well what I’m talkin’ about. That’s my Daddy’s old Winchester. He taught you and Albert how to shoot on it. I been missin’ that gun for some time now. Thought somebody’d run off with it, come to find out that you had it all the while.”
“This ain’t your gun Win. You know this ain’t your gun.” Harley knew the gun she was talking about, a fine old Winchester rifle, 22 caliber with a rich, gumwood stock. He recalled fondly the smooth, heavy feel of the gun in his small hands, the chalky sulfur smell of the smoke trailing out of the barrel, Winifred’s father’s horsy spasms of laughter when the recoil knocked Harley flat on his rear end the first time he fired. He knew what had become of that gun, too, having seen Winifred’s nephew Earl Lee Stokes showing it around one day over to Potter’s Garage. It was a shame, too, because the boy had no appreciation for a fine instrument like that or for much else as far as Harley could tell.
Earl Lee was a rangy, dark-eyed kid with a pocked face and a growth of wispy angel fuzz strung out along his cheeks and chin, his long, stringy hair usually crammed under a greasy, green John Deere cap. He was perpetually out of a job – “between jobs” as he would tell it – and off and on in trouble with the law. Harley considered whether to tell Winifred about Earl Lee and the gun but decided against it. She already knew the boy was no good although she tried not to let on that she knew, getting all hissy like a mother cat protecting her young as soon as anyone said an unkind word.
“Winnie, you know that old gun of your Daddy’s well as I do, you know it wasn’t no long.”
“What you talkin’ about?”
“.22 Winchester. Short. That’s what your Daddy’s rifle was. This here is a .22 Winchester long! You shot that gun yourself, you know it was a short.”
“Now you calling me a liar?”
“No ma’am, just statin’ the facts.”
“Get out of my house Harley Coy and don’t darken this door again.” He tried to protest, but she pushed him out the door and slammed it shut behind him, and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since. There were many days Harley had thought to call or stop by, but he had his pride. “No sir,” he would tell himself. “Not unless she apologizes first.”
Harley washed his face and under his arms, shaved his wiry, silver stubble and patted some Old Spice on his cheeks. He took a white shirt out of the closet, made sure it was one that hadn’t yellowed, and buttoned it over the curly white hairs on his bare chest. The buttons on the bottom strained as the cloth stretched tight over his hard, round belly. He didn’t quite know what to expect when he got to Winifred’s but he was as excited and nervous as a little boy to be seeing her again. Shy by nature, with Winifred he could be more natural although she always did most of the talking anyway.
Winifred, in turn, enjoyed Harley’s company. She had never married, not after Albert’s death, not ever wanting to get so close to anyone ever again. Harley had been there the day the news had come. He was on a tractor mowing the upper field when he saw a black Oldsmobile rumbling up the driveway. It was unusual in those days to see an unfamiliar vehicle up on the mountain, and when he saw a young officer in his crisp Navy dress uniform step out of the car, he knew at once. Hopping down, running to the house, he found Winifred standing in the doorway, staring at the car as it disappeared over the hill. The faraway look in her eyes scared him.
Harley had been there for her ever since, mending a fence or shingling a roof when it needed to be done but mostly sitting and keeping her company as she repeated one of her rambling stories or updated him on town gossip. She could be difficult, of course, but she was also funny, warm-hearted and full of mischief. Harley had never been in love, but he wondered sometimes if the feeling he had when he was with Winifred was really much different.
He found her sitting in one of the tall oak and wicker rocking chairs that lined her front porch, her legs crossed primly at the ankles under the hem of a flowery cotton dress. A large pitcher of tea, two glasses filled with ice and a small china plate holding cut wedges of lemon rested on the table beside her. She smiled demurely and motioned Harley to take the chair beside her.
“Too nice a day to not come up and visit with an old friend,” she said, concentrating on the wedge of lemon she was squeezing into a glass, her hand tracing a circular motion over the ice. Harley noticed out of the corner of his eye a rifle resting up against a railing at the end of the porch. He wasn’t certain, but it sure did look like her Daddy’s old Winchester.
“Got some bad news about Earl Lee,” she said with a weary sigh.
“That so?” Harley’s eyes were drawn back like magnets toward the gun as she placed the glass of tea into his outstretched hand.
“Held up the Texaco station down by the Interstate, at least that’s what they say.” She paused, waiting for a reaction, but when she got none, she continued. “They want him for armed robbery.”
“They brought him in yet?”
“Not yet. But Earl Lee, he figures they’ll catch up to him after a while anyways, seeing as the owner drove up right while he was getting into his vee-hickle. Earl Lee knows the owner, you see.”
“You ain’t hidin’ him out are you?” Harley looked around the porch warily.
“No, no! Nothin’ like that a’tall. He’s plannin’ on runnin’ himself in, that’s what he told me last night when he stopped by to drop off some of his personal things for safe keepin.’”
Harley thought he saw Winifred half nod toward the rifle. She stopped then to take a long sip of tea, watching him carefully over the top of her glass.
“Always said it was a shame about that boy,” he said at last, his eyes still riveted on the rifle.
“So you did Harley. So you did.”
There was a sadness in her voice, and, knowing Winifred as well as he did, Harley figured that this was as close as he’d ever come to an apology; so he accepted it as such. They visited into the evening long after an orange, gibbous moon had hung itself over the pine trees on the top of the mountain.
Ralph Uttaro is an attorney and real estate developer who lives with his wife Pamela outside of Rochester, New York. Writing was his first love, but his father convinced him that it was wiser to earn a decent living. He enjoys the craft of writing, choosing the perfect words and phrases to paint a portrait of a character or a snapshot of a place in time.