Fear the Night

33

1990

Strong Ranch was 590 acres of flat, arid land roughly between Phoenix and Tucson in the Arizona desert. It was bisected by an arroyo that ran with water about twice a year during unusually heavy rainstorms. On one side of the arroyo was the main ranch house, the boys’ barracks, and various outbuildings including a tractor shed and hip-roofed barn. On the other side was the smaller, girls’ quarters, a scaled-down version of the boys’ stucco-and-lapboard one-story structure with rooftop air-conditioning units and solar panels.

The barracks were divided into separate cubicles that afforded some privacy, and it was in one of those cubicles that Dante Vanya spent most of his time alone after being transferred to Strong Ranch. Being by himself was what he wanted, or told himself so, and the ranch wasn’t the kind of place where friendships were easily formed.

In the dining area, Dante ate alone at a table away from the other ten boys currently at the ranch, his fellow … he wasn’t sure if they were prisoners or patients.

With each passing day, Dante became more determined to go it alone at Strong Ranch. The others might have their problems, but none of them had Dante’s disfigurements.

On the third day, a hulking fifteen-year-old named Orvey tried to pick a fight with Dante by perpetrating a shoving match. Instead of shoving back, Dante kicked him hard in the shin, then advanced on him. Dante wasn’t angry, and not at all frightened. He was obviously resigned to taking a beating from the much larger boy, but determined to give back what he could.

The fight didn’t last long, and Dante was saved from a serious trouncing when two of the older boys separated the combatants out of fear the confrontation would draw attention and result in punishment.

From then on the other boys, including Orvey, granted Dante his privacy. They also respected him. They recognized toughness born of hopelessness and knew that whatever they started, the quiet boy with the sparse hair and hideous left profile would match them in meanness.

The week after Dante’s arrival, a commotion outside his cubicle made him curious. The other boys were obviously pleased by something, judging by their loud voices and laughter.

Dante ventured out to see what was going on.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with curly blond hair stood in the center of the main room. He was wearing a western-style tan shirt, cowboy boots, and jeans with a big silver belt buckle.

When he saw Dante he smiled. “Ah! Our newest arrival!” He walked over to stand near Dante, seeming even taller. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you, but I had to be in Europe on business. I’m Adam Strong.” He extended his hand.

Dante took it, and they shook. Strong’s grip was firm but he didn’t squeeze Dante’s hand like some people who tried to establish that they were in charge.

“This is Dante Vanya,” Strong said, releasing Dante’s hand and straightening up. He formally introduced the other boys, one of whom, Kerry, was bald. Dante learned later he’d lost his hair because of some kind of cancer treatment.

“What we do here,” Strong said, “is let you continue to recuperate, if you arrive with physical problems, and we help you find yourselves, no matter how you arrive.” He grinned. It scrunched up his cheeks and made his pale eyes tilt so he looked like a cat. “No doubt you’ve heard that ‘finding yourself’ malarkey before. What it means here at the ranch is that you learn what you like to do, then learn how to do it well.” He looked directly at Dante. “This is a working ranch, so we expect something in return for your stay here. There’ll be chores. You’ll act and talk like gentlemen. And we expect you to take part in activities.” The grin widened. “But don’t let me scare you, Dante. The main idea is for you to learn how to live, and to enjoy living.”

Strong looked at his wristwatch. It was big and seemed to have been made from a gold coin. “I’ve got work to do now. Vic will assign chores for the day.”

Vic was an older boy, about eighteen, who slept in the main house and also dressed like a cowboy. Dante thought he looked something like the gunfighters he’d seen on TV, only without the guns.

Vic read from a wrinkled sheet of paper. Nobody complained when they heard what work they were assigned, whether it was cleaning stables, milking cows, or helping to dig a new well. Dante drew kitchen duty in what everyone called the mess hall. In the biggest kitchen Dante had ever seen, a fat woman named Allen, even though she was a woman, gave him a paring knife and sat him down to peel potatoes for lunch. It would be a month before Dante learned that Allen was her last name and that her first was Lil.

Dante still kept to himself, but after a while he didn’t much mind being at Strong Ranch. The routine was morning chores, then various activities, and in the evenings reading or sometimes movies for both the boys and girls.

One of the girls, a redhead named Verna, was pretty in a storybook princess way, and Dante wished he knew her better, but after one look at his burned face she didn’t seem interested. He heard that her father was dead and her mother had sold her for crack money when she was six years old, to a man who’d kept her prisoner in a trailer court until she was nine. “Poor Verna can’t ever love anyone,” Dante overheard Lil Allen say one day, “’cause she can’t trust anyone. Not all the way.”

Dante could understand that. What he didn’t understand was that Verna must also betray everyone.

After the first month at the ranch, the school year began, and boys and girls together rode a bus every day into Nailsville, a small town about twenty miles away. There, with a lot of other kids, they attended school in a long, flat-roofed brick building with narrow, horizontal windows.

Despite having missed a grade, Dante found school easy enough, especially math. One day his math teacher handed him an envelope with instructions to give it to Adam Strong. Dante thought he might be in some kind of trouble, and since the envelope was unsealed, he opened it and read the note inside. His gaze fixed on the word amazing. The teacher thought he might be some kind of genius at mathematics.

Genius. Dante didn’t know what to make of that. All he knew was that he comprehended what he was taught, especially in his math class. It made sense, so why didn’t everyone comprehend it?

Early one evening, instead of the usual softball or soccer exercises, or track and field competition, Adam Strong had something different in mind. He drove up in his dusty white Ford pickup to where the boys were assembled, then lowered the tailgate and stood there with his fists on his hips. In the truck’s bed was a folded blue blanket. When the boys had all walked over to him, Strong unfolded the blanket to reveal a dozen rifles.

“We’re going to target shoot,” Strong announced. “Shooting’s a sport I used to be good at, and I know it’s a fine sport, no matter what you might think of guns, or what other people have told you.”

“I’m gonna join the army!” a tall, skinny kid named Charley announced loudly. Not meaning it. Smarting off in a way that had gotten him in trouble with Strong before.

“Not a bad choice,” Strong said. “They’ll know just what to do with you.”

When the other boys were finished snickering, Strong continued. “These are not new weapons. In fact, they are quite old. They are army surplus M1 rifles, and you need to understand them before you use them. Before we actually shoot, I want to show you how these rifles work, how to take them apart and put them together, and most of all, how not to accidentally shoot yourself or anyone else.”

“The girls gonna shoot?” one of the boys asked.

“They were told they had the opportunity,” Strong said. “They all chose other activities. That’s okay. They don’t like guns.”

More snickering.

Strong ignored it. He picked up the nearest rifle and handed it to Charley, then gave out the other rifles. When he handed one to Dante, Dante hesitated, remembering the gun his father had used.

But this wasn’t like that. This was another kind of gun. A rifle. And Adam Strong wasn’t his father. He accepted the rifle but knew Strong had noted his reluctance.

When everyone was armed with unloaded rifles, Strong sat down on the truck’s open tailgate, a rifle across his lap, and said, “Gather round.”

They spent the next three days learning about the rifles, how they were different from shotguns or handguns, and how to aim them, allowing for wind and distance. They learned how to lead a moving target. It struck Dante that shooting a gun wasn’t so complicated. It was mathematical, a matter of angle, speed, time, and distance. And variables like wind and the rhythms of motion and momentum.

He also learned from Kelly that Adam Strong had been an alternate small-bore rifle shooter on the 1976 U.S. Olympic team that went to Montreal. He hadn’t actually shot in competition there, but he’d been ready.

On the fourth day, Strong gathered the boys around the back of the pickup and said, “Today we shoot bullets. I have targets set up beyond the barracks, against a safe backdrop. Vic will lead the way, and I’ll follow in the truck, where we’ll leave the rifles for now.”

When they reached the new target range ten minutes later, Dante saw that the tractor sat nearby and now had a scoop on it like a bulldozer’s. It had been used to create a bank of earth about eight feet high. In front of the banked earth were bales of straw, and on each bale was a sheet of paper with a target on it, a series of circles around a red bull’s-eye. At intervals Dante later learned were twenty, fifty, and a hundred yards were low stakes in the ground with twine strung tautly between them, marking lines for the boys to shoot from.

They shot first from a distance of twenty yards, using the standing position Strong had taught them. Dante sighted carefully, squeezed the trigger gently as instructed, and felt the rifle’s stock buck against his shoulder. He winced, and his ears buzzed from the explosive bark of all the rifles firing almost at once.

“Not bad,” Strong said. “We’ll examine the targets later.”

Beginning with his second shot, Dante tried to factor in all the conditions he was shooting under. It wasn’t difficult, since it was a calm day and wind had little effect. That left the simple geometry of sending a predictable moving object toward a stationary one. He held his breath and felt an unexpected connection with the target, as if a wire were strung between it and the gun barrel, and squeezed the trigger, ready this time for the bark and buck of the old M1.

He felt a rush of excitement. He knew that this time he’d hit the target. And could do it again.

Every boy fired from standing, sitting, and prone positions at varying distances, a total of twenty rounds of ammunition.

Strong walked out and collected the targets while Vic and the boys stood and watched.

When Strong returned, he held all the targets but one in his right hand. In his left hand was Dante’s target.

He looked at Dante and said, “Holy Christ!”

All the boys froze. They had never before heard Strong utter a profanity.

“Eighteen out of twenty in the target, four in the bull’s-eye,” Strong said. “Holy. . Toledo. Have you shot before, Dante?”

Dante shook his head no.

Strong stared at him for a long time, silently, with something like doubt and with something like wonder.

Then he said, “Okay, let’s go back to the barracks. Remember to be neat. Pick up your shell casings.”

It was an instruction Dante never forgot.