Fear the Night

35

1991

To Adam Strong’s amazement, Dante’s performance on the target range wasn’t a fluke. He continued to shoot well, though he was such a natural shot that learning the fine points only marginally improved his aim. He was phenomenal at both skeet and still target shooting, accurate with a handgun, but particularly efficient with rifle or shotgun. And Dante continued to grow scholastically, especially in mathematics. Calculating distance, speed, and angles in shooting, and taking aim at solutions requiring similar calculations in mathematics, were talents that nourished each other.

Dante became increasingly important to Adam Strong, and Strong made it obvious. It was as if he’d found a son, and Dante had a father again. Dante grew in confidence and ability. The other boys respected him, especially when he began to defeat them regularly in the games they played. In everything from matchstick poker to chess, Dante became an obsessive and fiercely competitive opponent. He seldom lost. Then, after a while, when he had the measure of each of his opponents on the ranch, he never lost.

Strong gave Dante much more individual attention than he did any of the other children, and none of them complained. They all seemed to see something special in the relationship of Strong and the boy with the scarred face. Or maybe they figured that Dante had an extra measure of grief in the world, the way his face was, so he deserved special attention.

After one of their shooting expeditions plinking varmints-mostly jackrabbits and voles-on the ranch’s outskirts, Dante and Strong were walking side by side toward Strong’s pickup truck. The Arizona sun was brilliant and the temperature high. Neither Dante nor Strong was perspiring, but the heat still had to be taken into account. It worked internally and created a slight nausea. It discouraged fast or sudden movement.

They walked leisurely without talking, as they often did, content and comfortable with silence and each other’s company. The only sound was the regular slapping of their leather boot soles on the dry ground. Rooster tails of dust sprang up at their heels and settled back to earth slowly in the dry, still air.

Strong was wearing jeans, a western shirt, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. Dante had on jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt and was wearing a long-billed baseball cap.

Beside Dante, Strong slowed his pace slightly. He had his European single-shot breechloader broken down and balanced over his shoulder, freeing both his hands. This enabled him to remove his hat with his right hand and simultaneously swipe his left forearm across his forehead, where the hat’s leather brim had left a red indentation.

“Sun bother your scars?” he asked Dante.

Dante momentarily broke stride, surprised by the question. His burn-scarred face was something Strong never mentioned. Everyone on the ranch had learned not to mention it.

“Some,” he said, hoping Strong wasn’t going to pursue the subject.

“I been talking to some doctors in Phoenix,” Strong said. “Will you hear me out on what I learned?”

“Don’t I always hear you out?”

Strong smiled. “Yeah, I guess these days you do.”

“What kinda doctors?”

“The kind that can repair the damage to your face. It’s their specialty, helping people like you.”

Dante stopped walking. He swallowed. “I don’t wanna hear no more. Nothing about plastic surgeons.”

They began walking again. Strong said nothing for another dozen steps.

Then: “You scared?”

“It isn’t that.”

“Okay, we’ll let it drop.”

Neither of them spoke until they reached the truck.

“Not plastic surgeons, though,” Strong said, as they made sure their rifles were unloaded and placed them in padded cases, then in blankets in the pickup bed. “Cosmetic surgeons, they call themselves. They showed me pictures. They can show them to you. It’s amazing what they can do.”

“I thought we were gonna let it drop.”

Strong slapped the side of the pickup, startling Dante. “Listen, I know how you feel, and I’m only gonna push this so far. But I’m duty-bound because I’m fond of you, Dante. I want you to hear the facts, to think about them. Affection works both ways, you know. You really oughta give me a chance.”

Dante looked off to the horizon. The distant mountains were purple. The sun would be setting soon.

“I’ll listen,” he said.

For the next twenty minutes, then on the drive back to the ranch house, Strong told him what the doctors in Phoenix had said. They couldn’t make Dante perfect, but there’d been important advancements in dealing with scar tissue, and burn scar tissue in particular. They could make him normal.

It was dark when Strong parked the pickup alongside the tractor shed, in what he knew would be morning shade. He and Dante got out and walked around to the back of the vehicle to remove their rifles.

Strong smiled. “You gonna think on this, Dante?”

“Not much use. I’ve done some reading about it myself.”

“Then what do you mean, not much use?”

“I know how expensive it is. And I know I’m here because I don’t have any money.”

Strong removed his rifle from the back of the truck and shook his head. “I’ve got money, Dante.”

“Foundation money. You fix my face, you might have to do stuff for everyone here.”

“My money,” Strong said. “It’ll be my personal money.”

Dante stared at him in the dying orange light. “Why would you do that?”

Strong bit his lip. “Because I. . think of you as a son.” He reached out with his free hand and drew Dante close, hugging him.

Dante hugged him back. They stood that way for a long time, each awkwardly clinging to the other with the arm that didn’t hold a rifle.

Dante began to cry. Strong held him even closer until he gained control of his emotions.

It was several minutes before the sobbing stopped. By then Dante knew he’d do whatever Strong wanted.

He knew that this time the father-son bond would never break.