Shootout at Joe's

The glass pot exploded as she slammed it with the barrel of the revolver. I let the pot fly from my hand and made a grab for the gun. The woman jumped back off the stool, almost falling. I sprang over the counter, saw her take aim at my chest, and figured my number was up. But she didn't pull the trigger. Instead, she swung the barrel up hard. It caught me under the chin with a hard crash. The blow nearly knocked me out. I staggered away from her, bumped into a stool, and grabbed the counter top to keep from falling.

"You've got guts but no brains," she said.

I glanced toward Lester, hoping he might have escaped during the few seconds I had kept the woman busy. He was still sitting at the counter, his arm bleeding. His sad eyes met mine, and he shook his head slowly from side to side.

"Get behind that counter where you belong," Elsie snapped at me. "Clean up that mess," she said. "And don't you go trying another stupid trick like that. If you do, I'll put a bullet between your eyes."

I wasn't too steady on my feet, but I made my way down to the end of the counter. My head was spinning. My ears rang. Blood was dripping onto my apron from a small cut under my chin where the revolver had hit me. I guess I was lucky to be alive, but I didn't feel lucky.

I felt rotten.

I had failed. I had messed up. I had taken a chance and made the move that could have meant the difference. But this old woman, three times my age, had been quicker than me.

As I stepped behind the counter, I saw the woman move her stool back a few feet. That way, she would be out of range if I made another try. "Just face it," she told me. "You can't stop what's going to happen. No one can."

I wiped the blood off my chin. Then I started to wipe up the spilled coffee and bits of broken glass.

"Do you know why I can't be stopped?" she asked. "Because I've got will power, that's why." She gave me a strange grin as she chewed hard on her gum three times before going on. Then she said, "Today I'm going to die. So I have nothing to lose, you see? That gives me all the power in the world. Understand?"

I shook my head and wished I hadn't. It hurt like mad.

"As soon as I gun down Joe, I'll drive out of this town. I'll climb into that old Ford and get it up to 70 or 80 miles an hour. Then I'll pick out the biggest tree---"

My one loud laugh stopped her words.

"Think I'm fooling?" she asked. Her smile was gone.

"No, ma'am. It's just kind of funny, you talking like that about crashing into a tree. Not funny 'ha-ha,' funny 'weird.' "

"Weird?"

"You don't know about Joe? No, I guess you wouldn't. He crashed into a tree---an aspen, just off Route 5. That was about three years back. Martha was with him. His wife Martha. She got killed in the crash. Joe was in real bad shape himself, and Dr. Mills didn't give him much chance. But he pulled through. His face got so broken up that he doesn't look quite right, and he lost the use of an eye.

His left eye, not his aiming eye. He wears a patch over it, you know. And sometimes, when he gets feeling good, he lifts up the patch and gives us all a peek underneath."

"You can just stop that," the woman warned me.

"He lost a leg, too."

"I don't want to hear about it."

"Yes ma'am. I'm sorry. It's just that . . . I thought I should warn you. Everyone who crashes into a tree doesn't die."

"I will."

"You can't be sure. Maybe you'll just end up like Joe, hobbling around half blind on a wooden leg, with your face so scarred up that your best friends will hardly know you."

"Shut up, Wes."

She pointed the revolver toward my face, so I slowed down and said quietly, "I just mean, you'd better think twice before you go off and try to get yourself killed. You just never know how---"

"Keep your mouth shut!"

I shut my mouth. I shrugged. I wiped some blood off my chin. And then I heard footsteps outside---the slow, unsteady noise of boots dragging slowly across the porch.