Roy heard the trailer door open and lowered the Army .45 that he had been aiming at a beer can on a post, some thirty feet away. He watched as Laurel came out, followed by Stan. The boy kept his head down as they approached, as if he didn’t want to look at Roy. That was fine. Last night, they had broken the kid down. Now they would build him back again, in their own way.
“Mornin’, Stan,” he said casually. Stan mumbled something back.
“You ready to be famous?” Roy said.
Stan looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “What?” he said.
Roy looked at him for a moment. Then he took the gun and held it by the barrel. He handed it to Stan, butt-first. “This is your ticket, kid,” he said. “Your ticket to ride. But you got to know how to use it. You ready to learn?”
Stan looked at the gun. Roy held his breath. Stan reached out and took the gun from Roy’s hand. He let the hand fall limply to his side, the barrel pointed down. His eyes were empty of emotion.
Roy smiled in triumph. He had been right. The kid was weak. Had anyone done to Roy what Roy had done to the kid, that person would be dying on the ground right now. But Roy sensed that Stan had no strength of his own. Maybe it was because of the beatings he had suffered, or maybe he was just a pussy. But he had no power inside him. Any power that came to him now would be given to him by Roy. And what Roy gave him, Roy could take away. To make the point, Roy held out his hand for the gun. Stan looked confused, but handed it back to him. Roy ejected the magazine and slammed a fresh one home before handing it back to Stan. The kid looked confused, but took the now-loaded pistol back. He looked at it.
“It was empty?” he said.
“Yeah,” Roy said. “But you didn’t know that.”
“What would you have done if I …,” Stan began, then shut up.
Taken the gun away and beat you to death with it, Roy thought, but didn’t say. There was no need. Roy gestured toward the can on the post. “Try your luck,” he said.
Stan raised his arm, holding the gun out clumsily in front of him. His arm trembled with the weight of it. The flat bang of the gunshot rang out, startling a wading heron into panicky flight before the sound was swallowed by the vast silence of the river. The can didn’t move.
“Put just the pad of your finger on the trigger,” Roy said. “If you curl your whole finger around it, the shot pulls to the right.”
Stan raised the gun again and took aim. “Keep both eyes open,” Roy reminded him. “Put the dot of the front sight between the two dots on the back sight. Focus on the front sight and lay it on the target. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.”
This time, the can seemed to explode as the heavy caliber bullet tore through it.
“Can I try it again?” Stan asked.
“Sure,” Roy said. They worked with the gun for another half hour, firing round after round against a succession of bottles and cans. Roy finally held out his hand for the gun.
“We got stuff to do before we leave,” he said. “And then we got a ways to go.”
“Where are we going?” Stan said.
“You’ll find out,” Roy said, “when the time’s right.”
Stan turned as he heard Laurel come out of the trailer. He was startled to see that her short blonde hair was now shoulder length and jet black. As she came closer, Stan saw she was wearing a cheap wig. She grinned at him. “Like it?” she said.
“Come on,” Roy said. He headed for the trailer. Stan fell in beside him. Inside, Roy hunted through a cabinet for a few moments before coming out with a box.
“Wait a minute,” Stan said. “You’re going to dye my hair?”
“No,” Roy said. “Laurel is.”
She came inside and smiled at Stan. “And cut it, too,” Roy told her. “First thing people look at is the hair,” Roy said. “Most times, that’s all they remember. Hair and height. So we change what we can.”
“But why?” Stan said. He felt his voice rising with frustration. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Explain it to him,” Roy said. “I’ll be getting the van ready.” He walked out.
“Sit down here, Stan,” Laurel said. He sat. She got a pair of scissors out of the kitchen drawer. She took a tablecloth from a nearby cabinet. His shoulders tensed as she draped it over his shoulders. “Relax, baby,” she said. She began to cut. Stan saw tufts of his dark hair falling onto the whiteness of the tablecloth.
“Have y’ever noticed, Stan,” Laurel said as she cut, “that every time you turn on the TV, there’s something about a killer?”
“What?” he said. “Like those sniper guys. Or that fella out in California that killed his wife and baby. They’re famous, Stan. Ever’body knows them. People write ‘em letters in jail.”
“I guess,” Stan said.
She bent down and whispered in his ear. “Killers are like movie stars in this country, baby. And we’re gonna get us some of that.”
Her hot breath on his ear was making him hard. “But I…I mean, I never…” He was having trouble thinking.
“I know, baby,” she breathed. “But you’ve wanted to. You wanted to kill your stepdaddy, didn’t you?”
“I…I…”
“C’mon, you can tell me,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like, Stan. I do. So tell me. You wanted to kill him yourself.”
“Yeah,” Stan said. “I did.”
“And I wanted him dead, too, Stan. I never met him, but I wanted him dead. And now he is,” she said. “I made that happen, Stan. I wanted someone dead and now he’s rotting on a slab somewhere. Do you have any idea how good that feels?” Her hand stroked his neck sensuously. Then she kissed him lightly on the ear and stood up. “So what about it, Stan?” she said in a normal voice. “I guess you can still back out if you want. I can’t guarantee that ol’ Roy out there will understand. But say it now. Or never.”
Stan’s whole body was trembling. He felt like his head was going to explode. But then he remembered the feel of the gun in his hand, the look on his stepfather’s face as Laurel shot him. Something seemed to give way inside him like a guitar string snapping. He suddenly felt very calm.
“I’m in,” he said.
It was growing dark when they left the trailer. Stan drove, with Roy in the passenger seat and Laurel hanging over his shoulder from the back. Stan’s black hair was now buzz-cut and dyed an improbable shade of blonde. He periodically ran his fingers over it, feeling the unaccustomed spikiness. Roy had done something with his own salt-and-pepper hair to turn it pure white. He had also placed lifts in his shoes that added at least three inches to his height.
“What I don’t understand is why so far?” Stan said. “I mean, this place is, like, two hours away.”
“I’ve done a lot of readin’,” Roy said. “Cops have a lot of theories about… well, about people like us. They call it profilin’.”
“Like in the movies,” Laurel said.
Roy went on. “At first they’ll look around at the people close by, hopin’ we’ll be workin’ in what they call our comfort zone.” His grin flashed in the semidarkness of the van. “But we ain’t goin’ to be like no one they ever seen before. We’re gonna keep ‘em guessing. Instead of them knowin’ how we think …”
“We’re gonna know how they think we think.” Laurel giggled like a little girl laughing at an uncle’s often-old joke.
They