Fifty Grand

I stand behind him, look down at the top of his head. Bald, with a gray fringe around the edge.

I grip the knife, take a deep breath, and in one fast slice of air it’s at his throat.

“Don’t move,” I tell him.

“The fuck,” he says but doesn’t move.

“This is a hunting knife and it’s on your jugular vein. Don’t move or I’ll cut the vein and you’ll be dead in under a minute. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand,” he says with surprising equanimity-as if one of the hassles of everyday life was the occasional knife-wielding maniac jumping up from your sofa while you’re watching TV.

“Put down the beer,” I tell him.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

“Put down the beer.”

He sets the beer can on a side table next to the chair.

“What do you want from me?” he asks again.

Keeping the knife against his vein, I reach out with the handcuffs and place them on his thigh.

“Very slowly handcuff your wrists together,” I tell him.

“I ain’t gonna do it. You’re going to kill me,” he says.

“No one is going to die. Soon I’ll be leaving and you’ll go back to your TV show. I promise if you do what I say you will not be hurt.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” he says.

“Do I sound like a killer?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Just do it!”

He slides his wrists into the cuffs. “Never had a pair of these on before,” he mutters.

When his hands are fully clipped I step out from behind the chair. The ski mask startles him and I take that stunned second to check the cuffs. Tight. Good.

He’s not what I’m expecting. About sixty-five, maybe seventy, wearing a plaid shirt and dark blue jeans. His face says that he’s lived a lot of life. Blue-collar outdoor stuff. His eyes are green and sharp and kindly. It would be very hard to have to kill this man.

“Why don’t you sit down?” he says.

“I will.”

I turn off the TV and sit in the rocking chair opposite him. Rocking chair. A heartbeat ago I was in Santiago de Cuba watching little Ricky sitting down triumphantly in Uncle Arturo’s rocking chair, winning the game, Mom laughing, Dad winking, Lizzy bursting into floods of tears. A blink and the years are gone like playing cards. And Cuba’s gone and I’m in the dream world, America, opposite an elderly man in an unnamed hamlet outside a mountain town in Colorado and Dad’s dead and Ricky’s gay and Mom’s got pre-Alzheimer’s and I haven’t spoken to Lizzy or Esme or Uncle Arturo for a decade.

“Well,” the man says. “What can I do ye for?”

“Pardon?”

“What can I do ye for?”

“I have come about your advertisement in the newspaper.”

“What ad?”

“For the guns.”

“I can detect by your accent that you ain’t from around these parts.”

“No.”

His eyes twinkle. “Well, I have to tell you, ma’am, that in general this here thing with the knife and the handcuffs is not how you’re supposed to respond to a small ad in the newspaper.”

“I need the handgun,” I tell him.

He nods, scratches his nose. “Why is that? If you don’t mind me asking,” he says.

“I need it for protection and I don’t have enough money to buy one downtown.”

He clears his throat. “Ok. Just let me get this straight. You think someone’s trying to harm you and you want to get a gun to protect yourself, but you don’t have much money, so you thought you’d break into my house and steal one of my weapons?”

“Yes.”

He thinks for a second and nods. “Well, ma’am, if you’re willing to take a risk like that then I reckon you’re in a heap of trouble, all right.”

I nod in agreement.

“I got two daughters myself. Both in California.”

“Hmmm.”

“Two daughters, four grandchildren. All girls. Not a boy among them. Don’t get me wrong. I ain’t complaining. Thank the Lord they is all healthy.”

“Mister, uh…”

“Oh, you can call me Jonesy, everyone pretty much calls me Jonesy. And I won’t take it as a sign of disrespect if you don’t want to tell me your name considering the circumstances.”

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

A pause and then a look of cunning. “Well now, missy, how much money you got?” he asks.

“About ninety dollars.”

“Ninety bucks? My oh my. You’re right about that. That ain’t a whole lot of nothing these days. Well, I know you’ve kind of got me over a barrel here, but I’d be very reluctant to part with that brand-new Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter for less than a hundred dollars, no matter how I come to it, but I’ve got some older models you might wanna use for personal protection. Good guns. Stop any ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, that kind of thing. Stop a bull elephant if you was close enough. Lessen you is set on the M and P.”

“I don’t care what the gun is as long as it works.”

He smiles. “Yup, that’s what I reckoned. Well, if you’ll open that red cupboard over there. The key is on top of the TV.”

I find the key and open the cupboard. Half a dozen hunting rifles and a drawer full of revolvers and semiautomatic pistols. Many more guns than he needs for personal protection. Obviously a dealer or a collector of some kind.

I look back to check that he’s still sitting. He hasn’t stirred.