One Second After

“Come on, Dad. Now?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Get your sister settled in and let’s call it a night.”

“Dad, it’s not even eight yet.”

“Like the hurricane, kid. We went four days then and by the end of it we were asleep when it got dark and up at dawn.”

“Ok.”

He looked into his bedroom and Jennifer was, to his delight, lining up her new Beanies along what she had already claimed was her side of the king-size water bed. Clutched under her arm was her beloved Rabs, the stuffed rabbit that Bob and Barbara gave to her the day she was born and which had been Jennifer’s steadfast companion for twelve years.

Once a fuzzy white, old Rabs was now a sort of permanent dingy gray. Rabs had survived much, upset stomachs, once being left behind at a restaurant and the family drove nearly a hundred miles back to retrieve him while Jennifer cried every mile of the way, a kidnapping by a neighbor’s dog, with Dad then spending two days prowling the woods looking for him. He was patched, worn smooth in places, and though she was twelve today, Rabs was still her buddy and John suspected always would be… until finally there might be a day when, left behind as a young lady went off to college, Rabs would then rest on her father’s desk to remind him of the precious times before.

The dogs had finished up chomping down their dinner and he let them out for their evening run. Ginger was a bit nervous going out, since usually he’d throw on the spotlights for them. At this time of year bears with their newborn cubs were wandering about, raccoons were out, and the sight of either would nearly trigger a heart attack. She did her business quickly and darted back in, settling down at Jennifer’s feet.

“No school tomorrow?” Jennifer asked hopefully.

“Well, if the lights come on during the night, you’ll know there’s school. If not, no school.”

“Hope it stays pitch-black all night.”

“You want me in the guest room?” Jen asked, carrying the Coleman lantern.

“In with us, Grandma,” Jennifer announced.

“That puts me in the middle,” Elizabeth complained, “and Brat here kicks when she’s asleep.”

“All right, ladies, I’ll be out in my office. Now get to sleep.” Jen smiled and went into the bathroom, carrying the lantern.

“Night, girls.”

“Love you, Daddy.”

“Love you, too.”

He closed the door and went into his office. He sat down for a moment at his desk, setting the flashlight on end so that the beam pointed to the ceiling, filling the room with a reflected glow.

The office had always driven Mary crazy. She expected “better” of a military man to which his retort always was that she had also married a professor. Stacks of paper were piled up on either side of his desk, filed, he used to say, by “geological strata.” A floor-to-ceiling bookshelf to his left held books two rows deep, the references for whatever he was working on at the moment, or what interested him, on the nearest shelf. The other walls were lined with photos, his framed degrees, Mary’s degree, pictures of the kids.

He stood gazing at the bookshelf for a moment, pulled several books from the outer layer aside, found what he wanted, and fished the volume out. He had not opened it in years, not since leaving the war college.

Sitting down and propping the book on his knees, he held the flashlight with one hand, checked the chapter headings of the work, a mid-1990s dot-matrix computer printout, then sat back and read for half an hour. He finally put the report down on his desk.

Behind him was a locked cabinet, and opening his desk, he pulled out a single key, unlocked the cabinet, and swung the door open. He reached in, hesitated for a second, deciding which one, then pulled out his pump 20-gauge bird gun. From the ammunition rack he opened up a box of bird shot, and slipped three rounds in. The bird shot was not a killing load, except at very close range, but definitely a deterrent.

Next was the pistol. It was, he knew, an eccentric touch. A cap-and-ball Colt Dragoon. A big, heavy mother of a gun, the sight of it enough to scare the crap out of most drunks.

John had actually been forced to use it once for real, back in his undergraduate days, before he met Mary. He was living off campus, in a farmhouse shared with half a dozen other guys, all of them rather hippieish that year, long haired, the year he definitely smoked a little too much dope… something that Mary had made clear would stop on day one if they were to date.

Some local good old boys had taken a distinct dislike to “long-haired faggots” living nearby and one night did a “drive-by,” blowing out the kitchen door with a load of buckshot, yelling for the faggots to come out and get what they deserved.