The Triggerman Dance

Lane Fargo goes into the station, knocks down both singles and the double. He's shooting a .12 gauge with a heavy load, and the report of his gun booms across the range. He returns to Holt with a cautious look, but apparently pleased.

"Ninety," he says.

"That's good shooting, Lane. You'll slay them tomorrow."

They case their guns and lay them in the bed of a little pickup truck.

"You're not picking them up as soon, Boss," says Fargo.

"The eyes."

"I'm not happy about that."

"I'm less."

"Give you one of my own if I could."

"Hang on to what's yours, Lane."

"Stay out ahead of 'em tomorrow, and you'll limit by ten, Vann."

"Nine-thirty, Lane," says Holt with a warm, genuine, and somewhat impish smile.

Holt is quiet as they drive back toward the Big House. He has, in his law enforcement years, confronted his own mortality enough to be familiar with it, but this new enemy, which introduced itself during a yearly physical eight months ago, is more unnerving than any creep with a gun. What demoralizes him most is not the fact that the disease is inoperable, nor the slow sapping of his strength, but rather the inexorable diminishment of his eyesight. Fifty-five years of 20/10 vision and now some of the clay birds are just a blur.

Much to do, he thinks, while there's still daylight inside.

"Lane, we'll cast off at five tomorrow."

"I'm ready. You want to me to take care of the guns and dogs?"

Holt, of course, has taken care of the guns and dogs for the last thirty-five opening days of his life. He shakes his head and tells Fargo he'll handle it. Fargo is the only one he has told about the blood, and he regrets it. Nothing on earth is more irritating to Vann Holt than condescension. Lane Fargo means well and that is what makes it so disgusting.

"Got those covered, Lane."

"Yes, sir."

Later that night, after dinner and a brief discussion with his daughter about which dogs to take in the morning, Holt roams the main house. Still dressed as he was at the range but without the shell pouch, he has a tumbler of scotch and water in his hand rather than the Browning. He has replaced his shooting glasses with heavy bifocals.

It is late—almost midnight—and he is done with the work of the day. He has talked to the caretaker down at the Lake Riverside Estates place; he has confirmed times and weight loads with his helicopter pilot; he has spent almost an hour on the phone with a close personal friend who is in the middle of a messy divorce. He has talked briefly with Carolyn, his wife.

Now, unsaddled by obligation, Holt is free to tour the enormous house. He has still not gotten used to its beauty and size its varied atmospheres and internal climates. Lately, he's been particularly drawn to the library, which faces west, is cool ii the mornings, sun-dazzled in the evenings, and oddly hushed am handsome after dark. It is on the third floor of the house and provides an overview of Liberty Ridge and the rest of Orange County to the north.

He sits on one of the leather library sofas, with a reading lamp over his shoulder and the day's newspapers set out on the coffee table before him. Holt always reads his papers at night because his mornings are hurried. He scans the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and of course, the Orange County Journal.

He sips his scotch. Holt finds it increasingly difficult to read the mainstream American press. He does not believe that what he is reading is actually the pertinent news of the day. He thinks that large news organizations have an agenda to follow, and that they choose which stories to print and which to ignore, accordingly. He thinks that papers were better three decades ago, when the reporters were less righteous and egotistical, less obsessed with biographic, crowd-pleasing dirt. Still, he reads them, and they inform, amuse, and infuriate him. Here, he notes, is the dread Susan Baum again, in the Orange County Journal, bleating on about the "first annual" Gay Pride Festival last weekend in Laguna Beach: "The feeling of empowerment I sensed there was strong. There was a life-affirming scent in the air, as surely as the scent of eucalyptus. I saw the love between a lesbian couple and their two-year old, adopted son. I saw the uncloseted faces of young gay males, stepping into the straight world, without shame, for perhaps the first time. Yes, the American family ha changed, and now includes these divergent lifestyles. To deny this is to deny the truth, but to see it, is to glimpse America's future.