gunfist

by chris.

Gunfist lit a match and burned his beard away. The hot red crawled
like worms to his skin, then puffed out, leaving behind a trail of smoke
and a little red spot on his face. I wiped my nose with my sleeve and
turned away from him, toward our massive building, looking at us like a child
who wanted to know. I turned to Gunfist, baited my hook and threw
it.

“You don’t want to keep it?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

We stood there for a few seconds. “Not even as a curiosity?”

“No,” he said.

“Why? Why not?” I asked.

He looked at me, then back at the building. “I’ve told you a dozen
times. I’m not going to tell you again.”

We stood there, looking at its brown walls, at the kids huddled in
circles inside eating the lead paint chips off the walls, at the green
broken windows and massive rusty steel door.

“You sure?” I said, one more time.

He aimed his pistol at my forehead and as he pulled the trigger he said,
“Shove it.” The word “it” kind of echoed in my head, but it wasn’t really
an echo. More like it was getting a piggy back ride on the back of the
bullet, dragging its way through my brain, making the word flash every
hundredth of a millisecond, but kind of trail off before I comprehended the
“t.”

I slumped down in a pile before him, my body making no sound of much
substance as it collapsed. He lowered his gun. He’d never even looked at
me as he shot; he kept his eyes on the building.

He sighed. “I guess I’ll keep it for a while after all.”

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