The Lighthouse

Adam Reese

Adam parked his battered Volkswagen van in a copse of trees just off the cape road. He didn’t have to shut off the headlights; he’d been driving dark the past couple of miles. Taken him fifteen minutes to cover those two miles, as dark and foggy as the night was and as slow as he’d had to drive, but it was the only way. Ryerson and his woman might still be up, even though it was after three A.M. You never knew with people like that, city people, California people. And light was visible a long way out here, particularly moving light.

The lighthouse was maybe three hundred yards away and he could see it plain. This was where he’d parked the other time, when he’d shot up their car. There’d been moonshine that night, plenty of it; it was just like sighting in daylight, with that four-power Bausch amp; Lomb scope of his. He’d of had trouble if he’d been shooting tonight, though, because he didn’t have no sniper scope. There was a nightlight on the front wall up there, a small spot that threw an irregular patch of mist-blurred yellow across the lawn for maybe fifty feet, but it didn’t reach the garage or the pumphouse or anything else in the yard. Not hardly enough light for clear shooting, not unless your target was standing right in the middle of the yellow patch. Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to do no shooting tonight.

Their car wasn’t out; he wondered if they were even home. Probably. Taken to putting the car in the garage, probably, on account of him shooting it up. The windows he could see didn’t have any light showing. Good, good. He’d give odds, now, that if they were home, they were both asleep in their bed.

He reached behind him to where his Springfield 30.06 was clipped to mounts anchored to the van’s deck. Hell of a piece, that Springfield. Accurate-you couldn’t ask for no more accurate center-fire rifle, even with the 180-grain ammo he was using for better energy and trajectory. He ran his fingers over the smooth, silky wood of the stock. Fiddleback maple, made by an outfit back east, polished to a high gloss. Jesus, he liked to touch it. It was like touching a woman’s flesh. That woman up in Lake Oswego… no, better not think about her. Inviting him into her house, drinking his liquor, and then yelling rape when he tried to love her up. He should of given her something to yell about, instead of running like he had. Lucky thing he hadn’t told her his real name; otherwise the cops would of got him by now, and then where’d he be? In the goddamn state pen in Salem, that’s where. That bitch. But they were all bitches, weren’t they? Guns were better for you than women. Rifles like this baby. You took care of them and they took care of you. Nobody ever heard of a Springfield 30.06 yelling rape when you put your hand on its butt.

That Ryerson woman was worse than most. Snooty. Had her nose in the air all the time, like her shit didn’t stink. He knew her kind, he’d been around. City people-he’d never met one who treated him halfway decent. Met damned few anywhere who’d treated him decent, for that matter, until he came here. Hilliard… hell, it was the home he’d never had growing up. Been on his own since he was twelve, riding freights, taking any job he could get, back and forth across the whole damn country and never once felt like he belonged anywhere. Then he’d come here. Hilliard. Met Mitch and Hod, and they’d taken him right in like he was some long-lost kin. Not only treated him decent, treated him equal. No, sir, they weren’t just friends, they were family-the family he’d never had. Do anything for them. That was why he’d come out here that other time and shot up the Ryersons’ car, on account of what Ryerson had done to Red, that poor dumb dog. That was why he was out here tonight. Mitch had asked him to do it this time, told him the way things stood, told him maybe Ryerson had killed that little bitch of a hitchhiker they’d found back along the cape. We got to get those people out of the lighthouse, Mitch had said. Got to get rid of them before Ryerson hurts somebody else. Well, Mitch was right and that was why Adam had volunteered to do the job alone. He’d do anything for a real friend.