LITMIR.BIZ

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quick puffs.

      From where I crouch, behind a wide, stout pine tree at the edge of the clearing, I suddenly think that maybe he isn’t what I thought he was, that maybe he isn’t a bullet catcher, because from here he looks like any other wizened old man, made small and bent by time. His gaze is far-off, that look old people get when they’re gazing into the past.

      He gives his pipe a puff and says, “Come out from behind that tree, young lady.”

      My heart seizes, but there’s nothing else to do but what he says. I want to appear confident, strong, but I’m so tired. I’m covered in sand, blood, and pine needles. I smell only a little better than the corpse of the desert fox. The bullet catcher studies me as I step into the clearing and approach the fire.

      “So you lived,” he says. His voice is soft and slow. It puts me at ease, but when he looks at me with those piercing blue-white eyes, those dead man’s eyes, my spine goes rigid.

      I nod my head, and eke out, “I did.”

      “I’ll have my knife back, then,” he grunts, reaching out his hand. I take the knife from my belt and hand it to him. He studies it in the light of the fire. It’s dirty, stained with blood. Pouring clear water over it from a skin, he cleans the knife meticulously, wicking away the water and blood with long steady swipes of a cloth.

      “You can stay here by the fire till morning,” he says, not looking at me. “Then you’ll leave. There’s another town down the other side of the mountain. It’s closer than Sand, if you prefer.”

      I edge toward the fire. As soon as I feel the warmth on my skin, I realize how cold I am, how thin the air is high above the desert. The fire is hungry for the air and there seems precious little left for me. My starved legs buckle. But it’s warm near the fire and I don’t care that my lungs huff and puff and won’t take in the air. I could die right here. I made it.

      I want to tell the bullet catcher why I followed him. I want to tell him that it wasn’t just to get away from Sand—although that would have been reason enough. I want to tell him about Nikko, and I want to ask if he knew him. I want to ask if he knows what happened to him. I found a bullet catcher. I made it through the desert. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so crazy to think that, all those years ago, Nikko might have made it, too.

      I want to demand he train me, to make me a bullet catcher, like Nikko would have. I want him to tell me the secret to walking forever in the desert. I want to know how to catch bullets. But the fire is so warm, and I’m afraid that if I say anything he’ll chase me away and make me sleep in the woods, with the coyotes and wolves. So I don’t say anything. Lying by the fire, in the dirt, the heat envelops me, and I drift into a dark, dreamless sleep.

      • • •

      The next morning, the bullet catcher nudges me awake with the toe of his boot.

      “Up,” he says, already walking away, a towel over one shoulder and a tin mug with a toothbrush sticking out the top in his hand.

      I grumble a few curses as I shrug off a blanket. I didn’t have a blanket when I fell asleep. I watch the bullet catcher disappear down the path. Folding the blanket, I place it on the bullet catcher’s rocking chair and follow him out of the clearing.

      The path weaves through the sparse trees, down a small bluff that ends at the edge of a lake. A lake! It’s like discovering that Nikko and my parents are still alive and they’ve just been waiting until I was old enough to tell me. I imagine Nikko and my parents emerging from the water, their smiles so bright they reflect off the surface. I imagine them taking me in their arms and inviting me down below with them. Under the surface is where life really starts. Everything to this point was just to prepare me, to toughen my skin, to make me waterproof. But then I snap out of it and look for the bullet catcher.

      He’s sitting in the water, on a rock just below the surface. His back is to me, tanned brown and zigzagged with scars. His skin is a map: scars like roads and rivers that lead to his pelvis and shoulders. Taking a rock covered in little dimples, he rubs his skin in tight circles, scratching away the dirt and sweat.

      His thinness is amazing. Under all his clothes, with his broad, scarecrow shoulders, he seemed so much larger, so much stronger. He could be a hundred years old or a thousand. He’s the ageless man.

      Then I backtrack through the trees. I want to be waiting, like a good student on the first day of class. When he returns he’s fully clothed, his coat slung over those wide shoulders, making him look broad and strong again. His shadow goes on forever, and all the courage I built up down on the lake’s edge, when he looked so skinny and vulnerable, disappears.

      He doesn’t look surprised to see me. Without a word, he drops his bathing gear by his tent, strides across the camp, grabs me by my shirt collar, turns me around, and marches me to the edge of the clearing. With a push, he banishes me to the wilderness. He throws my pack after me. I don’t protest or struggle because there’s no time. It’s over in seconds. One moment I’m staring at him as he walks back into camp, and the next I’m on my butt, watching him walk away.

      Sitting in the nest of pine needles, I want so badly to leave. Haven’t I already accomplished something just by escaping Sand? Isn’t it enough that I found the bullet catcher? That I even spoke to him? I could start again in that new town on the other side of the mountain. Maybe it’s better. Maybe it sits by a river, and everyone has water and fresh food and fat cattle. Or maybe it’s just like Sand, and I’ll end up exactly where I started, with nothing but the desert in my lungs and my sunburns for the effort.

      I open my pack and take out the hunk of flesh I cut from the desert fox. Its blood has turned to jelly and makes my hands sticky. My fingertips are red with blood. I rake them down my face. War paint. I am the warrior girl. I stand and march back into the bullet catcher’s camp. Warriors don’t run away; they keep fighting until they can’t draw breath. Warriors don’t go to town and wash dishes; warriors fight.

      The bullet catcher is at the clothesline, unhanging each item and folding it carefully, setting the folded clothes in a basket by his feet. Even this mundane activity is full of focus. Hearing me, he turns slowly. His look stops me dead. Then he turns back, finishes folding the shirt he has in his hands, and picks up his hat from where it sits by the basket. He turns and puts it on. His face is relaxed and expressionless. He doesn’t move. Does he expect me to act first?

      I reach into my breast pocket and wrap my hand around my gun. It’s warm from being nestled close to my body. I draw the gun and point it at the bullet catcher. I hold it loosely, my arm bent. I’m just showing it to him, I’m not really aiming. My legs should still ache from the miles I walked, but they don’t. Even though I haven’t had enough to drink, or enough hours of sleep, my mind feels sharp, my trigger finger quick. The bullet catcher straightens his back, spreads his feet into a ready stance. He relaxes his hands at his sides and shakes them to get the blood flowing.

      “I didn’t come here to fight you!” I call across the clearing.

      “A gun is not a threat, young lady. It’s a promise.”

      Looking down at the gun in my hand, I feel suddenly foolish. Shaking away the feeling, I point it again at the bullet catcher and say, “I’ve come to train as a bullet catcher.”

      “There are no bullet catchers.”

      “I saw you in Sand. You killed that man with his own bullet.”

      “You’ve been too long in the desert. Your mind’s playing tricks on you.”

      I’ve come too far to take no for an answer. What would Nikko have done? I thrust the gun forward and say, “I’m not asking, bullet catcher!”

      He stares down the barrel of my gun. He doesn’t care that the gun is small, old, mostly broken. He respects the gun. He takes nothing for granted. “There are two paths before you,” he says. “You can either pocket that gun and walk out on your own two feet, or I can come over there and take it from you.” He pauses a moment, then adds, “It will hurt.”

      “I’m

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