LITMIR.BIZ

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it a game of low animal cunning?” she says, breaking the deck and examining the halves in either hand.

      “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “That’s just what they say.”

      Every night she disassembles the gun and cleans it with a brass-bristled brush and with cotton patches. Grandpa sits looking into the clean, well-worn rails, and then he returns the slide to the frame. His fingers shake, holding the slide in place against the recoil spring. He seems to have forgotten how to engage the takedown lever, sits looking at the catches and levers as if hesitating, as if for a moment he has lost his bearings on the gun. Turtle does not know what to do. She sits with the halves of the deck still in her hands. Then he finds the takedown lever and tries it twice before he manages to get the tight-fit steel tab to rotate, and then he pushes it into place, his hands shaking, and lets the slide relax forward. He sets the gun aside and looks at her. Turtle shuffles, bridges, slaps the deck down in front of him.

      “Well,” he says. “You’re not your old man, that’s for sure.”

      “What?” Turtle says, curious.

      “Oh,” Grandpa says, “never mind, never mind.”

      He extends a shaking hand and cuts the deck. Turtle picks it back up and deals them each six cards. Grandpa fans the cards before him, and sighs, making slight adjustments with thumb and forefinger. Turtle discards her crib. Grandpa sighs again and encircles his whiskey in one big hand and sits, turning it slowly in the ring of its condensation, the soapstones sounding softly against the glass.

      He tosses back the drink, sucks air through his teeth, pours himself another. Turtle waits, silent. He tosses this back, and pours himself a third. He sits rotating it slowly. Finally, he picks two cards and tosses them into the crib. Then he cuts the deck and Turtle draws off the start card, the queen of hearts, and lays it faceup. He seems about to remark on how the start card has determined the fate of his hand, as if—on the verge of this observation—he is struck mute by the complexity of it.

      “The rails on that gun,” he says after a minute, “look pretty good.”

      “Yeah,” Turtle says.

      “Well, they look pretty good,” Grandpa says again, doubtfully.

      “I keep them oiled,” she says.

      Grandpa looks around the trailer, suddenly, wonderingly. His eyes run across the ceiling, across the ersatz wood paneling peeling away in places, over the dingy little kitchen. There is laundry on the floor in the hallway and Grandpa frowns severely, looking at it all.

      “It’s your play,” Turtle says.

      Grandpa teases one card from the others, throws it down. “Ten,” he says.

      Turtle throws down a five, pegs two for fifteen.

      “Grandpa?” she says.

      “Twenty,” he says, pegging two for the pair.

      “Thirty,” Turtle says, throwing down a jack.

      “Go.”

      Turtle pegs one for the go, throws a queen. Grandpa lays down a seven in seeming exhaustion. Turtle throws a three, for twenty. Grandpa throws a six, says, “Here, sweetpea,” and unbuckles his belt and draws off it the old bowie knife. The belt leather is worn shiny black from the sheath, and he holds it out to her in his open hand, hefting it. “I don’t use it anymore,” he says.

      Turtle says, “Put that down, Grandpa. We still need to score the hand.”

      “Sweetpea,” Grandpa says, holding out the knife.

      “Let’s see what’s in your hand,” Turtle says.

      Grandpa puts the knife down on the table in front of her. The leather handle is old and black with grease, the steel pummel dark gray. Turtle reaches across the table, collects Grandpa’s hand, and pulls it forward to her. She gathers the four cards together and looks at them: the five of spades, the six of spades, seven of spades, ten of spades, and the start card, the queen of diamonds. “Well,” Turtle says, “well.” Grandpa doesn’t look at his cards, he just looks at her. Turtle’s mouth moves with her counting. “Fifteen for two, fifteen for four, the run for seven, and the flush for eleven points. Did I miss anything?” She pegs him eleven points.

      Grandpa says, “Pick that up, sweetpea.”

      She says, “I don’t understand, Grandpa.”

      He says, “You’re entitled to a thing or two of mine.”

      She cracks one knuckle, then another.

      He says, “You’ll take good care of it. It’s a good one. You ever stick a son of a bitch with this, he’ll sit up and take notice. This knife comes from me to you.”

      She draws it from the sheath. The steel is smoky black with age. Oxidized in the way of very old carbon steel. She turns the blade to face her and it shows a single unbroken, unglinting line without nicks or flaws, a shining, polished edge. She passes the blade gently up her arm and golden hairs accumulate in a tide line.

      He says, “Go get the whetstones, too, sweetpea.”

      She goes to the kitchen and opens a drawer and pulls out the old leather bundle with the three whetstones and carries it back to the table.

      He says, “You take good care of that.”

      She sits looking at the blade, mute. She loves taking care of things.

      Rosy, sitting on the floor between them, perks up, her collar tinkling. She looks toward the door, and then there is a loud knocking. Turtle flinches.

      “That’ll be your father,” Grandpa says.

      Martin swings the door open and steps inside. The floor complains beneath him. He stands spanning the hallway.

      “Oh Christ, Dad,” Martin says, “I wish you wouldn’t drink in front of her.”

      “She doesn’t mind me taking a drink,” Grandpa says. “Do you, sweetpea?”

      “Christ, Daniel,” Martin says. “Of course she doesn’t mind. She’s fourteen. It’s not her job to mind, it’s mine; it’s my job to mind, and I do. It should be your job, too, but you don’t make it your job, I guess.”

      “Well, I don’t see the harm.”

      “I don’t mind it,” Martin says, “if you have a beer. I don’t mind that. I don’t mind it if you’re gonna pour yourself a finger or two of Jack. But I don’t like it when you’ve had more than a few. That’s not all right.”

      “I’m fine,” Grandpa says with a wave of his hand.

      “All right,” Martin says thinly, “all right. Come on back home, kibble.”

      Turtle picks up the pistol, drops the slide, slaps in the magazine, holsters it. Then she rises, holding the knife and the bundle of whetstones, and walks toward the door, where Martin puts an arm around her shoulder. She slings the AR-10 and turns to look back at Grandpa. Martin hesitates there in the doorway, holding Turtle.

      He says, “You all right, Dad?”

      Grandpa says, “I’m fine.”

      Martin says, “I don’t guess you’d want to come over for dinner?”

      “Oh,” he says, “I have a pizza in the freezer.”

      “You’re welcome to dinner. We’d like to have you over, Dad. Wouldn’t we, kibble?”

      Turtle is silent, she does not want to be in this, does not want Grandpa to come over.

      Martin says, “Well, have it your way. If you change your mind, you just call, and I’ll drive the truck up here and pick you up.”

      “Oh, I’m all right,” Grandpa says.

      “And, Dad,” Martin says, “take it easy. This girl

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