Bluff City Pawn (21 page)

“I thought you said I was carrying,” Harlan says.

“I’m showing you. Just follow orders.”

“I am.”

“Don’t talk neither!”

And Huddy rushes through the garage where Kipp is gone and he gets the cases he brought for rare guns, and sets the rifles inside, and walks them into the far interior of the truck. Buries a blanket over ’em. Then he steps out of the bed and hurries back to the gun room. Joe looks him over and says, “You alright?”

“Just get to the truck,” Huddy says, and he points Harlan over to the first rack. “Grab two. Show ’em so I can read the serial numbers off the receiver. When I ID it off the list, you git.”

Guns going out in twos, and when Huddy finishes with twenty, he steps outside to see, the butts of the rifles nicely spaced and stacked. He nods at Joe, whose shirt is untucked and his face looks warm and bothered, but Joe brushes him back to the room and Huddy goes there to get Harlan to bring more out. Huddy checking the list and Harlan doing his job right, reading off the guns and saying nothing else, moving down the gun line and in and out of the room, until he looks back at the empty rack where Huddy’s first two came from.

“Something wrong with your eyes?” Huddy says.

“Nothing wrong, boss.”

“Next two are right in front of you. You already passed that spot, so why you looking there?”

“No reason.”

“What is it, Harlan? You wanna know what’s special? You wanna know what I’m treating personal? Are you fucking kidding me? If Joe knew I was talking to you right now. This is
all
special. So don’t look around for the one special thing to fuck up.”

“Relax, man.”

“When you get to the truck, bring the two crates sitting to the left.”

Harlan leaves and Huddy walks over to the pistols cabinet and swings the glass door open. He hears Harlan returning with the crates and Huddy meets him halfway, grabs the top one from his arms and carries it to the pistols. He flips the crate and dumps the socks out. “One pistol per sock. Half of these should fit in a crate.”

Harlan nods and looks back at the cabinet but doesn’t move.

“What?”

“I guess you ain’t gonna let me spin these things.” Harlan eyes the first-generation Colt, and his face is serious because he knows the collection is, too.

“Not today. Couple days, I might let you have your cowboy moment.”

“This man had some taste,” Harlan says. “Sure treated himself right.”

So Huddy whistles with Harlan for a bit, and when he’s finished slipping the pistols in the socks and bunching the socks in the crate, he lifts one crate and Harlan the other and that’s it, a gun room without guns, no reason to be here, and Huddy looks at the display photos of Yewell and he won’t say goodbye because he’s taking him with the guns. He’ll say goodbye to her, though, but when he rings the doorbell and sees Kipp, he knows she won’t, ’cause she’s done with the meeting. He hands Kipp the list and tells him where she should sign, right below where Huddy’s written,
paid in full. sold to huddy marr
. And Huddy waits at the door, watches the traffic on Dogwood. One car, then another, then a third speeding to catch up to the second or get away from what’s behind. Kipp returns and Huddy’s about to mention the ammo in the garage, in case she didn’t know and wanted it out of the house. He could pick that up later and take it off her hands, but he figures Joe’s the one that needs to come back, so he’ll let his brother have his future day. Today is his own.

The packing looks good. The blankets are stacked high and the guns secured inside, ready to float to the shop. He steps into the cab and he can feel the extra weight, the load sinking the brothers lower in the truck. Harlan wipes his brow, and Joe’s sweating fierce, red skin like he’s been under the sun.

“Everyone good?” Huddy asks.

“Our brother here,” Harlan says, “he breathing on one lung.”

Huddy looks at Joe, who glances at his watch as if to read not a schedule but a pulse.

“Well, that part’s done,” Huddy says, but they’re only halfway there, and he wishes it was Sunday morning or early on any other day, but if he can’t get the timing perfect for part two, at least they can go in quiet.

“I’d hate to get stopped for a ticket right now!” Harlan says.

All the guns in the back, might as well bring out what’s in front. Huddy reaches over, opens the glove box and pulls out two holstered pistols. Drops one in each brother’s lap. Harlan swivels in the seat to strap the belt on, but Joe frowns at what’s been placed there. He shakes his head, his brow creasing. Three baby brothers playing with cap guns. Then he unsnaps the holster, slides the pistol out and holds it in his hand. He blinks hard, clenches his jaw to strengthen.

Huddy drives west but feels like he’s driving south, out of the leafiest street of leafy Germantown and shiny tall properties to low-slung homes and gray, broken buildings, deserted or looking so with switched-off neon, and down to his store, which feels like all the way to the bottom. Huddy’s prepped his gun locker and his storage room, cleared space on his stout shelves, squeezing TVs and tools together or just dumping equipment on the ground. Tight space, but it’ll fit. It’s not late but the sky changed hours ago, pitch-dark by the time Huddy pulls into the lot—the Dumpster company has pulled the debris Dumpster from the blood bank, replaced it with a fresh one—and around the back, the lights sweeping across the weeds, the truck beeping in reverse like a distress call, a wake-up for the thieves. He backs in close, shuts the engine and the damn beeps.

“Let’s go. Offload quick, no noise.” He steps out, slides the gate up, grabs the top blanket.

The only different position is Huddy switching rooms. He stands by the empty shelves, waits for Harlan to come to him with guns. “Set them here,” Huddy says, and he pats the blanketed shelf. “Don’t stand ’em. You stand ’em, they’ll fall.” Harlan going the opposite way now, walking off empty-handed. If Huddy didn’t need to do the load-in fast, he’d have sectioned his room, not just clearing shelves but setting up special areas for special guns. Group the ’94s on a rack, put the regular guns with the general population. He’ll untangle it all later. Tomorrow he’ll sift ’em out.

He hears the gate slam behind the wall and before long Harlan walks in with the two cases, and Joe follows behind. Joe looks around and wants to but won’t talk.

“Harlan,” Huddy says, “go back to the truck.”

“It’s empty.”

“I know,” Huddy says, and waits for Harlan to know, too.

He throws up his arms, an angry customer who can’t scratch up gas money, and leaves. And Huddy feels bad. He doesn’t mean to treat Harlan like the village idiot, but right now he’s not us.

Joe glances at the shelves and then down at the cases. “Who you gonna sell ’em to?”

“Don’t know yet. Cowboy Hall of Fame.”

“You serious?”

Huddy shrugs, “Just about.”

“So what’s next?”

“Got twenty-four hours to log ’em in. Which I’ll try my best. But I ain’t worried. ATF, they understand slow, but they don’t understand mistakes. It’s what I
do
log in that I gotta make sure is right. You put a dyslexic serial number in your book, you write something on the wrong line. You don’t abbreviate Tennessee right.” Huddy shakes his head. “You gotta be careful. We don’t want ATF in here, because they’ll find errors, double errors. They’ll find a thousand things wrong.”

“So be careful.”

“Always am.”

“And quick?”

“Yeah, I can do both. What’ll help with quick is a second person for the log-in. You want it to be you or Harlan? Your call. Just walking the guns to me, reading off the info.”

Joe nods. “Harlan can do it. And then you start selling?”

“Yep. Get ’em tagged, get ’em sold.” And Huddy snaps his fingers. Sell the guns and get yours and mine and throw myself a goodbye party.

Harlan brings a gun and reads it and Huddy writes the specs in the book, the manufacturer and the model and the serial number and the action type and the caliber. The date and source are easy because they’re all one thing. Huddy says the serial number back to Harlan, and Harlan says it again, so Huddy’s having Harlan check with four eyes. The log-in can go fast, but the tagging is slower, because Huddy’s gotta price ’em and every once in a while consult the blue book to make sure he knows how.

“These ain’t your rock-low prices,” Harlan says, reading off an inventory tag.

“I guess it’s a new day in the pawn business. I’m going high-end now. And that’s all I’m saying.” A pawnbroker who for six months gets to sell more than pawnshop guns.

“Why ain’t you tagging that AK?” Harlan asks, nodding at the gun that Huddy’s set aside. What Huddy won’t say is he’s not tagging it because he didn’t catch the extra notch on the selector switch when he bought the 47, and when he brought it here. Thought it was semi-auto, like the two others, but now he’s examined it close-up and it’s a Vietnam bringback and it’s full. Doesn’t know if it was Yewell’s mistake or his, so easy to miss a third notch, but he doesn’t have a license for full-auto, and he’s not gonna take the time to get it, just eat the loss. Might as well drop the machine gun in the Mississippi, because he can’t sell it and won’t keep it here. And he won’t call ATF to come get it, because they won’t go away. Been a few years since he’s been audited, so if Huddy hands ’em the AK, they’ll say thanks for turning this in, and they’re smiling but they’re not coming in as friends, so now they’ll ask to see his gun book, and now’s not the time for that. What he says to Harlan is, “Just bring me the next gun.”

“Sure thing,” Harlan says, and he does. But then he says, “What you think can fool you more, a woman or a gun?”

“I don’t know, Harlan.”

“I think a woman can fool you, but a gun can’t.”

“You do, huh?”

“Why, you don’t?”

“I think it’s both. I think, with guns and people, if it’s bad on the outside, it’s bad inside.”

“And what about if it’s good?”

Huddy calling the collectors whose specialty overlaps with Yewell’s, and even others who don’t want the same thing but might buy for trading material because they know someone who does. Huddy talking, “Thought you might want to have first swat at this,” and taking pictures and zapping them over email, reading classifieds in
Shotgun News
and gunbroker.com, and registering for the big gun show in Oklahoma City next month, which he knows will be a prime mover.

“How many you sell?” Joe says on the phone, and it’s only been days.

“What?”

“You making my money back yet?”

“Can’t start selling the guns for thirty.”

“You said you’d make my money
back
in thirty.”

“I’m lining up the sales. Calendar hits day thirty—boom.”

“You were saying fast money.”

“Thirty is fast.”

“Huddy, I need that money now. I need the profit now!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where do you think my cash came from? You think it’s just reserves?”

“It was bank money.”

“That’s right. But not a savings account, if that’s what you mean. That money was borrowed. Theirs, not mine. Took it out on a construction loan.”

“Well, how the fuck would I know that? I don’t know about your business. I don’t know about your life.” But as soon as Huddy says it, he realizes he’s starting to, that the life and the business are all mixed up, one tangled-up fund.

“You saying you’re betting everything. You saying you all in. Well, I’m
always
all in. My lots are sitting. And I’m paying interest on ’em. So stop sitting on the guns.”

I’m not sitting, Huddy thinks. I’m only doing what’s legal. He looks over at Harlan, whose mouth is open to understand.

“Where you at?” Christie asks, staring hard at Huddy, who’s staring at the prongs of his fork, at the sliver of meat.

Huddy looks up from his plate to see a pointed finger twitching in a line to find him. “You trust Harlan?” he asks her.

“’Course not.”

“Why’s that?”

“When you ever trust him? Ain’t saying he done nothing when he was here.”

“When was he here?” Huddy wondering when his brother came from all the way out.

“What are you talking about? When he crashed.”

“What—who are you . . . you talking about Harlan?”

“That’s who you asking about.”

“I’m saying
Joe
.”

“No you—”

“I meant Joe.”

“Well, Joe. He a different person. From Harlan.”

“The person I talked to today—Joe—he was different. Different Joe.” And a lot like Harlan. ’Cause, it turns out, neither brother been playing pay-as-you-go. Always knew Harlan would play like that, but now he’s learned it about Joe, just on a higher debt level.

“Wouldn’t trust him, if I was married to him,” he hears Christie say. “I mean, seems like he’s always in a fix with his wives. Kind of slippery that way. But you ain’t married to him.”