Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (2 page)

1

Gun Pedersen stood in the shadow of a white pine, sixty feet six inches from his home-built pitching
machine. He waited in longjohns and red tennis
shoes, the long blond Hillerich and Bradsby resting
lightly on his bare shoulder. The metal arm of the
machine inched upward, ticking. Gun lifted the bat,
tensed the muscles of his back and arms, narrowed his eyes. He relaxed his fingers on the smooth handle. The
arm reached horizontal in its rising motion. Gun
wiggled the tip of the bat. The arm snapped forward
and the ball came straight and fast, waist high. He
took a quick short stride and swung hard. His eyes
held the ball until contact and he felt the clean
wooden pop. The line drive took off low and whined
with the full thrust of Gun’s swing. The ball was
still rising when it hit the trunk of a pine tree
in what would have been deep left field in a ball
park.

“Robbed,” Gun said.

Tapping the flat white stone he used for home plate

with the fat end of his narrow-handled bat, he rolled
his shoulders in a shrug. He never granted himself his morning swim until he’d hit three baseballs into Stony
Lake, which lay 380 feet due east, never felt complete
ly ready for a day until he’d taken his swings. Some
guys, of course, had to have their juice, and Gun grant
ed them that.
But Gun had his tonic too, and knew it.
Every morning as he loaded the pitching machine, in
his mind he loaded each ball with something he
wanted to forget: Hedman’s mall project, his daughter
Mazy’s anger (which she had every reason to hang on to), the mistakes from his old life that people liked to remind him of. Then he watched these freighted balls
come floating toward him, and jacked each one to kingdom come and gone.

He did a deep knee bend, straightened up slowly—
all six feet, six inches of him—and rested the bat once
more on his shoulder. Again the metal arm ticked
upward. In his peripheral vision he saw his World
Series ring glinting in the new sun. He wiggled his bat.
From behind him came the sound of a vehicle coming up the pitted gravel driveway: a creaky, loose-jointed
truck, cylinders missing badly. Gun sighed. That
would be Bowser. The metal arm snapped and Gun
strode into the ball, releasing his level, whipping
swing. Again the pop of wood on leather, again the
rising line drive. Only this time the ball found its way through the sky full of pines, reached its highest point
of flight well over the lake, and finally dropped,
putting a circular scar in the water’s perfect mirror of
the sky.

“There.” He leaned the bat against the nearest tree
and turned to look at the fat man spilling out the driver’s side of a Chevy spotted with rust holes the
size of dinner plates. Gun shook his head and started
toward him, moving with the easy grace of a large man

whose heart and lungs are more than big enough to
handle his size.

“Gun Pedersen, Gawd damnit, you owe me!”
Bowser Devitz was the son of old Jeremy Devitz, and
Gun understood his complaint. It was the Devitz
property, a hundred sixty acres of low trees and
marsh, that Hedman had bought for his mall project.

“Gun Pedersen—”

“Yeah, Bowser.” Gun raised a calming hand.

Bowser marched right up to Gun and stood glaring
at him, his face swollen and red, his breath coming
hard through his nose. He was forty or thereabouts, an
unemployed three-hundred-pounder who had grown
up dense but happy in his dad’s muskrat swamp.
School was his hell, and he’d quit at sixteen with the old man’s blessing, and then at eighteen his card got
drawn and he pulled up his traps and went to Viet
nam. It was worse than school. He came home con
fused in 1971 and resided in the marsh with his dad.

“What’s the problem?” Gun said.

Bowser raised a pudgy fist, then dropped it. His
thick eyebrows came together in the middle. “You’re
in your skivs,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to kick a
guy who’s in his skivs.”

“Just finished my swings and now I’m going for a
swim.” Gun motioned toward the water. “A few
baseballs out there to retrieve. I don’t suppose this can
wait.”

“You don’t suppose right,” Bowser said. He stood with his big hands curling and uncurling at his sides, apparently uncertain what to say next.

“Okay,” Gun said.

Bowser’s hands curled into fists and stayed there. “We always liked you, Mr. Pedersen, me and the old
man. He used to say you were like us. A guy who wanted to be left alone.”

“That’s me.”

“Not a big shot, even with all your money.” Bowser
took a step forward. Gun felt tired and cold and
wished he had his pants on.

“So I take it kind of hard that you turn on us that
way. And the old man, he takes it even harder.”

“I didn’t turn on you, Bowser. Your dad could’ve
held on to that land.”

“Could’ve held on to it, like hell. Hedman wanted
our piece like you wouldn’t believe. The old man, he’s
getting real slow now. You know.” Gun didn’t know,
but he’d heard. Jeremy Devitz had sold out so his only
son would have some money after he died, which
would probably be soon. He wanted to protect
Bowser. Might as well have shot him.

“Bowser, you’re welcome to stay and talk this over.
If that’s to your liking, then let’s go in the house and
do it over coffee. Otherwise, I think you should go on
home.”

Gun noticed for the first time that Bowser’s eyes
looked in two different directions; at the moment,
south and southwest.

“I went to see Hedman, see, and he tol’ me you’re
the one I oughta be mad at. He said after he tried
buying your land here, you tol’ him to go and talk to
my dad.”

“Not true,” said Gun.

“And he said that committee of Tig’s—Save
the Lake or whatever the hell they call it—he said last
month they went and asked you to help buy my dad’s
property. Save it. All they wanted was a lousy loan,
but you said no. If you’da done that, Loon Country woulda been history and maybe you and me coulda
worked out some deal so I wouldn’t have to move.”

“Maybe,” said Gun. He felt fatigued, too tired to be
explaining himself to Bowser Devitz. Or anyone else.

“Fella who’d turn nasty like that to his neighbors

oughta have his ass kicked,” Bowser went on. “I’m here to kick yours.”

“Come in or go home, Bowser.” Gun started past him toward the house.

It took a while to get there. As Gun brushed past
him, Bowser turned and funneled his full three hun
dred pounds into one fist, aimed low. It connected
with the pad of unprepared muscle covering Gun’s
kidney. It pushed the breath from him and made his
legs forget to stand. Gun went to his knees.

“Not so damn tough now, are you, Pedersen?” Bowser stood off to Gun’s right, living proof of the
strength of fat men. “What happened? Gone soft since
you quit ball? Only folks you can push around now’s a
sick old man.”

Gun brought air into his body, experimentally,
letting it fill his lungs. His kidneys quivered. He felt
sorry for Bowser, but it wouldn’t do to let this go on.

“I gotta tell you, Pedersen. The old man this
morning, he got up early and made a big batch of
oatmeal.” Bowser was waiting for Gun to get back on
his feet. He still looked mad. “A great
big
batch of
oatmeal, and I said to him, Geez, Pop, it’s just you
and me, we’re never gonna eat all that.”

Gun got up. There were green stains on the knees of
his longjohns.

“And Pop says, he’s laughing now, he says, It ain’t
for us, boy, it’s for Roxie, she loves it. Roxie! Damn,
Pedersen, Roxie was this old sow we raised for ham
back before I went over the pond. Pop sold her for
butchering while I was over there. I remember the
letter.” Bowser’s big fists came up as he talked; they
shook slightly in front of his chest.

Gun’s legs were steadier now and his kidneys felt
altered but still whole. He said, “Things are that bad.”

“Things have been bad for years now. But the sale,

Pedersen, that finished it. Pop blinks his eyes and
another ten years is gone. He thinks I’m a high school
kid. He thinks Ma’s just gone into town.”

“Let’s go inside,” Gun said cautiously.

“Bastard!” said Bowser. His lead blow was a right
hand square with Gun’s breastbone. It filled Gun’s
lungs with quicksand and he stepped back, twice.
Bowser plowed ahead with a windmill left at the solar
plexus, but Gun twisted his torso and the blow
skipped off. There was a time, Gun realized, when
even that first, kidney-burning punch would never
have landed; some animal nerve would have warned
him, some movement in the air, and his body would have acted without him. Now that nerve seemed
dormant, his defensive reflex tired. And Bowser was
just winding up.

“Too old for this, are you, Pedersen?” Bowser said.
He moved in with another roundhouse. Gun ducked
this one and Bowser slipped on the dewy grass,
thumping down butt first next to a dismembered old
lawn mower Gun had been trying to fix. Bowser
struggled up with the ease of a land-bound hippo,
his gut plunging. “So you’re a ducker,” he said. “Shouldn’t surprise me. You ducked Loon Country,
sure as hell.” Bowser moved more carefully now,
planting his feet, waving his fists like an old-time
boxer. Gun stood with his arms slightly bent in front
of him. He told himself to block those fists. No more,
and certainly no less. Couldn’t blame Bowser for
feeling this way, after all. It was just too bad he was so
damn strong. Block the fists, Gun told himself, and
when the boy’s tired he’ll go on home.

Fist number one came almost too quick. A left jab,
and Gun’s right palm barely deflected it in time to
save his nose. Come on, Gun thought. You did this enough on the ball field. Bowser threw another jab,
and again Gun slapped it away. Another jab missed

Gun’s chin by half a foot. Bowser was panting harder now, frustrated that his energy wasn’t landing any
where. A rag of dark hair had flipped down into his
eyes and he pushed it back with his knuckles. Gun
told him, “You can still quit.”

That brought Bowser’s fists in again. Gun fouled off
the jabs like a pair of bad pitches and let a right fly
past his head, carrying Bowser behind it. He saw
Bowser slip again, land in a full-faced sprawl this time
and lay quiet. He saw Bowser’s eyes wishing for some
kind of weapon, and he saw them light on the pieces of
the old lawn mower a few feet ahead. One piece was a
blade.

“Don’t do that, Bowser,” Gun said, but the big man
had already wiggled forward and grabbed the blade. It
was a heavy steel rotor that would lay a twenty-four-
inch swath when properly sharp, and Bowser’s grip on
it as he got to his feet turned his whole hand white and
then crimson-striped as the edge bit in. He walked
toward Gun with the blade drawn back and a mus
tache of mud under his nose.

“You don’t want to do that, Bowser.”

Bowser shook his head. A dime-size chunk of mud slid down his chin. “Don’t want to. But I’m going to.”

Gun said, “Your dad’ll be missing you, Bowser.”
Bowser stood with his feet widespread, his weight
bending his legs slightly inward at the knees. Gun
walked straight at him until they stood a scant yard
from each other. Bowser’s eyes were red and watery.
Blood ran from his fingers where he gripped the blade.
It ran down his upraised forearm and dripped from
his elbow.