THE STANDOFF

It had been football for too long. Chester Belknap was tired of it, so he thumbed off the TV. Trina laid up with the shingles. Bad sick since Friday. There’d been no work’s-over beer and bull session. Saturday, no whiskey extra frisky. There’d been yet another report about how all the computers weren’t going to work right once the new year started. And then there’d been football. There’d been football too long. He looked at the remote control. He set it down. He got up for maybe a drink or something to settle himself. Shingles. The mess was a fright. She couldn’t stand anything touching her. He thought he should see if she was ready for soup. Earlier, he’d been to the store and gotten more chicken noodle. Trina wanted popsicles, and he picked up a varied assortment. Her fever was still high, and she was back there in the bed suffering. She could have whatever kind of popsicle she wanted.

Chester missed his sweet baby.

A gunshot rang out across the road from Clayvon Groth’s place. Then another. Now, a man hollered out as if in celebration, and several more shots followed in rapid succession.

Chester approached the windows. A big man, his steps made the trailer creak. Not as stealthy as he once was when guns were firing close. The thought became a memory, an image of his right hand, dirty from wet foliage, holding a Zippo lighter while grenades were going off near his patrol. They’d had an element of surprise to exploit. The trailer’s cheap windowpanes were frosted, it’d been sleeting off and on, and it was dark, but he could see clearly the house the new people lived in was all lit up. The woman’s name was Rosalind – Roz – and she was a looker Chester had sure enough watched moving about over there. She liked short shorts even in cool weather, but now it was cold and Trina’d said she didn’t want to be with the man anymore. Nelson Mills. Trina’d said she could see it plain. Roz’s truck sat by the propane tank. Nelson’s shiny new Wrangler across the way. They had kids over there but they’d been gone since maybe Wednesday. All the time cussing and yelling at each other, those two. Nothing but trouble over there. Nelson a big talker about his time in Desert Storm. That summer he’d gotten in trouble for flashing a knife at an umpire working his oldest daughter’s softball game. Was the woman in danger? Rosalind?

Chester stood back from the trailer’s window. Trina said the problem for Nelson’s woman was that she feared to leave. That house all lit up, but lonely. Normally full of kids, it hadn’t been for days now. All those gunshots.

“Trina,” he called to the bedroom. “Baby. Something’s bad wrong out there. Better call the sheriff and tell them to come quick. That Nelson Mills is up to no good.”

Chester kept his long guns locked up but for a 12-gauge on foam hooks over the door. Trina’s chicken coop meant dealing with possums and coons and foxes and what all. He had a pistol, but it was in the bedroom, where Trina was laid up.

“Chester,” she called. “What the hell is going on?”

The Remington was a pump action similar to the one he sometimes carried on patrol in Nam. Wingmaster, this one.

“Trina,” he called, holding that cannon. “Baby, now you stay put back here. There’s trouble out there.”

“Chester!” she called.

The gun was loaded. He fingered off its safety. He felt the stirrings of long ago. The guilt of bloodshed but also the elation. Couldn’t deny either. He felt unsettled.

It’s like his body didn’t feel his steps. Trina called after him as he readied to open the door. She called his name again. She sounded bad afraid. There’d been that afternoon not long after they moved in over there. Nelson had said something to Trina, she’d told him. “There’s an ass a man can sure enough grab ahold of,” Nelson had said to her. He’d said it, she’d said, with his hands in his back pockets, like a real Mr. Hotshot. A gym rat, and proud of himself that way. Chester had hated that man then, and he sure God loathed him now.

Front door usually stuck, so he eased it open. Sneaked down the concrete block steps. The old ways coming back.

The air smelled like ice. Across the road he saw that Clayvon Groth lay crumpled on mossy pavement patchy with sleet. Most likely dead. Must’ve been. Wasn’t moving in that way of being dead. Nelson Mills was crossing Clayvon’s yard with a tactical rifle. It was like Chester saw Nelson first – he was the one with a gun – but his mind had gone to Clayvon – the dead one of his own. Clayvon a work friend who’d turned him on to this property he meant to build a dream home for Trina. For them to go ahead and get old in now that the kids were grown.

Chester worked the pump to chamber a round and send that classic signal of hands up.

Nelson Mills drew still.

“That’s right,” Chester said. “You best drop that fancy rifle, boy.”

Nelson started to turn.

“I’ll kill you deader than Hell,” Chester said.

Nelson kept still. Halfway turned before the barrel of the shotgun, he’d have looked damned vulnerable but for the rifle he continued to hold.

“Chester,” he said. “You ought to let me be, now. God ain’t got no trouble with you.”

Chester looked down the shotgun. “You keep still now,” he said. “You lift that rifle, you’re dead.”

The neighborhood was a scattering of little houses and trailers along a two-lane in the woods. Chester’s work shed had a security light and it cast long weird shadows. In its blurry glow the men stood on either side of the road, maybe twenty yards between them. Nelson with a rifle pointed at the ground, Chester with a shotgun aimed at Nelson. The gunmetal he looked down like a river under a moon. The side of Nelson’s face looked blue like gray blue. Chester licked his lips. When he’d killed before it had been at night. He remembered the smell of warm hay and manure and that the other man looked the more certain warrior. On that night, Chester had carried a rifle like Nelson’s. He’d also been lucky. They’d had the element of surprise. Then the other man surprised him anyway, but his rifle jammed. That look in his face as Chester pulled the trigger stuck with him all this time, festering like those Goddamn shingles, and it had been devasting for him to contemplate. That look had done real hard damage to him.

He’d forgotten a coat. Nelson wore a camouflage down one. Twenty yards at least. The shotgun heavy.

Clayvon had said come warm weather he’d help with some of the carpentry on what would become Chester’s dream home with Trina. They hadn’t talked as much after his wife’s misfortune. Clayvon had been defensive about her. He drank more than Chester liked to anymore. Now he lay dead on the ground.

“Nelson,” Chester said. “You drop that rifle. You stop all this.”

Nelson grinned. Even at this distance and in this spooky light he could see it. Malignant was the word. “God ain’t telling me to kill you,” he said. “Or wasn’t.” He shook his head, like he found all this humorous. “Got the wrath of God in me,” he said. “Mine is a righteous anger.”

“That what you think?” Chester said.

“I reckon,” he said. “Just said so.”

“God wouldn’t’ve told you to kill Clayvon,” Chester said. “Clayvon Groth was a damn good man.”

“Clayvon Groth carried off my woman,” Nelson Mills said. “Don’t that make it right? She done left me, and he’s the one took her away.”

Chester absorbed the intelligence. The harsh logic meant to defend his actions. The realization Rosalind wasn’t even over there. She wasn’t in danger.

Chester swallowed hard. He gripped the walnut pump. The stock warm in his palm. The finger cold in this cold. A man with a gun willing to talk was at least a fighting chance. But Nelson didn’t seem willing to drop it. Chester should fire.

“You know that ain’t right,” Chester said.

“Do I?” Nelson said. “Do you?”

“I don’t reckon I care one way or the other what you think,” Chester said. “You’ve killed a good man here, Nelson.”

“Took my woman away,” Nelson said. He nudged the rifle up a little. “Took her from me off to who knows where?”

Chester gripped the shotgun. “You drop that rifle,” he said. What if he fired right then? Why shouldn’t he? Hadn’t he learned at least that much?

“So, if I’s to take Miss Trina in there from you?” Nelson said. “You wouldn’t hear from God on the subject of killing me?”

“How much you had to drink today?” Chester said. “Here I was worried you could aim.”

“You better not assume anything about me,” Nelson said. “You know what’s good for you, old man, you’ll worry about this rifle I got here cradled in my loving arms.”

Chester longed for the trailer. He hadn’t thought this through. Plain hadn’t. Didn’t realize he’d be so conflicted. Should’ve. Now what?

“Nelson,” he said. “Listen.” His mind swam around lost. “You shoot a man in a state of passion over a domestic situation, yes, that’s one thing. Shooting up the neighborhood is whole different thing. Just saying. You’re going to get arrested one way or the other. Might as well make it easier on yourself.”

“Don’t have to get arrested,” Nelson said.

“Nelson,” Chester said. He felt his legs trembling now. Then this harsh cascade of cold rippled up from his waist through his shoulders and down his arms holding the shotgun. He was trembling out here from fear and cold. He couldn’t think of what to do to get out of this situation. The 12-gauge heavier than he remembered. His triceps and lats felt the strain.

“Chester,” Nelson said. He shook his head, like to get focused. Like something bothering him Chester couldn’t hear. Now that moment was gone. Nelson was staring at him, his face craned around on his neck. He looked agitated. The rifle rose a peg.

“God talking to me hard over here, Chester,” Nelson said. “Thing is, God wasn’t telling me to kill you. I wasn’t after you until you came out here and pointed that firebreather at me. What do you think about that? I got better people to kill than you. You ought to let me go.”

Chester gripped the heavy gun. Why wouldn’t he just pull the trigger? Who would miss this punk bastard? Chester had killed in Nam, but he’d dealt with all of that, and got past it with therapy. Now here he was in this situation, and he didn’t have the stuff.

Chester lowered the shotgun to his waist. He kept it dead on Nelson from down at his waist. Maybe he’d look tougher, but he did it for the lats. He wasn’t that buff kid that got drafted anymore. He was that middle-aged bastard that felt called to this misguided mission. And now this here.

“Nelson,” Chester said. “I ain’t letting you kill anyone else, but I could see us standing here until the sheriff comes. You could go quietly. Maybe they could help you. Counselors they got nowadays are real good at this kind of thing.”

“Now ain’t that sweet?” Nelson said. “Here you are trying to help me.”

The trailer’s door rasped opened.

“Trina!” Chester said. He glanced over to see she’d come out barefoot in her nightgown, sweating with fever. She held the revolver with outstretched arms and slipped on the concrete block steps so that she stumbled into the drive, waving the gun. He called to her again as two shots rang out and his right shoulder blossomed with pain and the Wingmaster fell from him. He gasped, swaying like he would fall. Something in his chest. There were more shots and he dropped to his knees reaching with the one arm for the shotgun, but then Trina fell. Trina. On the ground just to the side and back a few paces. Dead. She’d been shot repeatedly in the chest, and she’d fallen crumpled on her side but mostly on her back with an arm flung out. The pistol had flown up spinning and come to rest by the concrete blocks she’d stepped down to this miserable end.

Nelson Mills crossed the two-lane with the rifle aimed at him. “Goddamn you,” he said. He’d already said it two or three times. “Goddamn you, you miserable backwoods hick.”

Chester sat back on the icy ground. He felt too awful to think. Across the way, Nelson’s picture window had been shot out. Trina must’ve done it. Chester smiled at the idea. She’d’ve laughed.

“Look at you,” Nelson said.

Far away came the sound of a siren. Another joined in. It was a big county, spread out and mostly woods after a day of intermittent sleet. No one out. Woodsmoke in the air. She’d been shot so many times.

Nelson sank down on his heels and took the shotgun. He got up quick and ran over to his property, a long gun in each hand. He had the shiny new Wrangler over there. This vehicle he put the guns in. Then he climbed in after them. The big machine lurched around in the dirt drive. Now Nelson eased onto the icy pavement in the opposite direction of those sirens still too far away to mean anything.

Chester took a breath. He exhaled into the sky and saw that it was clearing. The plume of his breath faded and there were stars. He’d never been a praying man but for Nam, yet it bothered him that Nelson would talk that way. Nelson running around killing people. God would’ve tried to say something to talk him out of it. God wouldn’t have wanted Trina all shot up like that. But it was more than that. Who gave a care what Nelson thought about anything? It was that the man in Nam wasn’t like this punk ass here. No. He was fighting for a reason. Chester had killed a man with purpose in his heart but spared one with malice in his.

Oh, dear God. Trina. Oh, dear God.

It wasn’t just his shoulder. His chest ached with something like a burning spear of iron thrust through it. Chester Belknap was dying and nothing hardly made sense to him. He was fixing to die. His mind flickered in and out seeing Clayvon on the ground and Trina bloody in her nightgown. He must’ve heard the sirens, but he wasn’t sure anymore.

Her body sprawled on the ground like that, unmoving in that way of being dead. Her thighs shimmering in the security light. The blood like something brown and black. Her face hidden from him, for her head was back and chin up, and he couldn’t move closer. This partner to him all these years. She’d looked so grim, coming out with the pistol. She’d come out to try and help. He should have stayed inside. They would’ve had each other.

“Oh, Trina,” he said. “Oh, my sweet baby.”

Chuck Plunkett directs the journalism capstone CU News Corps at the University of Colorado Boulder. His stories have appeared in The Whisky Blot, Cimarron Review, and The Texas Review.