So I dig in, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from dropping my fork and knife and just eating with my hands. As I eat I watch the bullet catcher, studying him.
Now he catches me looking and raises an eyebrow.
I often wonder what the bullet catcher did during the war, especially toward the end when the gunslingers were hunting down the last of his kind. Maybe the gunslingers took him prisoner and tried to starve information out of him. And what about the scars on his back? They could be whip marks. They look a bit like the scars on Nikko’s back, from when the Brothers and Sisters would punish him.
“Why did the gunslingers and bullet catchers hate each other so much?”
“One believed in taking power with a gun and one did not.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to hate someone so bad you wanted to kill them.”
“That’s the thing about hate,” he says. “There ain’t no sense in it.”
“Did you come up here to hide from the gunslingers? You know, during the fighting?”
“No,” he says. He takes a slow bite of his food. “Not at first.”
“When?”
He looks up and fixes me with his cool, blue moon eyes. But when I stare back at him and refuse to let it drop, he puts down his knife and fork and says, “I came up here toward the end of the war. We had lost, but some chose to keep fighting.”
“You deserted?”
“Yes, I deserted.”
“Weren’t you ashamed?”
“We had lost already. I didn’t see the point of also dying. Back then I believed that there were good deaths and bad. And I believed a good death was one with meaning.”
“And now?”
“Now I know that death is always meaningless. A clap followed by nothing.”
We are silent for a time. “What’s your name?” I’ve asked it every morning for the last month. The wind blows through the trees. The bullet catcher says nothing. I go back to my food. “When I die,” I say, “I want it to mean something.”
He sloshes the dregs of his coffee into the fire. It hisses and flickers. He stands and says, “It won’t.”
• • •
At the base of the mountain, where the ground becomes flat and even, the bullet catcher leads me through the practice steps, like a dance. He shows me where to place my hands and feet. He corrects me if my stance is too narrow or wide, if my hands are too high or low. He slows me if I’m too fast, quickens me if I’m too slow. He tells me to close my eyes and focus on breathing. Or he says to keep my eyes open and imagine gunslingers in the warbling line of the desert. He quizzes me on what position I would use if they were shooting at my gut, my legs, my heart.
The positions are second nature by now, and mostly the bullet catcher only tweaks my posture, putting his hand on mine, shifting it a half inch or so, or he’ll tap my shoulder and I know I haven’t turned enough to my imaginary gunslinger, that I’m providing too large a target. Or he’ll nudge the back of my leg with his toe, because my stance is too narrow and if I had to suddenly shift my weight, I’d lose my balance. At first, we would go through the steps in slow motion, but lately we’ve sped things up.
Usually he tells me where he’s aiming, giving me time to go through my mental checklist of positions, but today, he points the empty gun, mimes the recoil, but he doesn’t tell me where he’s shooting. I keep my eye on the subtle shifts in his aim, clear my mind, and let my muscles react.
“Visualize the bullets!” he instructs. “Even when the bullets are real,” he says, “you have to visualize them. Bullets move too fast for the eye.”
Finally, after hours of this, I double over at the waist, my hands on my knees, and suck at the air. The bullet catcher lowers his gun and walks over to me. He produces a skin of water, takes a swig, and hands it to me. I drink greedily.
“It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I ask. But the way he said it, I know it can’t be anything good.
The bullet catcher flicks open the chamber of the gun, loads a single bullet, and flicks it closed. Suddenly, the gun is huge and evil-looking, dull in the light of the moon rising over the desert.
The bullet catcher puts his hand on my shoulder. It’s heavy and warm. Even through my clothes, I can feel the multitude of scars lining his palm. “We’ve worked all day,” I say. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
The bullet catcher shakes his head gently. His hand is still on my shoulder, radiating warmth. I look up at him and he’s smiling, like he’s suddenly got the knack of it. His smile is small, but like his hand, it radiates warmth. And I understand that he’s been where I am now, with his teacher’s hand on his shoulder, fear running through his spine. The bullet catcher judges my every mistake, but he does not judge my fear.
“It’s better to do it now,” he says, “when you are tired and your mind is clear. Tonight you will sleep well, knowing you won’t have to do this in the morning. There will be no thoughts of running away when fear gets the better of you.” He counts out the paces between us and turns. I imagine running away. I would run across the desert, all the way back to Sand. The bullet catcher reads my expression. He has seen and done all this before. He has encountered many different would-be bullet catchers. Brave. Cowardly. Full of hubris or disconsolate and unaware of their potential. Maybe he is thinking of Nikko. How he met this challenge, if he made it this far.
“First position,” he calls.
My mind is blank, but my muscles remember. They take first position, my right foot just ahead of my left, my toes slightly pigeoned, right hand up, left hand down, so they form a diagonal across my body. From first position I can adjust to wherever the bullet catcher aims. The bullet catcher doesn’t use first position anymore. He says that with enough practice, the positions become more relaxed, more natural. First position is just for beginners.
“Ready,” I call back, my voice shaking. My heart threatens to break out of my chest. I’m just a dishwasher. Is this how Nikko died? Is this what following in his footsteps means?
The moon has disappeared behind the clouds and the sky is a starless dome overhead. The gun in the bullet catcher’s hand glints silver. It’s cold and I’m sweating. My fingers tingle. Everything is silence. Then the bullet catcher raises the gun and pulls the trigger. The explosion is deafening. It obliterates the bullet catcher’s lessons in my mind.
I always imagined that a bullet catcher could slow and speed up time at will, that she has time to think how she will direct the bullet. Will she skip it across the ground like a stone across water or will she curve it back around to its shooter? Will she aim for the shooter’s gun to disarm him or will she hit his heart to kill him? But I’m a dishwasher, not a bullet catcher. Time does not slow for my sake.
I don’t see the bullet, can’t visualize it. It’s too terrifying to imagine. Then it hits, sending me sprawling to the ground, clutching my arm, the blood oozing through my fingers.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My legs
