Advice from Strangers
Three weeks before Easter I bought six pieces of chewing gum shaped like robin’s eggs with some of my cousin Travis’ 18th birthday money which I stole from his wallet. I took the money because he was leaving, and besides, he told me that nobody in the world was on my side so I needed to watch out for myself. He had also started telling me that I would kill him eventually. It was something he saw in a cowboy movie. The apprentice slays the master, Katie, he said. It’s Freudian.
The chewing gum eggs came in a little plastic carton and everything. It all fit right in the palm of my hand. Each egg was tiny and speckled with brown spots. They tasted like chalk and turned to nothing in my mouth within moments. I took the money the night before Travis was supposed to go live with his mother in California. When our grandmother brought him home the next day, he said someone must have robbed him on the Greyhound before his momma called to say her boyfriend changed his mind and not to get off the bus in Sacramento.
Ever since he came back we had been training in self defense. It was his idea. We worked on martial arts three days of the week and sharpshooting the rest of the time. On Wednesdays we got to take a break and watch a cowboy movie for research. Travis loved watching movies. He would sit in his dad’s recliner with the footrest up and his legs crossed, leaning forward on his elbows and rubbing small circles on the bulge of his sightless left eye.
He learned all kinds of things from the cowboys. You can’t get convicted if someone else shot first, he repeated and then made me write down so I’d remember. I was starting to worry that when he had said no one was on my side, he really meant our side, mine and his. If that was true, I had made a mistake. His mother also told me once, coming into my bedroom when she still lived with us and sitting on my bed and waking me up, that no one was on my side. She only said it about men, though. Stay a step ahead of them.
I had the last robin egg in my pocket while Travis taught me how to shoot on the first day of Easter vacation. We hiked out fifteen minutes from home to a clearing on the back stretch of our grandparents’ land. A trail of crows flew over the gulch alongside us, their shadows sealing cracks in the orange dust and opening them again. Washes of iron darkened the ground where water had risen and receded. We were in a dry year.
I stood on Travis’ left side sweeping my head back and forth to make up for the gap in his vision, checking that the coast was clear. He was born only seeing out of the one eye. It had always been that way. This was what made him so special and so unhappy. When he was born they called him a miracle and put him in the newspaper.
Anything? he whispered to me.
I knew this was a test–it wasn’t safe to speak out loud while doing recon–so I only shook my head.
Good, he whispered. Let’s get schooled.
We didn’t have a real gun because nobody else in our family believed in violence and Travis couldn’t drive, so we used water pistols from the Wal-Mart until he could find somebody to buy him a real one. He usually made me work on my draw, pulling from a holster we made with a coffee can and duct tape and a belt his mom left behind with a big shell-shaped buckle. This was the first day he’d said he would let me take aim at anything instead of watching him practice and refilling his pistol from a gallon jug of hose water.
Sometimes he shot up close, where the water could hit, but other times he went for distance and measured the arc where it fell, how close it would have been to the painted cardboard torso propped up in the arms of a cactus bush. Since he only had one eye to use, he told me, he needed to practice more than me to get his aim right.
God, he shouted, I just want to do this for real! He fired three times and waved at me for a refill while he paced out his aim with the tape measure.
You said I could shoot today, I said.
Shut up, he said, I’m getting warm. He drew the pistol from his holster and sprung into shooting position. The braced way he stood made it look like he was doing karate. He put one hand on his thin upper arm and squinted his blind eye and fired.
I sat between the low limbs of a juniper and watched, turning the cap around the top of the water jug. It bothered me that he wouldn’t let me shoot like he said he would, but not a lot. Travis was so picky about the way I drew the pistol that I was nervous to actually fire it in front of him. I loved him so much, and I wanted him to be proud of me.
What I wanted even more was to put the money back in his wallet but he never let it out of his sight anymore. Four twenty-dollar bills and change for a fifth, minus the gum, fluttered around in the air vent in my bedroom and gave me bad dreams at night. I hated the smell of money. My stomach was in knots all the time. Trust nobody, Travis warned me every morning before I left for school, Check the rooftops.
You gonna let me shoot? I asked. The wind was picking up and I felt cold in my favorite blue sweatshirt. Our grandmother made it for me and sewed a duck wearing rain boots onto the front.
In a minute, he said, looking over his crossed arm at the silhouette. His sneakers jerked back and forth in the dust of the split earth as he leapt in and out of position. I fished the last egg of chewing gum out of my pocket and cracked it between my teeth. It crumbled into dust and then solidified as I chewed.
In the cowboy movie we watched that week, James Stewart shoots a ranch owner through the palm of his hand in self-defense. The rancher catches him and shoots him back through his own hand. They are both sweating and shaking and bleeding but never cry.
That is so awesome, Travis said. Matching damage. He kept bringing it up. Whatever someone does to you, you gotta do the same back or worse.
I don’t think he’s the good guy, I had said, and Travis told me I just didn’t get it.
He came over for a refill. What are you eating? he asked, dropping the orange plastic gun at my knees and scattering the rocks I had stacked into a pyramid.
Just gum, I said. The jug was too full and some water missed the opening and thickened the split dirt below.
Where’d you get gum? You don’t have any money.
He knew this was true because he made me use all of my own birthday money on the water pistols. I wouldn’t be old enough to work for four years and neither one of us got an allowance.
I stole it. The gum.
Travis looked down at me and I looked up at him. The backs of my eyes felt tight. He coughed into his elbow.
You don’t have the guts. Where’d you get the money? he asked me again.
I told you there wasn’t any, I said.
Are you gonna kill me now, Katie?
What?
Are you gonna kill me?
Here, I spit the grey lump into my hand, You want it so bad?
I don’t want your fucking bubble gum, he said, dropping to his knees and knocking it from my hand. He knew I hated it when he swore.
I asked if you were going to kill me, Katie. Do you know more than me now?
That’s just a movie, I said. It doesn’t have to be like that.
It’s representative.
I don’t know what you’re talking about!
He stood up. The hidden sun made a bleary spot against the clouds. Something tasted metallic in the back of my mouth. He had kicked up a lot of dust getting in and out of shooting position and my throat felt like it might crack.
I didn’t say anything. I picked at the stitches holding the duck onto my sweatshirt. My mother had made him out of a slick fabric that slid under my hands. The feeling in my throat moved to a sharp point in my nose.
Did you take my money?
It took me too long to answer and I could see it on his face. I whipped the pistol from my holster and held it with two hands how he taught me and shot his palm. I thought this would help but instead he yelled at me and then he turned away, his hand dripping at his side.
I’m sorry, I said. I’ll do your chores if you want. I’ll earn your money back. It was only three dollars. I still have the rest. I felt so bad but I couldn’t get it back in your wallet. I’m sorry.
I thought I could trust you, he said, turning around. He pressed the fingers of one hand to the skin under his reddened eye. It looked right past me.
You can, I said. You can, you can, I promise you can.
If we were the type of people to say I love you I would’ve said it five times then. The wind swayed the heavy juniper branches. I sneezed at the sticky smell and erupted into a nosebleed. My blood splattered to the cracked dirt and lay on top of it. The cacti bent under a gathering wind and our practice silhouette slipped to the ground.
Travis, I stood up, He’s going to blow away.
I don’t care! he shouted. His shadow made a straight line in front of me. I ran after the cardboard but it twisted and flapped and rose in the wind, black against the grey sky knitting closed into dusk.
You told me I couldn’t trust you first! I shouted after it. You said nobody was on my side and everybody wanted to hurt me!
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked over the gulch where the silhouette had come to rest, over to the opposing hill and the grey scrub grass. When I pitched my head back and pinched my nose Travis came up next to me like I knew he would. He had just told me all about a TV special he saw where a lady almost choked to death on her own blood when she put her head back.
Stop it, he said. You’ll get it all in your throat. Lean over and let it drain.
I ruined my sweater.
We can wash it.
He tapped the back of my head and I leaned forward. I was too afraid to cry. The seashell on my belt dug into my stomach. Blood rolled down the jagged side of the gulch where the dirt had been eaten away by the wind. Twigs and pinon cones blew across the sand at the bottom. I thought I could smell Travis’ hair, somehow, the way it smelled when he sat next to me watching TV.
Some miracle I am, he said like he always did when anyone was upset with him.
I’m never going to kill you, I said.
I didn’t mean I was going to hurt you. And even if I did, it doesn’t give you the right to take my money.
Your momma told me men are gonna use me for the rest of my life, I said through my pinched nose, and that I need to get ahead of them.
Don’t be stupid like that, he said. Come on. That’s just something old women say.
My nose was drying up. I pushed my thumb against the openings of my nostrils and stood. He popped the plug from his pistol and poured the rest of the water into my palm and motioned for me to clean my face with it.
You have to prove I can trust you again, he said while I scrubbed at the skin under my nose. I don’t even know if you can.
I know, I sniffed. Your money’s in my air vent. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I don’t want to talk, he said.
We turned against the wind. He picked up the water jug and put my pistol in its holster. I pulled my sweatshirt sleeve over my hand and held it beneath my nose in case anything else came out. Our house was hidden by the slope of the land and the trees across it. The air smelled damp. It hadn’t rained in weeks. When it did, the water would roll right off of ground too dry to take it in.
The chewing gum eggs came in a little plastic carton and everything. It all fit right in the palm of my hand. Each egg was tiny and speckled with brown spots. They tasted like chalk and turned to nothing in my mouth within moments. I took the money the night before Travis was supposed to go live with his mother in California. When our grandmother brought him home the next day, he said someone must have robbed him on the Greyhound before his momma called to say her boyfriend changed his mind and not to get off the bus in Sacramento.
Ever since he came back we had been training in self defense. It was his idea. We worked on martial arts three days of the week and sharpshooting the rest of the time. On Wednesdays we got to take a break and watch a cowboy movie for research. Travis loved watching movies. He would sit in his dad’s recliner with the footrest up and his legs crossed, leaning forward on his elbows and rubbing small circles on the bulge of his sightless left eye.
He learned all kinds of things from the cowboys. You can’t get convicted if someone else shot first, he repeated and then made me write down so I’d remember. I was starting to worry that when he had said no one was on my side, he really meant our side, mine and his. If that was true, I had made a mistake. His mother also told me once, coming into my bedroom when she still lived with us and sitting on my bed and waking me up, that no one was on my side. She only said it about men, though. Stay a step ahead of them.
I had the last robin egg in my pocket while Travis taught me how to shoot on the first day of Easter vacation. We hiked out fifteen minutes from home to a clearing on the back stretch of our grandparents’ land. A trail of crows flew over the gulch alongside us, their shadows sealing cracks in the orange dust and opening them again. Washes of iron darkened the ground where water had risen and receded. We were in a dry year.
I stood on Travis’ left side sweeping my head back and forth to make up for the gap in his vision, checking that the coast was clear. He was born only seeing out of the one eye. It had always been that way. This was what made him so special and so unhappy. When he was born they called him a miracle and put him in the newspaper.
Anything? he whispered to me.
I knew this was a test–it wasn’t safe to speak out loud while doing recon–so I only shook my head.
Good, he whispered. Let’s get schooled.
We didn’t have a real gun because nobody else in our family believed in violence and Travis couldn’t drive, so we used water pistols from the Wal-Mart until he could find somebody to buy him a real one. He usually made me work on my draw, pulling from a holster we made with a coffee can and duct tape and a belt his mom left behind with a big shell-shaped buckle. This was the first day he’d said he would let me take aim at anything instead of watching him practice and refilling his pistol from a gallon jug of hose water.
Sometimes he shot up close, where the water could hit, but other times he went for distance and measured the arc where it fell, how close it would have been to the painted cardboard torso propped up in the arms of a cactus bush. Since he only had one eye to use, he told me, he needed to practice more than me to get his aim right.
God, he shouted, I just want to do this for real! He fired three times and waved at me for a refill while he paced out his aim with the tape measure.
You said I could shoot today, I said.
Shut up, he said, I’m getting warm. He drew the pistol from his holster and sprung into shooting position. The braced way he stood made it look like he was doing karate. He put one hand on his thin upper arm and squinted his blind eye and fired.
I sat between the low limbs of a juniper and watched, turning the cap around the top of the water jug. It bothered me that he wouldn’t let me shoot like he said he would, but not a lot. Travis was so picky about the way I drew the pistol that I was nervous to actually fire it in front of him. I loved him so much, and I wanted him to be proud of me.
What I wanted even more was to put the money back in his wallet but he never let it out of his sight anymore. Four twenty-dollar bills and change for a fifth, minus the gum, fluttered around in the air vent in my bedroom and gave me bad dreams at night. I hated the smell of money. My stomach was in knots all the time. Trust nobody, Travis warned me every morning before I left for school, Check the rooftops.
You gonna let me shoot? I asked. The wind was picking up and I felt cold in my favorite blue sweatshirt. Our grandmother made it for me and sewed a duck wearing rain boots onto the front.
In a minute, he said, looking over his crossed arm at the silhouette. His sneakers jerked back and forth in the dust of the split earth as he leapt in and out of position. I fished the last egg of chewing gum out of my pocket and cracked it between my teeth. It crumbled into dust and then solidified as I chewed.
In the cowboy movie we watched that week, James Stewart shoots a ranch owner through the palm of his hand in self-defense. The rancher catches him and shoots him back through his own hand. They are both sweating and shaking and bleeding but never cry.
That is so awesome, Travis said. Matching damage. He kept bringing it up. Whatever someone does to you, you gotta do the same back or worse.
I don’t think he’s the good guy, I had said, and Travis told me I just didn’t get it.
He came over for a refill. What are you eating? he asked, dropping the orange plastic gun at my knees and scattering the rocks I had stacked into a pyramid.
Just gum, I said. The jug was too full and some water missed the opening and thickened the split dirt below.
Where’d you get gum? You don’t have any money.
He knew this was true because he made me use all of my own birthday money on the water pistols. I wouldn’t be old enough to work for four years and neither one of us got an allowance.
I stole it. The gum.
Travis looked down at me and I looked up at him. The backs of my eyes felt tight. He coughed into his elbow.
You don’t have the guts. Where’d you get the money? he asked me again.
I told you there wasn’t any, I said.
Are you gonna kill me now, Katie?
What?
Are you gonna kill me?
Here, I spit the grey lump into my hand, You want it so bad?
I don’t want your fucking bubble gum, he said, dropping to his knees and knocking it from my hand. He knew I hated it when he swore.
I asked if you were going to kill me, Katie. Do you know more than me now?
That’s just a movie, I said. It doesn’t have to be like that.
It’s representative.
I don’t know what you’re talking about!
He stood up. The hidden sun made a bleary spot against the clouds. Something tasted metallic in the back of my mouth. He had kicked up a lot of dust getting in and out of shooting position and my throat felt like it might crack.
I didn’t say anything. I picked at the stitches holding the duck onto my sweatshirt. My mother had made him out of a slick fabric that slid under my hands. The feeling in my throat moved to a sharp point in my nose.
Did you take my money?
It took me too long to answer and I could see it on his face. I whipped the pistol from my holster and held it with two hands how he taught me and shot his palm. I thought this would help but instead he yelled at me and then he turned away, his hand dripping at his side.
I’m sorry, I said. I’ll do your chores if you want. I’ll earn your money back. It was only three dollars. I still have the rest. I felt so bad but I couldn’t get it back in your wallet. I’m sorry.
I thought I could trust you, he said, turning around. He pressed the fingers of one hand to the skin under his reddened eye. It looked right past me.
You can, I said. You can, you can, I promise you can.
If we were the type of people to say I love you I would’ve said it five times then. The wind swayed the heavy juniper branches. I sneezed at the sticky smell and erupted into a nosebleed. My blood splattered to the cracked dirt and lay on top of it. The cacti bent under a gathering wind and our practice silhouette slipped to the ground.
Travis, I stood up, He’s going to blow away.
I don’t care! he shouted. His shadow made a straight line in front of me. I ran after the cardboard but it twisted and flapped and rose in the wind, black against the grey sky knitting closed into dusk.
You told me I couldn’t trust you first! I shouted after it. You said nobody was on my side and everybody wanted to hurt me!
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked over the gulch where the silhouette had come to rest, over to the opposing hill and the grey scrub grass. When I pitched my head back and pinched my nose Travis came up next to me like I knew he would. He had just told me all about a TV special he saw where a lady almost choked to death on her own blood when she put her head back.
Stop it, he said. You’ll get it all in your throat. Lean over and let it drain.
I ruined my sweater.
We can wash it.
He tapped the back of my head and I leaned forward. I was too afraid to cry. The seashell on my belt dug into my stomach. Blood rolled down the jagged side of the gulch where the dirt had been eaten away by the wind. Twigs and pinon cones blew across the sand at the bottom. I thought I could smell Travis’ hair, somehow, the way it smelled when he sat next to me watching TV.
Some miracle I am, he said like he always did when anyone was upset with him.
I’m never going to kill you, I said.
I didn’t mean I was going to hurt you. And even if I did, it doesn’t give you the right to take my money.
Your momma told me men are gonna use me for the rest of my life, I said through my pinched nose, and that I need to get ahead of them.
Don’t be stupid like that, he said. Come on. That’s just something old women say.
My nose was drying up. I pushed my thumb against the openings of my nostrils and stood. He popped the plug from his pistol and poured the rest of the water into my palm and motioned for me to clean my face with it.
You have to prove I can trust you again, he said while I scrubbed at the skin under my nose. I don’t even know if you can.
I know, I sniffed. Your money’s in my air vent. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I don’t want to talk, he said.
We turned against the wind. He picked up the water jug and put my pistol in its holster. I pulled my sweatshirt sleeve over my hand and held it beneath my nose in case anything else came out. Our house was hidden by the slope of the land and the trees across it. The air smelled damp. It hadn’t rained in weeks. When it did, the water would roll right off of ground too dry to take it in.
March / April 2023
E.N. Walztoni's writing appears or is forthcoming in The Meadowlark Review, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology, and elsewhere. She was a Nature in Words Fellow at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in 2020. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.
Art: Aiyana Masla. For the Earth. Watercolor