Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) Read Free Page A

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.
    “Swing if you have to,” Gun said.
    Bowser swung, a simple level cut that whistled through the air neck high. Gun’s hand leaped almost before he knew it, catching Bowser’s thick wrist exactly where it joined thumb and pad, stopping the
    blade, backing it up. Gun tightened his hold on Bowser’s wrist and looked into his face. He saw that while Bowser was facing him directly, the paths of his eyes took him off to both sides, left and right. Gun made a fist of his free hand and sent it swiftly to the center, and Bowser fell like stockyard beef to the grass.
    Gun left him there and went inside. He made coffee from a red can, boiling it severely on the stove. He had a cup himself and then, still in his longjohns, took the pot outside and set it with a mug next to the silent Bowser.
    The morning was still, and a white mist rose up from the lake’s unrippled surface like smoke from a cooling battlefield. Gun entered the frigid water with out hesitating. He swam forty yards out and dove. The cold ignited a brilliant explosion inside his brain, and he could feel his skin tightening around his muscles like a rubber wetsuit. It was the middle of May, and the lake had been ice-free for only a few weeks.
    Ten feet down, at the sandy bottom, Gun opened his eyes. No walleyes here this morning, no streaks of silver heading for deeper waters. Only refracted spears of light entering from above, penetrating the green haze, dissolving like crystals of salt. He looked around but could not find any of the baseballs. He’d waited too long. He kicked for the top.
    When he came back in, the lawn and coffeepot were empty, the mug swaying neatly by its handle on the branch of a reaching fir.

2
    Gun was on the last phase of his morning workout— push-ups on his fists against the hard kitchen floor— when his second visitor of the day arrived. This time in a pinging, four-cylinder foreign job with squeaky shocks.
    As usual, Mazy shut off the engine and waited for Gun to come outside. He took his sweet time, slowing down the push-ups until they hurt.
    Mazy had turned fifteen the week her mother died. Fifteen and needing more from a father than he thought he could give. He’d tried to explain to her that he was afraid, that a ballplayer gone from home seven months a year never learned to be parent enough, never had time, but she knew it all and said it didn’t matter. She’d stay, she’d be good, she’d cook and do her homework and keep it all together. Then the