Emory’s Gift Read Free Page A

guns out and sight down on small prey in the backyard and “pow!” they’d be blown to imaginary bits. The .30-06, a huge, heavy rifle, had a small telescope on top, two thin hairs intersecting on pretend wolves and bears across the valley. The slugs rolled around in my hand with a thrilling weight and snicked into place when I loaded each weapon.
    Dad told me when we first moved to Idaho that when I was big enough he’d teach me how to handle guns. But he was never going to teach me; he hadn’t even opened the cabinet in two years.
    I spread a kitchen towel on the table and lined up my tools. I glanced at the sweep hand on the clock and saw that it was just ten seconds away from 11:50 A.M. I decided to see if I could disassemble a weapon in two minutes, the way recruits did in boot camp movies. The second hand passed over the 12 and I began confidently dismantling my dad’s .30-06 rifle.
    I went further this time than ever before, basically taking the gun completely apart. I examined each piece of metal, a few of them very small, as I freed them from the main assembly, placing them on the towel like a surgeon lining up scalpels before an operation.
    Just before noon I realized I’d failed to track when my two minutes were up, but it didn’t matter because I’d just heard something that made me freeze, my eyes wide open, disbelieving.
    We seldom got much traffic up in these hills beyond town. Anyone turning off the paved road, County Highway 206, was either lost or on his way to one of only six houses clustered up here on Hidden Creek Road. A long climb, full of switchbacks, would take you to our place, and a little farther on you’d crest the hill and then make your way back down to join Highway 206 again, the downward half of the loop just as steep as the upward half.
    I knew that climb well. The school bus always went to the opposite end of Hidden Creek Road first, so that our house was the last stop. This was fine for the morning because it meant I had a few more minutes to sleep in, but in the afternoon I was too impatient to make the full loop and would get out with a handful of other students who lived just off Highway 206. Then I’d run home, my breath getting ragged as I chugged up the steep switchbacks on Hidden Creek Road. And I mean run, because my mom was sick and I wanted to see her and make sure she was okay.
    I never told her the reason I raced up Hidden Creek Road as if being pursued by outlaws was that I was running home to her, but I’d like to think she knew. She was always glad to see me. Walking in the front door to her welcoming smile was often the high point of the day.
    Whenever a vehicle turned off the pavement and headed up our way, we could hear it in the valley. I’d long ago learned which sound meant the mail truck was coming; which clanking, grinding noise meant that the neighbor lady Mrs. Beck was driving her husband’s stick shift; and which throaty roar meant that my father’s Jeep had turned the corner.
    It was this last that came to me clearly through the open kitchen window to me now. What was he doing home? Did work let out early?
    And what really mattered: I had just a few minutes before my father came into the house and saw me sitting there with his forbidden rifle broken apart on the table. I jumped up and my motion jerked the kitchen towel and the gun parts fell to the floor in a shower of metal.

chapter
    TWO
    THE sound of the front door opening coincided perfectly with the firm click of the gun cabinet door as I shut it. I whirled and faced my father, who stood on the threshold and stared at me. Behind me I could feel the .30-06 rifle vibrating in its slot. I’d reassembled it with an alacrity that would put a smile on the face of any drill sergeant, but I was still standing right in front of the cabinet with no excuse for why I was there, guilt painted all over my face. I eyed my father with fear. I read in his expression that he knew what I’d been doing, and my