Pandora's Gun Read Free Page A

holding this same shoe, wondering about him? Had he lived in this room? Did he have big dreams about the money he’d make from mining? Maybe he’d been a foreman. This wasn’t a worker’s shoe. Or maybe this was his Sunday go-to-church shoe. A shoe like this could tell a hundred stories.
    That’s what he liked about the dump in the woods. Every scrap hinted at some story. Everything broken once worked and was vital. An abandoned house had once been new and filled with dreams. When he dug through the dump, he uncovered histories. This old house held echoes of the people who used to live here. Peter shivered in delight while looking at a closet filled with boxes waiting to be cleaned out.
    He brought the shoe into a beam of light coming through a dusty window. Where he would have put his foot, if he were going to put the shoe on, a film of spider web covered the opening. Hanging to the underside, bouncing a little as Peter moved the shoe, clung a black widow, its red hourglass vividly visible.
    Good thing I’m not arachnophobic, he thought as he put the shoe in the trash bag, along with the magazines.
    He went to warn the rest of the class to be careful what they picked up.

At 6:00, the clear skies had given way to a storm front coming in from the west. The sun hid behind the dark clouds, and lightning flicked in their depths. The air had taken a damp, autumn feel, like winter emerging. Peter wished he’d brought a jacket. He and Dante cut through the high school’s practice fields to the break in the split rail fence that separated the fields from the woods behind. On the school side of the fence, neatly lined soccer fields and mowed grass had a military order. On the other side, the wildwood defied pattern. Elms, willows, low, scraggly brush, haphazard weeds, and rotted leaves still piled from last winter, created an untamed woods. Their trail to the dump started there, although it wasn’t much of a trail. Spiky brambles tugged at their sleeves as they pushed through.
    Dante told a dirty joke that embarrassed Peter, who laughed, even though he didn’t like jokes like that. Dante had been telling more of them lately and saying things like, “Check the rack on that girl.” Peter purposefully wouldn’t look, although sometimes he’d see what Dante was talking about before he could glance away. Dante snuck beers out of his stepdad’s refrigerator, and offered to share with Peter. Dante had started smoking a month ago. But it wasn’t just the change of habits. They’d sworn to each other that they would never do those things—Peter wished to remind Dante of that, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.
    Maybe all could be forgiven, but they didn’t talk like they used to either. Conversations that would never stop now dwindled to uncomfortable pauses. Who do you talk to when you don’t know how to talk to your best friend?
    “We’ve never found anything that worked,” said Dante. “Busted stuff, sure, but not a machine.”
    They’d walked about half the distance to the dump. In another quarter mile, they’d be there. The sky darkened even more, and a sudden rain pelted them. They took shelter under an elm, waiting for the squall to pass.
    “Let me see,” said Dante.
    Rain pattered around them, but the thick canopy worked as an umbrella.
    “Let’s get to the burnt tree first.” Peter felt the gun’s weight in his pack and a reluctance now to show it.
    “Did you find anything else? Anything we could sell?”
    “I stopped looking after the tree blew up.”
    “I thought you said it burned.”
    Peter shrugged. “Whatever. The rain’s stopped. Let’s go.”
    Dante whistled when he saw the tree. Steam hissed out of a deep crack where water seeped in. The bark still felt warm. “You weren’t kidding! That’s awesome.”
    Peter put the backpack on the ground, opened it, and handed the gun to Dante.
    “So, I pull the trigger to turn it on?” he said.
    Peter pushed the gun away from him.