Paradise Sky

“Now, this LeMat, this particular one, anyway, uses .44-caliber ammunition. The curious part about it is it’s a nine-shooter. This big barrel underneath—a shotgun load goes there, sixteen-gauge. It’s a little like holding a stick of dynamite and hoping all the juice comes out the end of the barrel. That actually makes it a ten-shooter.”

“That sounds iffy,” I said, staring at its blue steel and what looked like polished hickory grips.

“Naw, it isn’t iffy. I’m just talking it up, but it sure will give you a kick if you aren’t paying attention. The LeMat’s not as accurate as the Colt, but it’s got you three more shots and then one big shot. For self-defense, up close, which is pretty much how self-defense usually is, you can’t beat that shotgun load. Hard to miss at ten feet or less. You got a little striker here on the hammer. Have it up, like this, it’s going to hit them nine rounds. Push it down, and it’ll hammer the shotgun load. I’ve adjusted it some, cause I’ve made this one over from pin-fire to center-fire so as to modernize it. You might call it the Loving version of the LeMat revolver.”

He went on like that for a while, telling me about the pistols and the loads and how I needed to pay attention on account of ammunition was expensive and he didn’t want it wasted on me just popping off shots.

Mr. Loving was a good teacher. By the end of the lesson I had almost hit one or two of the balls. He, on the other hand, wasn’t kidding about his aim. After he got tired of instructing me, he took the Colt, said, “Toss ’em, Willie.”

I went to doing that, and with that pistol held down beside his leg he’d wait till the ball I tossed got its full height and was just starting to drop, and quick as a tornado his hand would come up and he’d thumb that hammer and fire off a shot and knock that ball to shatters. He shot from the hip. He shot facing forward and standing sideways. About the only thing he didn’t do was stand on his head. He shot that fine with his left hand or his right. Way that man could shoot either of them pistols was like poetry.

He’d say, “Thing to remember is it’s good to be fast, but it’s better to be accurate. You can fire six times and miss, and the other fellow can come slow as a turtle but be right on his shot, and you’ll wind up with a hole in your chest big enough to shove an apple through. The chest is the best place to aim in a real situation because it’s bigger and more likely for you to hit. Still, you ought to be able to shoot the hairy balls off an undersize squirrel if it comes to it. Hit the little stuff in practice, you’re more likely to hit the big stuff in a real spot of trouble. Side vision is going to narrow some, get black on the edges, and you’re only going to see what’s right in front of you. Practice, some real experience, changes that. You don’t get killed the first time or two, you’ll get so you don’t have tu

“Don’t never draw a pistol on nobody that you don’t plan to shoot. You draw it, and you shoot, you shoot to kill. A wounded fellow can kill you same as one that isn’t wounded.”

Over the next few months I was taught how to shoot a Sharps rifle and a brand-new Winchester he had bought last time he was in town. But the thing about that Winchester that he done was he put a loop cock on it, and on that loop he put a striker that could be flipped with a finger. The loop cock could be handled quickly, and that striker, if you pushed it down, would hit the trigger every time you closed the cocking loop. You could fire rapid-like. It was hard to hit anything that way, unless you was Mr. Loving, of course, but you sure could put a lot of lead in the air.

By the end of them months I was not only good at shooting but the love of them weapons had also gone away from me. At first I adored them, but Mr. Loving kept telling me how they was tools, and they wasn’t in need of any more admiration than a hoe or a shovel. I took him at his word. If I didn’t love them pistols, I did respect them, and I was mighty respectful of the LeMat revolver in particular. It was, as Mr. Loving said, less accurate than the Colt, but I took to it. Pretty soon what natural accuracy it lacked I made up for by learning to know it and myself, and I liked them extra three shots. And then there was the shotgun load. He put a board up in the ground for that one, and I’d shoot at it at about a distance of ten feet and splinter it.

It was a good life. I liked the work. I liked Mr. Loving, and I liked my loft. I liked all that he had been teaching me. I could read and write a little, but he improved me. He had me reading all ma

I learned to ride a horse like a Comanche, which was another thing Mr. Loving could do. He said Texans in his day had learned it from watching the Indians. I could hang on the side of the horse, dangle under its neck and fire a pistol, cling to its belly, and swing back up with the pressure of my heels. I could grab its tail and run along behind it by making leaps like a rabbit. I also learned to grab the saddle, cling to it, and run that way for the long distance of Mr. Loving’s property.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is amid all these good times was the dark moments when Mr. Loving was like someone else. Not mean, mind you, but there was times when he wanted to be alone and sit up there under that tree in a chair and look out at the sun setting or the moon rising, and he could sit there for hours. I never went up there to sit with him unless I was invited. Somehow I knew he needed that time alone. My guess was he was thinking about his son and wife, but for all I knew he missed the easy money of preaching.

Within a day, sometimes within hours, he’d be his jovial self, discussing Polaris, Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor, who were supposed to be bears, and there was the Big and Little Dipper and Cassiopeia, who was supposed to have been the queen of Ethiopia. My geography lessons let me know Ethiopia was where dark people like myself lived, though with their ears closer to their head, or so Mr. Loving said, but I think he was pulling my leg.

I think I could have gone on like that forever, but as I heard my pa say to a friend of his one day, “The good times, if you have any, eventually get shit in them.”

5

I had grown yet another inch by the time things started to come to an end. I didn’t know things was coming to an end, but one day me and Mr. Loving was walking back from the fields, both of us with a tow sack of taters, and I noticed Mr. Loving was lollygagging a bit, dragging behind, and I come up and tried to lift the sack of taters he was carrying. He wasn’t having any of it. I think I hurt his pride.

Up at the house he had his di

This time I’m talking about, Mr. Loving thanked me for di