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“You have a nice day now,” the woman says for the third time, and her smile gets a little sharp around the edges.
Tim just stares at her. “You haven’t changed anything.”
Her voice is Georgia chipper. “Can’t do anything about this until the man in charge gets back!” she practically sings it, the way she throws her whole body into her drawl. She smiles wider, and Tim thinks he might see blood on her teeth.
“No,” he says, “You don’t understand. This is a basic gun course. For kids who have never held a gun before. I’m a sniper.”
“I understand your frustration sir, I really do—and I am sorry, but I cannot help you until my boss gets back from his vacation.”
“Which is when?”
“Oh, ‘bout three weeks from tomorrow,” she says, flicking through a little calendar book with the tips of her fingers.
Tim grits his teeth. “And if I just don’t show up to this class?”
“Well, you don’t have to, darlin, that of course is up to you. I’m just not so sure that the Marshal service will look so kindly upon that action, what do you think?” she sits back in her chair and looks pleased with herself.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tim says finally, “Thank you ma’am.”
“You have a nice day now,” she calls after him. Tim might be imagining it, but she sounds pretty vindictive.
~
At night, Tim dreams.
He’d thought, on his way back, staring out at a grey sky and grey water, that he’d dream of pulling triggers and explosions. Instead, he dreams of people. He dreams of targets and of friends, and the only thing that makes them nightmares, really, is the fact that he dreams through crosshairs.
It starts with a little girl. He doesn’t know her name--he never did. She was not important. She’s crouched there, looking up at him, she can see right through his hiding place. He tries to close his eyes. Her stare is like the sun through a magnifying glass, and it blinds him until he’s more aware of the fact that he’s the ant than of the fact that she’s watching him. She isn’t afraid in his dreams, but she knows that he is there to kill her father.
He doesn’t wake screaming; he wakes sweating.
The worst part about it is that he wakes up in a dorm, with snoring kids all around him. They’re not bad kids, but they are kids, and they seem impossibly young to Tim. He rolls onto his side and closes his eyes. He counts back from one hundred. When dawn finally cracks the sky, he’s had his bed made and been ready to go for hours.
It’s funny, he thinks. You can take the sniper out of the war zone, but you can’t dig the sand out of his gums.
~
Tim’s day does not get better from there. His instructor is, in fact, wearing a cowboy hat. He’s mostly trying not to notice his classmates, who stand in various shapes of disarray around him. A lesser man would think disparaging thoughts. Tim just shifts his weight.
Still, there’s something in the way the cowboy moves that makes Tim’s body straighten up, there’s a yes sir on the tip of his tongue before the cowboy even opens his mouth, and it only dies when he hears Kentucky rolling off the cowboy’s tongue. “Any questions?”
Tim wonders how long he’s been staring, or the cowboy’s been talking, but nobody has any questions, and so the demonstrations begin.
~
It’s hot in Georgia, but it’s a muggy damp heat that makes his hair curl. He breathes it in and wonders if this is what it feels like inside a dishwasher. His palms sweat and dirt clings to his skin. It reminds him of Kentucky, in a far off, detached sort of way. It reminds him of never going back. The sun beats at the back of his neck, relentless fingers that stroke up his spine and leave scratches that burn and peel all over his back. He should put a shirt on.
“Gutterson.”
Tim looks up and the bastard is standing with his back to the sun. He’s a slim dark shadow with a smirk and a cowboy hat. Tim feels that undercurrent of yes sir run through his veins, stomps down on it as hard as he can, grinds it into the grass with his heel. “Givens,” he answers, moving to make the cowboy move, shifting so that the glare doesn’t threaten to make Tim go blind.
“Are you scared of your firearm?”
The question catches Tim off guard, and his movement stills. They stand apart from each other, and Tim feels the sun’s fingers on his back and thinks that this is what the moon must feel like during a solar eclipse. “Excuse me?” he answers, forces his palms to lie flat against his side.
The day is hottest in the afternoon, after the highest amount of insolation has reached the atmosphere says a voice in his head that sounds like Daniels, matter of fact and tired at 11am in a village drenched in sunlight. Well fuck, Tim had answered, This shit is just like Christmas. That was seventeen hours before they never saw Daniels again, except for Tim, who watched through a crosshairs as he tripped, fell, disappeared. It’s seventeen hundred hours in Georgia, and the air and sun are both still hot enough to melt your bones. He should put a shirt on.
“I asked if you’re scared of your weapon.”
The cowboy doesn’t mince words, just stares Tim down, and Tim thinks that he’s not training right now—he thinks that he’s off duty right now and that this asshole in a cowboy hat doesn’t know a damn thing about insolation and the solar constant in a desert. “No,” Tim says, doesn’t bother mincing words either.
“You haven’t touched the gun. All we’re doin’ right now is learning the parts, dismantling and putting it back together. You just stare at it.”
“Yeah, well,” Tim shrugs, “Telekinesis has never been my strong suit.”
“You should try the hands on approach. Works better.”
Tim smirked, “Your girlfriend tell you that?”
“What I’m tryin’ to ask, if you could shut your hick mouth for a second--”
“Now wait just a second,” Tim cuts in, “Pot and kettle.”
“I been outta Harlan for a long time--”
Tim gives a low whistle and his smirk widens, “Shit. You’re from Harlan? No wonder it sounds like you eat bluegrass in your cheerios.”
The cowboy’s eyes don’t follow Tim’s movements quickly enough, and with the conversation more solidly on comfortable ground, he manages to make it so that he’s under the slight shade of a tree. The cowboy looks surprised, “You’re quick,” he says.
“No shit,” Tim answers, leaning back against the tree and watching the sun beat down and bounce off the cowboy’s hat. “You gotta first name?”
“Raylan.”
Tim doesn’t laugh, but the corner of his mouth curls up in a smile that’s just a shade shy of feral, “Yeah man,” he says, “You got Kentucky way out of your system.”
“Gutterson,” the cowboy starts, but Tim’s already walking away. “Gutterson,” the cowboy says again, and the grass whistles like the cowboy plans to follow him.
Tim looks down at his boots and up at the sky and thinks that the temperature has to start dropping soon anyway, thinks that Daniels would have known, thinks that he hadn’t planned on going for a run. The grass whistles and the cowboy starts to follow him, and he makes a run for it. It’s a luxury that he has now that he didn’t have before, and he runs with it. Quite literally.
When he gets back, he’s missed dinner and he’s pushing too close to curfew, but it doesn’t matter, nothing really matters here. It’s a little bit like limbo or a vacation—he’s never really bothered trying to tell the difference. The sheets in his rack are cool against his sunburned back, and when he does finally fall asleep, he can’t help but think that he should’ve put a shirt on.
~
Tim’s always liked dawn for the stillness that it brings to everything. The earlier the better; he likes it best before the sun’s cracked the sky open, before everything bleeds blue. He’s sitting outside, this time with a jacket on. The air is coldest just before the sun rises, Daniels said--who’d planned to major in geography. Like maps and shit? Tim had wanted to know. Naw, Daniels had said, stretched out beneath the stars, picking blisters with a knife, Like the weather. It had been just before dawn then, lying on their backs and waiting for orders. You could rub salt in Tim’s wounds all you wanted, just don’t fucking rub sand in them. That shit made a mess. You’d look good in front of a map. I’ll fuckin’ watch you on the mornin’ news. Daniels had looked at him then, the barest shift of his shoulder against Tim’s until their eyes met. He didn’t say you dumb hick, but it was kind of implied. The boys in his platoon liked Tim’s drawl, when things got bad, or still and slow, which was bad no matter how you looked at it, he’d always play it up, dropping his g’s off vocal grand canyons until no one was even sure there was supposed to be a g in those words anymore.
Tim likes the quiet, but he doesn’t like what the first glimmer of sunlight on the hood of a nearby van means. He thinks about skipping breakfast for a few more minutes of solitude, but he’d missed dinner, and he knows better than to skip meals. He ducks back inside to get changed into the uniform he has to wear for training. He drags his feet the whole way to the mess, sits down with a couple of other older guys here—the ones who aren’t barely twenty-one, the one’s who at least look like they’ve got their shit as together as it’s gonna get.
He thinks that he sees the cowboy through a window, but it could just be a trick of the light, or a goddamn bird or something.
~
“Today,” says the cowboy, looking over the room with those eyes that Tim still isn’t sure are working properly. “Today you guys are gonna start firing these weapons.”
Tim’s four days into this basic firearms class. There were a couple of different levels, and if this were anything like a regular school he’d claim he tested out of all the levels. Instead, he’s the victim of a paperwork error that’s gonna take the brunette in the office three weeks to fix. Today, the cowboy says, he’s gonna learn how to start firing a gun.
“Whoop-de-fucking-do,” Tim mumbles, leaning back against the wall and staring at the cowboy.
The cowboy’s eyes fall on him, sharper than Tim’s seen him look before. A little more aware. It almost looks like he’s smirking. “But before we get to that, you’re all gonna show me you know how to handle your firearm. Gutterson, why don’t you start ‘em off.”
It’s a challenge. Tim reads it in the way the cowboy looks at him. For the first time, Tim isn’t sure what the cowboy knows. Yes sir his body hums, and Tim closes his hand around the gun.
It’s not a rifle, but he supposes it doesn’t have to be.
There’s silence when he’s done. He looks up at the cowboy, and there’s something knowing in his eyes. He’s not quite smiling, but Tim isn’t either, so it works out. “Bureaucracy, huh?” says Raylan.
Tim shrugs, “Red tape’s a bitch.”
~
Raylan is outside his door, and it’s nineteen hundred hours. Tim’s just out of the shower, a towel around his waist as he wanders in circles around the room. The kids he lives with are gone. It’s Friday, they caught the earliest carpool they could to Jacksonville.
It’s nineteen hundred hours, and water is dripping from Tim’s hair down his shoulders and over his chest, and Raylan is outside his door, staring. So not your girlfriend then, Tim doesn’t say. “Can I help you?”
“I was wonderin’ if you wanted to get out of here for a bit. Your roommates said you haven’t walked through those gates since you got here.”
“Just offered that up, did they?”
“We were just having a nice conversation. Funny, though, how little anyone seems to know about you.”
“Yeah well,” Tim shrugs, “I’m a serial killer. You caught me.”
“You skipped dinner again,” says Raylan, which has nothing to do with the conversation and everything to do with how lax Tim’s gotten about watching and being watched.
“Yeah, well,” Tim says again. He doesn’t bother ending the sentence. Silence settles over them, Raylan standing in the doorway with the hat still on his head, Tim standing in the middle of the room, a towel slung around his waist and water dripping down his chest. Tim breaks first. Tells himself it’s a choice he’s making. “I’ll come.”
“Maybe put some clothes on first,” Raylan says.
He steps outside to wait, and Tim pulls on black jeans and a green henley. When he walks outside, Raylan laughs at him. “Jesus Christ,” he says, still grinning, “Is there an ‘off button’ for ranger mode?”
Tim eyes Raylan, “You know, then,” he says.
“Course I know. I looked you up after your demonstration today. Why the hell are you in a beginner’s firearms class? There are at least three different sections that would’ve made sense for you.”
Tim rolls his eyes, “Yeah well, I didn’t get that option. Where’re we going?”
“I was thinkin’ Savannah.”
“Sounds good to me, Raylan,” he says, and it’s only his instincts that keep him from stopping short as he wonders when exactly the cowboy became Raylan.
~
The car ride is long enough that it’d be weird if they weren’t talking, but Tim isn’t sure what to say. He’s never felt a need to fill silence, and he’s mostly comfortable with it, gets the feeling that Raylan is too. Maybe thirty minutes in, Raylan finally turns down the radio. Tim’s been slouched in the passenger’s seat, his head turned to face the window, watching highway slide by. The air conditioning and thrum of the car are lulling, and Raylan’s presence is reassuring enough that Tim’s feeling sleepy for the first time since he got to Glynco. It’s been five days since he’s had a solid night’s rest. He thinks it’s probably started to show. But Raylan turns the radio down and Tim feels eyes on the back of his neck.
“So where’d you serve?” Raylan asks, and his fingers tap on the steering wheel. Tim remembers, faintly, what it feels like to indulge in idle motions. He taps his foot once, experimenting with the feeling, but it’s lacking enough in purpose that he only gives it that one tap.
“Thought you’d know that,” Tim answers, “Looked me up.”
Raylan shrugs, “Just makin’ conversation. It’s a long car ride.”
“That’s a fuckin’ shitty conversation topic. Why don’t you tell me about Harlan instead?” Raylan is quiet. “Thought so,” Tim says. He lets his eyes close and turns back to the window.
“So why did you decide to become a marshal?” Raylan tries.
Tim shrugs. “It turns out that my skill set is pretty specific to a limited set of fields—and they told me I wasn’t going back to Afghanistan.”
“Really,” Raylan says, “Why?”
“I fell. Off a building. Banged my leg up pretty good. That’s the official reason.”
“And the unofficial reason?”
Cirrus is Latin for wisp of hair said Daniels, staring up at the kind of blue sky you could drown in. Those clouds are mostly made of ice. Tim had glanced up at the sporadic clouds that dotted the sky like wave caps. Good, he’d answered, maybe it’ll fucking snow. Daniels had given him that look again, the one that said you dumb hick without any venom, and pressed a hand against the back of Tim’s neck. Cirrus clouds don’t do precipitation, he explained, cumulonimbus though, if the temperature was cold enough maybe, for the condensation nuclei—He’d stopped when Tim rounded on him, Just shut up, Daniels, it’s not gonna fuckin’ snow. Daniels had grey eyes, but when the sky was blue like it was that day, he had the kind of blue eyes that could slice you into ribbons. His lips were chapped, and he’d smiled at Tim and then bled all over the place.
Tim looks at Raylan, “Don’t know. They never deigned to tell me.”
~
Raylan brings him to a bar that plays good music, and that isn’t full of twenty-one year olds who’ve barely had a drink in their life. Tim wants a whiskey, he orders a beer instead, drinks it slowly, and watches. Raylan is quiet now, after Tim’s half-assed answers had filled the car with silence. He’s still tapping his finger to the music, and Tim envies Raylan that inaction. When Tim taps his fingers, they’re always on a gun. The music is good, though, and the bar strikes a good balance between background noise and too busy, and Raylan bought his beer.
Tim looks up at Raylan, and he’s got that hat on still, but it doesn’t look so bad on him. “It was Afghanistan,” he says, and Raylan’s eyes flick to him, move over his face. “I’m a sniper.”
“Bet I can draw faster than you,” Raylan says instead of a real answer.
Tim shrugs, “Yeah, but I only need one shot.” He cocks his finger like a gun, makes the noise with his mouth.
“One shot, huh?” Raylan asks, and waves the bartender over.
Tim almost says that’s not what he meant, but Raylan’s paying, and they’re both adults.
~
It turns out that they’re both adults who are way too drunk to drive home. Raylan finds the cheapest motel in walking distance, and they’re in luck, they’ve got one room left, but sorry, it’s only a king and will that be cash or credit?
Raylan slides a bundle of bills over the counter and takes the key. Tim follows him into the elevator. When they get into the room, Tim’s not entirely convinced the bed is as big as a king, but he kicks off his boots and drops into it. Raylan’s looking at him, and Tim shrugs. “I’ve slept with better lookin’ guys in worse locations,” he says, “I’m not much for spooning.”
Shit Daniels said against Tim’s collarbone. Tim curled tighter, fisted his hands in the back of Daniels’s uniform. Shit fuck shit, Daniels kept saying. Tim squeezed his eyes shut, and the air exploded around them. He was a goddamn sniper. He wasn’t supposed to deal with this bullshit. Godammit said Daniels, and his breath was hot and warm. Tim blinked his eyes open, reached for his rifle, curled one hand around it like a safety net. Hey Daniels he said, remembering to breath. Tell me why it gets so cold in this fuckin’ desert.
“All right,” Raylan says, holding up his hands. “Just keep your shirt on.”
Tim rolls onto his side. He presents Raylan with his back and shuts his eyes.
~
“Tim,” Raylan says, a hand on his shoulder, “Jesus, Tim wake the fuck up.”
Tim’s eyes open. He’s lying on his back and Raylan is leaning over him. There’s sunshine in his hair, but his face is creased with something like concern, and he has morning breath. Tim notices all of that in a heartbeat, measures it out like he’d measure anything else. His hand goes under his pillow, but when he aims at Raylan, there’s nothing there. No gun. Nothing. Raylan looks startled. “Were you about to shoot me?”
Tim opens his mouth to answer, then falls back against the pillows. “Guess so.”
“You were having a nightmare,” Raylan tells him, collapsing back against the pillows too. Tim can almost feel the heat from his shoulder, or maybe that’s just a memory.
“Just a dream,” Tim says.
“What about?”
Tim doesn’t say ‘a little girl in my scope with a gaze like a sunburn.’ He shrugs, “Kneejerk reaction to sharin’ a bed with you, I guess. Think this place has coffee?”
Raylan just stares at him, a mixture of confusion and bemusement on his face. Tim looks back at him, reads him like a book. After a second Raylan gets up, kicks on his shoes. Tim slides his feet back into his boots and does up the laces.
“Doubt it,” Raylan answers. “But we can go find some.”
Tim just nods and follows him out of the room. He’d offer to pay, but Raylan hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even looked like it, and honestly Tim didn’t really have the money to be shacking up in cheap motel rooms. If he’d been alone, he’d have slept in the car.
The wind’s blowing in, and Tim can see tall, vertical clouds on the horizon. He rolls down the window and sticks his head out, breathing in the air. “Thank fuck,” he says. “There’s a cold front coming in.”
Raylan glances at him, “Yeah?”
“You can tell by clouds. And the wind,” Tim says, sliding back into the car and slouching down in his seat.
“Where’d you learn that?”
Tim shuts his eyes. “Wake me up when you find coffee.”
~
On Monday Tim gets told he’s lost too much weight since he got to Glynco. If he doesn’t stay in top condition he might not graduate. He only half listens. Out the window he can see Raylan working with a group of more advanced students, and it’s a more interesting sight than the doctor giving him a lecture. “Thanks, Doc,” Tim says, and puts his pants back on.
The doctor looks at him, “I know it must have been bad out there—” he starts.
“Nah,” says Tim, “It was real easy. I’m a sniper, you know? Don’t let us get in on the real action.” It’s a lie, and the doctor can tell, but he doesn’t call Tim back when he finally slips out the door.
It’s time, after all, to go learn how to fire a gun.
He’s the first one there, and Raylan’s got the hat on. “Mornin’ Gutterson,” he says, tipping the brim in Tim’s direction.
“Howdy. What’re we learnin’ today?”
Raylan grimaces. “How to hit a target?” he says, like it’s a question.
“Lucky me.” Tim leans back against the wall. “How’d the rest of your weekend go?”
“Good. Didn’t see you again though. You kinda disappeared on me, there.”
“I’m a popular guy, what can I say?”
Raylan doesn’t answer, because the rest of the class finally decides to show up. He gives them all goggles and gets them settled in the range, going around behind each one, showing them how to hit a target. Tim’s conscious of their eyes on him. He misses on purpose, aiming for the outer edges instead of the heart.
“Hey asshole,” someone says, “Have you even thrown a ball before?”
It’s good to relax, Daniels had said, dropping down next to Tim on the ground. The day was colder than it’d been in a while, a relief from the heat. The sand was still the same, though, and it was in everything Tim touched--except his gun. The guys were running circles around them with a tennis ball, but the day had been quiet. They all got restless in the stillness, but they made jokes to keep it light. Hey Gutterson, catch this you freaky fucking sniper! Tim missed the tennis ball, and Daniels, pressed against Tim shoulder to wrist, had laughed. The tennis ball made an arch overhead, and then from the other direction, another shape sailed through the air. Grenade! someone yelled, and everyone ran. That night, stretched out under the stars, Hey Daniels, why’s it so fucking dry on this side of the mountain? And Daniels had rolled onto his side, Just go to sleep, Tim. Jesus.
Raylan is behind him, a hand on Tim’s side, the other pressed against his wrist. “Like this,” Raylan says, like he’s teaching Tim something. Tim can feel the heat from Raylan’s chest, the cool weight of the gun in his hand. Raylan’s got a hand on Tim’s side, trying to get him to balance his weight. Tim’s body responds automatically, like gears clicking in to place. Bang bang bang, the gun sings, and Tim isn’t even a little bit off target.
“Yeah,” Tim says, putting the gun down and backing away. “I’ve thrown a fuckin’ ball before.”
The room is completely quiet, and everyone’s looking between Tim and the guy who’d spoken, and Raylan is still right there, just a little bit too close for it to feel natural. But it does, sort of, and Raylan’s hand is on the small of his back, not quite a warning, but it might be when it grows up. “Have you fired a gun before?” Tim says, his voice pitched low. “At a person? Or an animal? At something alive?”
Tim moves forward, and the guy hits him, hard, right in the face. And when Tim hits the ground he’s sort of smiling, but he’s got blood in his mouth, and god dammit, it just isn’t worth the effort of trying to hit back.
Raylan hauls him up by his collar, yells at the guy, yells at Tim, and Tim can tell he’s freaking the cowboy out because he just can’t stop smiling this stupid, red tinged smile. He’d skipped breakfast again, but in the grand scheme of things, little meals aren’t so important.
~
“What the fuck was that?” Raylan asks, handing Tim a chocolate bar.
“I get a cookie? Is it because I shot that target right in the heart?”
They’re in Raylan’s home, and it’s empty. Sort of silent and heavy with something strange that Tim can’t put his finger on. There’s this sense of a woman there, although Raylan’s never spoken about one before. Tim takes the chocolate and bites into it. He leans against the wall and looks at Raylan placidly.
Raylan sighs, “Tim, you’re going to get yourself in trouble if you keep this shit up. It’s not worth it.”
Tim looks out the window, “Did you know it’s drier on the leeward side of a mountain?” he asks.
Raylan just stares at him, “Someone teach you about the weather?”
“Naw,” Tim says, dropping down onto Raylan’s couch. “That one I looked up.”
Shit Daniels’s voice had shattered the semblance of stillness that Tim had drawn around himself like a net. He was lying on his belly on a roof, staring through his scope at a target. The fuck are you doin’ here, you’re gonna give away my position. Daniels shook his head, no way, he’d said, no fucking way are you going to shoot that guy. He’s like, a thousand miles away. You’ll miss. The knot of guilt in Tim’s gut had loosened, then, the one he’d never wanted to name. He took aim. Fired. Daniels’s hand dropped down low on the small of Tim’s back and they’d stayed there, watching the sun rise and blood dry. Did you know, Daniels said, that objects deflect to the left in the Southern hemisphere, it’s because of the Coriolis effect. And Tim, Tim had known that, because he always needed to know where his bullet was going to go. He’d rolled over onto his back and fisted a hand in Daniels’s collar, No I did not, he’d said, tell me more. Daniels’s lips had been rough and chapped, and they’d tasted faintly of blood, but he kissed Tim like he really meant it, and they rolled around on that rooftop until the sun was high in the sky.
“Shit, Raylan,” Tim says, “What the fuck is worth it anymore?”
And Raylan casts a glance around the house that looks like a woman lives there, but there’s no sign of one, and he shrugs. “Fuck if I know,” he says. “Catchin’ bad guys?”
Tim, sprawled out on Raylan’s couch nods his head. “Yeah, must be.”
“Why’d they kick you out, Gutterson?” Raylan asks, and it has the effect of a lighting bolt. Tim scrambles to his feet, pulls his fist back, blinks and there’s a gun in his face, Raylan pulls his gun faster than Tim’s seen anyone pull it, ever. It sits between them, heavy and weighty, and Tim just looks at Raylan. “Told you I’m quick,” Raylan says.
Tim takes a step forward. Raylan sets the gun down.
Another step, and then another, and then it’s Raylan who’s moving forward, who’s crowding Tim up against the wall. “Why’d they kick you out?” he says again, and Tim curls his fingers in Raylan’s shirt.
“Why the fuck do you think?” he asks, and Raylan kisses him. “Good guess,” Tim says.
He fists his hands in Raylan’s shirt and pulls him in closer. He thinks of Raylan’s eyes watching the water trail down his chest before he’d taken him to Savannah. He thinks of Raylan leaning over him in bed, with morning breath and concern, he thinks of Daniels—for a second, just for a second—on a rooftop at the edge of the world. He pulls Raylan in closer, and fumbles with his belt.
Raylan pulls back, and Tim opens his mouth to protest, but then he’s being dragged upstairs. Raylan pulls him up the stairs and shoves him down in bed, and then they’re both peeling their shirts off, trying to get to as much skin as possible as quickly as possible. Raylan’s kissing him like they’ve both got something to prove, and maybe they do, maybe that’s the fucking secret neither of them will say out loud.
But then Raylan’s got his fingers wrapped around Tim’s cock and he’s not really thinking much about anything at all.
~
On a rooftop in Afghanistan, Daniels had shown Tim constellations and cloud types. Tim hadn’t known it then, but it would be the last time he spoke to Daniels, the last time he saw him, except for that one second through the crosshairs when he tripped, fell, and then he was just gone. Shit man Daniels had said, pressed up tight against Tim’s body. I think they kick you out for this sort of thing. Tim had rolled his eyes and tipped his head back, looked up at the sky. That’s a stratus cloud, right?
~
The man in charge gets back five days early, and calls Tim in to meet with him. “I’m sorry about this,” he says, waving Tim’s schedule around. “You understand.”
It isn’t a question. “Yes sir,” Tim says, but it doesn’t sit right on his tongue.
“They tell me you’re losing weight. Is everything all right?”
“Yes sir,” Tim says again.
“Well that’s good, then,” the man in charge says, nodding his head. “Good. For the best, I think. You’ll be moving on in your training--focusing on your weak points. Givens is leaving us anyway. He’s heading off to Miami to wrestle alligators.”
Tim looks up, holds still. “Thank you, sir.”
~
“Were you goin’ ta fucking tell me?” Tim asks, not bothering to check and see if the room is empty, but it is. Raylan’s looking at him, his hand on his gun, and Tim stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
“I was,” Raylan says, like it’s nothing that matters at all. “Seems someone beat me to it.”
“Fuck you,” Tim says.
“They want me to go,” Raylan says. “Think it’ll be better for me.”
Tim looks at him, hears, Congratulations, son, you’re going home. Your part in this war is over. He’d said I can stay and fight, he’d said My leg will get better, he’d said Sir—any word on Daniels? Has anyone found him? He’d gotten a sharp look, Daniels is gone, son. Take your blessings where you can get them. We’re shipping you out tomorrow.
Is it because of me? Tim doesn’t say. He just nods his head at Raylan.
“My wife left me,” Raylan says.
“Didn’t know you’re married,” Tim says, his voice sharp.
“I’m not. Wasn’t when I met you. Just finishing up here before I left. Miami will be interestin’, I think.”
Tim just nods. “See you around, then.” He turns to leave.
“Hey, Gutterson,” Raylan says. Tim stops. “You’re the fastest fuckin’ learner I’ve ever taught.”
Tim rolls his eyes, “No shit, cowboy,” he says, “But my telekinesis is still fucked.”
~
Tim’s been in Kentucky for only nine months when they get another new guy. He hears about it from Art, who saunters in looking like he’d thought he’d found gold and it’d just been a pile of shit. “We’ve got a new guy,” Art announces. “Congratulations, Tim, you are officially not new.”
Tim flicks his eyes up at Art, “Thanks,” he says.
“This one’s quick with his gun. Might even be better n’you,” Art adds conversationally, dropping a file on Tim’s desk.
Tim looks down at the folder, can’t help but grin. “Nah,” he says, reading the name Raylan Givens. “Fast draw, sure. I’m a better shot.”
“Is that so?”
~
“Hey Raylan,” Tim says, “There’s a goddamn storm comin’, get your ass in gear.”
“Why the fuck do you know so much about the weather?” Raylan asks, jumping into the driver’s seat.
“Afghanistan,” Tim answers, and Raylan looks at him like he’s crazy.
Who the fuck are you Tim had said to the kid who dropped down next to him on a hot, dry day in Afghanistan. There was sand in everything, and high wispy clouds in the air. The sky was that shade of blue you could drown in, and Tim looked at the kid who’d just dropped down next to him, and he thought that those eyes could cut him right in half if they looked at him too fast. The kid had grinned a smile that split his face in half and made his chapped lips bleed. Daniels, the kid had said, I hear you think it’s gonna snow.
Raylan snaps his fingers in front of Tim’s face. “We got shit to do, soldier. Stay with me.”
Tim lets his body relax down into the seat and stares at the cold, damp Kentucky hills. “Yes sir,” he says.