Chapter 12

There isn't a great variety of eating spots in Red Hawk. When you've eaten at the Hawk House and the Dairy Queen, you've covered the ones worth giving good money to. There's another drive-in, but I learned not to eat there when I lived in Red Hawk, and between my own observations and what people had told me I'd decided not to try it out this trip.

After consultation, Cecelia, Darlia, and I decided to get ingredients at the store and eat in the park. She looked for bread, I took charge of the lunch meat, and Darlia would run the produce angle. I grabbed salami, and braunschweiger, and extra sharp cheddar, and pastrami, and corned beef, and Swiss cheese. Some might say that cheese isn't meat, but if Nero Wolfe could declare that in his house "contact" wasn't a verb, I could put cheese under the meat category.

Darlia was with me, so when I'd gotten what I wanted we headed over to the produce section. Darlia picked out a head of lettuce, and half a dozen tomatoes, and some yellow onions, and three avocados that she determined were ready to eat – that took some digging, since stores don't carry avocados fully ripe, as they don't take long after that to go bad – and besides a ripe avocado is too soft to travel well.

Cecelia was waiting for us by the registers, and we merged carts. She'd grabbed half a dozen loaves of French bread, and a loaf of fresh sourdough. I looked askance at the sourdough; I've found that store-bought isn't sour enough for my taste. Anna – my aunt who raised me – used to make sourdough from a starter she kept, and that was real sourdough; anything else is ordinary bread with a little odor and almost no flavor added. Cecelia bakes regularly, but she's never tried sourdough.

But I didn't say anything, and we ran our cart up to the cash register. I reached for my wallet but Cecelia forestalled me; apparently she'd come prepared to pay. She pulled a wad of bills out of her pocket – she's never owned a purse in all the time I've known her – and paid for the groceries. We swung by the motel and grabbed utensils, particularly my big knife, which I carry around just in case. I almost never have occasion to use it, but if I have to I can chop small pieces of wood with it, or cut food, or defend myself – or, since I keep it sharp enough, I can shave with it, though I much prefer my old safety razor. If I want to risk a sliced throat getting the whiskers off I'll buy a straight razor, not that I know where to start looking for one of those. For that matter, it's getting mighty hard to find blades for that old safety razor, and I may soon have to switch to disposable.

In the park the shade was cool and the sun was warm, and while Cecelia directed me in my part of the preparations Darlia ran over to the swing set and began pumping herself as high as she could go. We learned long ago that she holds on tight enough to strangle the chains; she won't fall out of the swing. She doesn't jump out either, the way most kids love to do, though she'd thought about it that day in the park. I think that perhaps she's inherited a slight touch of my mild acrophobia. I knew a guy when I was young who had the real genuine article; if he had to go up a flight of stairs he held on to the banister with both hands and took it one step at a time, and poured cold sweat. I can control mine, and hardly notice it anymore; my theory is that Darlia's got just enough of it that she unconsciously clings to the swing with a death grip.

When I help Cecelia put food together – which is seldom – I do as she tells me. She took charge of slicing the stuff that took control. There's no way on earth I could make paper thin slices of pastrami, but she took my big knife and did it like she was using a machine. I pulled the head of lettuce apart, and sliced up the onions, and left the tomatoes for her. We've learned that if I try to slice a tomato all I create is a mess. Cecelia can take the exact same knife and the exact same tomato, and get perfect slices.

When everything was sliced, and on paper plates, Cecelia called Darlia over and we dug in. We hadn't sliced the French bread – that's akin to heresy; you pull hunks off the loaf – but the sourdough was in slices, and just to see what I'd find I made my first sandwich with that. I got a surprise – it was actually good sourdough. Cecelia noticed my reaction, and said, "I'll go back before we go home and find out where we can get some."

"Coolness."

While I ate I watched my family. I never get tired of that. Eating, sleeping, walking, reading – whatever they're doing, I like to look at 'em. I've heard disparaging remarks about women who look adoringly at their husbands, but I can't join the sneers; I look adoringly at my wife and daughter. And if it's good enough for me, surely it's good enough for a wife who loves her husband. I suspect the scorn comes from people who wouldn't look adoringly at anyone – except perhaps themselves.

After a while we'd chomped our way through just about everything we'd bought. What was left over we put back in the packages or wrapped in empty bread bags, and carried to the car. We stopped by the motel and dropped off the supplies, putting 'em in the little refrigerator in the room, and Cecelia grabbed her gun and clipped it to her belt; she was wearing a shirt and jeans to go shooting. Not realizing we'd be shooting while in Red Hawk, we'd left Darlia's coffee can in Albuquerque, but we'd find something to put the brass in, though we wouldn't take it back home. Darlia's been going to the range with us nearly as long as she's been alive, and she picks up our brass – and collects it. She's got boxes of empty 9mm cartridges in her room, and I suppose that someday she'll decide what she's gonna do with 'em.

The Red Hawk shooting range is northwest of town, in an old gravel pit. The police department has set up a backstop, and installed shooting lanes, though by now the wear and tear is fairly considerable. As Harry had promised, the officer running the range was expecting us, and though he looked a little oddly at Darlia he didn't say anything. He issued us ear protection – Cecelia and I have our own shooter's glasses - and we walked out to the range itself.