Sixty dollars' worth

Oleg Volk From a hiding place in the attic, Ariel watched her father walk away from the house. Dusk was gathering, with the sun setting behind her house, and so a long shadow preceded the man. David, her father, walked with a weary, unhurried step, shuffling a bit. Small clouds of dust, pale yellow in the oblique rays of the sun puffed up with his every step and settled slowly. Another shadow, dancing and distorted, was cast onto David's broad back. The man who cast it was a veritable runt beside Ariel's father. He, too, walked slowly. He had no reason to hurry. He did not particularly enjoy his job but his job it was, so he would walk David out to the landfill at the edge of the town and shoot him. The long, tan limbs of the girl were aching from being scrunched up within her hiding spot. The dusty tarp covering several old bicycles also hid her from sight and it never occured to the policemen that David wasn't alone in the house. Of the four men that came to get her father, three drove off after bringing him outside. The one remaining was now herding him to the landfill. They weren't even twenty steps distant yet and Ariel stared straight at the sweat-stained back in a grey uniform with blue piping. She could see where the stitching where it crossed on the back of the tunic, so bright was the reddish sunlight. She thought of the rifle her father used to have. If only she still had it! She'd have aimed three inches above that x when so close. She knew that because she'd often hit a drink can dead center when aiming at its top. The two men walked in silence, thirty, then fifty meters distant. David did not even strain for a lunge, did not turn back. He knew where the stubby black muzzle was aimed. Ariel thought of the sixty dollars Dad got for the old beaten bolt action in a "buy-back" and that sixty meters was its close zero. "Better get something than fight them over this old thing" David said back then. He wasn't fighting now, either, though no longer by choice. The policeman's back just passed the sixty meter mark then. She would grieve later. She would exact vengeance. On that day, that never ending hot day, she could only watch. The two figures got to the turn. As her father stopped to look at the house once, the grey shape of the executioner paused, outlined so clearly against the house behind him. For a moment, the policeman stood still, a perfect outline like so many Ariel has seen at the range. Then David resumed his shuffle and the two disappeared from sight.