Free Vineyard Blues by Philip R. Craig Page B

fuddy-duddies, just like my parents,” sighed Zee. “They didn’t like the music I liked, and now I don’t like the music the next generation likes.”
    As one who was born disliking most of whatever music was currently popular—preferring country-and-western and classical, and having a selective taste for traditional English, Scottish, Irish, and Russian ballads, some jazz and some blues—I did not instantly admit to fuddy-duddyism.
    â€œMaybe it’s the sweaty-bed blues they like,” I said, easing up to her and starting to unbutton her shirt.
    Her blue-black hair smelled sweet and musky, and her dark eyes were deep as the sea. “Maybe that’s it,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt in return. “Makes sense to me.”
    I slid her shirt off her shoulders and kissed her right there on that spot at the base of her throat. She put her arms around my neck. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
    Marriage is good for you.
    The next day, Joshua and I worked on the addition, with Diana supervising from her corral. It was pretty clear that I’d probably get more done without assistance, but so what? I wanted my kids to know how to swing hammers, fish, and do the other stuff that I did. As we worked, the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire came through the trees from the Rod and Gun Club. One of the poppers was Zee, using her custom .45.
    Zee was practicing at the club range with Manny Fonseca, who was her tutor in the competitive pistol-shooting game they played. In spite of her belief that the world would be a better place without firearms, Zee was a whiz with a pistol and had begun to make a name for herself shooting competitively.
    She also had a lot of fun, which was something she had expected even less than her discovery that she was what Manny called a natural with a handgun. Her moral convictions about weapons were thus at odds with her talent and the pleasure shooting gave her, but the conflict didn’t prevent her from being a better pistol shot than I had ever been, even when I’d packed iron professionally, first as a soldier and then as a cop. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I could shoot pretty well as long as I didn’t have to shoot too far. Zee was a veritable Joanna Wayne.
    In time, she and I would teach our children about pistols, rifles, and shotguns, for ignorance of weapons is, like ignorance of most things, more dangerous than knowledge. But that would come later, when they were older and bigger. For now, as the sounds of Manny’s and Zee’s practice rounds came snapping at us through the trees, Joshua and Diana were apprentice carpenters.
    That afternoon, after cleaning her pistol and making note of an upcoming competition over in America, Zee went off to work on the four-to-midnight shift.
    No doubt there would be plenty of work waiting for her. The emergency ward at the hospital in OB took in a pretty steady stream of customers during the summer, including moped casualties; sufferers of sprains, contusions, broken bones, heart problems, alcohol and drug overdoses; and other routine patients. I don’t think I could ever do the work of medics without becoming hard as granite, but Zee, like most nurses and doctors I’ve met, somehow managed to stay quite human. It’s almost enough to make you believe that there is a God.
    Not long after she left, Corrie Appleyard, looking none too well, came putt-putting down the driveway on the same moped he’d been working on earlier.
    â€œEasy rider,” he said with a forced smile. “Just came by to say good-bye, and thanks. I’m catching the seven-thirty boat back to the mainland.” He put out his long brown hand and shook mine.
    â€œZee’s gone to work,” I said. “She’ll be sorry to have missed you. We’ll have a room ready for you in the fall, so come back anytime.”
    â€œSorry to have missed your wife,” said Corrie, “but I’ll take