Chapter 3

At Igwanda's parents' home the reaction to their story of the now-disgraced sheriff was completely different.

"You took too much of a chance, girl," said Antonio Igwanda, the colonel's father, in a reproving tone. "Shoot the man, not the gun. It's surer; he's a bigger target, and you finish any possible threat right there."

Meiersdottir looked helplessly at her husband. A mosquito landed on her arm; absently, she slapped at it while waiting for him to respond.

"Excessive, Pa," Carlos said. "She is an excellent marksman even from the hip, and there was no need to kill."

Antonio shook his head firmly. "Everybody misses sometimes. The element of surprise is gone, he blasts away and takes out her and my grandbaby both, and what then? Oh, you'll kill him, son, you've got the jump then, but it's too late. Another time put a hole in him, Mandy, take the sure shot. Much safer. You agree, Carlos?"

The trouble was, Igwanda reflected, that his father was right, strictly speaking. The elder Igwanda, too, had been a career soldier, though he'd never risen above enlisted ranks, and his comments were strictly by the book. Shoot the mass, the largest target area an enemy presents, where even a near miss will disable, don't try for a tour de force of weaponry and leave yourself open to a counterstrike.

Seeing her husband hesitate, Meiersdottir decided to take the initiative herself.

"Mr. Igwanda—" she started.

"Tony," the senior Igwanda corrected. "Or Antonio if you like. Or Sarge, I answer to that too. Not mister. You're family, girl. Family doesn't say mister."

"All right, Tony then," she said, smiling. "No, Sarge. I like that. But Sarge, I didn't want to kill him, just stop him. I don't want to kill anyone, or anything. I'm sorry, your new daughter-in-law is a pacifist, I don't like killing."

"Mmm," said Antonio thoughtfully. "Minute ago you took a swat at a 'skeeter. Get him?" She nodded. "So much for killing."

"It's not the same!" she protested indignantly. "That was an insect!"

"Sure," he said. "Insect that didn't mean you no harm. That 'skeeter, he wasn't out to hurt you, all he wanted was just a little bit of your blood which is his food. You wouldn't even have missed it, it's so little, and the worst you'd have would be a teeny-weeny itch that you'd scratch if you thought about it and would go away pretty quick even if you didn't."

"Well, OK, but..." Meiersdottir trailed off, looking baffled at the turn of the conversation.

"You know, most insects, they got about ninety-eight percent of the same DNA as humans, did you know that?"

"Well, yes, of course, but why are you saying this?" she asked, now thoroughly confused.

"All right, here's the point," he said. "You don't want to kill people, right?" She nodded. "That's all well and good, and I agree, I don't either ordinarily."

"Then why are you telling me—?"

"But," he continued, overriding her, "this sheriff, to me he quit being a 'people' the second he pointed his shotgun at you, threatened you, threatened my son and my grandson. He became an enemy. And unlike that 'skeeter, which was only doing what was natural for him to do, this enemy was settin' out to do you hurt on purpose, bad hurt, meaning to do it. Now, tell me how come two percent of DNA is worth giving him more consideration than you just gave the 'skeeter?"

Meiersdottir nearly burst into laughter. She'd spent the first few hours fairly tiptoeing around, intimidated in spite of herself, unable to shake off the fact that she was meeting her husband's family for the first time and needed to make a good impression, ingratiate herself—and likewise aware, though only peripherally, that hers was the only white face in a black household.

Suddenly she felt free of any sense of pressure. In the span of only a few minutes she'd been welcomed into the family and invited into the kind of debate that intimates, not strangers, share. Sarge wasn't criticizing her or her views, she realized, merely offering fatherly advice.

But the debate was still open. And she didn't like losing debates, even to kin.

"If I could have shot only the two percent I would have," she answered, tongue firmly in her cheek. "But wouldn't that have been even a smaller target?"

Antonio licked his finger and mimed making a stroke on an invisible board, as if awarding a point.

"Besides," she went on, "he had that shotgun pointed right at one of us all the time. First Carlos, then me. If I'd hit him anywhere that didn't make an instant kill, all he had to do was squeeze the trigger. And instant kill is a really small target, and even then there's death reflex."

The senior Igwanda gave her a skeptical look. "You telling me you thought that all out on the spot, girl?" he demanded.

"Well..." She hesitated and looked abashed. "OK, no, not exactly. Not all of it. Mostly I just saw that shotgun pointing at us, threatening us, and I thought right, just eliminate the threat. If he'd tried to fire after I fried his gun it would just have blown up in his face and we'd be OK."

"See, now, that's civilian thinking," said Antonio. "You see a gun, you worry about the gun. But a military mind recognizes that the gun ain't no more than a tool, no different from a shovel or a hammer. It doesn't shoot by itself any more than a shovel digs or a hammer pounds nails without there's a human being using it. Like they say, guns don't kill people, people kill people. The gun ain't the threat, your enemy holding it's the threat. Understand?"

She nodded. "Of course. But if you take away the tool, isn't that the same bottom line?"

"No, ma'am! Is that the only tool he has, the only gun? You waste a shot on the weapon you see, he dives quick for cover and pulls out the one you didn't see and there you are, gunfight at the OK corral and you've lost your element of surprise, your edge. Take out the enemy, not just the weapon he shows you, that's the right way."

"Enemies can become friends, Sarge," she said, unwilling to give ground. "It's one of the unique features of humans, of thinking beings, they can change. Yesterday's enemies may be today's friends—but only if you give them the chance, if you don't just kill them out of hand."

"Now, I gotta agree with that, about people bein' able to change. Lord, as black as I am, as my wife is and our kids, I thank God for it. Once was a time when that sheriff of yours, he wasn't the exception, he was the rule. Went the other way, too, some places. It was a lot of what was behind the Urban Wars. But it's a hell of a lot better now, mostly."

"There, that's what I'm saying, thinking beings can change," interjected Meiersdottir.

"Sure, girl, I said I agree," the older man continued. "But that's over generations. It ain't the nigger-haters who changed, or the honkey-haters, it's their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids and on down the line. And even then, some of it still gets passed down. There's your sheriff, and Carlos went through some of it not all that long ago, gettin' called nigger on one side 'cause he's as black as I am and oreo on the other 'cause he wanted an education."

"He's told me some of it," she acknowledged.

"Yeah, and that's my point. Change is slow, is the best you can say."

"But it can happen," she persisted. "It does happen. And not always slowly, look how fast it was in this country, from Jim Crow to a black American president in less than a hundred years."