//------------------------------//
// 25 - Wanting Purpose 
// Story: The GATE 
// by scifipony 
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Judith Brown


I was going to do something important with my life, to help people and make a difference—I just didn't know what.  I would attend CCC this fall; I was thinking paralegal or web design.  I didn't want to join the sheriffs like my dad, though he really had done just about everything he could to convince me.  He'd taught me to shoot and how to hunt.  I'd shot a hare once, which convinced me hunting wasn't it for me, though I hiked and fished with Dad any chance I got.  His stories of citing off-roaders, giving speeding tickets, dealing with families of idiots screaming at one another, and transporting occasional prisoners didn't fit my idea of making a difference.  It wasn't it, in a sense, either, though I really respected the man a lot for doing the job. 

In any case, I needed a job for myself, which was why I was working at the shooting range run by Daniel's family.  It wasn't like there was a lot of choice, and Daniel Shoal was all right, even if his grandpa Silver was an over-the-top right-wing loon.  All I had to say was "Yessir!" and "Nosir!" when the grey-bearded geezer showed up squinting at me—packing his long barreled Colt revolver in a black holster like a cartoon sheriff—and spitting as he made sure none of us were "slacking."

It's how I found myself bending over that day, plucking discarded ammo boxes, shell casings, and candy wrappers from the brown grass.  The bucket I dropped the stuff into was full and heavy.  The last customer had left a half-hour ago and the loudest sound this far from the 395 and Bishop was the wind and an occasional bird.  I heard a creaky hasp then the snap of what I was sure was the last padlock on the range gear cabinets.

Sure enough, Daniel called out.  "That's enough, Dude."

It was a joke between us that we called each other that.  Most of my friends called me Jude, except him.  As I approached, he tossed me a water bottle.  As I put the bucket beside the trash, I asked, "Are they really letting us close up ourselves?"

"Pretty much," he said.  He had short black hair and hadn't shaved in a day or so.  He looked scruffy, like the rest of his family.  We clunked our water bottles together, drank, then hustled the trash to the wildlife-proof bin and locked that up, too.  

As the sun sank into the clouds hovering over the peaks, I glanced at the house.  I saw a few familiar trucks and my dirty brown Tercel beater, that was all.  And no open windows.   "No lodgers.  What gives?  I don't remember ever seeing that, like, in forever.  Is business bad?"  Inyo County was all about tourists.  

"It happens."  He shrugged as we headed for the house.

I noticed that the twin's horses were gone.  Antoinette and her brother—I couldn't remember his name because she always called him Brother and so did everyone else—were cool.  Why Brother rode that janky Nightingale, I couldn't guess.  The stallion had trotted over and tried to bite me once, and I'm good around horses.  They lived somewhere near LA with their divorced mother.  It was hard to forget Antoinette because of her sweet smile and freckles, but I suspected I was nowhere sophisticated enough to be her friend.  She went to Cal State Domingues Hills.  I shrugged.  "I'll just use the john and go."

"Um." Daniel opened the door and grabbed a sign from the table beside the door.  He flipped it so I could read, Silver Shoal's is Closed Today.  "We're not open tomorrow."

"Wait, huh?"  I followed him as he trudged to the gate, leaving a wake of dust.  He had to push hard to slide the sign into the corroded holder.  "Is something wrong, dude?"

The shadows became deeper.  The sun had slid into a blue-grey bank of clouds that meant rain on the western slopes of the Sierras.  I followed him back to the house as he seemed to contemplate what he wanted to share.

"You want me to update the web site?"

"You know it...  It—It's the opposite of something wrong, Judith."

I stopped, my mouth opening in surprise.  He hadn't used my name, even on the phone asking my father if I was home, in, well, forever. 

"My dad said I could decide whether to invite you in.  He calls it an adventure.  He says it's going to be some few weeks of a lot of work and thinking on your feet.  And it'll pay well.  I know you're saving up so you don't need a full-time job when you're at CCC, so...  It'd be great for you.  You game?"

Maybe it was the sudden gloom and the oddity of everyone being gone that gave me a bad feeling about it all.  But, oh man, it did make me curious.  He knew my father was a sheriff, so I doubted that he'd let me know of something shady, but on the other hand, Daniel's uncle was a loon, like I said, so he might not have been told everything.  

I wanted to make a difference, so maybe this could be it.  "An adventure, huh?"

"Yeah.  But it's proprietary, need to know, hush hush—"

"Now you're messing with me."

"It really needs to be kept secret, for now."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "After that build up, it had better be good."

"You in?"

I sighed and raised my fist up, knuckles toward him.  "The only thing that would convince me more was if it involved horses."  I loved horses.  They and I saw eye-to-eye, and, with one notable exception named Nightingale, they all seemed to love me as much as I loved them.  I'd been riding since I was five.  Family couldn't afford to own one, though.  Couldn't afford to pay to ride, anymore, recently, saving up for college and all that.  

Daniel bumped his knuckles against mine. 

He chuckled.  "It sort of does, I'm told.  One of the reasons I decided to ask, in addition to us being best buds."  

"Really?"  About buds: Strictly non-romantic, and he understood why.

He held open the door to the house.  "Use the john."

I fake batted my eyes at him.  "You remembered!"

"Dude.  Meet me by the new shed."  He closed the door at me and I laughed...

...and couldn't help but be worried as much as I was intrigued.