Meg Callahan (setinstone) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-08-10 15:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 18, meghan callahan, thomas galloway, | meg and tom |
Week 18: Saturday
Characters: Tom and Meg (and their dogs)
Location: The Farmhouse, then the detached garage
Summary: Tom teaches Meg how to take care of her pistol and the two talk.
Rating: L for Looong
Saturday morning brought a chill to the air, slightly sharper than what it had been all week. It would’ve been nice if the chill alone had been what brought Meg out of her dreams--but her waking was helped along by the distant patter of paws on the hardwood hallway outside her and Holly’s room.
Then the sound of the bedroom door pushed further ajar. Then the ‘attack’. Thirty pounds of excitable canine launched from beside the bed onto the drowsy woman and her snoozing seeing-eye dog. A blitzkrieg of morning kisses and prancing paws was certainly better than any alarm clock she’d ever had.
Her chuckle melted into a groan as she shielded her face from the onslaught. “Morning, Nuisance.” Rollo wiggled and shifted around the other moving lump under the blanket-- the one named Sarge-- before both canines made their way down to the floor. Meg followed soon after, rubbing the drowsiness away from her eyes with the butt of one palm.
The younger dog pawed and padded the floor, impatient and excited about nothing more than the fact that Meg was moving. Sarge looked at him with a mild amount of disdain. “Where’s your Papa...”
Rollo’s human knocked on the doorframe but made a point not to look in, just in case the occupants weren’t decent. “Rollo, come.” The dog was always impatient when he didn’t get to go out right away, and Tom was moving a tad slower than his usual routine. He was freshly showered and had wolfed down breakfast before gathering up the weapons not being used to give them their weekly inspection and cleaning whether they needed it or not, and on his last trip into the building. “Sorry if he woke you up Meg.”
“S’okay...” Meg spoke through a yawn and from behind the back of one hand. Her hair was still slightly wild from sleep, and swallowed the round of her shoulders in it’s heavy reach for her chest. She swept it back with both hands, splayed--gathered to a messy ponytail. The faded daylight that streamed through the blinds caught the starburst of slight red scar tissue at her left shoulder. “S’pose I should get up anyway. What time is it?”
Tom checked his watch. “A little after eight.” He’d been up since a bit before four that morning, since he habitually took the predawn watch as he considered that the most dangerous time and one needing an experienced hand. “I’m about to start weapons detail, you want your pistol cleaned?”
Rollo was prancing around his master’s heels, clearly indicating his desire to go out and Tom shook his head. “Wait boy, just another minute.”
“Oh... Yes, actually... but...” Her hands left their work on her hair--one smoothly followed her mattress to the small end table near the wall, then the line of it’s edge to the drawer... then the knob. “I was gonna ask if you if you could show me how to do it myself.” She pulled the drawer open and withdrew the older revolver, the safety, as always, was on.
She transferred the gun from one hand to the other (nearest him and the door) and extended it out from her shoulder for him to take. “Go head out. He sounds like he’s ‘bout ready to spring a leak.” Fingertips loosened from the weapon when he slipped it from her grasp. Meg smiled lightly, her stare aimed in his general direction. “I’ll catch up.”
Tom nodded as he took the weapon from her hand. Frankly it was very unnerving to have a blind person handle a firearm, but she seemed to somehow be able to point and shoot most of the time. “I’ll be in the garage.” The pistol was checked and carefully placed in his belt, barrel pointing away from him, before he started off. His boots and the sounds of Rollo’s paws diminished as the pair travelled down the hall.
Meg’s smile remained for the most part, even after she listened to Man and Dog turn down the hallway. When she was sure Tom was out of earshot, she huffed a little aborted laugh, and murmured to Sarge. “He’s so personable.”
Getting dressed was a matter of routine: jeans replaced the cotton sleeper pants she wore to bed. A few layers of sweaters went over the plain package-quality tank top, as well as her boots, scarf, and jacket. She and the lumbering mass of canine made their way to the kitchen, where she nabbed a piece of nearly petrified fruit cake for breakfast. Memorized paces crossed to the back door, where she let Sarge out while slipping her sun glasses out from a pocket and situated them over her eyes.
She could smell the snow in the air, and feel the feather-light touch of flakes caught on her cheekbones. So that’s where the chill came from...
Meg leaned on the porch railing while she listened to Sarge’s tags out in the yard while he did his morning business, then shot a whistle through her lips. He bounded back to her, siding her thigh with his collar under her hand, as usual. Together, they headed in the direction of the garage.
Over the past few weeks Tom and Searle had constructed a fireplace in the garage for heating, set at the center of one of the longer walls and topped with a metal hood to capture the smoke and send it out the side. More windows had been installed as well, to allow for enough natural light to work with without raising the garage doors and losing all the precious heat. Rollo, having done his business, was curled up on a rug near the fire and patiently waiting for his master to finish his work.
Tom’s workbench was set near the windows, with a steel job box that had once graced a car mechanic’s shop floor off to the side to contain his tools. The veteran had his carbine lying in pieces on the bench, ready for cleaning. When he heard the door to the outside open, he turned in his swivel chair to see who it was. “Didn’t expect you for a while yet,” he told Meg honestly, a bit surprised to see her. “Figured you’d get something to eat first.”
Her free hand pulled the side door shut behind her, though she kept a loose hold on the dog by her side. The garage wasn’t that familiar to her yet, and though she had a basic layout of the place set in her mind, things tended to move a lot over the course of the day. Sarge padded with her toward the middle of the floorplan at an easy pace, careful to give her a wide birth of anything blocking the way. She also had Tom’s voice as a beacon.
“I did. Fruitcake. Breakfast of champions.” Her top lip pulled back a tiny bit over sharp, even teeth in a slightly feral grin. Sarge stopped walking right before the chair Tom occupied. Meg stopped with him.
“If you say so.” Tom’s tone was dubious, but he’d never cared for fruitcake. “There’s another swivel chair off to your left, you’re welcome to pull it up. Let me put my carbine off to the side and we’ll get started on your revolver.”
Meg didn’t particularly like fruitcake either, but it had sugar and could probably withstand an H-Bomb.. She usually ate like a bird anyway. A somewhat tight, but genuine (close lipped) smile answered him. Vague directions were vague, but they didn’t bother her... regardless of the question if the mentioned chair was three paces away or ten. She just dipped a hand into the back pocket of her jeans and snagged the collapsible walking-stick she usually had no need for (or desire to use--it got in the way), but it was a better option than ‘blindly’ wandering for a chair.
“Go find Rollo, boy.” This murmured to the seeing-eye dog as she dropped the length of the thin plastic (like a car antenna, or toy light saber). Sarge wandered from her hip to collapse near the other canine as his Master swung the skinny probe to her left with a practiced step in that direction. Plastic clicked on the chair’s wheels. Meg grabbed the back of the thing and tugged it back toward Tom’s work station.
Tom would freely admit that giving detailed directions to something in plain sight wasn’t something he was used to. It was a good thing Meg couldn’t see him, because her expression clearly had shown that his directions hadn’t been good enough and his face reddened slightly. He didn’t dislike the woman or think she was weak, but he’d never had to deal with a blind person ever in his life before she wandered into their midst. If it had just been himself, well, the veteran would have felt bad about it but he would have left her behind every time as not only was she blind, she’d also been on death’s door at the time.
He’d been a soldier, not a saint, and he’d never claimed otherwise.
The carbine parts were carefully put off to the side, with care not to let any of the smaller parts disappear on him, before Tom took the revolver and brought it to the center of the table. “All right Meg, you’re going to have to help me help you on this one. I’ve never tried to teach this sort of skill before to someone who can’t see what I’m doing.”
“Can do, Major Tom.” Sooner or later, everyone had a pet-name from Meg. She said it with a tilted grin. Maybe as a form of good-natured teasing to the subtle bewilderment seeping from his voice. In the meantime, she sat herself on the second chair and scooched it up closer to the table. The walking stick collapsed and pushed into her jacket pocket. “Ever heard the term ‘hand-over-hand’?”
“I’ve heard of being able to take weapons apart blindfolded, but usually it involves seeing first and then moving up to blindfolds.” Tom responded dryly, managing to refrain from pointing out that he’d been a Sergeant Major, and a command one at that, rather than a piddly ass Major. She’d meant it all in good fun, and those sorts of rank distinctions were meaningless in this new age anyway. “Hand-over-hand means rope climbing to me, but I’m guessing you’re talking about a different meaning.”
All the military jargon aside, Meg would’ve been lost if he tried to correct her: his nickname was from the song (which was, coincidentally, now stuck in her head). She snickered briefly and nodded. “Yeah, slightly different. Think of it this way...” Her hands lifted from her lap in a gesture that anybody might’ve used when explaining something. “My hands are my eyes, in this case. They already know my own gun, but if I have to tweak or twist or pull anything off that I haven’t before... you’ll have to direct them to it. Your hand over mine.” She canted her head to the side with another tight smile. “Easy peasy. Plus, I’m a fast learner.”
“That always helps,” Tom nodded after a moment. “How much experience do you have disassembling the pistol?” It would give him an idea of how much he had to teach her.
“Uh-well...” Meg’s voice carried a slightly sheepish laugh. “None?”
Tom’s eyebrows went up at that. If she’d never taken it apart to do a thorough cleaning he was a bit surprised that it hadn’t blown up in her face. Then again, he had no idea how much it had been used. “All right, then we’ll start at the beginning. What’s the first rule when handling a firearm?”
“Safety first.” Wasn’t that the first rule for everything? The old revolver hadn’t blown up in Meg’s face namely because she very rarely used it, and it hadn’t been terribly long since her father had last serviced the weapon. A year... almost. It’d been fired all of four times since she left the cabin in Colorado.
“Yes, but it’s a little more basic than that. Never, ever point the barrel at yourself or someone else unless you intend to squeeze the trigger. Even when you’ve got it disassembled don’t point it at yourself. It’s a little easier to make sure the barrel is empty in a revolver than an automatic, since the you’ve only got a limited number of shots anyway.”
“Gotcha. Common sense.”
“You’d be surprised how many people would forget that rule and didn’t live to regret it.” Tom told her, shaking his head.
“Surprised at how many people lack common sense? No way.” She smiled ruefully in his general direction. Thin, tapered fingertips curled inward toward their palms--purposefully popping her knuckles. “Let’s roll.”
Tom took her hands in his and soon began to guide her, step by step in how to disassemble the revolver, clean it, and put it back together. It took him significantly longer than it would if he were just working by himself, but he’d been taking weapons apart and putting them back together since he’d been a teenager, and he had to stop and think aloud a few times about how a blind person would be able to tell if a task was completed correctly. Eventually though, the freshly cleaned and reassembled revolver sat before them, ready for action. All it needed was for it to be loaded and it was combat ready.
Just to be sure she had it right, after the initial instruction (which went without a word from Meg, since she was concentrating fairly hard on the subtle positioning of his fingers over hers, etching it to memory), or maybe to show-off, the blind woman actually performed the task by herself from start to finish, almost exactly the way Tom had ‘shown’ her. The process was a bit slower, but she got it right.
“Well that was relatively painless...” Commented with a crooked grin and a slightly wrinkled nose. The reason why the freckles were lightly scrunched was the abrasive smell of the fluid used in the process.
“When you’ve only got one, easy enough.” Tom agreed. “It helps that your revolver isn’t that complicated, but I think if you want to do this on a regular basis you’ll need to come up with a system of where to put each part, especially the smaller ones.”
He pushed his own chair back and stood up to stretch, feeling vertebrae pop as he arched his back. “One of these days I’m going to wake up and be too old to hunch over a workbench for hours at time.”
Systems of where to put things, Meg could handle. She’d only been doing it her entire conscious life. “You could always condemn yourself to a life of manual labor?” Not that any of them were off that particular hook. Not even Meghan, who was still enduring Derek’s warnings about abandonment if she ever hurt herself, or a few of the other members of their little community fawning over whether or not she could handle something by herself.
She stayed in the chair, even as she heard him rise and stretch (the joint pop sounded both painful and relieving at the same time).
“Already did that for thirty plus years,” Tom retorted. “A career in the light infantry doesn’t involve a lot of cushy desk work, even when you get into senior ranks.” Though there’d been a fair amount of paperwork even during combat deployments. Sometime back he’d decided the Army really ran on paper, not diesel fuel.
He glanced over at the dogs, both of which seemed quite content to just laze by the fireplace.
“A lifer, then...” She assumed mildly, easing back in the chair with a relaxed sounding sigh. Maybe touched with a little bit of memory. “My brother aimed in that direction. Signed up right outta high school.” Her hands pushed in the pockets of her coat--a bit chilled from the gun cleaning, and denimed legs crossed.
“It can be a rewarding life, hard on the families though. Especially the last decade.” Tom commented thoughtfully. “I rose as high as an enlisted man could expect to go if he was talented and didn’t want to be an officer. Me, I preferred to stay with the troops.”
Suddenly, a slow grin crossed her features under the mirrored glasses. “You gotta have a few good stories.” Meghan loved stories. They fleshed out the people around her: gave creedance to what she could hear in their voices, or feel in their faces when they allowed her to ‘look’ in that manner--with her hands. Not many on the farmstead had allowed her to do that, but then again... she hadn’t asked.
“A few.” Tom allowed with a smile.
“...do I have to bribe them outta you?” Her grin remained. She did think that her desire to actually hear the stories was pretty clear.
“It never hurts.” Came the reply, though the smile was clear in his voice. After a moment or so of waiting he decided to relent. “I’ll tell you a second-hand one first. A buddy of mine, fellow senior NCO, told me a story of his that dates back to boot camp. He’d been hurt during training and was recuperating in one of the medical platoons. One of the duties of those who weren’t too badly banged up was to help clean the barracks, and a friend of his found a spare drill sergeant’s campaign hat, what we called a ‘smokey the bear’ hat back in the day, peaked with a wide, stiff brim the went all the way around. Well, that night my buddy got woken up from a sound sleep with a flashlight in his face and what he thought was a drill sergeant behind it, demanding to know what he’d done with the cigarettes.” He paused for effect. “Thing was, my friend didn’t smoke.”
Her mind wandered to the various horror stories Aiden had brought back from Basic and other bouts of training he’d gone through. Her smile leaned rather deeply into one cheek. “Uhoh.”
“So anyway, he’s trying to explain why he doesn’t have any cigarettes, and they were contraband during basic anyway even if he did, and the ‘Drill Sergeant’ is throwing a hissy fit and ready to make him do all sorts of things.” Tom grinned. “He made one mistake though, he forgot that even in medical platoons, there’s an NCO there at night just to have adult supervision around and make sure nobody gets hurt. The next thing my buddy knew, the lights to the squadroom flipped on and the real Drill Sergeant on duty comes walking out of his room in his skivvies wanting to know what the hell was going on. The person my buddy thought was the Sergeant was one of his platoon mates trying to pull a prank on him.”
“And I’m sure everybody pushed for that one...” She laughed with her words and leaned the back of her head against the back of the chair, arching in a deep and languid stretch before settling again: a bright grin showed off sharp, even teeth. No pops from her spine, at least.
“Everyone who was able,” Tom confirmed. “The poor bastard who borrowed the hat got transferred to the physical conditioning platoon soon after, from what I heard. He got all kinds of ‘extra training’ before they let him rejoin a regular basic training platoon.”
“My brother didn’t tell me too many actual stories, but one thing does stick out. You know what a ‘sugar cookie’ is?”
“I’ve heard the term before, yes.” Tom confirmed. “But I’ve had more exposure to sand than I’d ever care to think about over the past twenty years. Unfortunately it wasn’t just in basic training anymore.”
Another little scrunch to the freckles on the bridge of her nose. “Understood.” No, she wasn’t prying into that subject matter. Time for a slight subject change. “Y’know, I don’t think I’ve heard where you’re from.”
“Originally?” Tom looked over at her, a bit surprised at the question. “Middle o’ nowhere Missouri. I joined up straight out of high school, kind of like your brother. They’d just started the volunteer army back then really.” His joining up hadn’t been exactly voluntary, but it was the best decision that had ever been made for him.
Meg gauged the slightly higher pitch to the veteran’s voice as a sign of being caught off guard. True, she hadn’t had many conversations with him--he always seemed a bit busy or focused at the task at hand, but surely someone had inquired into his past, if casually.
Or maybe he was surprised that the question came from her.
“You don’t strike me as a Good Ole Boy.” AKA, Redneck. There were plenty of those in her college town, Middle’a Nowhere, southern Illinois. A town built on a state university and methamphetamine. Idly, one hand pushed a bit of escaped hair away from her cheek, and tucked it behind her ear.
“I haven’t been back since my mother died.” Tom confirmed. “Any GOB tendencies got beaten out of me my first hitch in the Army, not that I had many to begin with. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in Missouri.”
“A long time ago, I assume.” Meg was more thinking aloud than anything else, and moved on. “I know the military ‘brainwashed’ my brother to a certain degree--and I use that term just for lack of better description, not to offend anyone.” The dimpled smile was evidence of that, anyway. “...but there’s gotta be somethin’ besides the pledge and the survival manual in there.” Like Rollo, for example. This was Meghan’s way of learning things about people who didn’t necessarily talk much.
“So what else makes you tick? I ask ‘cause, let’s face it... you’re not very chatty. Course, I could always bribe that outta you, too. I do cook a mean rabbit.” Meghan grinned.
“Long as you let someone cut it up for you first.” Tom responded with a chuckle, then lapsed into silence for a few moments, trying to think of what to say to her.
“Believe me, I won’t be doing that again.” A fingertip dipped under her glasses to tend an itch in one eye. It hid the mild blush pretty well, she hoped.
“I haven’t had a lot to say I guess,” he said at last, shrugging. He’d still been putting his life back together from his son’s death, slowly but surely, when the plague came. “I’ve been married twice, divorced twice. I like dogs, obviously. I spent thirty five years in the United States Army, retired as a Command Sergeant Major, as high as you can go as an enlisted man. I did private security work for a few years after that, and then the flu came around.”
“Well, besides the dog tidbit, that’s a good start for a biography.” Meg was still teasing, and leaned comfortably back, one arm draped on the work-table next to her. “I’ll make it easier. I used to interview people for a living, and sometimes they need a template for what to say. Movies--do you like comedies? Horrors? Maybe Musicals?” There was another grin. Meg would’ve winked at him if she weren’t wearing her glasses, and the fact that she knew that sometimes freaked people out.
“Never cared for horror movies much, unless you count ‘Alien’ as one. Most people are too damn stupid in those, they deserve to get sliced up.” He snorted. “Actually, my favorite movie was one I saw as a kid, though I didn’t appreciate it as much back then. ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, with John Ford directing. I liked most of Ford’s movies, the man knew how to get a lot out of his actors.”
“Can’t say I’ve seen that one.” Was that a joke? By the Cheshire grin, there was no doubt.
“No, I’d imagine not, smartass.” Tom shook his head, but he was smiling when he said the words. At least she could laugh about her condition.
If the grin could get any bigger, it did. “Daddy always said that’s better than a dumbass.” Meg had been making blind jokes since she was nine. It was always better than some of the kids she went to school with who favored their disability and enjoyed their pity parties.
That earned a chuckle. “I told Tommy the same thing when he was growing up.” He told her, without really thinking about it.
Tommy? By the context, it had to be his kid. This could also be a touchy subject with people, and even though he was the one to bring it up, that didn’t mean Meg would be callous and not use her brains. ‘Tommy’ obviously wasn’t around anymore, and the realization fell her smile just a bit. What replaced it was a warmer look.
“How old?”
Tom’s smile vanished at the question. “He was twenty seven. Would have been thirty one by now.” He tried to keep the pain out of his voice, but the reality was that a large part of him had died that day in Iraq with his son. The healing process was well underway, but the loss of a child no matter how old was something you never completely got over.
Though Meghan knew what a smile felt like under her fingertips, the sound of it in someone’s voice was much more recognizable. So too, was the sudden disappearance of it. Their conversational territory had entered the dark place that all of them still harbored, and probably would until they themselves were put in the ground. Or lay rotting on top of it.
Meg nodded softly, acknowledging more than the fact that she had heard him. She hadn’t ever had children, but three miscarriages were about as close to commiserating with his pain as she could come. Plus, she lost her entire family as well (just like everyone else)--parents, a brother... a husband.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She said, both automatically and genuinely. “My husband and I always wanted kids... but it never really worked.” Maybe it was for the best.
“I didn’t get to see Tommy as much as I wanted when he was little, his mother and I just didn’t work out, but I made sure to make the most of the times we did have together. It was the proudest day in my life when I saluted him right after his graduation ceremony at West Point.” He mused aloud. “I wonder sometimes how his life might have been different if I hadn’t encouraged him to follow into the ‘family business’. He might be alive right now for all I know.” He didn’t normally talk about it, but the conversation seemed to have opened the floodgates.
“Wow... West Point.” Even Meg was proud for Tom’s son, and the respect was clear both in her voice and her expression: what of it could be seen under the glasses, anyway. She didn’t have much to say about the ‘what if’ proposed by the older man. Just a commiserating thought, and a piece of her heart went out to him. Meg always had a tendency to empathize with people a little harder than usual: a result of her dependence on them, regardless of a sometimes fierce sense of the opposite.
Her thoughts traveled back to Tommy’s age, or what it would have been currently. He was only 3 years younger than herself. That meant Tom was old enough to be her father. She’d always pegged his voice for at least a decade older, but sometimes it was just too hard to tell without actually gauging someone’s appearance with her hands.
“Y’know... I think you and my dad woulda gotten on well. He’s-- He was a retired Chicago cop.”
“Yeah?” Tom raised an eyebrow at that. “What was he like?”
Meg let her smile return, and though it carried the weight of their previous conversation, as well as the bittersweet memory of her father, it was more positive than depressing. “His name was Caleb: generally what they call the ‘strong silent’ type from Scotch-Irish and Scandinavian families.” She paused, then continued as a side thought. “I say that ‘cause heritage was damn near drilled into me as a child.” Her smile brightened a tad more. “When he did get to talking, he told some of the dirtiest jokes you can imagine, but was always tongue tied around my mother. He’s the one who taught me how to shoot, actually... right before he died.” Dad hadn’t been strong enough in those last hours to fill her in on gun maintenance.
“He had the strongest jaw I’ve ever felt in my life.” It may have been an odd observation for most, but Meg’s voice had a clear reverence for her father that was metaphorically conveyed in her statement. She saw her Dad as immortal in many ways, even as she listened to the sickness choke his voice.
“Sounds like a good man, I’m sure we would have gotten along fine.” Tom nodded. This conversation was getting too maudlin for his tastes, and his dog seemed to sense it as Rollo had gotten up and walked over to his master, thrusting his head under Tom’s hand. The veteran scratched the lab mix behind his ears and smiled.
Meg fell into a small length of silence, though she nodded in affirmation to Tom’s words. Subconsciously, she tracked the sound of Rollo from the makeshift fireplace, then easily stumbled onto a better topic. “Where’d you find Nuisance over there?”
“‘Nuisance?’” Tom grinned, pretending offense. “If you could see this sweet little doggie face you wouldn’t call him Nuisance.” He knelt down and played with the dog’s ears. “Listen to her, calling you a nuisance. You aren’t a nuisance are you boy?” Rollo licked his face in response, tail thumping on the floor.
He looked back up at Meghan. “I got him out of the pound as a puppy the summer before everything went to shit. Tried to train him into something of a guard dog, but all he wants to do is lick people to death.”
On some dependent reflex to the sounds of Rollo and his human sharing something that sounded way too close to baby talk, Meg grinned as she patted her knee. The lumbering Mastiff mix dragged himself up from the hearth and headed for her, placing his jaw on her upturned hand, where it proceeded to get scratched. “He’s got a great personality. Bridge actually mentioned you’ve been trying to train him. I wish I could help, but I have no idea how they got Sarge to do what he does.”
“I’ve got him trained well enough to sit, heel, and shake, but that’s about it.” Tom confessed. “I’d hoped when I got him to be able to make him into a guard dog but he doesn’t have the personality for it and I can’t say I’d really change it now if I could.” There were times when his dog’s tendency to lick first and bark later drove him crazy, but Rollo was literally his best friend.
He glanced at his watch and stood up. “I don’t mean to cut this short Meg, but I really need to get back to work.” There was his carbine and several other rifles that needed inspection, cleaning and oiling.
Was he telling her to scram? Essentially, yes--but in a way that teetered that line between ‘I’d love to continue this later’ and ‘get lost’. Meg just grinned a little, pressing her lips together with a nod. “Right, right... I got shit to do too.” Which was the truth, actually. She just had a tendency to get distracted.
Palms pressed against her thighs as she stood, then traced the line of the work station table to find her pistol with one hand. It was carefully positioned in her hand so the barrel pointed down--her other hand curled into Sarge’s collar. The two started for the door. “Thanks for your help.”
“Not a problem, always happy to show someone how to take care of their gear.” Tom waved off the thanks though he knew she couldn’t see. “I’ll talk at you later Meg.” Once the door was shut behind her, he returned his attention reluctantly to the workbench. Plenty of work to do, and he’d put himself behind schedule if he wanted to get them all done before lunch. With a sigh, he moved toward the workbench and got down to business.