The Gift.

"Small-town men are so chivalrous," thought Nell. A week ago she had announced her impending move 
to Minneapolis, and already most of the small-town father figures have come by to wish her luck. Every 
one of them, sheriff, minister and history teacher alike, seemed to regard the big city as a land of great 
peril.
Nell Retsina was a tall, thin girl whose thick glasses only underscored her nerdish inclinations. Asthmatic 
and myopic, she was never the outdoor or the cheerleader type. Though she regularly hiked the six miles 
to town at a brisk pace, Nell was an asthmatic and had to watch her exertions carefully. In a place like 
Moose Point, that left her few choices of entertainment. Of those few choices, she picked the library and 
the sole book store of the town. Those venues meant that her peers were the Moose Point old-timers, the 
only folks there who would read for pleasure and not under compulsion.
When Nell was two years old, her father, a handyman, died in an accident.  His truck slid off the road 
after a December ice rain. The vehicle went through thin ice of a small, boggy lake and was not recovered 
until the next day. Reisha, Nell's mother, never re-married and survived by working whatever odd jobs 
were available. In Moose Point, that meant going for weeks on what their little garden provided, corn, 
carrots and an occasional marauding rabbit that wasn't sufficiently mindful of Reisha's single antique trap. 
Reisha did not drive and so limited her forays into town to such occasions when traveling by rickety 
bicycle was practical. She was an asocial woman, as much through lack of inclination as though lack of 
spare time.  The neighbors saw little of her and she had no reason to change that.
Nell grew up without any friends of her own age. Until age six, she
had no opportunity to meet any other kids. After she started going to school, she preferred the company of adults to the uncertain 
welcome of her peers. To them, she looked and acted a little wild. She had no interest in the matters 
which are of such grave importance to children, be they latest films, hot brands or petty gossip. Her chief 
amusements were sketching and reading.
Nell could read at an early age. Retsinas had few books, though, and Nell had little time for reading left 
over from helping her mother. When going to school provided a reason to go into town, she discovered 
the book store on Main Street and dived into its depths. 
Sometimes, during infrequent luxurious hours of leisure, Nell would sit in the back of the Book Barn and 
travel elsewhere in her mind's eye. The owners, an elderly couple whose kids wouldn't touch a book 
unless forced, didn't mind her presence. When having tea on chilly winter evenings, they'd bring her a 
mug. Talking to the strange, pale girl who opined seriously on adult matters amused them. 
Sometime in her early teens, Nell realized that she was pretty. She was all pastel tones, delicate, and 
conducted herself quite unconsciously after the adults around her. For all her unforced charm, no one 
seemed to be sweet on her -- kids her age preferred the vigor and unabashed carnality, adults had long ago 
got used to parental emotions in respect to the little wise girl. The two town cops would give her rides 
home, always contriving to be going that way by an apparent coincidence. Her teachers developed a habit 
of including her into their conversations and only later reflected on the irregularity of that.
All of this was coming to an end. At the end of her senior year, Nell won the big one, a scholarship to the 
University. That good fortune came as a surprise to no one but her. Having had little contact with other 
students, Nell never benchmarked herself against them but rather measured her progress by the standards 
of the full body of printed knowledge. The notion that she was smart startled her, though quiet pride took 
over shortly. Unlike most of her classmates, she knew what she wanted from college.  Her goal was a degree 
in biochemistry.
Nell happiness at home has been a matter of habit. She'd gone hungry at times, threadbare and 
unfashionable always, but never lonely or unappreciated. Reisha, whose moody and oft depressed 
personality scared off outsiders, was a good friend to Nell. The departure from the familiar faces scared 
her more than she could fully comprehend and that fright blossomed in full brisance as the departure date 
approached. Her friends and heart-warmers drew closer to comfort her, but their concerns shined through, 
and she shied from the intensity of their worries.
***
A few days before she left town, Derek, the youngest of the two policemen asked if she would fancy a 
milkshake. They stretched on the trunk of his cruiser, frosty glasses in hand, and sipped quietly for a 
spell. Then Derek set his glass down and reached for something on his belt.
"Nell, I hate to bring this up," he said, his voice trailing off into a whisper "You've never been to the city, 
have you?"
She hummed an affirmative.
"Take this with you." He thrust a small canister of tear gas into her hand. "Won't need it, probably, but"
Nell slurped un-lady-like, as her straw scraped the bottom of the malt glass. She looked at the reddish 
cylinder in her left hand with a puzzled expression. Then a grimace of disgusted comprehension settled on 
her visage.
"Is Minneapolis so bad, Derek?"
Officer Derek Petersen blushed. He hated to frighten his friends but he was also worried. The thin blue 
grapevine worked much too well for comfort where the Metro was concerned. He knew what was afoot 
on campus but couldn't quite tell her.
"No, of course not," he said smiling with ill-concealed embarrassment "It's for dogs and such." Or, he 
added mentally, for the other kind of animals.
"Just mind the wind, though you'd get some on you in any case."
Nell smiled, also embarrassed. She was beginning to suspect what her friend left unsaid. Her smile was 
sad as she set the canister onto the trunk lid and pushed it away slightly: "I have asthma, Derek. I'd 
choke trying to use it."
***
Nell had no going-away party but the pilgrimage to her house held steady for the last two days of her stay 
there. Her teachers, stopped by one by one. Mr.Erskin, the history teacher, brought her an old laptop 
computer and spent half an hour convincing Nell to accept it. The town priest, Mr. Dawdson, thought to 
phone her but discovered that the Retsinas had no telephone. He drove up and asked if Nell could spare an 
hour of her time the next day. The girl, surprised at the request, promised to show up. She had no religion, 
and the social club function of the church never attracted her. 
Reisha did not know how to handle the separation. She was in awe of her daughter's success and in 
drastic, barely suppressed terror of the coming solitude. She was alone in Moose Point and, for the first 
time in her life, aware of that to the point of hysteria. She walked outside and stood still until her knees 
stopped shaking. Then she went back into the house and hugged her daughter gently.
A small suitcase held Nell's tiny wardrobe, a writing case that was in the family since before the 
Depression, half-dozen paperbacks and six twenty-dollar bills that Reisha managed to squirrel away over 
the preceding two years. That and a flat tin with letters and documents were all that Nell had. The black 
nylon case with the gift laptop went on top of the folded sweaters and the packing was done.
***
The following morning, Minister Dawdson watched the approaching girl from his office. She walked 
slowly and he realized, a bit too late, that she walked the five miles from her home to the church.  John 
Dawdson took his car so much for granted that he did not think twice of the distance involved until now. 
He hurried to meet her in the parking lot.
***
Sitting in his tiny, cool office, the minister handed Nell a notepad. On its front page were several names 
paired with telephone numbers. "My friends," he said "If anything comes up" he hesitated, suddenly ill 
at ease. "I've asked them to look after you.  I hope that you don't mind."
Nell smiled. She was going to thank the priest but he opened his mouth to speak again. Nell saw a bead of 
sweat start from the churchman's hairline, trickle down his nose and, finally, plunge from the tip of it onto 
his desk. Mr.Dawdson was plainly embarrassed and ill-equipped to conceal his consternation.
"My wife Irene wishes you to have it. I agree with her."
He opened his desk and extracted a small cardboard box from it. His long fingers removed the cover 
slowly, making a ritualized production of that simple task. Inside was a stippled leatherette pouch with a 
drawstring closure.
"I hope," the man started, then breathed in deeply at the pause, "that you do not resent our concern."
***
The pouch contained a small flat revolver with a stylized owl bas-relief on the black grips of hard rubber. 
Under the pouch, at the bottom of the box, were four brownish cardboard boxes with letters U.M.C. 
across the top.  
"My wife's great-grandmother bought it when she lived in Peoria, that's in Illinois. She passed it onto her 
son, and he gave it to his grand-daughter, Irene. We wish you to have it." He paused, saw the look of 
incomprehension in Nell's eyes.  Misinterpreting the cause of the confusion, he added quickly: "Our 
children have no need of it. They fend for themselves just fine."
Remembering Derek's offer of a few days prior, Nell couldn't help smiling.
"Mr. Dawdson, why would I ever need such a thing? I have yet to make a habit of getting on people's 
nerves."
The clergyman smiled at the innocence of the question.  He decided to avoid the gory details, though not 
a few of those still haunted him from the days when he worked in the Metro.
"Child," he said in his sermon voice "some eventualities are out of our hands. Just because" -- he was 
going to say "God" but amended that to "Fate" -- "just because Fate sends a viper your way, you are not 
obligated to let it bite you. And some men are meaner than snakes and need no provocation."
Nell found herself comforted more by the tone than by his assertion that evil was afoot even among the 
righteous. She's had little experience with hostile humans but wasn't so naive as to expect that pleasant 
condition to persist indefinitely. Her readings had done much to convince her that her personal experience 
has been atypical.
"Your life, Nell, is worth defending. You know it is so."
The girl did not argue. She knew the argument well through Locke and Spooner. Many times in her life, 
she has encountered concepts of which book learning had fore-warned her. Mr. Dawdson's assertion was 
centuries-old, and well-supported by history.
They walked into the church courtyard, past the brick wall pierced with stained-glass windows. The 
minister stopped where the back of the church firewood shed met an overgrown apple orchard. The trees 
still bore fruit, but the fruit was sour and ground had gone to weeds. John Dawdson took the revolver and 
its ammunition out of the box and placed them onto an un-split piece of firewood. Holding the cardboard 
box in his hand, he paced out five steps and jammed it roughly between the trunk and a major branch of 
the nearest apple tree.
He showed Nell how to load the small break-top revolver. She pulled up on the yoke which held the 
cylinder and the frame together, watched the extractor extend and retract. The minister held out one of the 
four brown boxes and she picked out five slightly tarnished cartridges from it. Black lead immediately 
dirtied her fingers. One by one, Nell dropped the cartridges into the chambers and closed the action 
firmly. Mr. Dawdson handed her a pair of foam ear plugs and held the revolver while she plugged her 
ears.
"Place the front sight blade over your target," the man said, aiming the weapon at the tree which held the 
cardboard box "Put your arms out in front thus," he demonstrated "and pull the trigger smoothly."
A puff of smoke emanated from the short blued barrel and Mr. Dawdson's hands went up slightly. A 
sharp report, much less reverberating than in the movies, reached the girl's ears even though the foam 
closing them. She saw an apple at the end of one of the outlying branches splinter and fall to the ground. 
Four more reports followed, with three more apples tumbling to the damp ground below. Her instructor 
unlatched the cylinder and five sooty brass cases arced out.
"Nell," the minister asked when he handed her the revolver "Do you usually have pockets on your 
jackets?"
"I do on both," she replied, tugging at the one she was wearing that day.
He handed her a piece of leather, wrapped back onto itself and molded closed. The revolver fit into it, and 
the whole assembly had the look of a thick notepad or a wallet. Nell placed it into her jacket pocket and 
reached for it experimentally. With a minute of practice, she could grip and point her weapon almost 
instantly. 
She loaded up and lined the thin front sight on the box stuck on the tree. The cardboard filled her vision 
and blurred a little as the rough metal of the sight came into focus. For once in her life, myopia was an 
advantage. She gripped the thin rubber grips with both hands and began squeezing the trigger, unsure of 
when it would snap and fire the gun.
The report was less sharp than when she stood to the side of the muzzle. Nell had expected a jolting recoil 
and was almost disappointed when the revolver pressed slightly into her palm and let up at once. She 
looked at the cardboard box which was her target. It did not move but a small dark hole was visible 
slightly low of center. A faint wisp of pulped cellulose settled slowly behind it.
She fired the remaining forty cartridges from the first box. Mr. Dawdson took down the box, which by 
then had more holes than substance. In it place, he propped up a quarter-log from the wood pile, a foot-
long segment with bark still clinging to the spongy wood.
"Knock it down please," he requested.
Flushed with her early success, Nell hit the wood with her first shot. She saw splinters fly from it but the 
log stayed in its place. She hit it twice more, getting agitated and missing with the last two shots. The log 
remained where it was. Nell breathed in the powder and bullet lubricant fumes and began to cough.
"Doesn't do much," her instructor said when she caught her breath. He held up the wood and she could 
plainly see three flattened pieces of lead imbedded about half an inch into it.
"You'd have to gun and run, as the boys call it," he continued "but you'd have a chance. Fire five and 
run."
Nell used up the next box learning to fire five fast. At last, the battered piece of wood swayed back and 
toppled from the branch. Together, they cleaned up the splinters and the empty brass which littered the 
ground behind them.
Mr. Dawdson cleaned the gun with hot water, soap and lead solvent, then oiled it. "Just use this oil for 
cleaning," he remarked "The smell of this solvent would give you away at the dorms."  He placed the 
remaining ammunition and the holstered revolver into a small sheet-metal lockbox and handed that to 
Nell. "Now," he said in an aggrieved tone " we shall talk about the hard part."
***
"Nell, you are seventeen years old. In our state, you cannot defend yourself. It is not legal for you own 
this gun, nor can you carry it. Even if you were older, the University has rules which prohibit you from 
keeping this gun on campus. If you bring it with you, it must stay hidden at all times and brought out only 
for the most dire emergency. That day may never come. I will not tell you to break the law, but you know 
how I feel about it."
The minister's brow was brimming with sweat again. Nell was beginning to feel guilty about his 
embarrassment. She stood up and extended her hand.
"Thank you, Sir," she began in a formal tone "I appreciate the loan. Please don't worry about me so much. 
I will write."
She squeezed his hand and started for the door. John Dawdson thought to say "It isn't a loan" but 
remained quiet. He wished that he could shoulder all the responsibility for the decision but it would be 
Nell who'd have to take the lumps if something went wrong. He closed the office door and turned to 
prayer. 
***
On a sunny morning that followed, Nell boarded a bus for Minneapolis. She felt almost happy, the full 
happiness made impossible by the knowledge that her mother would be all alone for the next four months. 
As the bus entered the smooth blacktop of the highway, Nell settled a sketch pad against her knees and 
began her first letter home.
The lockbox given to her by John Dawdson was in the cargo hold of the massive bus. She kept the laptop 
on a vacant seat next to her to protect it from damage. A small rectangular object bulged the right pocket 
of her jacket slightly. Nell felt well-equipped for the four-hour trip towards her new life.
She disembarked at the depot in Downtown Minneapolis. According to her map, the University campus 
was close by, two miles down Hennepin Avenue, turn right and follow the University Avenue for two and 
a half miles. The dormitory where she'd stay was right on the Mississippi. Nell hefted her bag, put the 
padded strap over her left shoulder, gripped the smaller laptop bag under her right arm and headed East.
She reached the outskirts of the campus by early afternoon. The dormitory check-in went smoothly, and 
she settled into her tiny room with a sigh of relief. The other roommate had yet to arrive, so Nell took care 
of bolting her lockbox to the closet floor and unpacking the rest of her luggage. Then the girl went outside 
to sketch the campus for the letter home.
***
The first semester seemed eternal to Nell. With all the new impressions to register, most memories of 
Moose Point went undercover in her memory.  With much of her spare time taken up with coursework 
and the basics of running an abbreviated half-room dormitory household, she made few acquaintances 
and no close friends. Her roommate Jennifer was seldom home, generally showing up after Nell was 
already asleep.  "Been clubbing," the roommate volunteered once, shortly before passing out on the floor 
of their room "damn, I feel wasted"
If Nell had expected to socialize much with her instructors, that expectation had come to naught.  With 
classes of over a hundred students, few teachers would even learn their names.  John Dawdson had hoped 
that his friends would look after Nell but that did not happen.  Thinking her list of names to be solely an 
emergency resource, she declined to contact anyone out of consideration for their time. Her would-be 
friends, likewise, assumed that Nell was much too busy with studying to be bothered. In short, Nell's 
social life had changed little from how it was back home.
The little revolver had been with her always, but she found Minneapolis to be safe and her precautions 
excessive. The flat leather holster dwelled by her right side, snug and unobtrusive inside a lapel pocket. 
Once every four weeks she would lock herself in the bathroom, clean off the lint and re-oil the metal 
lightly. Her roommate would have been none the wiser of the process even had she been inclined to pry, 
which she was not. Jennifer, more consumed by recreational drinking than by her scholastic pursuits, was 
seldom in evidence. 
***
Nell returned to Moose Point at the end of December. She entered her snow-covered hometown as a 
triumphant Roman would, jubilant and eager to share recent accomplishments, but also subtly concerned 
about the changes transpiring since the departure four months earlier.  To her relief, nothing has changed 
except one thing, and that for the better. Reisha, to Nell's pleasant surprise, had finally made friends with 
several other locals, the Dawdsons among them.  It was to their place that they went the next evening to 
celebrate Christmas.
***  
Several days later, Irene Dawdson came by to pick up Nell.  A snowfall on New Year's Day had 
blanketed the land two feet deep, and Irene's truck left a white wake as it plowed through.
"Hop in," she hollered when Nell's face appeared in the window "Dress warmly."
They went to the church backyard where Nell had practiced before.  Irene paced out five steps and set up 
an empty milk jug on a snow-mound. Both women were wearing warm ear muffs over hats, so she judged 
their hearing well-protected.
"Nell, you do have our gift with you?"
Nell nodded and patted the pocket with her mitten. The woolen mitten made hardly a sound on the soft 
fabric of the jacket.
"Can you knock down that jug?" asked the older woman.
Reaching for the small butt of the revolver with thick mittens proved slow, still, moments later five 
reports issued and faded, muffled by the soft snow. The jug moved once, grazed but slightly on one side. 
Nell was disappointed and her face showed it. She also realize, disconsolately, that she had brought no 
more cartridges with her.
Irene Dawdson had anticipated the outcome of her request.  She tugged a box of cartridges, this time a 
gray one of recent manufacture, out of her coat pocket and handed it to Nell. Then she brought out her 
own gun and sent the plastic jug flying with a well-placed shot. Ere the light target stopped rolling, she hit 
it again. The reports of her pistol were sharper and louder, and empty brass came out after every shot. The 
woman ejected the magazine and replaced it with a full one which came from somewhere on her person.
"Skills decay over time," she said with a smile "Try again, Nell."
It took only ten minutes to use up forty-five cartridges from the new box. By the end of the practice, Nell 
was able to connect four out of five times on a milk jug rolled across snow by gusts of wind though her 
target was over twenty paces distant. The last five rounds she saved. After they returned to the vehicle, 
she proffered a twenty dollar bill to Missis Dawdson.
"Thank you for getting ammunition," she said "this kind doesn't come cheaply, I now know."
Her money was declined gratefully.   
***
The second semester was easier for Nell than the first. She knew the lay of the land by then, and knew 
also the Byzantine requirements of the University in regards to registration paperwork, regulations of 
student conduct and every other aspect of the education process, however minute. Well aware that she 
was breaking at least some of the rules at all times, Nell regarded that state of affairs as natural. Thoreau 
had mentioned that much, and her earlier experiences dovetailed neatly with his assertions.
Though she got acquainted with fellow students at last, Nell remained a loner as much by necessity as by 
inclination. Getting grades sufficiently good for the continuation of the scholarship required her full 
attention and most of her time. Writing letters home consumed much of the few remaining hours each 
week.  
Brought up without a camera at home, Nell Retsina developed a considerable talent for sketching to 
compensate. Drawing, to her, was preferable to photography because she could distill the details in her 
mind before committing them to paper. Her hand-drawn universe had no inconvenient power lines to 
spoil perfect skylines. Her regular letters to Reisha contained a medley of sketches, which together added 
up to the whole of the campus and its surroundings. 
One day in late April, Nell glanced through the window and realized that the sun was about to set behind 
the West Bank of the Mississippi. She had long wanted to depict the picturesque conglomeration of 
disparate buildings there in backlight, and so hurried out of the door with her sketchbook and pencil in 
hand. The East Bank had a number of stone stairways going sharply down to the riverbank and 
terminating in small landings at the water level, with sandstone benches on each one. Disused over time, 
they had grown over a bit, giving some shade and much privacy to anyone resting there. Nell had gone to 
the water before to read in seclusion, and now was there to sketch.
***
She had been at her task for an hour or so, filling in details rapidly against the equally quick change and 
fading of the twilight. As her pencil wore down to a stub and the last traces of yellow sky gave place to 
mauve of the early night, she put the paper away, satisfied with the results. Before she could rise to leave, 
a new actor entered the scene.
The street lamps did not reach to the waterfront, as the steep overgrown bank blocked them. In the feeble 
illumination of the barge running lights and the lamps of a distant bridge, the girl observed a derelict 
shuffling slowly down the stairway.  She looked on with interest mixed with a tinge of apprehension. The 
vagrants she had encountered up to that day have been harmless, a welcome variation from some of the 
hard-drinking fraternity brothers. This one was different.
The man had come to the riverfront for privacy. Police officers could not see the landing from the road 
and, for the campus security, a needless step from the cruiser was a step not taken. A sudden 
comprehension that a stranger invaded his place -- his personal place -- disconcerted him terribly. He 
turned and watched Nell for a time, ready to flee if she turned hostile. 
Nell stood her ground for lack of other choices. On her left was the river, on her right an impassable steep 
hillside, dense with thorny bushes. Her back was to the wall, which was cut into the sloping bank. The 
smelly and vaguely threatening stranger stood between her and the way out. She adjusted the strap of her 
book bag and looked directly at the man ten feet in front of her.
The girl's pupils were dilated due to darkness, but the vagrant mistook that for a sign of fear. That 
emotion did come into her face, too, after he took a step to close in. As he stepped closer, the man 
reconsidered his initial impulsive plan. Nell Retsina was a head taller than he, and seemed strong enough 
to be trouble. He growled.
Nell considered the situation with alarm. Despite her fear, she could almost laugh at the University 
booklets advising on such a predicament. They recommended screaming for help, which was impractical due to 
the seclusion of the place. They also suggested dialing 911 on a cell phone, which was equally impossible 
for she did not have one, nor could she describe where she was without taking a lot of time. Cooperating 
with a threatening person, as advised, would have been a lot easier had she been able to figure out what he 
was after. He did not seem to know that himself and dithered, still blocking her path.
"Please let me pass," she said without moving. It seemed inadvisable to get closer, for some reason, so she 
hoped that the man would move aside.
The sound of Nell's voice gave her adversary a good idea of how slightly built she was. Emboldened, he 
produced something from his pocket and advanced. He was angry at the invasion of his place and 
determined to do something about it. As a patch of light reflected off the water shined on the object held 
out towards her, Nell realized that it was a very large rusty nail, almost the size of a railroad spike. She 
blanched and reacted.
With the bench behind her and the advancing adversary closing in fast, she withdrew her right hand from the 
lapel pocket and pulled the trigger. Having no time or room to spare, she fired with the gun held almost 
against her chest. She heard a surprisingly faint noise which reflected once off the nearby objects and 
went away. Thin white smoke caught the light, obscuring her target. It persisted briefly before blowing 
away with the breeze. Unaware that she had fired all five rounds, Nell saw only that her adversary lost 
balance and fell face first into shallow water of the river. She saw him try to get up and fail. She ran past 
and up and away, going faster than she had ever gone before. Miraculously, her asthma had not acted up 
at the provocation until she was back at her own room. She did not see her would-be killer cough, choke 
and twitch for a minute, then drown in ten inches of water near the Mississippi shore. The drinking that 
man had done earlier, and the five slow, obsolescent lead slugs, which all flattened and stopped against 
his upper ribs, had merely toppled him and kept him from getting up.
***
Nell Retsina never did find out what that man wanted with her. The sign of the rusty spike positioned to 
rip into her abdomen had decided her actions and she did not regret them. Upon getting home, she opened 
her locker, dumped the five empties and re-loaded the cylinder. Then she went to the bathroom and threw 
up. She began to hyperventilate after that, and had to use her inhaler to cut short an asthma attack. Her 
mind was lucid throughout, and she knew that her concern was for herself alone.
She fretted a bit about getting caught. In her heart she knew that the attack was real, and could only hope 
that the investigating authorities wouldn't find her. Yet Nell had no nightmares, suffered no great stress as 
a consequence of that brief fight for her life. She did what she had to do, stayed alive, and saw no reason 
why becoming a mangled corpse would have constituted an improvement.
Nothing further came out of that incident. The already weak reports of the shots had been contained 
within the landing. One dead derelict was discovered two days later, after he got ripe. The cops who were 
called knew him by sight and showed no surprise except for the grouping of the five chest wounds, all of 
which could be covered up with a hand. The investigation turned up no leads and joined the other 
unsolved homicides in the archives of the MPD.
***
The little girl from the backwoods of Minnesota has grown up since. Nell got married not long ago. She is 
in graduate school now, and no longer carries the 1902 Iver Johnson .38 revolver. It stays in the lockbox, 
where her kids can't get at it. As for Nell Retsina, she counts on her luck to keep her safe, and carries a 
Remington-Rand .45