3.c.x
Merlton had
trouble understanding most city folk.
Their patterns of speech and clipped accents always required extra
attention on his part. Understanding the
woman in his shop right now was worse than normal. Maybe it was because she had more teeth than
the average person. It was also quite
possible that she had a case of mumps.
Did people still get mumps these days?
There she went
again, saying something. What was that?
She’d come in before
with a bag full of teeth and a note asking him to make the things into
bullets. Mighty strange. In seventeen years of running this gun shop,
Merlton had never heard that particular request. Sure, he’d been asked to make all kinds of
custom crap for hot headed militia types, but teeth?
He told her
that he could encase a tooth in the lead of each bullet, but that she would
need a large enough caliber weapon – he pointed to the Chiappa Rhino .357
magnums and the Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan .454 caliber – to accommodate
them. She liked the idea, but wrote down
a strange request. She wanted to be able
to see the teeth in the final product.
Sort of a tooth capped bullet or something. He warned that an irregular tooth shape could
screw up the aim and damage her gun barrel. She wrote that she didn’t care.
Now, here she
was again, chewing her words with all them teeth, eager to pick up her
merchandise. Along with the custom
bullets, she’d gone with a pair of the chrome plated Rugers with the 2½ inch
barrels.
Merlton threw
his hands up, confused at her muttered speech.
The woman with more teeth than the average person scribbled a note on
her receipt. It read: Thank you for the
quick turn around time. And the
necessary discretion.
Merlton
nodded. All the words after “thank you”
were unnecessary. He always got things
done quick and he never spoke of one’s business to another.