...But now? My arms were skinny, my boobs were sinkin’, my eyes needed glasses and I had my gray hair and my wrinkles all back. I was holdin’ a pistol the wrong way, just to make myself look like those youngun’s had got the wrong gal. I’d remembered most of my life, the good and the bad, in just a few seconds of time. Boys who’d said they loved me an’ wanted to marry me? Few an’ far between, and not important enough for me to think of now. All of it was my Daddy, and then being Calamity Jane.

And like it sometimes happens when I know I’m alone and no one’s there, I sat down and started crying. Just a little- Sometimes when you get older you think a little about what mighta-been. And sometimes I think about it a lot. But never in front of anyone else, and not unless I’ve got a full bottle of whiskey to knock back with it.

So I cried. Soft. Other gals I’d known and grow’d up with were at home, sleeping next to husbands who’d retired and playing with their grandkids on the weekends. Me? I was busy, pointing a loaded pistol at a brat of a man-child who ran around in a big-ass version of a Halloween costume and scaring him off.

The last boy who’d really loved me was married, jobbed-up with kids an’ grandkids of his own. He’d go back to that life when we were done. What did I have? Money, and nobody’s love here or there on earth.

And I was still crying when the wall exploded, and I dropped into a one-knee and got off all six rounds in the chamber before I even thought of anything.

Give him credit; he may be a brat, but he knew how to make me drop the poor-old-lady bit and be Calamity Jane.

“Good evening, Miss Jane,” he said, his black body armor showing a few dimples where my slugs’d tried to tear through, “You need to come with me, now.”

Dammit. I reached for more bullets, but he was too quick. There was a smell, something sprayed in my face, and I knew I’d prob’ly go d-

#

MONTY

We drove in silence.

I was, truthfully, feeling more than a little jubilant; however, I think we all had a sense that if we began celebrating at that moment, we’d play into the trope of the criminals who are captured by the superhero right after they feel safe and secure.

And we were criminals; I could not let myself forget that. I had tried being the hero more than once, and gotten soundly beaten for my troubles, and even on occasion laughed at by the very people I was trying to defend.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The schoolyard can be a terrible place.

But enough; I don’t wish to bore you with my own biographical details. Mitch, Jake and I managed to get the goods from the vault and into the truck, then disassemble the rather massive tools and move them as well. Into the truck, and leave the site a good seven hours before the reliefs are due. Seven full hours before anyone realizes that we were not, in fact, even employed by Sentinel Security, but liars wearing uniforms and badges purloined and created respectively by Jake’s contacts in the local miscreant community.

We had millions, though.

Millions of dollars, primarily in precious stones.

And we were driving a van. With millions of dollars in merchandise contained in cloth sacks behind us.

Mitch was driving. He looked the most clean-cut of us. After dosing his blue rocks, he looked quite possibly the best of us, likely since he started out much younger than we were.

“Everything lookin’ good up there?” Jake asked from the back, his voice still a tad screechy, even when he was filled up with our little fountain-of-youth.

“Lookin’ great, Jake,” Mitch mumbled. It was eleven at night, dark, and we all wanted desperately and suddenly to take a very, very long nap.

But there was too much to do. Get back to the house, move the bags and goods, find a place to dispose of the van, then return to the house unnoticed, and . . .

I hoped Jane was going to take care of those details herself. I was suddenly very, very tired. She or Miguel or Russ could take care of the van as easily as anyone- I had been annoyed with the lack of speed with which we’d bored the holes in the wall, despite the efficacy of my optics, but now, hopefully, we’d be able to move the jewels and trinkets we’d taken, obtain large amounts of cash, and go our separate ways.

In truth, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to separate so quickly. Even if they did not measure up to my standards of intellectual rigor, I was just getting used to having a group of like-minded people close at hand, just down the hall, at my elbow at mealtimes . . . yes, in truth, I was enjoying myself with my old colleagues more than I ever had. More than we ever did in our younger days, we were truly becoming friends rather than just associates. I further had to admit that despite over forty years of living largely alone, I felt a kind of completeness I hadn’t even known I’d been wishing for. It was like suddenly having the final piece to a puzzle I didn’t even know I was missing.

I wasn’t about to verbalize this, of course. Such unmitigated displays of emotion got one on the receiving end of ridicule and /or beatings in the environment and culture I was raised in, and lessons learned early die quite hard.

I was fortunate I had learned them, though, as we pulled up to the house and saw-

“What th’hell…”

Mitch whispered as close to a curse as I ever heard him say, jolting me out of my semi-slumber despite the softness of his speech.

There was a hole blasted in the wall of the house.

Police cars were parked outside. Yellow tape stretched everywhere. A news van was parked on the side of the road, and some TV reporter starlet stood with a spotlight on her, holding a microphone and saying words we couldn’t hear.

“Shit on toast,” Jake said. “We’re fucked.”