Page 75 - WTP Vol. VII #6

took it out of Derek’s hands and set it back on the table. “Find it?” he said, his eyes still on Derek. Then he patted Derek on the behind. “We can head to the arcade now. I guess we’re done here.”
wrong?” she said.
~
His mother pulled him closer. “I know how hard this is for you,” she said. “But he’s your father and I want you to try. Can you do that for me?”
A week later they went to the shooting range at the Maiden Creek Rod and Gun Club. The guy that owned the place had long hair and a triangle of silver whis- kers beneath his bottom lip. When they walked in he threw up his hands and said, “Jack, where the hell you been?” Right away Joel didn’t like being there. He got the feeling he and Derek weren’t welcome.
He wanted to tell her about the woman in his father’s bed that morning. It had been in his head all week, but he kept it to himself because telling her was exactly what his father had wanted. Joel had become a messenger for his dad and it wasn’t fair. His father could carry his own weight was how he saw it.
“These are my boys,” his father said.
~
“Joel stood in the doorway because
going inside felt like forgiveness.”
His father had them stand against the wall. He flipped a switch and a paper target sailed away from them and flapped in the air when it came to a stop. Derek was wide-eyed.
“I don’t feel like it,” he said.
The man watched them out of the corner of his eye. “They can’t shoot,” he said.
His father raised the pistol and squeezed off a bunch of rounds. Derek put his hands over the earmuffs and pressed them tight against his head, and when it was over he kept his hands there as if the noise might start again. His father replaced the magazine and set up another target. This time the shots came slower, like he was trying to outdo himself. When it was over he reeled the target back in and yanked it from the clip. He held the two sheets side by side for them to compare. A few of the shots on the second one were clustered outside the bull’s eye. “Not too bad,” he said, and handed one to each of them. “You can keep those.”
“I know the rules.”
The man wrote something on a piece of paper. Be- hind him rifles were mounted on the wall like an army ready to advance. “How long you gonna be?”
Joel never understood all the fuss about guns. He’d shot his friend Evan’s BB gun once, lying on their stomachs in the woods behind their school, and it wasn’t nearly as much fun as he thought it’d be. Evan showed him how to line up the sites and told him to let out all his air to steady himself before the shot, and they spent the afternoon firing BBs into an empty milk container. After a full round, Evan would run
“Let’s go half an hour. That should do it.”
The man put three sets of earmuffs on the counter. “Enjoy,” he said.
They followed their father through the back and down a flight of stairs. He gave them each a set of earmuffs and started going on about the correct way to hold a pistol, how a weapon needed respect and how people who didn’t understand that wound up dead from their own stupidity, which was how it should be. “One less dumb nigger, right?” he said. “Good riddance.”
to the target and rattle the tiny pellets in the carton, then he’d count them out to see who was the better shot. None of it excited Joel in the least.
Joel wanted to go home. Earlier that morning he’d woke with a trembling in his stomach like he some- times got before school. His legs had felt weak.
He’d gone to his mother and asked if he could stay home and she’d watched him carefully. “Why, what’s
“I can’t. The guy said.”
“It’s okay,” his father said. “He has to say that.”
His father signaled him to come closer. He reloaded the magazine and laid the pistol on the shelf with the barrel facing away from them. “You’re up,” he said.
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