The Shooting (5 page)

—Let me out! Lee begs.

—You ain't never gettin' out, little piggy!

Then there is relentless knocking, pounding from the outside, and Lee backs away against the wall to get away from it. It gets louder and louder, the banging now on the inside walls of his skull.

—Leave me alone!

—You ain't never getting outta here, boy! You ain't never getting out!

—Please!

—
Pwea-he-he-hease! Heeeee! HEEEEEE!

The knocking grows more violent and the squeals and snorts more savage and deranged. Lee slides to the floor, shouting, —
Go away!
He reaches for his hip, pulls from the waistband of his Levi's his cork gun. He points it at the door. —Go away! he cries. —I'm warning you!

—HEEEEEEEEEE!

He pulls the trigger. The pounding stops. The squealing and the torment stop. The death goes away. And he is alone and peaceful in the dark. When he tries the door again it opens. The sunlight floods in and he inhales it like oxygen itself. Lee steps outside, silent, face wet and even puffier than it already was, lower lip trembling. The trees in the distance sway in the breeze. The trees, the breeze, the
distance
itself, he understands, are terror. All is death.

Over in the garden stands his father, his back to Lee, still chuckling to himself as he twists a can of pesticide to the nozzle of the hose.

At last his mother calls and says she hears he has not been doing well at school. He says he hates school, he's not good at it, he does not want school he wants the animals, and his eye hurts, and he's hungry, and when she sounds very angry at what he is saying he feels angry too and tells her things are not good here anymore, why did she leave him here, he wants to come see her in New York, he
wants to come now, but she says he can't, that she's not in New York anymore, now she is in Africa, for work, and he does not know where Africa is but he is not allowed to go there,
the custody agreement
she says, but as soon as she gets back to the States
the custody agreement
will allow it and things will be good again. He asks when that will be and she says she doesn't know, it's hard to say right now, but she says, —Will you try to do better in school? and he says he will and she says, —Will you think of being with me in New York every day and dream of being with me in New York every night? And he says he will, and he does. But months go by, and years, and she never gets back to the States, and he never stops dreaming of being with his mother in New York.

Lee listens to his father on the phone with the school, yelling about Lee. —Is your nurse a doctor? Did she go to medical school and become a doctor? Answer me: Is she a doctor?

He listens to his father on the phone with his mother, yelling about Lee. —He's fine, it's clearing up, he's doing completely fine, he's a good healthy boy, he's just impatient about the livestock getting here, it's all he's been talking about, you know how he is when he gets his mind set on something, he needs to learn patience. Anyway, you left the damn country so you get zero say in this, thank you very much. He listens and says, —Go right ahead and call them then. I dare you. They can go right ahead and try coming up here onto my property. Go right ahead and try.

When he hangs up his face is red and he is shaking. He tells Lee to come here. He holds Lee's face in his sweaty hands and looks at Lee's eye and says they are crazy, it's fine, it's clearing up, says school is a machine. Then he takes Lee to town for more guns and ammunition to keep themselves safe.

His father has put on tight jeans and snakeskin boots, a cowboy hat and a bright red western shirt; has tobacco in the pouch of his lip, carries a cup to spit in; has the gun on his hip in its holster. The men in the store stare at him as he enters, looking him up and down. —Howdy, he grunts at them. They nod back. He asks the salesman to see one of these new semiautomatic polymer pistols
from Austria. Lee stands on tiptoes to see over the counter as the bearded salesman, speaking in intimate quiet tones like a doctor, explains to Lee's father about the lightweight body, the safety trigger, the brilliant engineering that avoids jams and minimizes kick, the unique grip required and the high level of accuracy that results from it.

—Get a load of this thing, Lee, it looks like a daggone space gun, don't it? I think I'll stick to my granddaddy's gun, thank you very much. He gestures to it on his hip. —Tried and true. Battle-tested.

Says the salesman, —Cops and military have been switching over from those to these. This is what they're all carrying nowadays. Much more reliable. Fires twice as many rounds without having to reload—He sees Lee's eye and cuts himself off. He is large, his face emotionless, but it breaks into quiet horror. —Good Lord, he whispers.

Lee's father glares at the salesman as though daring him to say another word about the eye. —Cops and military, huh? How much they going for?

—Three-fifty and tax.

—Gimme four of 'em.

—Four?

—Four. What caliber are they? You got hollow points for 'em?

—Nine millimeter, and yes, sir, we do.

—Okay, gimme a shitload of hollow points. Turns to Lee. —What about you, buckaroo? You want one? You do, don't you? He turns back to the salesman. —Give me one more, for my son.

—Five, then?

—Excellent math. Hell, better yet? Make it ten.

The man has now forgotten all about the eye. A buoyancy has entered his hefty frame now as he says, —That's my entire stock.

—Is that a problem?

—No, sir, not at all. He hurries into the back to fetch them. Comes out with the guns in their big bombproof-seeming cases stacked in his arms over his face, places them on the counter. Returns to the back for the bullets. —Hundred boxes is all I got. Hundred okay?

—I reckon that'll do, says Lee's father. —For now. He winks at Lee. Fills out the forms, pays. —You ever make a sale this big before?

—No, sir, no, I have not.

Lee's father winks at Lee again and drums his knuckles happily on the glass countertop.

The man hands them their new weapons and ammunition and hurries around from behind the counter to get the door for them, grinning so broadly and strangely now that Lee thinks he will hug his father. —Y'all come back any time now, any time at all.

They drive off, passing a hospital, Lee peering out at it through his good eye. They go home, go directly to the range to shoot the brand-new space guns. The space guns are supposed to hit the bull's-eye without your even aiming them, they are supposed to fire without your even feeling it or hearing it—isn't that what the salesman said? But neither turns out to be true, and Lee's father cannot hit anything with the first one he shoots, says it feels like a daggone block in his hand; he does not like how it smells or even how deep black it is, too industrial and inhuman. Tries a second one and it's no better. Lee has his empty one, pointing it downrange.

—What do you think, buckaroo? We don't like this, do we? It don't feel like a gun. It feels like a toy. We miss
our
gun, don't we?

Lee nods. His father puts the space guns back into their big, heavy safe-like carrying cases and unholsters the special gun. Glances down at Lee. He is a big shadow between Lee and the sun. The shadow says, —Wanna learn to shoot it today, son?

The day the pets come in, Lee stands at a safe distance from the fence beholding these large, smelly things that are not as cute or as nice as they should be. Flies crawl all over the cows' eyeballs as they stare at Lee. The chickens shit as they walk and make angry squawks. The pigs are scary and mean and filthy and stinky. He will not ride these terrible things, he will not nuzzle them or talk to them or even go near them. He watches the animals feeding and groveling in the mud, stepping over each other, and wishes the man who brought them would come take them back. His father leans on the fence, one boot up on the lowest slat, happily observing his stock. —Yessir,
he keeps saying. —Yessir. You're happy now, ain't you, now that your animals are here. He laughs and ruffles Lee's head and says, —Yessir, yessir. You're happy.

In the morning all the pigs are lying on the ground, their bellies and throats open and their flesh white and fly-covered, guts hardening in the dirt. He wakes his father up and his father looks out the window and says, —
Shit
,
shit
,
shit
,
shit.
He runs outside, climbs over his fence, and squats at the first pig, wanting to touch something with his hand but not knowing what. —
Shit!
he yells. Someone has let the cows out and they stand in the pigpen with blood on their hooves. —Where are the chickens? his father says. The coop is open and they are nowhere to be seen, it is like they were never here. Through his diseased eye Lee watches his father run around looking for them. —What the fuck? he says. —What the fuck? He is covered in sweat, reeks of yesterday's whiskey. Lee begins to cry. —Stop crying, his father shouts.

The man who sold them the animals comes from town in a pickup truck just like Lee's father's but bigger, newer, and made not by Chevrolet but Toyota. He gets out and walks through the gravel dust settling around him.

—He was born and raised here, Lee's father tells Lee, voice somber with respect. —His family's been grazing livestock ‘round these parts since 1850. He's one of us.

The man wears a cowboy hat like Lee's father, a flannel shirt, boots, jeans—just like Lee and Lee's father. A new plastic European space gun is holstered on his hip. He shakes Lee's father's hand, shakes Lee's. Looks in silent amusement at the dead animals, at Lee's father who around this man is very talkative and moves around a lot. The man says nothing, just nods and grunts as Lee's father explains how last night they were fine.

—Think it's wolves? his father says.

The man says, —That ain't animals. That's a knife did that. That's slaughtering.

—Slaughtering? his father says, looking around as though whoever it was might still be seen.

—Probably oughta call the police.

His father shakes his head at the idea. When the man leaves, Lee's father's face is red and he does not look at Lee or at anything. —I know who it was, he says. Lee says, —Who? but his father won't say, and he takes the gun out of its holster, stomps off fifty feet out toward the trees, and points it and, screaming, fires once and fires again and keeps firing until it's empty. Comes back, gestures over his shoulder.

—Pick 'em up.

—Huh?

—The bullets. It ain't good for the land for them to be out there, they'll poison our soil. Go out there and fetch 'em and bring 'em back. All of 'em. And don't come back until you do.

—Why?

Warm pain splatters across the back of his head and his hat falls off.

—We obey our daddies where we come from.

His father goes back inside and shuts the door, and Lee wanders toward the trees, crying, face hurting. He goes as slowly as he can. When he gets too close, when he cannot bear to go any farther, he turns and runs off to the guest house on the far side of the property, one of four, his hiding place. When he returns to the house four hours later, stopping at the gun range to dig six crushed bullets from the sand mound there, his father is in his chair in front of the TV, watching
Happy Days.
He does not look at Lee and he is drunk, and Lee thinks he looks like a little boy. Lee drops the bullets on the coffee table but his father does not look at them or acknowledge him.

Over the ensuing week the garden stops growing altogether. Soon it is just wood and dirt, and soon fall comes and chills it, then winter comes and finally kills it off completely. They buy their groceries from Safeway, overpriced and infused with chemicals and hormones, in cartons and plastic packaging, meat killed by other men, crops grown on other men's land. The bullets his father fired into the trees remain out there.

His father disappears with no explanation. Lee wanders around the arsenal in the basement, picking up guns, feeling his father in them;
he puts the special gun in a holster on his hip and admires himself in the mirror, wanders around the house like that. Steps outside and feels the breeze blowing over his skin, watches the green tops of the trees. He finds himself walking down the long driveway to the street, stands there for a moment, then continues. At the hospital they know who he is, the nurse takes him by the hand without asking him any questions, as though she has been waiting for him. People waiting in chairs holding wads of bandages to bleeding bodies call out in protest but she ignores them, leads him back through a winding hallway. On the way Lee looks over a doorway and his own name is there:
THE LEE FISHER WING
. They give him medicine and a man wearing a tie drives him home. It is night and he is in bed when he hears his father come home. He listens to him going through drawers in the kitchen, pulling things out, putting things away. Glasses clink. He is talking to someone. Lee thinks he hears another voice, a man's. He holds his breath and listens very intently but does not hear the other voice again. Lee gets out of bed, stands against his closed door, listening, his heart beating very hard, lungs burning from holding his breath. Then it is quiet. Lee slips out of his bedroom, goes down the long hall, squats at the top of the stairs. A dim orange light Lee has never seen emanates from down there. His father's long shadow is cast upon the wall. Lee hears the other voice again.

His father appears at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him as though suspecting he would find him there. —What are you doing, Lee?

—Nothing.

—Go to bed.

—Who's here?

—No one.

—I heard someone.

—No one's here.

—I heard a man.

—There's no man. Go to bed.

Lee does as he is told. In the morning his face is almost back to its normal size and he sucks in gob after gob of air. Two days after that,
as he keeps taking the medicine in secret, hiding it from his father under his mattress, the infection clears.