“In wartime, drastic measures are necessary.”
“Are we at war?” Dom asked. It was a mistake. The Colonel closed his eyes as if exhausted and let out a long root beer–scented belch.
He looked around suspiciously before whispering, “We are in a war, son. The crusade to make America great again. There are those naysayers who will tell you different. They’ll say we are in a golden age. Ha! But they’re liars. Or they’re cowards. Content to live a cushiony life with their big TVs and their shrink appointments and their goddamn feelings.”
Dom nodded, repeating, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” And it seemed to work because the Colonel released his throbbing shoulder and turned Dom to face the tomato-can targets. Dom lifted the gun.
“Hold your horses there,” the Colonel said, and wrapped his arms around Dom from behind so he covered Dom’s hands with his own. “You’re a righty, so you grip it high on the back strap. That’ll help you deal with recoil better.”
“Yes, sir,” Dom said. The Colonel’s round belly pressed into his back and he tried not to think about how close they were, and what if he couldn’t control his body like in the woods outside the Castle the other day, and then the Colonel was yelling in his ear, “Pay attention, boy!”
“Yes, sir!”
“All four fingers under the trigger guard. Yeah, you got it. I’m going to tell you a little story while we get you ready to shoot. I think it’ll illuminate (the Colonel drew out every syllable like it was a joke) why this island—the whole US of A—is at war.”
He showed Dom how to keep his trigger finger on the outside of the guard, his thumb pointing forward where the slide met the frame, so his hands fit together—Like a puzzle.
“Once upon a time,” the Colonel sang, like it was storytime at nursery school, “there was a boy named Willie. A Southern boy who thought he was a real big cheese. But was, in fact, a flat tire through and through. His girl was named Hillie. And whoa was she a number. Queen of the man-eating feminists!”
Dom was concentrating on the gun so it was hard to listen to the story and the instructions at once. He nodded, said “Uh-huh,” and the Colonel continued.
“They were a greedy couple of kids. Wanted money and power. But without the cost. Wanted it handed to them on a silver platter.”
Dom’s arms were beginning to ache.
“Instead of fighting for his country, Willie whined and whined until he was allowed to dodge the draft.”
“That’s messed up.”
“That’s not all.” The Colonel showed Dom how to stand, moving Dom’s hips roughly with his hands. Feet and shoulders apart, knees bent slightly. “Willie can’t keep his willy in his pants!” That laugh again. Heh-heh-heh. “He’s screwing some broad, and get this, her name is Flowers. No lie.”
Dom aimed at the middle can so the top of the front sight lined up with the top of the rear sight. His arms trembled and sweat trickled past his temple toward his chin but he didn’t dare move.
“Now, Willie and Hillie want to live in the White House. If you can imagine that! And the people of America, especially the young—with their video games and MTV music shows—they don’t know what it means to fear war. Oh no, they’re content. Numb. They don’t know what it feels like to have your son head overseas and come home in a pine box—his skull shattered by shrapnel so you can see bits of his brain. No open casket.”
Dom set what the Colonel called the “sight picture” so the front and rear sights were sharp in focus and the target, the can, blurry. When, he wondered, was he going to be allowed to pull the trigger?
“They think war is something that happens in faraway countries. In history books and Hollywood movies.” Dom heard the teeth-clenching bitterness in the Colonel’s voice. “When they watched Desert Storm on the TV set, it looked like a game at the goddamn arcade!”
The Colonel pressed into him from behind and Dom worried he’d topple forward.
“You ready to shoot, lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now, when I say, you squeeze the trigger. You squeeze until you feel it resist. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When violence does enter your life,” the Colonel continued, “it marks you like tar. It stains you good. It devours you until you don’t know how you can go on living, and you sure as hell aren’t griping about your feelings.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, the key is to let the gun fire on its own. Don’t try to trick yourself into thinking you’ll know when it fires. The gun likes to surprise you.”
Dom heard a smile in the Colonel’s voice.
“The goddamn liberals. The EPA and their environment BS. Bush, that nitwit, cutting the defense budget. The Berlin Wall came down and hippies are still writing songs about it. They weren’t alive to remember why it went up in the first place!”
“Can I shoot?” Sweat was dripping down both sides of Dom’s face.
“You know what’s going to happen if Slick Willie gets into the White House?”
Dom shook his head.
“The dawn of destruction! Why, in Christ’s name, should we lay down arms when we are winning? When we are at the top of the game?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
The Colonel stepped back so his voice felt far away. “Let’s see you shoot those motherfucking Krauts full of holes.”
Dom had imagined shooting would be hard. That he’d be scared of the blast and the reverberating thwang that moved up his arm, into his shoulder, spread through his chest. But he was good. His hands steady, his aim decent. He hit one can and then another, missing the last. When he turned to see if the Colonel was pleased or disappointed, the old man was whooping and dancing a frolicky jig that made Dom think of Rumpelstiltskin.
The Colonel hobbled over to the fence to replace the cans and Dom knew he had death in his hands. He was death. Like Hades, the god of the underworld with his two-pronged fork that shattered anything, anyone, not to his liking. How easy it would be, to lift and fire. Claim it was an accident. It was his first time, after all. No more stomach-clenching tense family dinners. No more nights listening to his mother cry because her father had called her a fat pig. Or, maybe, it was his mother who needed the peace of death more. How different could it be from death—that dark silent space she escaped to with her pills?
As he squeezed off round after round, the stewed-tomato cans flying off the fence, he realized he could make an excuse for the death of everyone. He gave each can a name; MJ Bundy; Mr. Brenner, that sadistic shit of a gym teacher; the Colonel and his mom and dad; and Jules, the new neighbor who had laughed at him. The only one he left out was Maddie. When he hit the can he’d named Dom, it spun in the air like a flying saucer.