Marshall turned and stared at her. “This is yours?”
Loo shook her head. “I use a rifle.” She crossed the living room and opened the chest in the corner and took out the M14. She kept the gun pointed down as she went back to Marshall, then laid it gingerly on the table. The wood glowed from years of polish, the trigger hung loose. Loo ran her fingers down the side. “That’s my grandfather’s name, on the barrel. He used this in the war. These marks on the side—that’s how many men he killed.”
She pointed to the fifteen notches carved near the handle. Loo had grown up with guns in the kitchen, guns in the bathroom, guns in the car, but this one was special. When her father picked it up, the rifle was practically an extension of himself. It was the oldest gun in his collection, the one he had carried through the past he would not speak of. The rifle was the most impressive thing in the house, the best she had to offer.
“You want to try it out?”
“I’ve never shot a gun before,” said Marshall. “The only weapons I’ve ever used were on my stepfather’s boat, trying to slow down a whaler. And those were just stink bombs and prop foulers.”
The rifle stretched across the table between them. Loo watched the boy watching the gun.
“I could teach you,” she said.
Marshall ran his fingers over the kill marks the same way he had touched the lady’s slipper. Then he pulled his hand away.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on.” Loo returned to the chest, slipped a few magazines and a box of ammo into the pocket of her shorts and headed for the door. Marshall stayed at the table. But when she turned at the entryway and looked back at him, he left the table and followed, as if she were a magnet drawing him away from his better judgment.
She gave Marshall a pair of her father’s boots and they headed into the ravine behind the house. The light was filtering through the leaves, creating layers upon layers of green. Once they were fifty yards in, it got darker, and the temperature dropped. Loo led Marshall down a steep slope toward the sound of moving water until they reached the gully that Hawley used for target practice.
“Here.” Loo handed Marshall the rifle. Then she took the box of ammo from her pocket and started loading one of the magazines. Marshall held the rifle as if he were waiting for it to go off, even though the safety was on and it was not loaded.
“What’s wrong?”
His neck flushed.
“Are you scared?”
“No,” he said.
Loo paused over the mag, a bullet in the palm of her hand. She did not say anything in return, only motioned for him to give the rifle back. Marshall passed it over, his face anxious. Loo wondered if she had made a mistake by bringing him here, but the clip was already loaded. The safety flipped. The handle of the rifle pressed high and tight to her shoulder. The sight was there to guide her as she tilted her head slightly, lifted the barrel a fraction of an inch, took in a breath and let half of it out. She squeezed the trigger.
And there was the boom.
The sound was so loud it pushed everything out of Loo’s mind—like an eraser wiping all her thoughts clean. For a brief moment she was nothing but a person in a place and there was no past and there was no future, only this single moment where her life flashed open—and she was awake and she was alive and she was real. Then the boom began to fade until it was only an echo, and she was her old self again, the memory of the previous moment nothing but a powdery smell in the air, like a match lit and quickly blown out.
Loo pointed at the mark she’d made in the distance, the bark exploded from the mossy base of a tree and scattered across the forest floor. She passed over the rifle. “The trick is to hit the same spot.” She put her hands on Marshall’s shoulders and stood behind him, positioning his body like a marionette’s—legs, hips, shoulders, fingers. She pushed until the wood was nestled into the crook of his arm.
“That’s going to kick,” she said. “Most of the power’s going out with the bullet, but some of it gets sent back into your body.”
“Kinetic energy,” said Marshall.
“See?” Loo said. “You’re going to do fine.”
Marshall kept perfectly still while she leaned her head toward him, until her cheek nearly touched the length of the barrel. “Look,” she said, and he bent his head so that it was next to hers. She could smell his hair, damp and earthy, like long grass after the rain.
“The bullet won’t travel in a straight line,” said Loo. “It gets pulled down. So you should always aim a tiny bit higher. You’re shaking,” she said. “Stop shaking.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s instinct. You’re afraid of what’s coming. But that’s the best part.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Take a breath,” she said. She heard Marshall inhale deeply, and she opened her lungs and took the air with him. Between the raised metal sights, there was the mark she had already made. She slid her hand through the trigger guard, then pressed down on top of his broken finger. The whole world was waiting.
“Now,” she said.
Bullet Number Four
THE DINER WAS RIGHT OFF the highway, just like Jove had promised. In the parking lot there was a sign with the name in lights and a cartoon drawing of a giant hairy pig with tusks, munching on a slice of blueberry pie. The place was old-fashioned—a railroad diner, booths along one side and a long counter edged with chrome, a door with a bell and a big neon clock set near the ceiling. There was one waitress on duty and a cook behind the kitchen window, frying some bacon and sometimes stepping out to work the cash register. It was between the breakfast shift and the lunch shift and the place was nearly empty, just Hawley and a couple of old truckers drinking coffee in one of the corner booths, taking their time before getting back on the road.