to kill him. Wouldn’t you think that a kid who witnessed all this would need spiritual help?
Cappy looked me over. Nah.
Right. I brooded down at the clipped green for a while.
Nah, he said again. There’s something else.
Okay, I said. I needed practice shooting. Like I thought he’d let me help shoot the gophers. But he just gave me a book.
Cappy laughed. You dumb-ass!
Yeah. I imitated Father Travis talking: We won’t be doing that, Joe. Good will always come out of evil. You’ll see.
You’ll see? He said that?
Yeah.
Butt-fucker. If that was true, all good things would start in bad things. If you wanna shoot, said Cappy, you coulda gone to your uncle.
I’m off Whitey.
Better me. You shoulda come to me. Anytime. Anytime, my brother. I been hunting since I was two. I got my first buck when I was nine.
I know it. But it wasn’t just shooting gophers. You know that.
I might. I might know that.
You know what it is. What I’m talking about.
I do. I guess I do. Cappy nodded, looking down at a new set of golfers, Indian ones this time, who didn’t match.
So if you know, you also know I won’t implicate anybody else.
Implicate. Big lawyer word.
Should I define it?
Fuck you. I’m your best friend. I’m your number one.
I’m your number one, too. I do it alone or I don’t do it.
Cappy laughed. He reached around to his back pocket suddenly and took out a squashed pack of his brother’s cigarettes. Shit, I forgot about these.
They were crumpled but not torn apart. This time I noticed the matches had Whitey’s station on them.
Now he’s got matches, I said.
My brother got ’em. I never went there. But Randall said he’s moving on, he’s gonna rent out movies. Anyway, back to the subject.
What subject.
I don’t need to know. We’ll take my dad’s deer rifle out and practice, because, Joe, you can’t hit the side of a truck.
Maybe not.
And then where would you be when the side of the truck gets pissed off and runs you down? Shit outta luck. I can’t let that happen to you.
Except his rifle. I can’t use his rifle.
Just to practice. Then Doe’s gun gets stolen while we’re gone. While the house is empty. We hide the gun, the ammunition. And we’re not here anyway to laugh at geezers, are we.
No.
We’re scouting.
In case he comes along. I know he golfs, used to anyway. Linda told me.
Everybody knows Lark golfs, which is good. Anyone can miss a deer and hit a golfer.
We rode back to Cappy’s and went out back where Cappy had started practicing when he was five years old.
My dad taught me on a .22, said Cappy, just gophers or squirrels, hardly no kick to speak of. Then the first time we went deer hunting he hands me his 30.06. I tell him I’m worried it’ll kick, but he says no more than the .22, I promise you, my boy, just go easy. So I get my first deer on one shot. Know why?
’Cause you’re an Emperor?
No, my son, because I didn’t feel the kick. I wasn’t worried about the kick. I shot smooth. Sometimes you learn on a 30.06 and you flinch while you jerk the trigger, ’cause you can’t help anticipate the kick. I wish I could teach you on a .22 like my dad did, but you’re ruined already.
I did feel ruined. I knew I’d jerk the trigger, knew I’d flinch, knew how awkwardly I’d work the bolt action, how I’d probably jam it up, knew how I might as well cross my eyes as sight a target.
There was a rail fence where we set out cans and shot them down, and set up cans and shot them down. Cappy shot the first off neatly, showing me exactly how, but I couldn’t hit a single one of the rest. I was probably the only boy on the whole reservation who couldn’t shoot. My father hadn’t cared, but Whitey had tried to teach me. I was just no good at it. I couldn’t aim straight.
Lucky you’re not an old-time Indian. You woulda starved, said Cappy.
Maybe I need glasses. I was discouraged.
Maybe you should close one eye.
I’m doing that.
The other eye.
Both eyes?
Yeah, you might do better.
I hit three out of ten. I shot until we used most of the expensive ammunition, a problem as Cappy pointed out. We couldn’t let anybody know I was practicing. He couldn’t ask Doe for ammunition without explaining why. We also decided I should only practice when there was