this whole thing specced out on a grid. “I’m telling you. Dave used to be an army ranger—well, he was almost one. Elias could relate to him, and it’d be way better than leaving him up here with Dodge and Candy.”
“Not going to happen,” I told her. “I’ve already got a plan. It’ll work. You just have to have a little faith in me.”
She tipped her head, and her hands went still in midair. “I’ve got all the faith in the world in you. But we need to act soon with him. Dave will help us, and sometimes you just have to accept help when it’s offered. Admitting you need it isn’t a weakness. It’s a sign of strength.”
This was something Jill did a lot. When she was talking about moving in with Stan or what my dad needed these days or anything where someone was having a hard time, she started sounding like she was running an AA meeting. I wouldn’t have rolled my eyes at her, but I sure wanted to some days. So I let it go. I told her we’d figure it out once the baby got here. And I guess I just ignored the obvious, which was that if I was really a good judge of my capabilities, we wouldn’t have been stuck in fucking Frasier in the first place.
Chapter 15
Candy
The jungle-camo jacket pulled tight across her brother’s back as he lay in the dirt with his eye up against the AR-15’s iron sight, trying to get a bead on the paper target’s red center. The scuffed bottoms of his boots faced Candy. Their father crouched beside him, rattling off instructions in a voice that had the crack of a rifle in it, so sharply did it cut the air. In response Elias squeezed the grip and the bipod in turn, as if he was milking a cow, or crushing one of the foam stress balls they gave out at the hardware store.
Pop. Pop. The second one was hesitant. Pop. She squinted, tightened her arms across her jacket, prayed for him. They had been here for three hours, in this clearing in the heart of the woods, long after their father’s friends had packed up and gone home. It was their job to run back and forth to the house in search of additional ammo, beer, gun-cleaning equipment, bags of corn chips or whatever else their father might order. In between, Candy drew letters in the dust, quizzing Elias on his alphabet. He was only in the first grade; she was in the third. When he grew tired of that she placed acorn caps and bits of gravel in each of his palms and asked him to find the sums. It gave her a good feeling to teach him this way, a tender and grown-up feeling, and sometimes when he got an answer right she felt the urge to pull him into her arms and rock him like a baby doll. But he would never tolerate that.
It had been all right until their father called Elias over to try his hand at the AR-15—calculated, Candy could see, to show off for their friends—and Elias had missed every shot at the target. Their dad, inspired by three or four beers’ worth of overconfidence, had been embarrassed by his son’s incompetence, his forgetfulness about even the most basic elements of loading and handling a rifle. The failure had won Elias an hour of remedial training, and their father’s frustration escalated with every missed shot.
“No,” he said, incredulous. “No, no and no. Why’s your hand shaking? Stop that. Just look. It’s red. Just line ’em up.”
Pop.
Candy winced. Their father’s arm flew out at Elias, attempting to cuff him on the side of the head, but he dodged it. Quickly he made a second grab, this time for the back of Elias’s jacket, which bunched up like the neck of a kitten. Without letting go, he cupped his other big hand around the back of Elias’s head and, with a steady, deliberate rhythm, knocked his forehead into the leveled stump on which the rifle rested.
“What’s rule one.”
“Point it in a safe direction.”
“What’s rule two.”
“Finger off the trigger.”
“What’s rule three.”
“Know what you’re shooting at.”
“Then why don’t you, you worthless fucking turd.”
He dropped his clutch of jacket and Elias slumped against the ground. After a moment Candy skittered over, gathering up a clinking armful of empties to be sure she looked useful, and ushered Elias out of the woods. Their father