sharply against the green fields, like tiny standing stones. The brown mountains rise behind them.
“OK,” Cal says. “You can shoot standing, kneeling, or flat on your belly, but we’re gonna start with kneeling. One leg under you, one knee up. Like this.”
Trey imitates him carefully.
“The stock goes in the hollow of your shoulder, right here. Good and tight against you, so it won’t kick too hard.” The balance of the rifle is perfect; Cal feels like he could kneel there all day long without his muscles getting tired. “See that bead on the end of the barrel? That’s the front sight. This half-moon here, that’s your rear sight. You line up the two of ’em right on your target. I’m aiming for the third can from the left, so I’ve got those sights lined up on it. I’m gonna take a breath and then let it out again, nice and easy, and when all that breath is gone I’m gonna squeeze the trigger. Not hard; this isn’t a gun you need to haul at. It’ll work with you. You just breathe out through your mouth, and then out through the gun. Got it?”
Trey nods.
“Good,” Cal says. “Now let’s see if I still got it.”
Somehow, after all these years, Cal’s eye with a rifle is still there. He knocks the can clean off the wall with a triumphal ring of metal on metal that echoes across the fields, over the gun’s sharp report.
“Ah yeah,” Trey says, awed.
“Well, look at that,” Cal says. He inhales the smell of gunpowder and finds himself smiling. “Your turn.”
The kid holds the rifle well, settling it into his shoulder like it belongs there. “Elbows in. Let your cheek fall against the stock, nice and easy,” Cal says. “Take your time.”
Trey squints down the barrel, carefully picking his can and lining up the sights. “It’s gonna go bang,” Cal says, “and it’s gonna kick into your shoulder a little bit. Don’t get startled.”
Trey is too focused to bother with the eye-roll. Cal hears his long slow breath in and out. He doesn’t wobble in anticipation of the kick, and he doesn’t flinch when it comes. He misses, but not by too much.
“Not bad,” Cal says. “All you need is some practice. Pick up your shell casing; you gotta leave a place the same way you found it.”
They take turns till the magazine is empty. Cal bags himself five beer cans. The kid gets one, which lights him up so vividly that Cal grins and trudges across the field to retrieve the holed can for him. “Here,” he says, passing it over. “You can hang on to that. Your first kill.”
Trey grins back, but then he shakes his head. “My mam’d want to know where I got it.”
“She go through your stuff?”
“Didn’t useta. Only since Brendan went.”
“She’s worried, kid,” Cal says. “She just wants to know that you’re not thinking of going anywhere.”
Trey shrugs, tossing the can into the plastic bag. The light has gone out of his face. “OK,” Cal says. “Now that you’ve got the idea, let’s get ourselves some dinner.”
That pulls the kid back; his head snaps up again. “Where?”
“That piece of woodland over there,” Cal says, nodding towards it. “Rabbits got a bunch of burrows at the edge of that. I see them up feeding most evenings, around this time. Come on.”
They collect the beer cans and set themselves up far enough from the little wood not to spook the rabbits, but close enough that the kid stands a chance. Then they wait. The gold in the west has shifted to pink and the light is starting to fade, turning the fields gray-green and insubstantial. Off in Cal’s garden, the rooks are having their bedtime powwow; distance gentles their racket to a comfortable babble, running under the high scattered chitchat of the smaller birds.
Trey has the rifle resting carefully on his knee, ready to raise. He says, “You said your granddaddy taught you to shoot.”
“That’s right.”
“How come not your dad?”
“Like I told you. He wasn’t around a lot.”
“You said not steady.”
“That’s right.”
Trey thinks this over. “How come your mam didn’t teach you? Was she not steady either?”
“No,” Cal says, “my mama was steady as they come. She worked two jobs to pay our way. Thing is, that meant she wasn’t home enough to watch me. So she sent me to stay with my granddaddy and my grandma, most of the time, till I got big enough to watch myself. And that’s why he’s the