The Shooting. James Boice

he does not like how it smells or even how deep black it is, too industrial and inhuman. Tries a second one and it’s no better. Lee has his empty one, pointing it downrange.

      —What do you think, buckaroo? We don’t like this, do we? It don’t feel like a gun. It feels like a toy. We miss our gun, don’t we?

      Lee nods. His father puts the space guns back into their big, heavy safe-like carrying cases and unholsters the special gun. Glances down at Lee. He is a big shadow between Lee and the sun. The shadow says, —Wanna learn to shoot it today, son?

      The day the pets come in, Lee stands at a safe distance from the fence beholding these large, smelly things that are not as cute or as nice as they should be. Flies crawl all over the cows’ eyeballs as they stare at Lee. The chickens shit as they walk and make angry squawks. The pigs are scary and mean and filthy and stinky. He will not ride these terrible things, he will not nuzzle them or talk to them or even go near them. He watches the animals feeding and groveling in the mud, stepping over each other, and wishes the man who brought them would come take them back. His father leans on the fence, one boot up on the lowest slat, happily observing his stock. —Yessir, he keeps saying. —Yessir. You’re happy now, ain’t you, now that your animals are here. He laughs and ruffles Lee’s head and says, —Yessir, yessir. You’re happy.

      In the morning all the pigs are lying on the ground, their bellies and throats open and their flesh white and fly-covered, guts hardening in the dirt. He wakes his father up and his father looks out the window and says, —Shit, shit, shit, shit. He runs outside, climbs over his fence, and squats at the first pig, wanting to touch something with his hand but not knowing what. —Shit! he yells. Someone has let the cows out and they stand in the pigpen with blood on their hooves. —Where are the chickens? his father says. The coop is open and they are nowhere to be seen, it is like they were never here. Through his diseased eye Lee watches his father run around looking for them. —What the fuck? he says. —What the fuck? He is covered in sweat, reeks of yesterday’s whiskey. Lee begins to cry. —Stop crying, his father shouts.

      The man who sold them the animals comes from town in a pickup truck just like Lee’s father’s but bigger, newer, and made not by Chevrolet but Toyota. He gets out and walks through the gravel dust settling around him.

      —He was born and raised here, Lee’s father tells Lee, voice somber with respect. —His family’s been grazing livestock ‘round these parts since 1850. He’s one of us.

      The man wears a cowboy hat like Lee’s father, a flannel shirt, boots, jeans—just like Lee and Lee’s father. A new plastic European space gun is holstered on his hip. He shakes Lee’s father’s hand, shakes Lee’s. Looks in silent amusement at the dead animals, at Lee’s father who around this man is very talkative and moves around a lot. The man says nothing, just nods and grunts as Lee’s father explains how last night they were fine.

      —Think it’s wolves? his father says.

      The man says, —That ain’t animals. That’s a knife did that. That’s slaughtering.

      —Slaughtering? his father says, looking around as though whoever it was might still be seen.

      —Probably oughta call the police.

      His father shakes his head at the idea. When the man leaves, Lee’s father’s face is red and he does not look at Lee or at anything. —I know who it was, he says. Lee says, —Who? but his father won’t say, and he takes the gun out of its holster, stomps off fifty feet out toward the trees, and points it and, screaming, fires once and fires again and keeps firing until it’s empty. Comes back, gestures over his shoulder.

      —Pick ’em up.

      —Huh?

      —The bullets. It ain’t good for the land for them to be out there, they’ll poison our soil. Go out there and fetch ’em and bring ’em back. All of ’em. And don’t come back until you do.

      —Why?

      Warm pain splatters across the back of his head and his hat falls off.

      —We obey our daddies where we come from.

      His father goes back inside and shuts the door, and Lee wanders toward the trees, crying, face hurting. He goes as slowly as he can. When he gets too close, when he cannot bear to go any farther, he turns and runs off to the guest house on the far side of the property, one of four, his hiding place. When he returns to the house four hours later, stopping at the gun range to dig six crushed bullets from the sand mound there, his father is in his chair in front of the TV, watching Happy Days. He does not look at Lee and he is drunk, and Lee thinks he looks like a little boy. Lee drops the bullets on the coffee table but his father does not look at them or acknowledge him.

      Over the ensuing week the garden stops growing altogether. Soon it is just wood and dirt, and soon fall comes and chills it, then winter comes and finally kills it off completely. They buy their groceries from Safeway, overpriced and infused with chemicals and hormones, in cartons and plastic packaging, meat killed by other men, crops grown on other men’s land. The bullets his father fired into the trees remain out there.

      His father disappears with no explanation. Lee wanders around the arsenal in the basement, picking up guns, feeling his father in them; he puts the special gun in a holster on his hip and admires himself in the mirror, wanders around the house like that. Steps outside and feels the breeze blowing over his skin, watches the green tops of the trees. He finds himself walking down the long driveway to the street, stands there for a moment, then continues. At the hospital they know who he is, the nurse takes him by the hand without asking him any questions, as though she has been waiting for him. People waiting in chairs holding wads of bandages to bleeding bodies call out in protest but she ignores them, leads him back through a winding hallway. On the way Lee looks over a doorway and his own name is there: THE LEE FISHER WING. They give him medicine and a man wearing a tie drives him home. It is night and he is in bed when he hears his father come home. He listens to him going through drawers in the kitchen, pulling things out, putting things away. Glasses clink. He is talking to someone. Lee thinks he hears another voice, a man’s. He holds his breath and listens very intently but does not hear the other voice again. Lee gets out of bed, stands against his closed door, listening, his heart beating very hard, lungs burning from holding his breath. Then it is quiet. Lee slips out of his bedroom, goes down the long hall, squats at the top of the stairs. A dim orange light Lee has never seen emanates from down there. His father’s long shadow is cast upon the wall. Lee hears the other voice again.

      His father appears at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him as though suspecting he would find him there. —What are you doing, Lee?

      —Nothing.

      —Go to bed.

      —Who’s here?

      —No one.

      —I heard someone.

      —No one’s here.

      —I heard a man.

      —There’s no man. Go to bed.

      Lee does as he is told. In the morning his face is almost back to its normal size and he sucks in gob after gob of air. Two days after that, as he keeps taking the medicine in secret, hiding it from his father under his mattress, the infection clears.

      —Look at that, his father says. —Just like I told you it would.

      Lee finds him in his bedroom pulling everything from the closets. A pile of clothing rises in the center of the room, all his cowboy hats and fringe vests and leather chaps and boots and dungarees and Levi’s. He tosses another armload of clothing atop the mound and mops a swath of sweat from his face with his palm. He is not a cowboy anymore. Now he is a soldier.

      Soldiers train. They join with others to form armies. They drill on the new course built where the farm was by a former drill sergeant who was responsible for the training courses on Parris Island, where they trained US Marines for battle in Vietnam.

      Soldiers go to church. They bring along their