The Shooting. James Boice

what I said, it’s what I’m saying now: a boy should be free to run in the woods, learn about nature and himself, see what he’s made of, free from women always criticizing him and trying to break his spirit. It builds character. Look at Huck Finn.

      —Huck Finn is a fictional character, Mr. Fisher.

      —Thoreau then. Ain’t nothing made up about Henry David Thoreau. Anyway, it’s not exactly the great untamed wilderness, there’s a damned paved road.

      —A major highway.

      —Major highway. Good God. It’s just a daggone road and there ain’t never hardly anyone on it but us. Ain’t that right, Lee?

      —That’s right, says Lee.

      —Mr. Fisher, Lee is a very sensitive boy. If something should bite him, or if he runs through poison ivy, or—

      —My son ain’t gonna live his life afraid of the daggone world.

      Violet is gripping the edges of the table she stands beside, her arms quivering and knuckles white. Lee’s father laughs at her.

      —Thank God a man is finally around, right, Lee?

      —Thank God, says Lee.

      Violet says, —I’m only doing as instructed by Mrs. Fisher.

      —Well, do you see Mrs. Fisher anywhere around here? And her picture in your gossip magazines doesn’t count.

      Lee says, —So can I go?

      —Of course you can, his father says.

      Lee emerges from the woods with briars in his hair and pricklers on his shirt, mud caked on his butt from having lost his footing along a little gulch. Runs through the house’s backyard and up the porch, knocks. A woman answers the door.

      —Do any children live here? he asks.

      —Where on earth did you come from?

      —Up there.

      —All the way up there, you must be exhausted.

      —No, he says. —So do they?

      —I’m afraid not, no.

      A car pulls into the driveway and it is Violet, she has come down after him. —Come on, Lee, she says from the open window.

      Lee whines, —But he said I could.

      —Hello, the lady calls to Violet, —I’m sorry, he just knocked on my door, I was going to—

      —No, no, Violet interrupts her, smiling but not really smiling. —Come on, Lee.

      Inside the car as they drive back up the mountain Violet says, —He changed his mind. Please don’t ask me to try to explain that man.

      He wakes up and his right eye is sticky and he cannot move his jaw. To swallow saliva is to swallow a golf ball. He looks at himself in his bedroom mirror—an opaque red-gray sore stares back at him. Sobbing, he goes to his father’s bedroom; he’s asleep on his stomach, face buried in his pillow. The room smells of sweat and beer. It takes several shoves to wake him up. He grunts and groans, lifts his head.

      —What? he says. He looks very sick.

      —Look, Lee says.

      —God Almighty.

      —What’s happening to me?

      His father sits up, peers in close, forehead furrowed in concern. —Does it hurt?

      Lee feels like he should say no, so he says no.

      —Good boy. Just a little irritation. Allergy or something. You can see out of it okay, can’t you?

      Everything Lee sees with it is blurry. —I can see out of it okay.

      —Well, if it doesn’t hurt and you can see out of it, let’s just keep an eye on it and see if it goes away, all right? Getting in to town to the doctor’s is such a pain in the ass, we’ll be there all day, and we have so much work to do today on the farm. And the medical establishment is a machine, it crushes people, I don’t want you entering into it if you don’t have to. Look, you can tough it out, right?

      —I can tough it out.

      —Good man. You’re a good tough little guy. Nothing gets to you, does it? A little minor irritation doesn’t get to you, does it?

      —It doesn’t get to me.

      He hugs Lee, kisses him. —Daddy loves you.

      His mother calls from New York and she sounds very sleepy, and he wants to tell her about his eye but before he can she says she just called to say good-bye, and he says, —Where are you going? and she says, —I am dying. He says, —What do you mean? Are you sick? What happened? and she says, —No, I mean I am going to die very soon, I am going to kill myself, because you won’t come to New York and see me, you don’t love me, no one loves me, they have taken everything from me and I do not want to live, so good-bye, I love you, and he yells, —No, stop! But the line goes click and he screams for his father, who comes, and he tells him, —She’s died, she’s dead, and his father just rolls his eyes and mutters, —Dead drunk, and leaves, not caring. For days Lee wonders if his mother is dead. Then one day she calls and says, —Hello, babu, and she sounds bright and happy, as if nothing ever happened, and asks if he misses her and if he loves her and if he will come see her in New York. He says yes but only because he does not want to say no, the truth is he does not want to be anywhere near her.

      Things are already beginning to grow in the garden: little hard potatoes, tiny sprouts of greens. —Enough food to feed a city, his father says, standing proudly with his hands on his hips, gun in its holster, observing his dominion. Lee watches him lovingly water the poo-smelling dirt, pointing out to Lee where the tomatoes will soon be coming in, the broccoli, the carrots, the beans. —Fertile here, he says happily. —This land wants to grow food, it wants to feed us, don’t it?

      It’s only Lee and his father in the house now, no staff, his father has fired them, Violet too, who raised Lee from infancy. —We don’t need things done for us anymore, his father explains to Lee. He leaves early in the morning with one of his rifles to hunt but returns later in the afternoon with frozen meat in grocery store packaging. They cook the potatoes and the greens and the meat outside over an open flame, and his father seems happy and says things are going even better than expected.

      His father refuses to use the phone. Whenever it rings he cries out as though in great pain, —Go away! He does not bathe, spends his days digging and cutting and measuring and hoisting and planting and preparing the farm and his nights in his easy chair reading the newspapers, keeps red pens nearby to annotate them and argues with the lies they tell him. He carefully cuts out articles and gives them to Lee to read even though Lee is too young to understand. Lee holds the articles before his face pretending to read; his father watches Lee’s face, needing something from Lee that Lee cannot give. —Scary as hell, ain’t it? his father says. —It’s very bad. Very bad. It didn’t used to be like this, Lee.

      Day after day he goes out to hunt but returns only with frozen meat.

      The eye pulsates hot day and night. Lee puts a hand over it and it scalds, has its own heartbeat. He cannot feel his face; in the mirror his face is shiny and fat, but if he could not see it in the mirror he would believe it is not there. A rare sip of air sneaking down his strangled throat and into his lungs is a great pleasure. Wakes in the mornings with little silver bugs in his eye feeding off the thick pink-green discharge. He is sweaty, feverish. —Let me see, his father says, taking Lee’s chin in his and tilting up his grotesque little face toward his own. —Look at that! Getting better!

      In the mornings before school, Lee traipses around the kitchen and living room in the darkness of dawn, bending down to pick up his father’s empty bottles with cigarettes in them and bring them to the trash. When his father appears on the stairs with his rifle and camouflage heading out to hunt, he makes fun of Lee. —Uh-oh, it’s the cops. Do you have a warrant officer?