Taking Aim

by Michael Cart

  Grams takes the two stones from Swayzee and carefully lays them at the bottom of the bag, next to the struggling kittens. Then she holds the neck between her legs and ties it with twine.

  “There you have it,” she says, throwing her hands in the air like she’s just won the calf-roping competition.

  Gravely, she picks up the bag and heads down the curving driveway. She stops before her head disappears. “You coming?” The calico turns and asks the same.

  But he doesn’t. He runs in the house and up the stairs. Taped on his bedroom door is his proudest accomplishment. It says:

  KNOW THY GUN

  KNOW THY SELF

  And below it:

  SWAYZEE MORRISON HAS SATISFIED

  ALL THE REQUIREMENTS FOR GUN SAFETY.

  “Proud of you,” Grams said when they taped it up. “Smarter than they all think you are.”

  Now he opens the window and rests his elbows on the sill. From there, he sees her come out of the trees and stand before the pond down by the well house. He has the toothbrush in one hand and depresses the cylinder as down below she twirls the sack and tosses it out toward the middle. Just before it hits, the sack tears and the rocks and the kittens tumble out making separate splashes in the thin ice of the pond. The calico runs to the edge and pads out on the thick shore ice. Her kittens pop up and work their paws frantically against the surface. Grams bends down and picks up pebbles. If a kitten moves toward shore, she lobs a pebble in the water, and is remarkably accurate as she hits them, driving them back. Even from way down below, Swayzee thinks he can hear Grams: I am so unhappy to have to do this. Lately he is sure he can hear the same coming from the kids in his classes. We are so unhappy.

  Now Swayzee runs into the old bedroom. He knows that if he pushes the cedar chest away from the wall, he’ll find the rifle. He picks it up. A 30-06. Its bullets are like missiles. In the drawer on Gramps’s side of the bed he pulls out the rag and the oil. He sits on the bed and rubs and rubs at the stock, minute after minute until it shines. He picks it up and sights it in, over toward the door. This is it. When the big comes into his bones and his meat. It feels like the cool smooth inside of Elaine Sandeborn’s leg when the kids at school tricked him and then everybody jumped out and laughed him down the stairs.

  He sat once in the counselor’s office and listened as they talked. Can’t blame him for not knowing the appropriate rules for dating. We’ll work on it with him. Meantime, keep him where he is. He mostly gets along just fine. Just has to stay away from Elaine.

  “He’s passed the exam for his carry permit,” Grams said. “Not stupid, this boy. Just troubled. You ask me, you should be taking a look at those other kids.”

  Grams is back and now steps into the doorway from the hall and right into Swayzee’s line of sight. Her body sags when she sees the rifle pointed at her. One day she will just crumple from all this heavy life. He sees a new scared look on her for an instant. But just for an instant. It tickles him. It touches the sweet part of his brain. He smiles everywhere but on his lips.

  “Put that thing down!” she orders. And all the big deflates as she yanks it from his grasp by the barrel. “Gramps will flay the meat off your bones.”

  He knows Gramps wouldn’t. Can’t. But Gramps would be proud. Even prouder if he knew that Swayzee’s been practicing what Gramps preaches about war. But it’s Grams and he falls to his knees. Begs for her forgiveness. Plays like he’s on the stage so they won’t know the truth. There is a great fetid pool he tells no one about. Not Grams, not the perfect lady at the clinic where he can spend hours watching the curl in her hair. In the pool, he sees his long-lost older sister and his father. Both refugees who took a boat to some other life. Left Swayzee without a map to find them. Didn’t tell him that you can be smart as a whip and still nobody likes you. Pretty girls crush themselves against the sides of this pool, hoping you won’t touch them. He imagines his sister and his father swim around in their own better pool called luck like a couple of kittens with life preservers. Getting somewhere, not like Swayzee. He doesn’t tell anybody about the other one who lives in his pool. Grams has her witch . . . well, Swayzee has one better. His voice is everywhere. But quiet. They don’t know, he whispers. Gramps would like him. They say the same things.

  He goes upstairs, pulls his oxfords from under the bed. Takes the rectangle of paraffin hidden inside one. He goes back down and plops himself on the hassock next to Gramps. No money for skates again this year so he must work on the shoes. Gramps sits in his wheelchair, a beam of winter sun cooking his face. Swayzee turns one shoe upside down and runs the paraffin across the sole. Back and forth and back and forth. A nice waxy buildup. While he does this, he talks to Gramps. And Gramps answers back. Not to anyone else for ten years since the stroke, but to Swayzee he does.

  The inside of your head is a delicate thing. Your skull, now, it’s made to protect your brain from the outside. But God didn’t make anything to protect your brain from the inside. See there? That’s the rub. All the while you’re slogging along, looking for the enemy out in the jungle, and bam, there he is, sneaking up on you from the inside. In war, everybody’s the enemy and believe you me, we both know it’s a war out there for you, Swayzee. Be careful. Be ready. I saw plenty of that sneaking in the Pacific Theater.

  Swayzee reaches out and touches the wheelchair. He hopes one day to get a part on the stage of the Pacific Theater. He might stand up before the audience and say, “No, you cannot take those medications. They are extremely bad for you. They make it all sour and you can’t taste anything. They make it hard to sight in the gun. Hard to do a double Salchow. I will show you how not to take them.”

  Grams is so unhappy, mute Gramps says.

  He brings the shoe up to his nose and sniffs. His tongue comes out and licks the heel. Just like the top of a jar of blackberry jam. He will be ready.

  A few days later, it is worth the wait. It is colder outside. The leaves have all deserted the trees. Grams is busy in the barn. Swayzee puts on his sweatshirt, now heavy with the little missiles. He uses his silent skills to slip into the old bedroom. Moves the chest, pulls out the gun. He slings it on his back and it is like a part of his spine: a part that holds his body straight and true.

  He winds down the driveway to the pond. He lays the rifle in the ivy and sits back on the gravel and trades his boots for his oxfords. They are shiny and black. He can see the whole world in the leather. He racks the rifle back on his spine and tiptoes through the dead grass and onto the ice. It creaks under his weight. He likes the sound. The ice is practically the only thing that speaks nicely to him. Then he glides across the ice and around the little islands of broken cattails poking up. The wax has made him a star. He twirls and jumps and spreads his arms wide while behind him the rifle is safe and sound, like the biathlon sport he’s seen in the Winter Olympics.

  As he moves so gracefully, he can hear his fans.

  Swayzee! Swayzee! We love you, kid!

  He pumps his arms and gets his speed up. Leaves his sour brain way behind. If he skates fast enough, he can catch up to all the ones who left him. He leaps into the air and thumbs a ride on a normal wind and spins and twirls and rotates. He laughs and screams and introduces himself to all the pretty girls. Then he lands solidly, perfectly, and stops himself with the toe of his oxford.

  Yeah, Swayzee, old buddy, old pal! You’re the best!

  He skates from one end of the pond to the other and back again. It is a competition that Swayzee always wins. He skates out to the middle. He knows it is the deepest here. Over everybody’s head. Deep as the pit in his brain that everyone thinks is empty but really isn’t. The swirling cold from the north has made it thicker here than it was just last week. It is here where he has perfected his best moves. And it is here that he makes his mistake.

  He tries to push off to get his speed going fast enough to twirl himself up into space, but he catches on one of the islands of cattails and falls hard, face-first onto the shimmering ice. The
gun goes off and a bullet speeds straight and true into the trunk of a young naked maple. His nose slams into the ice and the pain paints its bright notice behind his eyes. He yowls and slips and slides on his blood that is fast congealing. A front tooth is rocking in its socket. He falls again on his cheek.

  Something stares up at him and he tries to focus. Something there locked in the ice. A dark blue eye, a swatch of calico. As the blood spatters from his nose, he clambers up onto his hands and knees. He peers down.

  Locked in there but moving its mouth. Swayzee can hear it. I’m the one who looks like her.

  He wails and scrambles to stand up. The blood falls freely. His jacket is splotched and stiffening. He screams and screams. He stumbles, splays his legs, falls forward across the ice to the shore. He finds the ground and runs. Who cares about the ought-six? Who cares about his oxfords? Who cares? They propel him up the hill in a frenzy of blood and grief and a feeling that some bad things never end.

  He can’t tell her well enough. Can’t get it past the blood. “Alive!” he finally gabbles. “Alive!”

  Grams is puzzled. She tries to staunch the blood but he won’t let her. She looks at him and her breath pulls back. Who is this man she now sees in his eyes? She fidgets. “Don’t try it, boy,” she says.

  “But it’s alive,” he says.

  “Who? Where?”

  He leads her down the driveway, no time to put on her heavy coat and scarf. He yanks her along. She doesn’t care about the blood right now. She doesn’t say a word about the rifle strapped to his back. At the pond, he refuses to go out on the ice again, but points it out to her.

  “She’s alive!” he shouts. “Alive!”

  She glances down at his scuffed oxfords. She tears a piece of her sleeve off and jams it next to his nostrils, makes him hold it there. Then she walks out on the ice.

  It crackles beneath her, making great ancient sounds. She’s gained twenty pounds this year and that, plus the weight of her world, is finally too much. She looks down and, through the slushy blood, sees the kitten trapped in the ice. Sees the one dark blue eye observing her. It is the eye that will not let her go, the one unblinking reminder that maybe it was a mistake to walk out here.

  She turns and looks at her grandson as the ice buckles and then breaks beneath her. She goes down quickly, inevitably. She comes up and spits the frigid murky water from her mouth. She clutches for the edge of the ice, but it breaks away from her grasp. Down once more, this time the cold is dragging her, sopping into her dress, into her socks, filling the airy spaces of her shoes.

  Rising again, “Swayzee!” she calls. “Swayzee! Help!”

  But what she sees is Swayzee calmly collecting stones from the driveway and as she battles the cracking ice, he lobs them, one by one out to the middle of the pond. One hits in the open water. One hits the solid ice and skates across and catches her on her heavy lips.

  “Swayzee!” she calls a final time before she goes under yet again.

  I was so unhappy, he hears her say from beneath the water.

  Swayzee pauses. The pebbles are cold in his palm. He waits. It is quiet. The ice has stopped its awful wailing. He knows what will happen next and he quickly pulls the rifle from his back and fixes on the hole Grams has made. In a few seconds comes his reward. The little witch bobs to the surface, puffing, crying, those wicked little teeth chomping at the water. She is looking to come for Swayzee. He knows better. He butts the rifle against his shoulder and catches her through the sight. He fires and the happy bullet hits the mark.

  “Yes,” says Swayzee. The big is back. His bones grow. His meat grows. They feed the illustrations of success in his brain.

  Yes, you can do it, Swayzee, old boy, old pal.

  He likes this part. Knowing that he can finally make something of himself. So many witches to keep from shore. Keep out of people’s hearts. Now that the witch has gone under, everything is quiet again.

  He wants to leave. Wants to go back up and see what Gramps has to say about what he’s done. He turns and nearly trips over the calico sitting next to his boots. They share a glance. There is much for them to talk about.

  Who’s next? says the cat. How about that Elaine Sandeborn?

  Guys won’t chase me down the stairs this time.

  Up to the barn then?

  To that hole in the floor.

  There is the tiniest quiver at the corner of the calico’s mouth. Then she turns and twitches her tail as they go up the driveway together. Swayzee sticks out his tongue. The air is a shock and it tastes so much sweeter.

  THE GUNSLINGER

  Peter Johnson

  The black Mazda reeked of cigarettes and fear.

  The cigarettes were Maura’s mother’s. The fear was hers.

  She turned the key, and the engine coughed itself awake. The afternoon was still hot and sunlight flashed off the hood.

  Maura was going to buy a gun.

  She knew nothing about guns, though they were a daily threat in Gabby’s neighborhood. Just last summer, Gabby had told Maura how a carload of boys had peppered her housing project with bullets while neighbors sat outside barbecuing and making small talk. Gabby also said she knew where to get a gun if she felt unsafe, which was why Maura was picking her up.

  It was a short drive to the Dunkin’ Donuts located at the end of the strip mall. Maura could see Gabby standing on the corner, yelling at two guys in a yellow Mustang convertible. She wore skintight jeans and a snug, white sleeveless top. Her dark curly hair was drawn back into a ponytail. She was tall and thin, her body sculpted from exercise and weight training. She was a sprinter. That’s how she and Maura had met last summer. Gabby did the 100- and 200-yard dashes, and Maura ran long distance. Neither one of them had the money to afford a premier track camp in the city, but their coaches finagled them scholarships. They saw each other daily for four weeks that summer and kept in touch through Facebook, sometimes meeting at the mall for lunch.

  Maura pulled up behind the Mustang. When Gabby saw her, she shot the guys in the car the finger. They laughed, and one called her a slut. Then they peeled away.

  “Slut, my ass,” Gabby said, sliding into the front seat of the Mazda.

  Maura laughed.

  “It ain’t funny, girl,” Gabby said. “Dumb boys think every beautiful black girl has the morals of a rap diva. I’m a straight-A student on the fast track to something big.”

  There was no doubt in Maura’s mind that was true.

  She was about to pull away when Gabby grabbed her by the forearm. “Why did you scrub yourself down, girl?”

  “What?” Maura asked.

  “No makeup. You look like a nun.”

  Maura felt herself smile, and that was nice, since for the last few weeks she’d been so depressed she’d had trouble getting out of bed. And as for makeup, the truth was, she didn’t want to look pretty anymore.

  “Don’t worry about today,” Gabby said. “These guys will want your money, and then we’re gone. They don’t need to know nothin’. You understand?”

  Maura nodded.

  “No need to share. You need protection, right?”

  Maura nodded again.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid, right?”

  “No,” Maura said.

  Alex didn’t think much about it when he first saw Maura at the mall. He needed new desert boots. They were a hundred and fifty dollars, but he needed them. They were cool, so his mother gave him the money. It was nice to be able to spend money like this, and not have to work crappy summer jobs to buy clothes. Instead he had time to get in shape for football.

  As he was leaving the shoe store, he saw her sitting in the food court on a bench by a water fountain. Looking at him. Not waving or approaching. Just staring. He waved but she didn’t respond, so he kept walking toward J.Crew. He needed new shorts and some T-shirts. He needed some kind of lightweight pants.

  It was after he left J.Crew that he saw her a second time, squatting on another bench acro
ss from the store. Now this was getting annoying.

  She actually looked good. She wore white short shorts and a blue sleeveless knit top, her long brown hair breaking across her breasts. She had one leg crossed over the other. She had nice legs. He had remembered that, and also the green pendant that hung around her neck. That night, he had retrieved it from the floor and slid it into her pocket. That was nice of him, thoughtful.

  But this was creeping him out.

  He decided to talk to her.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  She kept staring at him. She looked a little stoned.

  “Okay,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’m cool with that.”

  Still no response.

  She looked sad, then angry, then sad.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “But let’s talk sometime, okay?”

  He was about to leave when she said something very softly.

  “What?” he said.

  “I said, ‘Why?’”

  Now this was awkward.

  “Like I said, Maura, let’s get together. Some place quiet. But I have stuff to do now. I’ll call, okay?”

  Still no answer, so he smiled and headed toward the sunglasses kiosk. That was the last item he needed to buy.

  He didn’t see her again until after he paid for parking and headed through the steamy underground garage toward his red Audi. He wanted to get home, then go to the country club for a quick dip. Dory said she’d be there around three. Dory was hot, and as far he knew, no one had gotten with her.

  He placed a few bags on the hood while he opened the door. When he went to retrieve them, he spotted her. She was leaning against a concrete pillar.

  This was too much now. He tossed the bags into the backseat. He was going to confront her, say it was creepy to stalk him like this. She had everything all wrong. If it hadn’t been for him, she would’ve been in real trouble.