by Mark Bouman
After building the range, there was the problem of where to put everyone who wanted to shoot. During the busiest times, there might be six or eight of Dad’s friends out behind the house, each with a weapon or three, so Dad built a two-story gun tower off to one side of the house, next to the shed, about two hundred yards from the range. The first story was all braces and pilings, along with a ladder, and the second story was a flat platform—about the size of a large bedroom—accessed by a hatch in the floor. From the second level, the guys could shoot and brag and cuss and swap guns to their hearts’ content.
Mom hated the gun range, but not because she hated the guns. When she and Dad were dating, they had gone rat shooting at the dump with .22s, and they had even driven all the way to Montana once to hunt bear. No, what galled Mom was that Dad considered it part of his business—that blowing up a bunch of junk with his buddies counted the same as her cooking and cleaning and mending or the same as one of her part-time jobs as a receptionist or clerk in town. But what could she say? The proof was right there on the mailbox: it said Dad was running a gun company, not a hobby.
“Your father likes his playtime,” she would sometimes say, “but it’s not playtime you boys need to be part of.”
That was her opinion, but Dad had a different one. We did have to be part of his playtime, whether we liked it or not. At least when he was inside with his buddies, he forgot about giving us jobs. He would invite guys over, and when they knocked, he would open the front door with his left hand. Then he’d bang his heels together and stick his right arm out in front of him, like he was pointing at the sun.
“Sieg heil!”
His friends would do the same thing back, and often they were dressed in tan or camouflage uniforms. If the weather wasn’t good for shooting, they would sit around the living room, playing records with German songs and talking about guns and Jews and wars. Their favorite leader was Hitler, and they all agreed he should have won the war. He was trying to keep his country safe and strong, but his other generals and communists and Jews lied to him and caused him to lose. But Hitler’s ideas were still alive, Dad said—they were just waiting for the right time to rise again.
Guns began to take up increasingly more space in our lives. The gun range and the gun tower were obvious to anyone, but more subtle signs of the Bouman weaponizing were everywhere: oil stains on towels Dad used to clean gun barrels, large drums of gunpowder in the laundry room, and shell casings littered all over the property, winking up from the ground. Jerry and I got used to answering Dad’s call, expecting to be given some chore or a tongue-lashing, only to have Dad show us a weapon that was inside a crate.
“You kids don’t tell anyone you saw this,” he’d say. “If someone asks, you don’t know a thing!”
We quickly lost track of which guns we were allowed to talk about and which ones were hush-hush, but it scarcely mattered. Most kids in elementary school had no understanding of weapons, so they wouldn’t have cared about our secrets, and most adults wouldn’t have believed that kids our age knew the difference between a legal M1 carbine and an illegal German broomhandle Mauser that could fire on full auto.
A police officer once came to my classroom to give a talk about neighborhood safety. When he asked if anyone had any questions, I piped up. “Do you guys ever have to deal with gas bombs?” He gave my teacher a strange look, then asked if there were any other questions.
I never had any big plans. Most days all I wanted to do was play, eat, stay out of trouble, and get a good night of sleep. I didn’t like my chores, and I didn’t like school, but what could a guy do? They were just part of life.
Dad’s behavior, though, caused me to change the way I lived. Jerry, Sheri, and I started to pay more attention to him, specifically so we could avoid him. If we were at home and Dad wasn’t, we kept our senses on constant alert, ready to scatter at the sound of his truck.
“Dad’s home!” one of us would yell. It was like yelling Fire! in a movie theater. If we were inside, perhaps playing cards, we’d toss the cards back in the drawer and either race outside, assuming we could get out and away before Dad parked, or else race to our rooms and try to look busy. If we were outside, we’d head for the hills, getting far away as fast as possible. Who knew what job we might be given? One weekend he forced us to shovel sand and dirt into the driveway ruts for two backbreaking days, and then Monday morning he kept us home from school to finish the job.
Sometimes Dad snuck past our radar, though. One afternoon, when Jerry and I were lounging on the living room floor drawing, Dad suddenly appeared in the doorway. “I need you boys to come help on the range.”
We knew better than to dawdle, so we tugged on our shoes and jogged around to the back of the house toward the gun tower. Four of Dad’s buddies were already there, hanging around the bottom of the ladder, packing guns that looked big enough to bring down an elephant. They nodded, then went back to ignoring us. Dad showed up a minute later and shoved a stack of paper targets at Jerry, then tossed a roll of masking tape to me. We knew the drill by heart. While Dad and his friends climbed into the tower with their rifles and cases of ammunition, we ran the two hundred yards across the field to get everything ready for them. Jerry and I taped the first target to the front of the washing machine, and then we clambered up the mound on the left and took cover behind the dirt.
The first shot rang out: a sharp, staccato crack, followed by an echo that rolled up and down the hills.
Jerry took the first turn spotting. He ran back to the target, leaned over to look at it, then straightened and screamed back toward the tower, “Inch high, two inches left!” Five seconds later, he was leaping over the dirt berm and sliding down toward me. Crack! Then it was my turn to check the target and scream back the information. Every few trips, one of us would tape a new target to the front of the washing machine to ensure we didn’t mix up which bullet hole was which.
Twenty minutes later, we were both sweaty, covered in dirt, and desperate for a chance to rest our aching legs. One of the guns was having trouble sighting in, and a job that usually took us ten minutes or less was stretching on and on.
Crack. Run, check, holler, run. Crack. Run, check, holler, run.
As the minutes wore on, we stopped hiding our entire bodies behind the dirt and began crouching at the top of the rise. When my next turn came and I ran back from the washing machine, I couldn’t face climbing all the way up the slippery berm for what seemed like the hundredth time. I simply scrambled up partway, then turned to watch the next shot come in.
Each time a bullet hit, the entire washing machine shuddered and the dirt behind it kicked up. Whatever rifle they were firing was powerful enough to shoot clear through the target, ripping it apart in the process.
Crack. Another shot—and my right leg buckled beneath me. I collapsed in a heap and rolled down the hill, stopping in the weeds at the bottom.
“Jerry!” I screamed. My right ankle felt like it was on fire. Panicked, I tried to stand up but immediately collapsed again. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot, which felt like a piece of dead meat that someone had attached to my body.
I dared to look down. Blood, and a lot of it. “Jerry!” I screamed again. My mind raced to comprehend what had happened to me. I tried to stand again but collapsed. Why couldn’t I feel my ankle anymore?
My hands shook and my breath came in gasps. I could feel my right foot again, but for some reason it was growing warmer and warmer. I sat up and grabbed my ankle, trying to relieve the pain, but it hurt worse than ever. I pulled away hands covered in blood.
Jerry sprinted to my side. “Stay down and don’t move—Dad’s coming!”
I squinted up at my brother. He was cradling his right arm, and blood was oozing through the fingers of his left hand. Before I could say anything, he asked, “Did you get shot too?”
Suddenly I realized why my leg didn’t work—I had been shot. It was a realization that caused a fresh wave of panic. We were just kids—what
in the world was happening to us?
I turned and saw that Dad was already halfway across the field. He must have seen me hit the ground right after the shot was fired and assumed the worst. He was in a full-out sprint, his arms swinging up near his head and his thighs pumping like pistons with every stride. I’d never seen him move so fast. He skidded to a stop at my side, sliding to one knee and putting one hand down for balance. He took one look at me, then scooped me into his arms. “Let’s go,” he said.
Then we were speed walking back across the field. I could hear every breath exploding out of his mouth. From below, Dad’s face was foreign. I couldn’t remember him ever carrying me before. I could see the lump in his throat bobbing, see up his nostrils. I could see his eyelashes. His smell was the same as always, sour and ripe. When we reached the bottom of the hill below the house, Dad began to run, straight up the hill with me in his grip.
At the car, Dad balanced me with one arm and one raised knee while he opened the rear door with his other hand. He leaned forward and laid me across the backseat, headfirst. From my back, I raised my chin to my chest and watched him pull off my shoe. I saw blood slosh out of it. Dad held the shoe at arm’s length away from the car and turned the shoe over, like he was pouring out the dregs from a thermos. The sight of my own blood poured out in the sand made my stomach clench, and I gritted my teeth against the bile I could taste in the back of my throat. Dad reached back into the car, set my shoe on the floor, and unrolled my sock. Then he disappeared. I could see Jerry, who had been standing just behind Dad outside the car. He was still calmly cradling his right arm, and the blood that had leaked out over his fingers was drying and darkening. Dad returned with an old towel and told Jerry to get in the front. Then Dad leaned over me again and, as if he were tying my shoelace, knotted the towel around my ankle. The door slammed, Dad hopped into the front seat, and then the engine roared to life and we were bouncing down the driveway.
I expected Dad’s furious lecture to begin at any moment, but the fifteen-minute drive passed in complete silence. My ankle felt like an ocean was raging inside it, with waves of pain crashing loudly enough that I could feel them in my ears. I watched upside-down trees whip past the window—flick flick flick—and I tried to see how many I could count between blinks.
Dad screeched to a stop in front of Doc Kramer’s clinic. He yanked open the car door and lifted me out, carrying me down the outside stairs to the basement entrance. Jerry opened it and stood back, and Dad marched in. Doc Kramer didn’t have a receptionist, but from Dad’s arms I could see four other patients waiting in the room. There was an old woman with gray hair and large glasses, and beside her were two middle-aged women, frozen in midconversation. An elderly man nearly fumbled the magazine he’d been reading. I saw them at a crazy angle, my head resting in the crook of Dad’s arm. I wondered why they had all come. Arthritis? A sore throat? I wondered if any of them had ever been shot.
Then I was inside the examination room. Doc Kramer looked as tall and tired as he always did. The sight of two young boys with bleeding wounds didn’t faze him—or at least not when they were the Bouman boys.
“Put him on that table,” he said to my father. Then he stepped out of the room for a minute, and from where I lay on the table I could hear him apologizing to his other patients. Jerry sat nearby on another table. When Doc Kramer came back, he ignored Jerry and me, walking to stand nose to nose with my father. “What happened?” he asked, peering over his wire-rim glasses.
“Well, the boys were tending targets . . .” His speech was hesitant, sheepish. I’d never heard him speak that way. Doc didn’t blink, and Dad was forced to continue. “And they . . . got a little too close.” Dad closed his mouth and floated to the edge of the room, where he stood alone with his arms crossed.
Doc Kramer didn’t say anything at the close of Dad’s explanation—just shook his head as if Dad had invented a whole new type of stupid. “Get me a sewing kit, please,” Doc Kramer said quietly to his nurse, and the two of them moved over to my brother. The nurse laid out the kit on a tray, and Doc went to work on Jerry’s arm. When he lifted the flapped skin to see what had caused the damage, he found several pieces of metal, silver atop the pink of Jerry’s bicep muscle.
“Well, look at that,” he said, and with a large pair of tweezers he removed the shards, dropping them one by one onto a metal tray. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Jerry barely blinked.
“And I told the boys to stay behind the berm, but . . .” Dad’s voice trailed off as quickly as it had started.
Doc Kramer pulled the largest piece from Jerry’s arm. It was twisted, and red blood coated it. He looked at my brother. “I want to make sure I get all the pieces,” he said, and Jerry nodded. As Doc probed the wound, Jerry observed stoically, as if he were watching Mom clean a spot of dirt from his sleeve.
“I’m done with you,” Doc Kramer said as he finished stitching. “Now let’s take a look at your brother’s ankle.” Doc Kramer leaned over me and frowned, then reached up and pulled the overhead light closer, inspecting my ankle under the bright glare. Lying on my back, I couldn’t see my leg. Instead, I watched his face go in and out of focus as it moved back and forth in the bright glare. When I could see it, his eyebrows were even lower than usual. His lips pinched into a thin line and he shook his head. Then he flicked off the light and straightened.
“I’m afraid I’ll do more damage than good if I try to remove that shrapnel—too many nerves in that part of your ankle. I don’t want to dig around in there and tear it up worse. Let’s just leave it and see what happens. Who knows—it might eventually work its way out on its own.”
That didn’t sound comforting, but the thought of Doc Kramer digging around in my ankle—whatever that meant—was even worse. I shuddered. Doc bandaged my ankle, all the while giving Dad a lecture on how the wound needed to be cared for.
“Now see if you can sit up,” he told me, taking my hand and pulling me up. He crossed the room to a cupboard and then returned with a pair of crutches. “You’ll figure out how to use these real quick—but they’re not toys, so bring ’em back when you’re done.”
Doc walked toward the sink, pausing to look back across his shoulder at my father and say, “I’m finished.”
Dad left without a word. Jerry helped me to the floor and made sure I had each crutch snug under my armpits. It took me several minutes to navigate the doors and reach the top of the stairs. Dad was already in the car, engine running. What’s Mom going to think? I wondered as we drove. I’m not even ten years old, and I have a shrapnel wound.
Just after we parked in front of the house, I found out exactly what Mom thought.
The tips of my crutches sank into the sand, slowing me down, so Jerry entered the house first. I saw him displaying his bandaged arm as if he were a war hero returning from the front lines.
“What happened?” I heard Mom ask.
Dad arrived at the door, and I was right behind him. “Just had a little accident,” he answered, “on the gun range.”
That’s when I came into the house, banging my crutches on the door as I negotiated the narrow entryway. Not to be outdone by my brother, I piped up. “And I got hit in the foot!”
Mom took a second look at Jerry, a first look at me, and then rounded on Dad. “Hit? Have you lost your mind? Don’t you know anything?”
Jerry and I gaped at each other. We’d never seen Mom so mad. She was raging.
“They’re all right,” Dad said, trying to calm things down. “They just got a little too close.”
“Too close?” Spittle was flying out of Mom’s mouth now. “You’re their father, for crying out loud! Why didn’t you say something? It’s a wonder you didn’t kill them!”
From the way Dad backed down, we guessed even he had never seen Mom like that. “Okay, okay. I should have paid more attention to where they were standing.”
As he talked, Jerry and I headed to our room. Our curiosity to see the fight was overpowered by our desire to s
tay out of it. So far neither of us had gotten in any trouble over the incident, and we wanted to keep it that way. We closed the door behind us. Jerry sat down at our desk, and I lay on my bunk. We could still hear Mom yelling at Dad in the other room.
The fight tapered off a minute later, and as soon as it did, Mom opened our door and came in.
“Are you two all right?”
“Yeah, it was just a couple of small pieces,” Jerry answered.
“And are you all right?” she asked, coming to kneel beside me.
“I’m okay. Doc didn’t take any of the metal out—said it would be better to leave it in and let it heal.”
Mom frowned, then shook her head. She seemed to stand up slow, like she was lifting something. “You boys need to be careful,” she said, and then she left us alone.
6
DURING THE YEAR that Boumar Custom Gun Company was going gangbusters, Dad found himself with more and more admirers of a certain sort: men who viewed Dad as a hero and father figure and commander and cool kid all rolled into one.
One night, when I should have already been in bed, there was a sharp rap at the front door. When Dad opened it, a man I’d never seen before stood in the frame. Younger than Dad, the man wore a black beret, dark green military fatigues, and black leather boots that nearly reached his knees. Dad nodded, and the man stepped forward, taking off his hat and folding it into his hand. Then another man entered, dressed like the first, followed by another, and soon there were six men standing in a loose line in front of Dad, hats in hand. One of the men held a long tube of white paper, rolled up like a telescope. Dad looked them up and down, nodded again, and said, “Let’s get to work.”
Dad strode to the kitchen and the men followed. I could no longer see them from the living room, so I padded into the kitchen and ducked below the counter. I could hear wooden chairs being dragged out and then scraped back in, paper being spread out and smoothed on the table, and the thunk of metal objects being set down—knives or lighters, I guessed—to keep the rolled paper in place.
