and are again.
Jasper growled now in the night and I sat up in the blankets heart thumping. I whispered
Jasper knows. He knows when the shit’s serious.
He sat back on his hindquarters and cut the noise mid-growl and looked at me with real concern and also with the taut poise of a hunter who is enjoying himself. He was amped. So was I. This hadn’t happened in a long time, maybe half a year, and I felt a little sluggish, a little out of practice. A couple of years ago and I would have been at the top of the berm by now and scanning with the goggles with my left hand on the receiver of the AR. As it was I had to dig the rifle out from between the cold damp tarp and the back of the duffle. Next to it the goggles inside an old wool sock. At least I still thought to bring them out with me when we slept. I set the goggles against my brow and stretched the strap over the back of my head and slowly, quietly, tugged against and pulled the charging handle that racked the gun. Climbed the berm slowly, more cautiously.
Jasper stayed still. Straining against the urge to chase down the smell in the dark. Or maybe some sound, some sound in some frequency that penetrated his near deafness. I climbed the steep back of the berm slowly. Prayed it was coyotes, even wolves. Not in the mood for killing, not one bit. Not myself, not to spot for Bangley.
At the top I slid the rifle flat over the smooth top and lowered myself to cold dirt and wriggled upwards until my eyes cleared the lip.
In the light of the porch bulb I saw them. One two threefourfive …
Shit.
With great effort that first summer we had levered and toppled the dumpster back south maybe a hundred feet further from the house. It was on its side, the open top gaping black. The creek bank was sheer and deep. The stream ran around it so that the airport sat in an oxbowed bite. Perfect moat. The only good ford was a trail that led out of the bottom to this house, the only one we lit. So they naturally clustered against the dumpster, south of it in the shadow of the bulb, shielded from the house where they—anyone not a professional soldier—would imagine the threat and the prize.
Fish in a barrel. Whatever other hapless metaphor for the hapless soon to be dead.
I kill deer. I have no problem killing deer. Dressing, butchering, eating.
Heart now thumping like a blind thing trying to bang its way out of the ribcage. I felt down to my belt and squeezed the sides of the radio, keying the mike button with my thumb three times. Then three then three. Then I counted. Before I got to two hundred Bangley would be sauntering up behind me carrying two guns: M4 assault rifle and a light sniper, probably an AR-10 .308. Counted to myself and shifted the rifle up and over one of the sandbags at the top and snugged the stock into my right shoulder and sighted. Ninety feet. We had measured it to the inch.
They were crouched and talking among themselves, whispering, I couldn’t hear them. The wind was light, cool against the back of my neck, westerly from me to them. Carrying sound. Very slowly I thumbed the safety to fire, heard the click, wince, seemed loud, eased the small lever forward to full auto.
They were not even not pros. They were crouched together as one target at this distance one alone filled the scope, way more than filled it. They were farmers insurance men mechanics. Probably. Haplessly clustered. But. I shifted the scope, just the slightest pressure from the inside of my shoulder, and swept them and they had guns, each one. As I swept, the sight picture tremored with the hammering of my heart. At this stage they were killers. I mean this stage in our mutually culpable history. Who to say how many or how cruelly. At this stage they were gathered in the posture of armed assault. On who knew what remnant of family had managed to survive in that house. And.
The cruelty of it struck me: they in relation to the house, the fictional family, me to them, that any of us should be in this position.
I eased my eye off the eyepiece and twisted my head around to the left. No shadow. No figure, no Bangley approaching.
They were talking among themselves. I flipped the lever that unlocked the scope with my trembling left hand and released it from its rail. Lay it to the side out of line of the iron peep sight. It opened up my field of view.
Even as a boy, the killing part was my least favorite. I loved to hunt with my Uncle Pete. He was an unreconstructed man of letters and of action in the mode of Ernest Hemingway and Jack London, except that he taught ballroom dancing. On cruise ships. He and Aunt Louise did that for like twenty years and she died, and my normally exuberant and talkative uncle got quiet, more serious. Still fun. He wasn’t very good at either one, either the action or the letters, but I idolized him for a long time, longer than was necessary and went on my first elk hunt with him when I was twelve.
I was good. I mean I quickly understood terrain and habitat almost as if I had grown up with People of the Deer, and I was quiet and careful about the direction of the wind and the sound of twigs whizzing along the cordura of my pack, and the covering sounds of water, and I was an adept stalker and helpful in camp and nearly leapt out of my bag into the icy five a.m. chill of what was still a mountain mid-November night. I adored it all, and it seemed I didn’t have any problem putting the cow elk in my sights, but the way she stumbled over the rockfall when I shot, tripping forward and somersaulting over her own neck, and the way her eye shone up at me and she scrabbled her useless legs sideways over the rocks before I shot again right into the head in a panic, and the life went out of her eye and her legs, and then the way when I dressed her the blood spilled onto the frozen ground and mixed pink with warm milk from her still feeding teats—
Didn’t like it. Did it every year for years afterward and loved it all including having elk in the freezer, but not that. Don’t even like to kill a bug.
No Bangley. I had tried negotiating once. Closest I ever came to dying.
He loved to say that before he set up to plug someone.
Five was a big bunch, biggest we’d had in a couple of years. They were crouched, the biggest closest to the dumpster had a rifle with scope, was twisted back doing the talking, signing with his right hand, touching the watch cap cocked on his head, the one just beside him had some sort of assault rifle probably an AK, the three others: two shotguns and a ranch rifle all clear at ninety feet with the goggled eye. The third from the left with a shotgun wore a cowboy hat a short man in a big hat. They were bunched and nodding and they were about to move. My hand shook. They would never be this tight a target.
I planned to sweep right to left. Full auto. Set the peep in the middle of the last one’s bulk and planned to cut across through the midline of the bunch.
Moved right index finger onto the cold trigger, took a deep breath, a deep living breath to let out slow the way taught and
Cracked open. The night. Not me. Erupted pulse of flame peripheral from down to my right, the hulk carcass of a truck, the concatenate blast of rapid fire, the group in my sight coming apart entropic, the red dot flying across like a lethal bug throwing their shadows upwards and out to land, to be swallowed by the green ground.
Not me.
I hadn’t pulled the trigger.
A shriek and scream, one moaning another writhing, and whimpers, I saw Bangley step out from behind the truck, unholster his .45 walk calmly across the open ground and three shots, the ones crying suddenly silent.
Light wind, cold. Blood rushing in my ears, rinsing the cries. Quiet.
He picked up the scattered guns, slung all five. Walked around the berm, unslung the guns, heard them chink together on the ground, talked low to Jasper, climbed up to me where I was still prone, I would say still frozen on
