“Do you believe?”
“I believe.”
“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”
“I have seen and I believe,” I said.
Then the silence shattered in a roar. Jim’s proud smile was so broad I thought his skin might crack.
“Look! You hit me! You hit me!” He was beside himself, poking his finger into a small hole in his shirt above his abdomen. “Virgins almost never hit anything but the mattresses. They’re always so nervous and weak. People have a kind of built-in thing about not killing other people. It’s one thing to shoot close to them up in the woods. It’s really different to aim at another person and pull the trigger, no matter what they’re wearing. But you did it, Kip. You did it.”
We pulled off our helmets and shirts, the snaggle-toothed girl collecting the shirts from Jim and me. The St. Pauli Girl folded herself into my arms. Tears of relief streamed down her cheeks, but there was something else in her expression that I couldn’t quite decipher in my numb euphoria. Whatever it was quickly vanished and she kissed me. It felt like my first kiss, the best first kiss. But when I looked up, I saw an unwelcome face, one that I hadn’t noticed in the blur of preceding moments: Stan Petrovic’s. There he was, standing at the very back of the crowd that had circled around us-that sneer on his battered face as cruel as a serrated edge.
I didn’t have time to focus on Stan because Jim, Renee, and I were being carried away with the will of the crowd, our feet not seeming to touch the ground as we were swept along. Hands pulled at my protective gear and by the time we reached the beer coolers, Jim and I were naked from our waists up. He had a small red blotch on his stomach about the size of an old silver dollar. The splotch on my chest was similar in size. We were both going to be bruised and sore for a while. I could only imagine the kind of pain you’d be in wearing only the thinner vests.
Jim shook up a can of Bud. “Welcome,” he said and showered me in beer.
Everyone else repeated the gesture until I was thoroughly soaked. I loved it. I had on a full body buzz and could have left earth’s orbit under my own power. My fears and worries, my disappointment over the book, had all been washed away by the beer and evaporated with the gun smoke. There was definitely something transformative about coming out the other end of this. It had been maybe five minutes since Jim and I had fired live ammunition at each other, and fuck me if Jim wasn’t right: I felt reborn. There was my total dunghill of a life beforehand and there was now. I grabbed a beer of my own, shook madly, and gave Jim a taste of his own medicine. When I was done, we hugged again.
It was like the rush from a roller coaster ride. When it’s over, you want to go again more than anything else in the world. The rush didn’t last. Nothing good ever lasts. The buzz drained out of me through the bottom of my shoes. Suddenly, my legs were rubbery and everything fell on my shoulders all at once. I was weak and I wanted nothing more than to lie down right there and pass out. Jim picked up on it right away.
“Come on, Kip, let’s get cleaned up.”
He fairly dragged me into the locker room and I lay down on the cold floor. I was vaguely conscious of Jim washing himself. I was utterly spent and my mind was as empty as it had been since the day I was born. My internal voice was asleep and I wanted to be. I think I nodded off there for a few minutes.
“Okay, Kip,” Jim said, lifting me to a sitting position. “Drink this and then wash up.” He handed me a cold bottle of water and pointed at three more bottles on the locker room bench.
I guzzled the water and made to stretch out again. “Just let me die here in peace.”
He laughed. “It happens to everybody. It’s the fear and the adrenalin. It gets to you, but we have to go back inside.”
“Why?”
“We’ve got to watch the others shoot.”
“I’ll read about it in the morning papers.”
He laughed again. I had my moments.
“But there’s someone you’ve got to see shoot.”
“Who?”
“Renee.”
Sixteen
The St. Pauli Girl was barely recognizable in her protective gear, but it would have been impossible not to recognize the hulking figure standing across the room from her. Although the helmet and face mask obscured his pocked and scarred visage, Stan Petrovic stuck out like a malignant cyst. For the second time since we met, Renee seemed small and vulnerable. I realize that’s an odd thing to say about someone with a.40 Glock in her right hand, but the menace that Stan Petrovic exuded couldn’t be contained by all the padding in the world. Protective armor is meant to keep things out, not keep them in.
“I don’t like it,” I heard myself say.
“Don’t worry about Renee. She’s good. She can take care of herself.”
“Thanks, Jim, but you’ll excuse me if I find little comfort in that.” I started to get up. The kid held me down in my seat.
Before I could get another word out of my mouth, the chapel echoed with gunfire. The next thing I was conscious of was kneeling over Renee, searching her shirt and suit for where the bullet had hit. I couldn’t find an indentation anywhere. My mind was racing with the illogic of it. She was down, so she had to have been hit, but there was no hole, no blood. She was down, but she wasn’t writhing in pain. The St. Pauli Girl was deathly still, and quiet. Frantically, I ran my hands along the makeshift leg armor. Then a disembodied voice called out: “Headshot.”
And there it was: a thumb-sized hole in the front left side of the thick flak padding glued onto the Army surplus helmet. Before I could move, I was being shoved out of the way and Renee seemed to disappear behind a wall of bodies. They moved around her like worker bees attending their fallen queen. I think I was in shock and just stood there for what felt like hours. Then I heard something else and turned to see Stan getting up onto his hands and knees. He was grunting, struggling to pull off the face mask and helmet. I ran at him, rearing back my leg to kick the cocksucker in the face, but Jim tackled me before I swung my leg forward. He kept me pinned to the floor.
“Stop it, Kip,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re going to fuck everything up. You can’t do that now. You can’t fuck it all up now.” He was almost pleading.
“That fuck shot her in the head. He killed Renee.”
“It was Stan’s first time too, just like you.”
“I don’t give a-”
“She’s okay. She’s okay. Calm down! She was just stunned and knocked her head when she fell back. Look.”
I raised my head up as far as I could against Jim’s mass and saw the St. Pauli Girl smiling at me in that way she had.
“Okay, okay, let me up.”
When everyone was certain Renee was steady on her feet, they moved away from her. She moved toward Stan and repeated the same ritual Jim and I had performed only a half hour before. Then it was Stan’s turn for the beer bath, for the adulation, and eventually for everything else I’d gone through earlier.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?” I was shouting at the St. Pauli Girl.
“I’m fine. I just feel stupid. Christ, you’d think I’d never done this before.”
“But you’re okay?”
“I’m okay, Ken. I promise,” she said, pecking me softly on the cheek. “You really do care about me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t answer, instead pulling me over to where Stan was the center of attention, his fat gut wet with
