to. Mission accomplished. He’d gotten laid.
Later that day, after class, it was back up into the woods as usual. As happy as I was for him, I still wasn’t pleased about having to get accustomed to a new sidearm. No matter. I needed Jim as a friend, as the man who would keep me on the inside. Until I stood across from Jim in the chapel, raised my weapon and fired, I’d told myself it was all about writing again, about McGuinn. That was no longer true. It may never have been true. If I never wrote another word, I would’ve been hooked. I
It was definitely the.38. The feel was very different from the Beretta. The Beretta was small and sleek-a woman’s gun, Jim teased. It popped more than banged when you fired it. The.38 was no cannon, but it was a beast by comparison. Still, it fit comfortably in my hand and after only a few rounds I started to get a feel for it.
Things were going great and the tiny dose of bad blood between Jim and me seemed forgotten-forgotten until I asked if I could shoot the Beretta one last time for old times’ sake.
“I told you, you’re never going to see that gun again, so don’t ask about it!” It wasn’t a suggestion. It was the first time Jim’s tone was unmistakably belligerent.
“Christ, kid,” I said, using
For the hurt expression on his face, you’d have thought I’d just gut-shot him. His lips moved, but only wounded animal noises came out. Then realizing how stunned he must have looked to me, he turned away in embarrassment. Only after getting hold of himself did he face me. His expression was no longer stunned or wounded. I’d seen him angry once, when Vuchovich was holding us hostage. He was angrier now.
“Don’t ever say that again, Kip. We’re nothing like those gun queers.”
“Gun queers?”
“It’s the old-fashioned meaning of queer. It means like obsessed. We’re not like that. We don’t care about muzzle velocities and specs and shit like that. We’re not queer for the guns themselves, not like the Colonel.”
“Okay, but why hate the NRA? I mean, I’d think you would hate gun control advocates worse.”
“Gun control is a misnomer. They don’t want to control guns. They just don’t want you to have ’em. I understand that and, let’s be real, it is kind of hard to argue that we wouldn’t all be safer if no one had handguns. The NRA types, man, they’re the worst. They’re the real gun control advocates because they want to control what you do with your guns: how to hold them, how to carry them, when to clean them, when to use them, and on and on. They’re fascists. They couldn’t give two shits about the Constitution. For them, everything except the Second Amendment is the fine print. They’re just a bunch of gun queers.”
I held my palms upward in surrender. “Sorry.”
“All right,” he said, but he was still red-faced. “Just don’t ever say that. We’ve come a long way together, too long a way to screw it all up now. We’re both in the deep end of the pool, Kip, and there’s no going back now.”
I kept quiet. The kid needed to have his say if we were going to move on. Besides, I was trying to figure out if there was something I was missing. This was the second time in only a few days Jim had talked to me this way. After I went after Stan Petrovic and Jim tackled me, he had said a very similar kind of thing.
“No, Kip, I’m the one who should be sorry, not you. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that. Don’t be mad at me, please,” he said, his frightened inner child that he hid so well coming to the fore. “I just want you to like and understand me. I think sometimes I want that a little too much and I get worried is all.”
“Jim, you’re the best friend I’ve got in this world. Forget it. Let’s just shoot.”
And shoot we did, way longer than was normally the case. It was a race to see whether the sun would set before we ran out of ammo. I could tell Jim was getting bored, so I regaled him with some of my endless supply of stories. What I don’t think Jim realized was just how hooked I really was. He didn’t have to beg for my approval. By now, it was almost beside the point.
Nineteen
Ironic thing is, it took me standing there in the chapel a second time to realize it wasn’t Amy’s respect I wanted, but my own. Regardless of the forces that got me there, I
“Even with all the practice, you’re so nervous that first time that if you didn’t just raise up and shoot, you’d probably kill someone in the crowd,” Jim had said. “Ain’t that different than being a real virgin, you just aim and shoot.” We both had a laugh at that.
The second time was different. Gone was the profound nervousness, the panic that came with not knowing. The nauseating smells that had nearly caused me to swoon were expected, almost comforting, and the protective gear, though still cumbersome, didn’t irk me quite so much. The sweat that poured out of me was from excitement, not fear. I moved out of the locker room to the chapel under my own steam. There was no change in my perceptions. My hearing was fine. I wasn’t particularly conscious of my breathing or of the beating of my heart. What I felt was alive. I was fully in the moment maybe for the first time in my life. The ritual of the ash seemed to have the paradoxical effect of both heightening my sensations and calming me even further.
Through the door and padding, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my opponent, the security guard from the base. Our helmets were strapped on. We took eight measured strides to the center spot on the chapel floor. We did not bow or shout, “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe.” Jim had told me, “Only virgins do that.”
I felt my opponent’s back to mine. I counted out the four strides, stopped, then took the one last step and about-faced. I zeroed in on my opponent’s chest. This time I didn’t need to imagine a red fist pumping inside a rib cage. I simply focused on the center of his vest. Jim placed the.38 in my hand, placed a Glock in the hand of my opponent, and stepped off to the side. He asked the both of us if we were ready. When we nodded that we were, Jim told us to raise our weapons and said, “Begin.”
“Each visit to the chapel is a different test,” Jim had explained. “The second time is as much a test of wills as a matter of marksmanship. It’s sort of like a game of chicken. How long can you stand there staring down the barrel of another weapon before one of you gives into the tension? Big balls won’t do you any good if you miss and take one in the chest. It’s a balancing act.”
I had to constantly weigh the loss of accuracy, the gun getting heavier in my hand the longer I waited, versus the macho factor.
As we stood there, rain pelting the corrugated metal roof of the hangar, there was a palpable sense of anticipation in the dank air. Maybe the same energy was there the first time too and I had been so consumed by the experience I hadn’t noticed. The longer I held back, the bigger the rush. I could feel the thousand little crosscuts in the textured grip of the.38. Then I saw or thought I saw a tensing in my opponent’s stance, but I could not react quickly enough. A flash.
A second later, I was still standing, still breathing freely. Nothing hurt. The freight train missed me. Across the way, the security guard was down, writhing on the floor. I was staring at him, admiring my handiwork, buzzing inside my own skin like a total freak. I’d hit him, but I couldn’t lose control. I walked over to him, gave him my hand, and pulled him to his feet. We removed our helmets and stood across from each other. He looked utterly dejected. His hand was on my shoulder, my index finger in the hole in his shirt above his heart. Only I spoke, “Stop doubting and believe.” When the receiving line was formed, only I passed along from person to person, repeating the phrase.
Someone clapped me on the back. Jim. “Great shot, Kip. Maybe you
I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. Just nodded my head yes.
“Come on.” His arm urged me forward. “Let’s get a beer.”
