Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  Damian would use the birth of his first niece as reason enough to celebrate. This on its face seemed rational enough, but as Tom stood there watching the cat sniff his partner’s pants leg, he remembered how that night had ended. Damian taking ketamine in the back of a shuttered bar and then convincing Tom to do so.

  Or it could go easily the other way.

  Damian would use the arrest of his own mother as reason enough to mourn. Again, on its face this seems a rational enough response. Anyone would understand the inclination for a stiff drink to comfort, but as Tom stood there watching Damian wipe his vomit-stained mouth on the bathroom floor mat, he remembered how that night ended. Damian buying an eight-ball with an ex-boyfriend Tom did not approve of and then accusing Tom of jealousy.

  All things — good, bad, celebratory, tragic — were reasons for Damian to go on a tear.

  This: the moment a very real possibility of something snapped together for soft Tom.

  Tom’s human brain, powerful and fascinating as it was, was trying to form a hypothesis and present it for peer review. The peer in question was for sure Tom’s heart, who had for the most part been ignoring the evidence supporting the specific notion suggested ages ago and frequently by mutual friends, Tom’s family, even Melanie. Even Damian’s own sister said Damian was not thriving.

  But Tom really didn’t want Damian to be that way.

  He wanted it to be a phase. Something to laugh about later. He dismissed it with a shake of his head and posted another charming picture of them together on Instagram. The summer evening they drank old-fashioneds from mason jars overlooking Trinity Bay. Damian napping on a daybed in the wallpapered kitchen of an old saltbox house rented for a long weekend. Standing next to their first wine kit surrounded by two dozen label-free green glass bottles.

  This was the reality Tom was willing to look at.

  Warmth and laughter, vitality and joy. Tom was an affectionate sort. He was always touching Damian. A hand on his elbow. A leg tossed over a leg. He wanted oak wood fires and sweet tea with bourbon. Grins in the freshly fallen snow. He wanted a female Newfoundland dog called Rex Murphy. Delighted himself with jokes about how he might train that bitch to listen.

  Tom nurtured these wants like carefully dropped seeds. He sprinkled them everywhere. Sure, Damian carried many off to the smelly bars on his heels knowing rightly that nothing vibrant could truly root in the places he inhabited, but that was no matter because Tom tossed down so many.

  Like an illustrated character in a Little Golden Book, Tom the gardener was generous.

  Happiness would grow on Damian.

  This is what Tom convinced himself of, poor sweet man, a spade in one hand, a pair of patterned gardening gloves in the other, contrasting yet well matched to his plaid cargo shorts, so ready was Tom. He pruned carefully to ensure the pretty bits faced forward. He deadheaded all the deadhead blooms.

  Damian took advantage of this generosity in Tom because that is what he does.

  Like even right now, in this instant, as his booze-soaked mind salivates over the details of his relationship demise, Damian knows he is taking advantage of the circumstances at The Hazel. He knows fucking well that John wants to fire him. John didn’t even want to hire him. It was Iris who had gotten him the job after a drunken, cocaine-fuelled heart-to-heart at a New Year’s Eve do on Bond Street neither of them could remember going to. Iris had been crying in the downstairs bathroom. Damian had been kind to her. Brought her a glass of water. Given her a bump. Listened to her ramble about some man who hurt her. Damian had been hurt too. Their broken bits bonded over the wreckage. She said she could get him a job. And she could. And she did.

  Then one day in January the girl showed up looking for Iris at the restaurant.

  Who was that?

  Olive Noseworthy.

  How do you know her?

  We grew up together.

  She okay?

  Is anyone?

  Suppose not.

  Are you?

  Not really.

  People around home used to say her crowd is half witch.

  What the fuck does that mean?

  That people are shitty.

  It’s easy to be shitty.

  Probably easier to not be shitty in the long run.

  Who wants to go for the long run, though?

  Her pop had bad nerves.

  That’s hard.

  He drowned after his TAGS ran out.

  TAGS?

  Welfare for fishermen.

  We never really had that out our way.

  Everyone had it back home.

  Fuck.

  They said he threw himself overboard.

  Who said that?

  Everyone.

  That’s dark, Iris.

  I heard worse.

  Don’t make it right.

  Seemed normal at the time.

  Jesus, I’m sorry.

  Don’t apologize to me.

  I mean —

  Just be nice to Olive, okay?

  Of course.

  Of course. Of course now he said of course. Of course.

  Damian tosses those of courses atop the heaps of burning secrets and throws another dose of booze down to quash them. He should slow down to keep his lies intact but he doesn’t because he also knows that John wants to keep all sides of his triangle sound. John is alt-j and Damian is riding this awesome wave ashore for as long as he can, goddamn it.

  He has got John by the cock. Iris has got John by the cock. George has got John by the cock. Everyone has John by his penis! It is all hands on John’s dick! It is amazing. Damian has never seen anything like it before. And he is after getting himself into some right fuck ups. But not like old Johnny boy over here with his wife and mistress currently dropping tea lights into candle-holders side by side while discussing the wine pairings quietly under their breath. And Damian can see that Iris is straining to educate George on how this show is run, and the abject horribleness of it is fucking delightful.

  John is definitely a worse person than he, and Damian finds that truly delicious.

  He feels like storming into the kitchen and thanking John for being a malicious fucker cause at least Damian is a better guy than that guy. John deserves a hug but, alas, there is always a lineup of plump chests heaving to press themselves up against John’s. All of them, even the ones at the back of the queue, seem to know intuitively to patiently wait until he turns to them.

  Damian thinks it must suck really hard to be John’s secret girlfriend.

  It certainly looks like it sucks. It looks like Iris has once again given up on eating entirely only to haul back hard on a chain of cancer sticks. Damian is going to smoke two darts on his break, he can’t wait, maybe three, he doesn’t give a fuck about smelling of nicotine in the dining room. Queen Bitch will have her hands full trying to turn over tables and also manage Iris who looks to be on the verge of homicide. Damian has heard her say repeatedly that she is not supposed to be here.

  I have to go pay my phone bill, she has said half-heartedly to the universe.

  Queen Bitch replied she must wait and the lights flickered over the bar as Iris spun a wine glass in her hand, catching a flash of something sinister. The word wait is a shot that goes through Iris’s body from her hips to her jaw as if she will Hulk out on the wine glass. Or hit someone. For a fading moment, it looks like Iris might get revolutionary on behalf of all other women everywhere.

  But she doesn’t.

  Instead, she just slides the glass along the rack overhead, and Damian thinks he should instead gift his hu
g to her if she’ll let him handy to her after his insinuating she smelt of genitalia. Iris holding the clean staff shirt to her chest and speaking softly into her own fists.

  I don’t know why you would be mean to me today.

  Saying again as she raises her face to his that she has only ever been nice to him.

  I have only ever tried to be nice to everyone.

  And it was true, and he did feel regret, but more than anything he wanted to pull the clean shirt she held over his head because the smell of his own body sweat was making him ill.

  Damian recognizes his admiration for John is gross. He does and it is, but how can you not admire the nerve of him? It is fully insane the way he conducts himself. Damian takes the women in again and thinks they might have been friends under different circumstances.

  They would have probably liked each other.

  But not now. Now there will be a riot. He catches Iris light up at some insinuation over the candles. Damian cannot believe Iris is going along with this. It is not a fit way to live. Even Damian can see that, and he’s pretty damn sure he snorted Ritalin off some stranger’s ass in the last twelve hours.

  John keeps sticking his head out of the kitchen. He has the fear of god in him.

  Damian wonders if ever there was a time, before the minute hand coursed toward John’s pants, that some woman did not have his balls in her mouth ready to snap. Probably not. John has definitely always been face and eyes deep in pussy, and this comforts Damian. By all accounts, John is a respected human. Which means there is still hope for Damian yet. He just needs to get through this night, and then February, and then winter. He should probably move away. He would if he could think of somewhere to go.

  But Damian hates everywhere.

  Lately he has hated home the most though. Since even before Tom left. Lately Damian has wondered if people are meant to live here at all. Everyone seems right shabby. Going to the grocery store during off hours, because that’s the only hours he keeps, means he sees a lot of sad-­looking people buying out the centre store. They don’t even pretend to take a quick spin around the circumference under the pretence that they might purchase food that was recently living.

  They skip right on over to the boxy core where everything is gift-wrapped so it feels like eating is a small present you are giving yourself. It is a tiny surprise, a singular joy, shiny like childhood. The manufacturers have made eating feel like something that is not eating.

  Instead, it feels like pass the parcel at a kid’s birthday party, and not at all necessary for survival or adulting like cooking food. Preparing food without wrappers and mascots feels very nearly like unpaid labour and everyone is unpaid or underpaid enough as it is.

  And while Damian knows that they are poor, he still hates them in his way. Their raw lust for something gross feels akin to his own raw lust and he does not want to be of them. They are worn and unappealing and soft-looking and Damian does not want to be viewed as such.

  He would rather death than the lack of glamour associated with that lot.

  * * *

  Iris has been seeing spots ever since George insisted she serve all day.

  Now Iris is trapped in here with their saviour who has worked out what she will do about the CRA payment between lunch and dinner. One conversation with her father will vanquish all of John’s problems. Abracadabra. Alakazam. Presto fucking magic. Her Royal Highness of Circular Road arrived on a cloud of glitter and adoration to wield her magnanimous rule over the peasants. Yay for them. They are so goddamn lucky to know her. Iris would like to shove her sceptre up her ass.

  Iris has lost control over the internal dialogue.

  John would say, don’t be like that, you’re better than that.

  But Iris is not better than that. Not anymore anyway. Iris is worse. Besides, expressing disappointment in her is just another way to quieten her. John would shame her into submission and silence because it’s rewarding when he shoots up half her triggers in a sentence or two and then shushes her in less. Sometimes a mere forefinger to his lips or stern look over the dinner plates stacked along the serving station will do. He’s resourceful. Growing up poor makes you a different breed of clever. John can make a meal out of nothing. An onion, a bit of carcass, sure that’s soup. And John loves soup. Loves it.

  Mind you, he’s not above gathering up his necessary devices.

  This is the future. And didn’t Iris encourage him to join the future. A well-crafted text message sent in the early hours of a Saturday morning to greet Iris upon wakening would bring about a hunger for reconciliation. A love-song link sent straight through to her Facebook page would break down any security inside a pre-planned hangover.

  Adele must want everyone to fucking kill themselves.

  But Iris gets it. She is starving for relief as well.

  John is aware of this and so ladles great heaping servings of grief to Iris and watches as she forces it down. He would tilt his head nearly touching a shoulder and frown at her before proclaiming how discouraged he was that she would behave so crassly toward George who was, after all, innocent in all of this and well above ever saying any of the things Iris says.

  John claims George would never even think those things.

  George is pure. It was they who had made her life untrue. It was their sin, not George’s. If there was a spirit in the sky, then George was going on up to him, while Iris remains in the shit with John. He did not make her do any of this. She chose it.

  He had encouraged her to dress a certain way, eat certain food, read certain books.

  But he had not made her.

  She had done so with what she thought was her own free will because she believed this was what you did when you loved someone unconditionally. You tried to make them happy. And if happiness was wearing a black V-neck dress while eating a Cobb salad and reading a Coetzee novel, then she could do that. It didn’t bother her much what neckline she wore or that eggs upset her stomach. She tried to pretend that the book with the skinny dog on the cover did not disturb her to the point of waking nightmares. She tried to convince herself that John was not like that.

  When he clearly was.

  Still she tried to be easy. Casual. Uncomplicated. Iris did the things John wanted her to do because she didn’t even understand that these were not the things she wanted to do because, in all honesty, they were. Kind of. The thing Iris wanted to do was please John. Though she preferred boat necks with sleeves, salads with nuts, and magic realism, she refused to admit his exuberance for teaching her was worrisome.

  But when John asked to see her new paintings, Iris refused.

  She suspected John would try to colonize every aspect of her character so that he could accredit himself with anything worthwhile later. Early on, before the truly horrid had happened, Iris was concerned that John could not care less what she was really like as long as this impersonation woman he preferred to her was believable.

  And it doesn’t all happen in one go. That motion would never get carried.

  This grade of conditioning needs time to ripen and so John gives it space. Had he walked in that very first day with a long shopping list of subtle changes he intended to bring about in her, she would have fled the scene. She would have declared him controlling and harmful. But John knows better than to show his cards too early by now. He has got ACEs up his sleeves, under his shirt, even in his pants legs. They are well-concealed because boyhood does its very best to teach half-feral boy children to swallow all of that.

  It is a wary culture that tells boy children not to cry when they are hurt, and John was a boy c
hild once.

  Iris could wax on poetic about the feelings that were harmed and harnessed early on that led him frankly down this road but she’s past that. At some point, this point here now, why is irrelevant. At some point one must stop asking altogether. Why John does this doesn’t fucking matter anymore. It just matters that he does. And he shouldn’t. And it has to end.

  But endings are hard.

  Because Iris has got to find some kind of truth in a mistake before packing it up and putting it away. Check the pockets for change. Shove dryer sheets in the sleeves. Take it down to her mind’s furnace room and hang it in the storage closet until she can figure out what to do with it. Until she is ready, years later, to admit, after seeing it hanging there again while searching for her skates or snowshoes, that it never really fit.

  Then the work comes.

  The slow process of acknowledging to your real people, with great regret, that you were wrong that time and the time before that, too. That truly you’ve been wrong every time so far and maybe you have no idea what you are looking for cause it didn’t ever make sense, did it? It didn’t suit her, not really. Every time she tried it on, she was dissatisfied.

  Left feeling ugly and gross.

  Browsing the photographic evidence and murmuring under her breath, what was I thinking? She wonders if one day far from today she will be full of remorse. Right now there is only fear. Iris is afraid to try on anything else because her closets are full of skeletons and she obviously cannot trust herself. This style she had long thought her style is just not working. And to sort through the dregs will require facing all the mismatched socks thrown in, the tights she meant to mend, all the would-have-fit pieces if only she had bought the right size to begin with.

  Besides, this would require self-awareness, and John would cry atop her womb when she attempted autonomy of thought. She knows John will throw the taps open if found out. You bet he will. And he will mean it, too. Just like he means he is sorry when he says so. But ask for clarification and John will find himself adrift as he tries to find the correct lie. Lying is all John knows.