by Tyler Keevil
‘Are these all yours?’
‘Hell, you should see what I got at home.’
We were up in the woods. We’d driven back from the gas station in convoy, and turned off the main road on to a dirt track that made my Neon buck and shudder. I don’t think it was a hunting reserve or anything, but there were pheasants around, apparently. The other guys had wandered off, carrying pistols and cans of Pilsner. Every so often I could hear them shooting in the distance. The reports sounded muffled, like somebody punching a pillow.
‘Take your pick,’ he said.
‘What would you recommend?’
‘To start with let’s try this little number.’
He selected a snub-nosed revolver. It looked like the kind of gun cops used in old TV shows. Squatting down in the grass, he demonstrated how to load it by thumbing cartridges into the cylinder. They slid in easily, like little metal pills.
‘This here is the safety.’ He pointed to a switch on the side, then pushed it forward, keeping the gun aimed away from us. ‘Now the piece is live, see? And you don’t want to be pointing it at anybody – including yourself.’
We stood up. Twenty yards away he’d arranged five beer cans on an old stump. He took aim, one-handed. The gun yipped and one of the cans jumped. I jumped too. Neither of us was wearing earplugs. Pigeon said he only wore them at the range.
‘Okay, rookie. Your turn.’
He handed it over. It had a wooden grip, worn smooth and stained with sweat. He showed me how to stand, with one foot forward, and how to aim – holding the gun in the right hand while supporting the butt with the left. I sighted along the barrel.
‘Bend your elbow more. Good.’
There was a bead at the end of the barrel, and a notch near the hammer. You just had to line up the bead with the notch. It was the same as the pellet guns I’d shot as a kid.
‘Okay. When you’re ready.’
I pulled the trigger, and pulled it harder. Nothing happened. Pigeon was smiling at me. I’d forgotten about the safety. I slid the switch forward and took aim again. This time when I pulled the trigger the gun woofed like a dog – a very small dog that wanted to leap out of my hands. Splinters of wood spat off the tree stump, just below the cans.
Pigeon slapped me on the back.
‘How’s that feel, huh?’
‘Good.’ I could hear a faint ringing in my ears, like tinnitus, and the grip of the gun felt all slippery. I wiped my palms on my jeans. ‘Can I try again?’
‘Hell – empty the whole cylinder.’
I did, taking my time. The revolver held eight rounds. I improved as I got used to the noise and recoil, but my aim was still wild. Afterwards I reloaded the cylinder myself, with Pigeon talking me through it. My fingers trembled as I put the cartridges in. I had to take a second to steady myself before I could shoot again. I emptied another seven bullets into the stump. On the last shot – the eighth – I managed to wing one of the cans. It twirled on the spot and fell over, like a demented ballerina.
‘Attaboy,’ Pigeon said. ‘Keep at it.’
I reloaded and fired a few more rounds. While I did, Pigeon prepped another pistol – a semi-automatic. We used that one next. It was the same calibre as the revolver – a twenty-two – and it held more bullets. You loaded them in a magazine that slotted into the bottom of the grip. The shooting action felt fairly similar but I had better luck with it. I hit two cans the first time I tried it, and three on the second.
‘I like this one,’ I said, hefting it up.
Pigeon grinned. ‘My wife carries one like that. In her purse.’
I looked at it. It didn’t seem like much, now that I thought about it.
‘Do you have anything bigger?’ I asked.
He drained his beer can. You could tell he’d been waiting for me to ask. Walking over to his Jeep, he took his time appraising the various gun cases. Then he dipped his hand in one and removed another revolver, holding it with special reverence. It was a beast of a gun, with a hefty chamber and a cannon of a barrel.
‘This here is a forty-four Magnum,’ he said.
Even I knew what that meant. That was Dirty Harry’s gun. Pigeon flicked open the cylinder to load it. The rounds for the Magnum were big and squat and glistening, like slugs. I guess that’s why they call them slugs.
‘Might want to cover your ears,’ he said, raising it.
I didn’t. I should have. The other guns had yipped and woofed. This one roared. A dart of flame flashed from the barrel, and one of the beer cans sort of blew apart. The echo resonated through the forest like thunder.
I said, ‘Holy shit!’
Pigeon fired off a couple more rounds before switching the safety on and handing the gun to me. It was twice as heavy as the others, and harder to hold level. I kept having to readjust my grip, my stance.
‘Hold on tight,’ Pigeon warned. ‘This baby kicks.’
I stood rigidly and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked and I felt the recoil all the way to my shoulders. I had no idea where the shot went. I was just glad I hadn’t dropped the gun.
‘Whoah,’ I said, offering it back to him. ‘That’s really something.’
‘Go on. Try it again. Don’t let it scare you.’ He had a fresh can of Pils on the go now. ‘Afterwards we can catch up to the others, maybe bag us a couple of birds.’
His voice sounded oddly muted. My ears were humming, as if I’d been punched in the head. I adopted my stance, keeping the gun pointed at the ground, and studied the cans. I took a deep breath, drinking in the scent of pine and dirt, and let the air slip out between my lips.
‘You know what I do?’ he said. He was right behind me, whispering in my ear. ‘I think about somebody I hate. Like, picture their face. Use that as your target.’
At first I tried to imagine the guy – this guy who was dicking my girl. But I couldn’t. I’d never seen him. He was a faceless, nameless menace. A shadow. I knew what Zuzska looked like, though. I could picture her easily. Maybe with her mouth half-open, her eyes half-closed, grinding and groaning beneath him. I thought: this is what you get, you kurva.
The Magnum came up and the trigger gave beneath my finger and the hammer reared and fell in a way that felt perfectly seamless. The metal can screamed, bursting into shrapnel. I stared at where it had been. My fingers had gone numb on the pistol grip. The howl of the repercussions echoed in my ears.
‘Damn,’ Pigeon said. ‘That sure worked.’
chapter 32
Shooting pheasants was a lot harder than shooting beer cans. The pheasants were bigger, but they were also further away. Plus, they moved. If they saw you or heard you, they burst up into the air and flustered around for a while before flopping back to earth. They never got very far – they seemed to tucker out easily. But all that flapping made them trickier to hit.
‘Nice and easy, rookie,’ Pigeon told me.
He was standing next to me, with the other guys spread out on either side. We were trudging together through the woods in a staggered line. Pigeon had said it was the safest method. If we all faced the same direction, we had less chance of shooting one another. I picked my way over twigs and fallen branches, cupping the pistol in both hands, keeping it pointed at the ground. Pigeon had lent me his semi-automatic for the hunt.
‘Target sighted, rookie,’ he said, nodding off to the left.
There was a pheasant squatting on the lowest branch of a nearby pine. Its head jerked back and forth in that curious, lizard-like manner. I took aim with the automatic. Beyond the barrel, I could see the bird’s feathered breast pulsing with each breath. I squeezed the trigger. The gun barked and bucked but the bullet whined wide. The pheasant took flight, croaking in alarm.
‘Good try,’ Pigeon said, patting my shoulder. ‘Don’t worry – there’s plenty of game around here.’
It was true. The scrubby woodland was practically infested with pheasants. Every few minutes one of the other guys would spot a bird and take a shot. They rarely missed. There
would be an explosion of blood and feathers, followed by a collective cheer. The pheasant would lie on the ground and twitch, its legs scratching erratic patterns in the dirt. Sometimes the shooter had to go over to finish it off. We weren’t keeping any of the birds. We just killed them and left them where they fell. Between gunshots, the forest was quiet except for the rustling sounds we made as we waded through the underbrush.
‘Got another bogie for the kid,’ one of them said, holding up a fist. ‘Ten o’clock.’
It took me a few seconds to figure out what he meant by ten o’clock. Then I spotted the pheasant off to our left, puttering back and forth like a grounded blimp. The rest of them waited politely as I crouched, took aim, and fired. Dirt sprayed across the bird’s feet. It leapt up and flapped away, wobbling through the air.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘No worries,’ Pigeon told me. ‘You’ll get one.’
But you could tell he wasn’t all that sure. Evening was creeping up on us and the sky had darkened to a deep cobalt blue. We didn’t have much longer. As the other guys moved off, I lingered behind to check my gun. I thought there might be something wrong with it.
‘You coming, rook?’ Pigeon called back.
I trotted along in his wake, studying the terrain ahead. Since the trees were well-spaced, you could see fairly far. The ground rose steadily towards the crest of a hill. On the hill was a big Douglas fir, and in the branches near the top I spotted one of the birds. It had to be two hundred yards away – an impossible distance. They’d be completely stupefied if I made that shot. Just for kicks, I tried the trick Pigeon had taught me. I pictured Zuzska’s face, instead of the bird. My gun swung up with that same smooth motion and the forest settled into stillness as I drew a bead on the target.
‘You kurva-bitch,’ I said.
Just as I pulled the trigger, Pigeon called, ‘Wait!’
I fired and felt the shudder of the bullet leaving the barrel. A second later, the brown bird dropped out of the tree, straight down, like a falling pine cone. A perfect shot.
‘Oh, shit,’ Pigeon said.
‘What? What is it?’
He’d already started up the hill. I hustled after him. I could hear the others following behind, crunching through the undergrowth. At the top of the hill we reached a clearing. In the centre, lit up by a last ray of sunlight, lay my pheasant. Only it wasn’t a pheasant. It looked two or three times as big, with a brown body, a white head, and a hooked yellow beak. It was sprawled on its back with both wings extended, as if in mid-flight. A bullet hole, rich and red, gaped in the middle of its chest. Blood had pooled in the pine needles beneath it.
Pigeon clamped a hand over his mouth.
‘What is it?’ I whispered.
‘An eagle,’ he said. ‘A bald eagle.’
Dropping my gun, I knelt on the ground in front of the bird. I placed my hand on its breast. It was warm and downy and still. I’d never seen anything more beautiful. Or more dead.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ Pigeon said. ‘No pheasant roosts way up in a tree like that.’
I looked upwards, as if the answer lay overhead. At the top of the tree from which the eagle had fallen, I could see the nest it had built for itself – a massive oval of mud and leaves and twigs. The other guys had arrived by then, but they didn’t come too close. They stood at the edge of the clearing, muttering and shifting from foot to foot – not wanting any part of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Nobody said anything. We stayed there in the dying light for a long time.
Pigeon had an old camping tarp in his Jeep. He helped me wrap the eagle up – using the tarp as a makeshift body bag. The two of us carried the corpse back to my Neon. At least Pigeon understood why I wanted to keep it. The other guys didn’t. They couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. Bald eagles were the national bird of America, and protected. If a ranger came along, and found us with this thing, we’d be fucked. That was what one of them said, anyway. Those were his exact words. But I couldn’t just leave it there, for the wolves and coyotes.
They all watched from a distance as we lowered the eagle into my trunk. By then the sun had set and dusk was closing in, like a casket covering the forest.
‘Come on, Pigeon,’ a guy called. ‘It’s getting late.’
Pigeon waved to them in acknowledgement. Then he turned to me. He removed his hunting cap, ran a hand over his scalp, and blew out his cheeks. You could tell he wanted to say something that would make me feel better. But what can you really say to somebody who’s just shot a bald eagle?
‘Well,’ he said, and tried to smile, ‘from that distance, through all those trees – that must have been one of the best shots I’ve ever seen. Or the worst, as it turned out.’
I shook my head. I still had his pistol. I offered it to him, butt-first.
He eyed it uneasily. ‘You might as well keep that.’
‘I don’t need a gun.’
We argued about it for a while, but he wouldn’t take it back. He shoved a box of ammunition at me, and told me the pistol was a gift.
‘I don’t even have a licence.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said, backing away. ‘I don’t either, for that one.’
By then the other guys were waiting in their vehicles. Engines started up. Headlights flicked on. Pigeon climbed into his Jeep, rolled down the window, and leaned out.
‘What are you going to do with the bird?’
‘Bury it, I guess.’
‘Better do it quick. Otherwise, in this heat, it’ll start to rot.’ He shrugged. ‘And don’t be too hard on yourself, rookie. That there was just plain old-fashioned bad luck.’
Then his window was going up, and the vehicles were moving off. I watched them rumble away, bumping and bobbing along the dirt track. The sets of tail-lights got smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter, until they winked out and I was alone in the fading dusk.
chapter 33
Pigeon was right about the bird going rotten. But I had an idea while I was passing the gas station where I’d first met him and his friends. Next to the pumps sat a big white freezer with the word ‘ICE’ scrawled across the doors. I pulled in and bought two sacks of crushed ice. I also bought a cooler – one of those cheap styrofoam picnic coolers. I placed the bags of ice inside and laid the eagle on top of them, using its tarp as a coffin liner. The bird was already going stiff. I smoothed out its feathers and bent the feet a little to make it fit. When I looked up, the clerk – an anaemic teenager with acne – was watching from the doorway.
I raised a hand to acknowledge him.
‘Gonna get that one stuffed?’ he called out.
‘That’s right. It’s a keeper.’
As I left the gas station, I bottomed out, grinding the undercarriage on the ramp. I could feel my new load weighing down the rear suspension. That eagle was even heavier than it looked. It was as if it was made of lead, or gold. A Maltese eagle.
I turned on to the two-lane highway. The sky was a purple swath pinned over a black strip of land. At the horizon the two colours met in a crisp and distinct line, like an abstract painting. There was nothing else out there: no lights, no houses, no other cars, no signs of life. It was exactly what I’d wanted. Total isolation. But now that it was in front of me I took my foot off the gas and slowed to a halt, in the middle of the road. I just had a feeling – that shivery, ghost-over-your-grave feeling. Whatever America had in store for me wasn’t going to be good. I mean, I’d shot her national bird. She wouldn’t be happy about that.
I reached over to fasten my seatbelt.
I floated on alone, in the rolling dark. I’d set the Neon’s autopilot to seventy, which meant I could sit back with my legs stretched out and one hand on the wheel, letting her drive herself. I also had the A/C on full and the windows up. I felt completely numb, slipping through the night in my airtight pod, like a spaceman frozen by cryogenics. We were riding low and the Neon had started to wh
ine, straining under the weight of that eagle. I kept telling myself that I hadn’t meant to kill it, but it didn’t make much difference. I had killed it, and that was that.
I lit a cigarette and rolled down my window. As I smoked, I rewound the sequence of events, and played the ‘if only’ game. Like, if only my shot hadn’t been so good. Or, if only I’d realised it was an eagle. If only Pigeon had warned me a second sooner. If only I’d not agreed to go hunting. If only I hadn’t pulled into that gas station. If only I’d never come on this fucking road trip. If only Zuzska hadn’t done what she did. If only. If only. If only.
I had one of those starburst moments. I saw all my possible lives, all the choices and paths I could have taken, streaking away from me at light-speed, like the explosion of a supernova. What I needed was a time machine – a bicycle or a DeLorean. Then I could go back and change everything. I’d write a whole new story, and have it turn out the way I wanted. But I couldn’t, obviously. I was stuck in this story, with a dead eagle in the trunk, and a girlfriend who was dead to me. It had all happened. It was all fixed. I flicked my cigarette out the window. In my wing mirror, I watched the butt bounce and skitter on the asphalt like a red-hot jumping bean.
Beyond the glare of my headlights and the glow of the dashboard I couldn’t see anything, not even the stars. I was trapped in my pod with my thoughts. Hours passed – I don’t know how many – and at some point I noticed that the horizon was glowing orange. At first I thought I’d travelled all night, right through until dawn. But it couldn’t be dawn. The transition was too sudden and intense and the light seemed to be shimmering like a midnight mirage. Then I smelled the smoke, and understood. It was a brushfire. On either side of the highway, stretching out into the night, the flames rippled and flickered, blurry with heat, like those pictures you see of oil wells burning in the desert.
I followed the road into the middle of the fire, parked, and got out. I was hit by huge blasts of scalding air, as if I was standing in front of a giant hairdryer. Overhead, sparks and embers swirled on the updraughts. The smoke wasn’t as thick as I expected, and didn’t hinder my breathing. The dry brush was burning clean, purging the landscape in its passing.