Why we own all of these guns is another story altogether, and one that has little to do with hunting. Forty percent of U.S. households contain at least one gun. One in four adults owns one or more guns. Yet only 11 percent of firearm-owning households say they hunt. The rest keep their weapons primarily for self-defense.
The idea of keeping a gun for self-defense sounds crazy to me. And the more I handle a gun, the crazier this idea gets. The only way for a gun to be useful in, say, defending one’s family from a burglary would require that the gun be stored unlocked and with ammunition either inside the chamber or close by—a dangerous situation in any household, with or without kids.
Despite my fear of guns, I enjoy the class. More than anything, I enjoy my classmates. At first, they’re amused to have an adult in their ranks. But eventually, they treat me like I’m one of them. One evening, a boy comes in all puffed up because he learned to whistle earlier that day. He demonstrates for me—sucking in one long, sustained note until finally he has to stop to exhale. I congratulate him.
“Can you whistle?” He’s not issuing a challenge, he sounds genuinely curious.
“Yes.” I toot out a simple tune.
His eyes widen. “Wow, you’re really good.”
“Thank you. I’ve had a lot of time to practice.”
Later, when E.V. scolds me for picking up a rifle without checking to make sure it’s unloaded first, my new buddy reassures me.
“At least you’re good at whistling,” he says cheerfully.
One of the students lives on a remote farm with his large family. He is homeschooled, which makes our crowded classroom exotic to him. He tells me that his family raises pygmy fainting goats, which freeze and topple over when they get scared.
“Really?” I can’t tell if this kid is pulling my leg.
“Yep. You go like this”—he smacks his hands together—“and they just fall right over.”
I rush home from class, excited to tell Scott about my latest friend from Hunter Safety.
On the last two days of class, we meet at an indoor shooting range. Technically, this will not be the first time I have shot a gun. In high school, my friend Nick and I went with his father to a shooting range and gun store next to a prison in Jessup, Maryland. Nick’s dad rented the gun for us—a 9mm or maybe just a .22, I can’t remember. Either way, it was a semi-automatic pistol. The store clerk taught us how to shoot. First, he showed us how to snap the magazine into the bottom of the gun. Then he explained what he called “the push-pull technique”: Hold the gun with two hands, fingers interlaced. Push against the gun with the heel of one palm, pull toward your chest with the other. Apparently this steadies the gun. He reminded us to stand with our feet shoulder-width apart and our arms straight in front of us.
We took turns. Nick walked into the range and shot at a paper target with a silhouette of a human bust until the magazine was empty. Then he came out and handed me the gun, and I shot through the magazine. I don’t remember much about the whole experience except that I’d anticipated it would be a thrill. I’d seen Pulp Fiction; I knew how much swagger came with shooting a gun. But in the moment, I was terrified. Even just holding the gun, unloaded, made me sweat.
I am even more nervous now. Today feels more momentous than my onetime target practice in high school. Back then, I was casually trying out a new experience. This time, I am preparing for something in which I have already invested a great deal of time and energy.
Before the rifles are handed out, E.V. gives a stern recap of gun safety principles. Then the kids and I line up to receive our guns, and it occurs to me that if one of them is an undiagnosed psychotic, he could turn his back to the paper targets and open fire on all of us right here, right now. I shudder. But I remind myself again that this situation—blindly trusting the people around me to do the right thing and keep us all safe—is not remarkable. We all do it every day. When I lived in New York City, for example, a fellow subway passenger could have shoved me into an oncoming train, on purpose or by accident, at any moment. But for the most part I choose to believe, as I always have, that it won’t happen today.
Even so, as an adult hands out rifles to a group of eleven-and twelve-year-olds, this social contract into which I’ve placed my well-being is looking awfully fragile. Then I look at Grayson, who is somber and calm. I take a deep breath. These kids have shown me, for four weeks now, that they take guns more seriously than a lot of adults I’ve read about in the news. I heave away my doubts. It’s time to shoot.
I pull on a pair of clear plastic glasses, to protect my eyes in case the gun backfires, and what look like giant headphones, to protect my ears from the noise. The voices around me are muffled, and my heartbeat becomes the dominant sound. I lay my gun on a small desk and walk deep into the shooting range to pin up my paper target, a round bull’s-eye. My heart thumps ominously as I walk back to my gun. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. E.V. walks up and down the line of desks, helping us drape ourselves from the chair onto the desk and gun. The idea is to keep the rifle perfectly still by anchoring as much of my quivering body as possible—feet, butt, elbows, forearms—to the ground, the chair, the desk. I press my right cheek into the cold metal gun, peering down its black neck to line up the metal sights with my paper target. On the desk next to me is a wooden block with five little copper bullets poking out.
“When you are ready, go ahead and shoot all of your rounds,” E.V. barks to the class.
Immediately, guns start blasting. The booms are muffled by my headgear, and sound more like a heavy book dropping on the ground than an explosion. I take a deep breath and load my first round. I take another deep breath and pull the trigger. Bang! My face, arms, torso—everything that is connected to this gun—flinches for a moment. The gun is small by most standards, and according to E.V. it doesn’t kick, but this burst of motion still startles me. I smell gunpowder. I sit up and look around before reassuming my shooting position and reloading the gun. This time, I tense up, bracing myself for the jump when I shoot. I pull the trigger. Bang!
I reload the gun and before I have time to get settled, E.V. is crouched down beside me.
“You’re closing your eyes, Lily.”
No kidding.
“Concentrate on keeping them open when you pull the trigger. You’ll shoot straighter.” He stands up and heads to someone else in need of coaching.
Before each of the next three rounds, I try to take a few deep breaths, to calm my nerves and will myself to hold my eyes open. But with each shot, I flinch and shut my eyes.
When everyone has shot all five rounds, E.V. tells us to go get our targets and see how we did. I take off my earphones and relax when the sound of my heartbeat is eclipsed by the familiar squeaking of sneakers and whispering of kids. My target has five shots on it, one of which is actually touching the bull’s-eye. I’m proud of myself, but worry that my best shot was the first one, before my body knew to flinch with the trigger.
On the last day, after another session at the shooting range, we go into a classroom and take a multiple-choice test. As we are finishing, the kid next to me turns to his father, who is sitting behind us, and whispers, “Dad? How do we spell our last name?”
After a few minutes of grading tests, our instructors announce that each one of us has graduated from Hunter Safety. We cheer and give each other high fives. E.V. calls our names, one by one, and we walk up to shake his hand and receive a small cardstock certificate.
When I get home, I show off my certificate to Scott. Attached is a letter addressed “to the parents of the Hunter Safety graduate,” reminding them that safety should be a lifelong practice. By now, I have described so many of my classmates and recounted my funny interactions with them that Scott can’t help but find the whole Hunter Safety experience charming. By extension, he is starting to get excited about the idea of me hunting in the near future.
Scott’s growing enthusiasm has encouraged me to do something I’ve already put off for way too long: tell my par
ents about it. The next month, in October, they arrive in Bend for a weeklong visit. The first morning of their trip, we go to a small, empty coffee shop and settle into a pair of sofas. I can think of no way to ease the shock of this news, so I just spit it out.
“Mom and Dad?” I take a deep breath. “I’m learning to hunt.”
They both stare at me, expressionless. I think of one of my gay friends, and how he must have felt when he came out to his ultra-conservative parents. In fact, for one brief moment, this feels like a bizarre version of coming out: I’m shocking my hippie, blue-state parents with a revelation that they reserve for heartless conservatives.
My dad breaks the silence.
“Won’t you be the darling of the right wing,” he says, his voice dripping with disgust.
“Dad, it’s not what you think.”
We spend the next hour or so talking about my reasons for wanting to learn. I explain that the way I see it, hunting will make me a better environmentalist. To my parents’ credit, they listen and eventually soften up to the idea. My mother frets about the guns, but is somewhat reassured when I tell her about the Hunter Safety course. Both are amused by my stories about the kids. Over the next few years, they will become curious, enthusiastic boosters of my hunting expeditions. For now, though, the conversation stalls when they realize that I haven’t actually hunted anything yet.
“How do you know you’ll like it?” my mom asks.
“I don’t think I can know until I get out and try it.”
This is what Hunter Safety couldn’t teach me. Although I am slightly more comfortable handling a gun and I now have a basic familiarity with hunting rules, I still know nothing about how to actually hunt. It feels like I’ve earned my driver’s license without ever sitting behind the wheel and turning the key in the ignition.
CHAPTER 4
PULL
Later that fall, Scott and I decide to get married. I have no doubts whatsoever about Scott. But I am startled to find myself marrying someone so deeply rooted in central Oregon, a place that still feels foreign at times. By marrying Scott, I am setting down roots of my own, gripping this lean, rocky soil.
Friends from college ask me, “Do you think you’ll stay in Bend for the rest of your life?” I hyperventilate at the thought of staying anywhere for the rest of my life. “Who knows?” I answer. “Forever’s a long time.”
Occasionally, I worry about what will happen if my family remains far apart. My older brother lives in Brazil, my younger sister in Los Angeles. I fret about what will happen when my parents, who still live in Maryland, grow old. But most of the time, I shoo away these concerns. I have plenty of time, and so much will happen between now and then.
We rush to arrange a small wedding during the last week in December, when my parents and sister are already planning to be in Bend for Christmas. Nathan won’t be able to come from Brazil on such short notice. We make plans for a reception on the East Coast in May, and he vows to come to that.
“Maybe I’ll come visit you in Oregon, too,” he adds.
My family is all city folk, but none more so than Nathan. Even in Brazil, it took him years to stop dressing like an inner-city American, with baggy jeans and tan Timberland boots (he has since replaced them with baggy shorts and flip-flops). Yet for the last year or so, he has grown increasingly curious about my country life in Oregon. A voracious reader, he randomly discovered The River Why, by the author Scott and I heard speak shortly after we met. This novel has spurred his growing interest in fly-fishing—a theoretical one; he has never touched a fly rod. Scott accompanied me on a trip to visit Nathan earlier this year, so he knows what an odd figure my brother would cut in a pair of waders, with a fly rod in his hand. We joke about testing his touted interest in this technical and sometimes tedious sport by taking him on an overnight float trip. Nathan has little experience outdoors, amid bugs and mud. His fair skin would burn in the sun. His patience would fizzle against hours of fruitless casts and tangled line. Then again, Nathan has surprised me before.
In March, he calls with an announcement that eclipses my nuptials: His girlfriend, Luciana, is pregnant and due in September. Nathan loves children, and he has always wanted kids of his own. But this pregnancy wasn’t planned, and he stammers as he spills the news. At the end of our conversation, he apologizes because he won’t be able to make it to our reception.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, too drunk on newlywed love to take offense. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“No.” He sounds far more disappointed than I am. “It is a big deal.”
Nathan and I have a relationship that swings like a pendulum. For a time, while he was in high school and I was in junior high, we would stay up late together, watching reruns of The World’s Strongest Man on cable. We added our own commentary—trying to mimic the contestants’ accents—and made each other laugh so hard that we struggled to breathe. Then there were years like his first year of college (and mine of high school) when we could barely look at each other without resorting to yelling. Since he moved to Brazil and I to Bend, we’ve slowly grown apart, and our relationship has settled into an unfamiliar coolness.
The news of Nathan’s impending fatherhood highlights the distance between us. Not knowing what to say to each other when we talk on the phone, we resort to mostly small talk. It’s hard to remain close—even harder to close a growing gap—when we live so far apart. But I don’t worry too much about this. It’s part of the ebb and flow of our relationship, I tell myself. Nathan is family—he’ll always be there for me, I’ll always be there for him. One of these days, something will spark new feelings of closeness and we’ll swing back together.
Before I know it, 2007 has arrived and halfway passed, and if I’m ever going to hunt I had better get started. As the summer days shrink, I hatch out a plan. I will try hunting for birds, then move on—if I’m still interested—to big game. My reasons are simple: A smaller animal is less overwhelming and scary. And bird hunting has the added appeal of using dogs as helpers. But one fact is unavoidable: I will need a gun.
When Scott’s family first heard that I was interested in hunting, several of them offered to loan me their heirloom guns—if I’d keep them at my house. I declined. I hated the idea of storing a firearm in my house. For weeks, I brainstormed ways to learn to hunt that did not involve a gun in my home. I considered borrowing one. Or renting a storage unit. Or just keeping my gun in the trunk of my car. Eventually, it became clear that to hunt with any seriousness I would need to own at least one gun, and the responsible thing was to keep it in my house. Locked up, of course, and unloaded, with the ammunition stored someplace else.
There are a few different gun stores in town. I decide to try the biggest outdoors store first, figuring it will have the greatest selection.
I walk in intimidated. The gun department is a long counter with racks of guns hanging on the wall behind it. The area is crowded with men and teenage boys holding different guns and taking them apart on the counter. I stand back and wait for fifteen minutes or so until a salesman is available.
“What can I get you?” he asks brusquely.
“Uh, I’m not sure. I’m looking for a 20-gauge shotgun.”
“Okay, shotguns are over here.” We walk down the counter. “Is it for you?”
“Yes. It’s my first gun.”
He nods. It’s obvious from the guy’s deflated facial expression that I’m the worst possible client. I will require time, hand-holding and detailed explanations and then spend little, if any, money. I won’t be able to gab excitedly about the new semi-automatic Beretta, like the man standing to my right is doing with the other, luckier salesman.
“What will you use it for?”
I don’t understand what he means. What does anyone use a gun for?
“Um, hunting? Birds?”
He sighs. “What kind of birds?”
“I’m not sure. All different kinds?”
“You should get a 12-gauge.” He turn
s around, pulls a gun off the rack behind him and places it on the counter in front of me. “This is a good entry-level gun. It’s a pump-action. It comes in a wood stock, black or camo.”
“Well, I think I’d rather have a 20-gauge.”
“Why? A bigger gun is more versatile.”
“Uh, well… He’s getting impatient. “I don’t want to have to carry such a big, heavy gun. And I want as little kick as possible.”
“A 12-gauge kicks less than a 20-gauge,” he says matter-of-factly.
This will turn out to be a recurring theme in my gun-related education: Hunters disagree about what makes a gun kick against your shoulder when it fires. Some stick to the intuitive rule that the bigger the gun, the harder it kicks. Others have elaborate theories about how the energy from a wider shotgun shell somehow dissipates more quickly, sending a lighter thud into the shooter’s shoulder. I’m sure it’s true that an expensive, well-designed gun shoots with less of a jolt than a cheap one. But later, when I have shot several different guns, I will reach the same general conclusion I’d suspected all along: To spare your shoulder, shoot a smaller gun. I will be glad that I held my ground with this salesman.
“Let’s just pretend I was going to buy a 20-gauge. Which would you recommend?”
He caves, and plunks down a couple of guns with the muzzles pointing behind the counter, toward him.
Nervously, I pick one up, turn it over and put it back down. I’m not sure what to do with it. The salesman smiles. Finally, I’ve offered him something: amusement.
“Well? Whaddya think?”
I don’t know what to think. Other than price, I have no idea how to compare these guns. I’m not even sure how to hold them. I thank the salesman and leave the store. At another large outdoors store, the salesman is more helpful.
Instead of trying to talk me out of a 20-gauge, he picks one out. As he places it on the counter, he points out the pump action and other features.
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