Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (35 page)

Once we
reached our usual pace on the main road, I asked Boone what odds he gave for Grampa accidentally killing somebody.

“He’s
keeping them honest,” Boone said. “You’ve seen the news. Things get weird fast, and it’s starting to spread.” After a quarter mile or so, he asked, “Have you ever thought about learning to shoot?”

I navigated around a
broken bottle then looked over my shoulder at him. “Not really.”

“Might
be a useful skill.”

I tr
ied to achieve the flirtatious appearance of what the regency romance books called a
coquette
. “Would you be the one teaching me?”

He grinned back with the confidence of a true regency rake. “You bet.”

I faced front again. My smile faded. In a different lifetime, back in the hunting store at college, Boone told me I wasn’t going to end up in a militia. He’d told me I wouldn’t need to know how to load the bullets from his yellow cracker box. Now he thought I should learn to shoot. I turned the unhappy implications over in my mind as steadily as my feet turned the crank on my bike.
 

 

He gave me my first shooting lesson later that afternoon, up in the woods. Grandpa supervised, his interest piqued when Boone asked to teach me using his short-barreled shotgun.

Sara and Mom
joined us, too. My sister chewed gum, unimpressed by the stick of death Mom watched like a poisonous snake. She’d insisted on hearing protection but could only produce the set of earmuffs she’d bought to use with the electric leaf blower. They were looped around my neck. Everyone else planned to put their fingers in their ears, except Boone, who handled the gun with the easy grace of someone who’d fired enough rounds to already compromise his hearing.

“This is a coach gun, double barrels side by side. It’s a break action, meaning it splits open in the middle for loading.” He
slid a lever behind to open the gun at a hinge between the barrels and the wooden stock. “It’s empty, no cartridges loaded. Always make sure, with your own eyes.”

I smiled at him
, so adorable in safety mode.

“I’m serious,” he
chided. “Empty or not, don’t ever point it at anything you don’t want to blow a hole through.”

I smoothed away the smile and nodded, serious
for the moment.

He snapped the gun closed, still empty. He pointed to a metal thumb slider right above the triggers. “This is the safety. Backward
, the safety is off.” Next he showed me the triggers.

Sara piped up, “Can you fire them both at once?”

Grampa chuckled. “You can, but it’ll set you back on your keister.”

Boone
opened the gun again to slide green plastic cartridges he called “target loads” singly into the barrels. He snapped the gun closed. “The gun is loaded, safety on,” he said, holding it with both hands, the business end pointed at the ground. “I’m going to fire these two, okay? So you can get an idea what it sounds like.”

I slid the
earmuffs off my neck and clapped them on his head. He rolled his eyes when I stuck my fingers in my ears. Back to business, he thumbed the safety back.

“There’s a bead at the end of
the barrel to use as your sight. We’re going to shoot for that tree over there. See the slow rise behind it? You always want to know what might potentially be stopping your shot.”

He steadied himself on his feet, snuggled the gun into his shoulder. I watched his forefinger ease back the front trigger.
Even knowing it was coming, the sudden concussion made me jerk back in surprise.

While
I caught my breath, Mom exclaimed, “Oh!”

Without changing his stance he said,
“Now, the right barrel.” He slid his finger over the back trigger. This time I tried to see where the pellets went as he fired with another loud pop.

H
e shoved the ear protectors down to his neck. “What do you think?” he asked. No one answered. He broke the gun open again to remove the spent cartridges. “Your turn,” he said, holding the gun out to me.

I hadn’t expected tre
pidation, but after hearing the bark and realizing I had no idea what he’d hit, I hesitated to touch the thing.

“
Left hand here on the forestock, right hand on the stock,” he encouraged. The wood was warm from his touch. When he let go, the angular weight felt awkward and clumsy. “Close it up. Get the feel of it.”

I sensed it would take some force to close the gun, so I snapped it
with authority. I tried to be smart by sliding the safety on, though I knew the gun was empty.

I shift
ed my feet into some approximation of the stance he’d shown us. The stock didn’t fit into my shoulder as naturally as it seemed to in his. He held out two cartridges. Like a moron, I tried to load one backwards, but the brass head wouldn’t clear the diameter of the barrel. Once I’d managed to do it right, the shining ends stared at me like closely spaced owl eyes.

“Close it,” Boone said.

I had the irrational fear both barrels would fire if I snapped it shut. “Are you sure?” I asked.

Grampa shuffled behind me. “It’s not going to fire until you do,” he said.

“That’s sort of what I’m afraid of.”

Boone moved closer. “I’ve never heard of a misfire from closing a shotgun, but if it worries you, make certain where the pellets will go if it happens.”

I rotated so the arc of the closing gun would sweep the barrel up toward the tree Boone used as a target. I clicked it shut then exhaled when nothing happened.

“
Safety on or off?”

“Umm
.” I check the switch with my thumb. “It’s on.”

“Good. Get set up to shoot.”

I tried to remember everything. Feet set. Left hand tight on the front gripper thing and push the stock back into my shoulder. Beaded sight at the end of the barrel set on the middle of the distant tree.

He
clapped the earmuffs on my head then moved to stand behind my left shoulder, just like bike riding. “Okay, safety off. Make sure you’re pushing the stock back hard. Finger on the front trigger. Squeeze back.”

“Are you sure?”
I asked again, my voice flat and lifeless, trapped in my head by the earmuffs.

He lifted the left side to whisper,
“You’re tough, Biker-girl. You can handle it.”

His confidence gave me goose bumps.
I gritted my teeth together, set my feet one last time and pulled the trigger.

The concussion
shoved on my torso and knocked the breath out of me for a split second, its flat pressure more shocking than the kick to my shoulder. Wow. An unpleasant sensation, but he was right. I could handle it.

 

After Mom and Sara had a turn—neither of them liked it much—I shot another dozen rounds, getting a feel for the gun and where the shot landed.

“Let’s go bag
some squirrels,” Boone suggested.

“Squirrel and dumplings
,” Grampa said. He rubbed his hand over his belly. Sara wrinkled her nose and Mom waved us off, so we set out through the trees on our own.

I gingerly carried the gun we’d been shooting while
Boone shouldered my Dad’s longer-barreled shotgun, what he called an over/under, with barrels on top of each other instead of side by side. I pointed at a squirrel poised on the side of a tree. It watched our approach without moving its head.

“Too far,” Boone said. “A hotter load will go farther, but then y
our spread gets wider and wider, so there’s the tradeoff.”

We settled next to a
thick-trunked oak. “You go first,” I whispered.

The quiet woods
soon resumed its lively activity. Birds flitted from branch to branch, their wing sounds like fluttering cards. Dry leaves crackled as plain brown sparrows scratched under a spindly bush. The scene was so calming I almost forgot why we were there.

When
Boone lifted the gun, I turned my head stealthily to watch him aim. His quarry sat on the lowest branch of a tree, cautious of us, but obviously unfamiliar with the whole concept of guns.

Boone switched off the safety. I’d forgotten to put on my earmuffs
. The deafening bang of the shot made my head ring.

The squirrel
fell off the branch and flopped to the ground like a rag doll. Its bottlebrush tail twitched.

“Oh, poor thing
,” I whispered as the little critter went through its death throes.

Boone g
ave me a wry smile. “I shot it on purpose, you know.”

I felt my cheeks flush. “Sorry. Automatic girl reaction.”

“Next shot is yours.”
 

 

We brought four squirrels back to the house, one of which I’d shot, giving me a kill percentage of like 8%. I’d been really effective at scaring them off, so much so that we’d had to move to a different part of the woods.

Boone didn’t make me
help skin and clean them, though I did watch, and only gagged on the first one.

Grandma eyed the tiny headless bodies
with skepticism. “At least they’re fattened up for winter. No time to make my own dumplings but I think Candy has some egg noodles in here somewhere….”

Grandma used beef broth to produce a
rich noodle stew everyone but Sara appreciated. Mom rounded out the meal with sautéed baby greens—including kale—and I had to admit, the fresh veggies tasted delish.

We’d had a long day. Boone and I
sat shoulder-to-shoulder, hungry for the meal we’d helped provide.

Tomorrow, on to chickens.