The Shooting (3 page)

Lee shakes his head no.

—Of course not. Well, don't worry. Daddy's home now.

They come up the driveway and they get out of the car wearing suits. He follows her through the house, out to the driveway where they wait. She is furious, weeping, the stomping of her heels and the jingling of her bracelets echoing, staff carrying her suitcases. —
He's
the liar! she is saying. —He's paranoid! Insane! She is dressed in a bright orange dress and her lips are painted red and her eyes blue and her hair is different again.

—Don't go, Lee says.

—The lawyers say I don't have a choice.

—It's not fair.

—No, it's not, of course it's not, but it's the way it is, so for now we just have to do what he says and not make it worse by antagonizing him, and we'll, I don't know, figure it out. She stops being furious and becomes sad; she bends down to him, hugs him, and cries. Then she stops being sad and becomes very happy, and it is like she was only pretending to be furious and then only pretending to be sad, or maybe it is like she is only pretending to be very happy.

—Hey, she says, —you know what? Maybe this will turn out to be okay. Maybe whether I like it or not, a boy does need his father and you haven't had him. A father teaches a boy how to be a man. Momma can't teach you that. You want to learn to be a man, don't you?

—No! he cries.

She laughs at him, a high, loud song of a laugh:
Oh, ha ha ha!
—It will be good, she says, and kisses him again. —Anyway, at least this will give me the chance to work again and be
me
again. And then I'll be happy, and Momma hasn't been happy for some time, she should never have let him convince me to come here. I need a
break.
I'll take
a break and figure it out, and when I do you can come see me and even be with me. And everything will be good. I promise.

He passes the living room where his father sits reading the newspaper in the big chair he brought in. His things are everywhere; the house is filled with old, massive American things pregnant with the ghosts of a sacred other world: war uniforms and badges for heroism, tools and instruments, fifes, drums, tricornered hats, funny black shoes, black hats with buckles. There are Thomas Jefferson and George Mason and Patrick Henry, shelves lined with American poets of individualism. Only his father's pictures hang on the walls now, scenes of war and homesteads, portraits of humble bearded generals praying before battle, of the proud, righteous, bullet-frayed underdog star-spangled banner in the dawn above water, of lone cowboys, of free frontier families singing hymns at the hearth, shotgun above it. His father calls to him, tells him to come here. He puts down the newspaper and stands over Lee. He puts his arm out and makes a muscle. —Feel that, he tells Lee, and Lee does. —Hang from it, he says, and Lee does.

They wrestle on the floor. He gives Lee sips of beer in a teeny, tiny mug, a micro version of his own, even says
ALASKA
on it like his does. He brings Lee down with him to the shooting range he has resurrected at the foot of the property near the trees—a pile of sand for a backstop and some tree stumps on which to set bottles and cans and watermelons and the pictures his mother left—string art, nude people at Woodstock, John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., hairy Vietnam War protestors—and blast them with noise so loud Lee must stuff his fingers into his ears as he watches from behind him. His father uses the gun. The special one. The one that will be Lee's. Lee watches it twitch and spit in his father's hand, a gorgeous miracle perfectly crafted as if all in one single piece, not an inch of waste, not a single flaw. You can trust it. And it trusts you. It is simple and honest: —Just like us, his father says. The gun, Lee understands, is who he is. He lies in bed at night dreaming of the gun and his mother. He carries a toy gun and pretends it's the gun. Aims it at the trees and the bad guys his daddy says will come sneaking out of
them. And it is who he is and who the Fisher men are and who his countrymen once were, and Lee, for a time, feels safe.

His mother calls from New York and she says she misses him and does he want to come see her, and he says yes and says when, and she says soon. She asks how he is and he says okay; she says she loves him and he says, —I love you too, and he says, —I miss you, and starts to cry, and she does too, and he begs her to come back but she says she cannot, and now she is crying harder, and she says but soon he will come see her in New York, soon he will.

His father digs in the ground and drags pieces of wood from his rusted pickup truck and saws them and hammers them and curses and spits brown juice from his lips and wipes his lips with the back of his hand and hammers more, curses more, Lee there with him in little Levi's rolled up at the cuffs and a boy's flannel shirt, with his own wood to saw, with his own dull children's saw from his own children's tool kit, toy gun stuffed down the side of the Levi's to be like his father who carries the special gun in a holster on his hip as he works. They are building a garden. —So we can provide our own vegetables and things, his father says. There is a high mound of mulch packed in bags from the store in town. They are building fences for animals, little houses for them to live in. They are going to have pets: pigs, cows, chickens. —So we can provide our own meat.

Lee cries when he says that. His father says, —What the hell you crying about?

—I don't want to kill them.

—Relax, we don't even have them yet, we have to build their barn and fences first. Anyway, where do you think meat comes from? Meat is animals that someone has to kill, Lee. It's nature. It's life.

—Then I don't like life.

—Life doesn't care if you like it or not. Life is life. Anyway, it's better we do it ourselves than some corporation doing it for us. You think the Founding Fathers went to Safeway? Hell no. They provided for themselves. They were men of the field and the plow. They were peaceful and happy. Much happier than people are now. They were
happy because they were self-determining. Self-determination is the name of the game.

—What game?

—I don't know what game, it's a figure of speech, Lee. Though you could say it's all one big goddamn game. A rigged one.

—Do you think children are in the new house?

—What new house?

—The one they're building.

—Where are they building houses at?

—Down the mountain. I see it from my window. Lee has been watching for his mother from his bedroom window all summer, and there is a spot farther down the mountain where one by one the canopies of the trees went away and were replaced with the gray roof of a brand-new house, the first one to have ever been built anywhere near their mountain.

His father stops digging and looks at him like Lee has done something bad. —Shit, he finally says, shaking the sweat from his head like a wet dog and stomping the edge of his shovel into the earth with his steel-toed boot. —Didn't know that land was for sale or I would've bought it just to keep anyone from building on it.

—Shit, Lee says.

—Watch your mouth. How close by is this house?

Lee shrugs. And then he says, —So do you?

—Do I what?

—Think there are children there?

—Well, yessir, I reckon children probably do live there. You'll want to play with them sometime, I guess, huh? He says it with his face pained, like he's getting a shot. Lee nods. —Okay, well, once we find out what kind of people they are and what they're all about, maybe I'll take you down there.

He keeps working, sweat steaming his glasses, which are secured to his face by a piece of thin rope he cut off the curtains inside and proudly rigged to go around the back of his head and tie to both ends of the glasses.

Lee asks him, —Where do you come from?

—Where do you think I come from?

—New York.

—Is that what she told you? No, New York is where I was
born,
but that's not where I
come
from. Do you understand the difference? Just because you're born somewhere doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean that's who you are. You
choose
where you come from. No one else gets to decide that for you.

Lee stares at the wood he has sawed, the bright fresh teeth marks he has made in it, the thin curls of wood that have been shaved away and gather at the edge of the teeth marks. —Then where are you from?

His father dumps a shovelful of rocky dirt atop the mound he has made to the side of the garden site and wipes his face with the sleeve of his plaid shirt, drinks from one of the beers he has brought out in a blue plastic cooler. —The West. The frontier. That's where I'm from. And that's where I've been. And that's where I am. And that's where I'll be. He shakes the empty can, drops it in the cooler, opens a fresh one before he has even finished swallowing. —You know what? We should build ourselves a little brewery up here too. Provide our own beer. George Washington used to do that, you know. All those guys did. He becomes excited, animated. He is almost yelling now. —Yessir, once we get all this up and running, we'll have everything we'll ever need, Lee. We'll never leave. We'll never have to!

His mother calls from New York and he is working on the farm and does not want to talk, but when she calls from New York he has to talk to her, so he goes inside and holds the phone up to his ear and listens to her talk and says yes when she asks if he is okay and if he misses her and if he loves her. She asks if he loves her even if she's not an actress anymore, and he does not understand so he says yes, and she says, —Will you always love me no matter what? and he says yes and she says, —No matter what? and he says, —No matter what. And she says, —The attorneys have been talking and they say you can come visit me in New York any time, even next week, what do you think, do you want to come next week? And he says, —But I don't want to, and she says, —You'll love New York, I'll take you to the Central Park Zoo and see the animals, and he
says, —We're building a farm, we'll have our own animals. And when it is time to be done talking to her on the phone he can hear her start to cry as she hangs up.

They are working again on the farm and on the house for the animals. The mulch is laid, bright brown and sweet-smelling. A good deal of the fence is up, the barns are coming along. Lee says, —Can you take me to the new house now?

—Help me with this some.

—You promised.

—All right, don't cry about it.

—You'll take me?

—I can't take you, son, I'm working. Violet will take you.

Lee goes inside, finds her standing at the window watching his father and shaking her head.

—Will you take me to the new house to see if any children live there?

—Of course, I'll get the car keys.

—Can I go by myself?

—I don't know, can you?

—May
I go by myself?

—No, you absolutely may not. It's too far.

—No, it ain't, his father says from behind them. He has come inside to refill his cooler and he stands in the doorway. He is tanned and cheerful and sweating, beer can in one hand, the other in his back pocket, gun on his hip. —At least let the boy's balls drop first before you go loppin' 'em off, Violet.

—You said to me to keep him
away
from those woods at all costs. You said we don't know who could be in there, there could be anyone in there. You said that—

—It doesn't matter what I said, it's what I'm
saying now
: a boy should be free to run in the woods, learn about nature and himself, see what he's made of, free from women always criticizing him and trying to break his spirit. It builds character. Look at Huck Finn.

—Huck Finn is a fictional character, Mr. Fisher.

—Thoreau then. Ain't nothing made up about Henry David Thoreau. Anyway, it's not exactly the great untamed wilderness, there's a damned paved road.

—A major highway.

—Major highway. Good God. It's just a daggone road and there ain't never hardly anyone on it but us. Ain't that right, Lee?

—That's right, says Lee.

—Mr. Fisher, Lee is a very sensitive boy. If something should bite him, or if he runs through poison ivy, or—

—My son ain't gonna live his life afraid of the daggone world.

Violet is gripping the edges of the table she stands beside, her arms quivering and knuckles white. Lee's father laughs at her.

—Thank God a man is finally around, right, Lee?

—Thank God, says Lee.

Violet says, —I'm only doing as instructed by Mrs. Fisher.

—Well, do you see Mrs. Fisher anywhere around here? And her picture in your gossip magazines doesn't count.

Lee says, —So can I go?

—Of course you can, his father says.

Lee emerges from the woods with briars in his hair and pricklers on his shirt, mud caked on his butt from having lost his footing along a little gulch. Runs through the house's backyard and up the porch, knocks. A woman answers the door.

—Do any children live here? he asks.

—Where on earth did you come from?

—Up there.

—All the way up there, you must be exhausted.

—No, he says. —So do they?

—I'm afraid not, no.

A car pulls into the driveway and it is Violet, she has come down after him. —Come on, Lee, she says from the open window.

Lee whines, —But he said I could.

—Hello, the lady calls to Violet, —I'm sorry, he just knocked on my door, I was going to—

—No, no, Violet interrupts her, smiling but not really smiling. —Come on, Lee.

Inside the car as they drive back up the mountain Violet says, —He changed his mind. Please don't ask me to try to explain that man.

He wakes up and his right eye is sticky and he cannot move his jaw. To swallow saliva is to swallow a golf ball. He looks at himself in his bedroom mirror—an opaque red-gray sore stares back at him. Sobbing, he goes to his father's bedroom; he's asleep on his stomach, face buried in his pillow. The room smells of sweat and beer. It takes several shoves to wake him up. He grunts and groans, lifts his head.