Knucklehead, page 13
Was I that transparent? I decided that I was. “And clips?”
“And clips.”
A moderate amount of paperwork later, I was back in the office, the proud owner of a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber semi-automatic target pistol. The gun was still at the store—waiting period—but I had seen and held my actual piece, identified on the receipt by serial number.
A few days later I went back, again at lunchtime, and picked it up. Having a gun in my briefcase all afternoon was badass. I considered naming it, but decided that that was probably too much.
YPDRMF.
Friday, December 17, 1993
Mr. Dr. was reading the paper; I, for once, was not. I was watching Amalia sleep and didn’t notice that Mama had left the room until Mr. Dr. called to me softly: “Marcus.” When I glanced up, he gestured outside with his head. “A word?”
We went out into the hallway. Mr. Dr. closed the door to Amalia’s room behind us. I waited while he tried to read my face.
“Marcus. We are approaching the point in this . . . process . . . we need to discuss something. Something medical.”
“OK.” I was Amalia’s health care proxy. We had not reached this decision lightly. One of her parents was a physician, after all, and you could probably make a solid argument that they loved her even more than I did. Ultimately, they decided to respect the office, as it were. Probably after Amalia promised them that I would listen to reason, as I was apparently doing right now.
“Do you know what a DNR is?” He didn’t wait. “It stands for Do Not Resuscitate. It is an order that a patient—or her proxy—can put in place once it is certain that even the most heroic measures will only prolong life briefly, and will probably prolong suffering. Unnecessary suffering. Do you understand?”
“Well . . . I know what a DNR is. But why are you bringing it up?”
He pressed on. “Because, we wanted to ask . . . Have you considered putting such an order in place here . . . if it becomes . . . evident—”
“No. Shit no.” A little loud. One or two people in the hall turned to look, but Shit no is a pretty normal thing to hear in a hospital. “In fact, right now I’m thinking about inventing something called a Yes, Please Do Resuscitate Motherf—. . . order. What I am thinking about is one of those. How does that sound to you? Sir?”
I expected him to match my anger. But his body relaxed and he smiled in a way I had only seen him smile at Amalia. “I like the sound of that fine, Marcus.” He put his hand on my shoulder and glanced behind me. I turned. Mama was standing at the end of the hall. Waiting.
Ah, shit. A test. Wow. Clever motherfucker.
I opened the door to Amalia’s room. “After you, Mr. Dr.”
He put his hand on my shoulder again. “You can call me Papa if you like.”
Fuck Hunters.
Sunday, December 19, 1993
I waited outside, in the parking lot. Go just two towns south of SF and you are in the Rust Belt. Fat men wearing baseball caps watched me as they passed. I did not return their rudeness. I had a gun on me, but we all did.
Debra arrived five minutes later. She was a good hugger, in part because her arms were so long. Debra was the size of a big dude; almost the size of The Door, with boobs. But mostly the hugs were so good because we were war buddies. Abby, her sister, was having a very hard time. As hard as Amalia. When Debra was around, I knew that somebody understood.
By the time we released our bear hugs, fat men had stopped to stare. California is basically Ohio with Oakland stuck in. “Let’s go inside,” she said.
We picked up our cases and went in. She held the door for me, which was noted with disapproval by a few of the heavyset gentlemen lounging on the couches inside.
“Help you,” the portly man behind the counter said as we approached. Somehow he did not seem particularly inclined to help us.
“This is a stickup,” Debra announced. The eavesdroppers turned to us hopefully. “You think? We’re here to shoot. Please.” That man would have never said please to Debra. Not for anything. That’s what made us better than him.
The rangemaster put his hands on his considerable hips. He looked sad. “Weapons.”
Debra placed her case on the counter, opened it, and turned it to face the redneck like it was a briefcase full of money. I imitated her.
The dullard’s fleshy eyes widened at the sight of Debra’s hardware. I took a peek. Her large case held two huge pistols, several very long clips, and some funny-looking bullets.
“Weapons and ammunition must be carried separately,” the rangemaster declared, injecting what authority he could into his voice. “And that ammunition is illegal! This is felony!”
“A felony,” I corrected. “Or felonious.”
The chubby men behind us were all staring now. One even started to rise. Debra pulled her badge out of the back pocket of her jeans and plunked it down on the counter. The shield was heavy in its thick leather wallet; the thud of that thing on the counter carried considerably more authority than the rangemaster’s panicked accusation. Debra herself didn’t say a word. Instead, she began peering past the gatekeeper at the walls and display cases of the shop, clearly snooping for some sort of citable offense of her own. I looked too, though I had no idea what I was looking for. These people did need to be cited for something.
Duly intimidated, the dunce took a small step back from Deb and turned to face me. The .22 caliber target pistol placed precisely in the center of my small case might have been cool if I were James Bond.
“Well that’s a puny gun!” the rangemaster said. A corpulent fellow in full hunter gear giggled.
“You got a puny gun too, Hank.” Someone had emerged from the back of the shop. An Asian man, incredibly fit and wearing a tight blue T-shirt with some sort of logo over the breast. He was smiling the same wolf’s smile as the other men in the place, but it was not directed at Debra, or me.
Hank puffed up even more, and bristled. But after a moment he laughed. It was a pretty convincing laugh.
The Asian man walked up to the counter. “I’ll check these two in.” Not a request. Hank moved slowly away, jilted.
“How you doin’, Deb. How’s Abby?”
“Good days and bad days, Lyle. You know.”
Ah—Lyle is in The Club. Bad for him; good for us.
Lyle glanced at Debra’s gear. “Nice.” Then he turned to me. “It’s my job to inspect all weapons before they are allowed on the range. For safety.”
“Please,” I said. “I need all the help I can get.”
The fat men, Hank included, ignored us. Lyle took my .22 out of the case. “Unloaded?” he asked me, even as he racked the slide and checked the empty chamber himself. “Brand new?”
“Yes. And yes.”
“You’ve never shot before?”
“No, I have . . . but not in a long time, though. And not like this.” Lyle’s eyebrows rose. “Out in the woods, I mean. Upstate, with my cousins. When I was a teenager. They’re kinda . . .”
“I’ve got ‘kinda’ cousins too,” Lyle said.
“Everybody does.”
Lyle laughed and snapped the slide of my piece back into place. He looked very cool doing that. “You’re fine. Lane two. Have fun, guys.”
* * *
“Handle your gun a lot,” Debra yelled. We were wearing those big muffs and earplugs underneath. I’d thought I remembered how loud guns were, but that had been outside. In this cramped bunker, the noise was painful even with protection. Bubbas were shooting guns constantly on both sides of us. “Load it. Unload it. Strip it. Put it back together. If you can’t, read the manual. Or call me.”
I hadn’t handled Dookie much since I got him (yeah, I named him after all), so we took our time. Debra disassembled him a bit and we examined his guts. She showed me what to clean when I got home. She told me to stop pointing the gun at my face and staring down into the barrel. She showed me the right way to do it. I loaded up both of my clips with bullets and seated each clip into my new friend and racked all of the bullets first into the chamber then out onto the floor one by one. Pretty sure I looked as cool as Lyle did. She showed me how to clear a jam. She unloaded Dookie and had me cock and decock him a bunch of times. “Guns never just ‘go off,’” she shouted. “Those ‘accidental’ shootings you hear about are people decocking wrong.”
“Or murders.” I racked the slide and held Dookie up next to my face like a movie poster.
“Yeah, there’s probably a few in there.” She swallowed my gun hand in hers and pointed us back downrange. “OK! You’re ready to shoot.”
“What about you?” I asked. Deb’s guns were still in their case. I really wanted to see what they could do. Granted, we were only shooting paper, and mine could do that. But I was guessing those puppies would make confetti.
“Patience, Grasshopper. Dookie is a gun too. This counts as shooting a gun.” She got behind me. “Is the safety on?” she asked for the eleventy billionth time.
“Yes.”
“Good. Switch it off.”
I did. The little red dot smiled at me.
“Both hands.”
I turned around and stared up at her. “Are you sure I can’t shoot one-handed?”
“I’m sure you can. Also sure you’ll shoot better with two. You wanna look like John Woo? Or you wanna take down the bad guy?”
“John Woo is a director,” I said. But I held Dookie like she showed me.
“Good. If it helps, we call this the ‘pussy grip.’ That’s a good thing, right? Alright. Now breathe. Put the front sight where you want it. Breathe. Don’t worry about the rear sight. You’ll get shot worrying about the rear one. Just put that front sight where you want it, and breathe. Don’t cock it!” she barked; she must have seen my thumb start to move. “You’ll get shot cocking too. Or you’ll shoot a friendly thinking you didn’t cock it. Fuck the cock!” The three gentlemen in the next lane seemed afraid, despite the fact that each held an assault rifle. “Just squeeze the trigger the whole way. Don’t pull it; squeeze.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Yes, she did. You ready?”
I nodded.
“Take a slow, deep breath. Let it out easy. And while you do, think about what you are trying to hit, and squeeze. Don’t think about the hammer or anything else . . .”
Dookie cracked, and jumped slightly. I got ready to take another shot but Debra put her hand on top of mine. “Let’s see what you did with that one.”
She hit the button on the wall at the left side of our lane and our paper target came speeding toward us on a clothesline like a ghost.
The target slammed up to our faces. There was a very neat, very small, very unimpressive hole in the center of the target’s neck.
“The throat? What were you aiming for? The head?”
“No. The throat.”
Deb leaned away and stared at me. “Why?” she asked, in a decidedly skeptical manner.
“Because aiming for the torso is bullshit these days. Too many vests. Center of mass is a myth perpetuated by the body armor industry. I was gonna aim for the head, but using just the front sight, like you said, you could go high and miss him entirely. So I figured, aim for the neck. It’s about as tough as a head shot, but if I go a little high that’s good for me. And if I go low, well, maybe he’s not wearing a vest.”
“You gave that some thought.”
“Little bit.”
Deb hit the button and the ghost fled backward to the middle of the range. She folded her arms. “Do it again.”
I did my pussy grip and breathed and squeezed. CRACK!, Dookie said. He didn’t make the satisfying boomgrowl that guns make on TV, but it turns out that no guns do.
“Howd’ya feel about that one?” she asked.
“Pretty good.”
“Let’s see.”
The ghost came back. I didn’t put it in exactly the same hole, which is what I’d been trying to do. My second shot was off to the right by maybe an eighth of an inch. So it wasn’t one hole, but it wasn’t quite two either. I’d made an infinity symbol, or a Venn diagram.
“Impressive,” Deb nodded.
Dookie was incredibly easy to shoot. He had almost no recoil. Almost no stopping power either—the two pretty much go together—but he was my first, a starter pistol, like Roy said. And Debra declared me a natural. I believed her. Shooting is kind of like punching. A cross between punching and sending someone bad thoughts. All bullets are mind bullets.
We went through my box of shells. They sold .22 ammo, so I bought another five boxes, mostly to take home. And while I was at it, I bought up all of their pre-ban Smith .22 clips. I tossed my fifties on the counter like I did back when Amalia and I used to travel. That’s right—she’s a cop, and I’m rich. Suck it, Cleetus.
After we shot another box of .22s, Debra pulled out her pythons. Really they were Eagles—Desert Eagles, Israeli-made .50 caliber autos. The biggest handgun they make. Deb rocked two of them. I knew she wouldn’t let me run across the range with one in each hand, shooting up everyone’s targets in slow motion while doing my war cry.
She loaded them both and set one down on the counter in front of her. She checked her stance and aimed and breathed and slowly, rhythmically emptied first one pistol, then the other. Each shot thundered and kicked like I couldn’t believe. It took maybe two minutes.
We didn’t need to bring the target up to see what she had done but we did anyway. There was one hole punched out. Dead center, just over the sternum. Fourteen of the biggest bullets they make, all through a hole the size of a small fist.
Debra admired her work. “Armor piercing. Fuck a vest.”
“I love you.”
“You guys mind a little company?” Deb’s friend Lyle was behind us, smiling behind some wicked sporty goggles. “I heard those Deagles talking.”
For the better part of the next hour, the grown-ups shot the big guns and chatted while I watched and listened. I took in more good information about guns and shooting in that one day than most people ever learn. Turned out that both Debra and Lyle were certified weapons instructors, which explained their patience with me.
After the Deagles cooled off, we packed up our gear and left the lanes. We scrubbed the lead and other gunk off our hands in the bathroom and I bought us all Snapples from a cooler set between the paper targets and the gun-cleaning supplies. We crashed on couches arranged in a circle in the middle of the roomy shop. The place had emptied out while we were shooting. Only Hank remained, dusting suspiciously.
“Guns are hella fun. Why isn’t everybody into them?” It sounded crazy, but I had to say it. If anyone would understand, it would be this crowd.
“Because,” Lyle said without hesitation, “most people are taught that only Caucasians should have guns. Only hicks. Not directly,” he added to my skeptical face. “Culturally. Regular urban professional types like yourself don’t usually associate themselves with guns. They can’t imagine themselves being all gunny like Hank here.”
Though Hank had been pretending not to eavesdrop, once he was busted he smiled broadly and declared, “Mah cold dead fingers!” But then he lumbered away, back to his perch behind the counter.
“Right,” Lyle said. “So the progressives and the professionals decide that guns don’t fit their image, and they don’t learn about them and they don’t buy them. But the hicks do. It’s how they were raised.”
“And the gangstas,” Deb grumbled.
“Yeah. And the gangsters and criminals generally. And us cops. So, in San Francisco, say, that’s, what, 2,000 cops, maybe 200 on duty at any given time, protecting 700,000 citizens from 10,000 criminals. That makes no sense. That’s why things are the way they are. People refuse to protect themselves.”
“Cops want people to have guns?”
“People like you. We don’t want bad guys to have guns. But they do anyway. Why not you? Just don’t get them stolen from you.”
I thought on that. “Through all that Brady bill business, it was always some guy from Montana or Kentucky someplace standing up on the House floor talking about, ‘We need our guns for huntin’.’ And only, um, rural types hunt.” I wasn’t comfortable calling Hank a fucking hillbilly to his face.
“For the most part, yeah.”
“Fuck hunters!” Deb said, mostly to Hank.
“It’s always seemed a little creepy to me,” I agreed. “Even the ones who say they do it so they can eat it. They drive past 34 Safeways going out to the woods to wound a deer and follow its blood trail like Jason.”
“Those are the guardians of our Second Amendment rights,” Lyle said. “Yup.”
“This country ain’t right sometimes,” Deb declared. We all nodded. Even Hank.
Connected.
Monday, December 20, 1993
“I remember the first time I hurt someone.” Amalia sat up slightly. Mama kept staring out the window, but she was listening. The orderly left.
“I was . . . tiny. I mean like five. School was this new thing. Not, like, day care or nursery school or some shit, where you eat some paste and call it a day. Real school, the first time they really try and teach you stuff, you know?”
Amalia nodded. Mama stopped pretending and turned to us.
“I don’t remember what the lesson was about. Like, what color is blue or how do you spell the word ‘A’ or some sh—. . . stuff. I just remember, I knew the answer. So I raised my hand and the teacher called on me and I said it.
“No problem, right? No. Problem. There was this kid. Fat fucker. Sorry. His name was Rudy. That I remember. ’Cause Rudy was, like, the first hater. That dude is famous. He was my first hater, anyway, and because I knew what one plus one was or whatever, that fat f—. . . he had beef.
“So class is going on, and I’m sitting there and I look over at Rudy and he’s doing, you know, schoolyard sign language.” I made a fist. “I . . . am gon’ punch . . . you . . . in yo face . . . at three . . . oh . . . clock.” I showed three fingers and then pointed at the clock. “Outside.” I pointed at the window. “But when I shrugged ‘Why?’ at him, he just sat there mad-dogging me.
