Wormfood, page 10
I sighted down the barrel, staring down between the notches in the iron sights, and everything else in the world fell away. Nothing else existed except myself, the rifle, and the squirrels. My breathing got even slower, deeper. The index finger of my right hand gently, ever so gently came to rest on the smooth trigger, almost as if there were an extremely rotten egg between the trigger and the guard and I was afraid of breaking the fragileshell. Then my eyes focused somewhere beyond the tip of the barrel, rushing forward across the field and coming to rest on the cliff face, alive with the motion of squirrels dashing from one hole to another.
A blur of brown fur scurried into my line of sight and froze, becoming a statue of a scraggly adult squirrel, ears up, mangy tail held high, claws clutching at the solid dirt. I swung the barrel slightly, until the notches lined up just behind the squirrel’s front shoulder. I held my breath, then let it out slow, slower still, until I wasn’t really breathing at all, and squeezed the trigger.
The world jolted, winked out for an instant, and the squirrel was gone. No pieces, nothing. It was simply gone. The crack of the shot rolled out across the field and into the hills, bouncing back toward the tree. Strangely though, I only really heard it with my left ear.
Without moving my left arm, I reached up with my right, jerked the bolt up and back. The spent casing went flying toward an old coffee can I kept, about four feet off to my right. I collected the casings when I was finished, and took them back to the trailer so Grandma could reload them.
I slid the bolt forward and locked it down. My finger found the trigger all by itself as I scanned the cliff again. Everything was still. The squirrels understood that one of their own had been touched once again by God, but they weren’t sure where His hand had come out of the sky. So they froze, listening, watching.
Another crack of thunder. This time, the bullet slammed into the squirrel’s chest, near the ground. The thin body flew off the cliff in a spectacular cartwheel, sending drops of blood into an abstract, circular pattern into the dirt. It bounced once before falling out of sight into the gravel of the creek bed. The body wouldn’t last long; the vultures would arrive as soon as I left. They were probably circling already.
In these hills, gunfire tended to attract scavengers.
I shot twenty-two more squirrels in fifteen minutes. That was enough. Only one shell was left in the breech. It took a while, but thesquirrels finally realized that it didn’t matter where the hand of God was coming from, only that it was coming out of the sky with a vengeance, and it was safer to hole up inside the burrows until God got bored and went somewhere else. I watched the cliff face for a moment through the binoculars, satisfying myself that there wasn’t going to be any brave or just plain stupid squirrel trying to make a mad dash to another hole. There wasn’t.
I was about to put the binoculars down and collect my spent casings when three quick puffs of dirt popped out of the cliff and an instant later three light cracks of another rifle echoed out across the field. I dropped the binoculars and scrabbled back against the dead tree, breathing hard. I waited a moment, watching the cliff, but the gunshots rolled away as if they had never happened.
After a full minute, I poked my head carefully around the tree, checking the field behind me. It was empty. But there, on the far edge of the field, a bright red Dodge pickup, sitting way up on some kind of lift kit, was parked on the side of Road E. I could just make out the shape of someone sitting in the driver’s seat.
I brought the binoculars up and found someone with long blond hair pointing a rifle at me. I jerked back around the tree, breath trapped in my throat. It took a moment, but then I realized that the rifle had a scope on it, and the person was probably just watching me through the scope. That didn’t make me feel any better. Only some kind of a moron would watch somebody else through a scope, not realizing that they were also aiming the rifle at the person. Or maybe they did realize it.
I took a chance and peered back around the tree. Now the person was leaning out of the window, waving at me. The rifle was gone. I glanced quickly through the binoculars again.
The red pickup sprang into view, in sharp focus, showing me everything. The person in the window was wearing a tight white blouse, and I couldn’t help but notice the generous swell of breasts barely contained underneath. The waving wasn’t helping me much either; the breastsshimmered slightly with every movement. I finally managed to tear my gaze away from the curves to see the face. But I knew who it was. Knew it before I even saw her face. I suppose I knew it when I saw the pickup, saw the blond hair.
It was Misty Johnson. And she was waving at me.
CHAPTER 15
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I raised my right arm and kind of waved back. Actually, it took me a few seconds to figure out that she wasn’t so much waving at me as she was waving me over to her, beckoning me.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. The idea that someone like Misty Johnson was calling me over to her snapped something in my brain, disrupted the flow of thoughts, and so I stood rooted to my spot under the oak tree. She kept waving at me.
I left all the spent casings behind and didn’t waste much time getting across the field.
She had the upper half of her body out of the driver’s window, resting on her elbows, watching me get closer. Her arms pressed her breasts together, pushing them up and out. I think she knew what she was doing, knew exactly the kind of effect it was having on me. I stopped on my side of the old barbed wire fence, trying hard not to stare up at her.
“I was watching you shoot,” she said. “You’re pretty good. Never missed once.”
I shrugged and stammered out something like, “I get a lot of practice.”
“I’ll bet. What’s your name?”
“Arch Stanton.”
“You live here?” Before I could answer, she said, “I’ve seen you at school, right?”
I shrugged again, trying to blurt out something, anything. “Ah … uh-huh.” That’s me—Mr. Smooth. I was just glad she didn’t mention seeing me yesterday morning, when her dad went for a swim in the ditch.
“Wanna go for a ride?”
My heart stopped. “Uhh … A ride?”
She sat back, pulling her body into the truck, then held up a rifle. For the briefest second, I found that I could tear my eyes off her breasts and focus on the rifle. It looked expensive. But then she stuck her head back out the window and thrust that chest at me again, and I forgot all about the rifle. My gaze slid right back into place, like a couple magnets were pulling at my eyes.
“I just got this,” she said, holding the rifle out to me, “but I can’t figure out how to sight it in. I saw you shoot once before, out at my house, for my dad, and thought you could help me.”
I bent over and slipped through the strands of barbed wire, and walked up to the truck, forcing myself to look only at the rifle. Like its owner, the weapon was beautiful.
It had the basic shape of an ordinary rifle, with a Mannlicher stock, meaning the forestock extended out to the end of the barrel, but I had never seen anything like it. It had a bolt action, with a painstakingly checkered stock, made from a kind of dark, almost black, hardwood that I couldn’t place. Misty held the rifle out to me and I took it with a kind of holy reverence. I recognized only one of the words etched along the barrel. Anschütz.
“That’s gorgeous,” I whispered. “This is an Anschütz rifle.” I didn’t even know that they made hunting rifles. As far as I knew, they made the most accurate target rifles in the world. The name is known as The Rifle of Champions. I mean, if you cared about precision and accuracy at all, then these rifles were the absolute best. Damn nearevery Olympic shooter in the world used an Anschütz. It even had a Zeiss scope. Unbelievable. It was expensive, all right. “This is one hell of a rifle,” I managed to mumble, handing it up to Misty. “It’s beautiful.”
She shrugged. “It’s some German thing, the only thing Dad ever bought that wasn’t American made. Said that since the caliber was small enough for me to handle, he wanted me to have it. But it needs to be sighted in. What do you say?”
I thought about it, wondering what the price would be for getting to work late once again. It didn’t take long for me to decide that whatever the punishment was, it wasn’t going to stop me from taking a ride with Misty and getting to shoot that rifle. It wasn’t just a gun; that was a work of art. I nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
She grinned at me and winked. Actually winked. My heart started hammering at my rib cage again and I walked around the front of the truck, praying that I wouldn’t get a sudden, unmistakable hard-on, which is what happened most of the time when I thought about Misty.
I set my jaw tight, coming up with an emergency plan. If I felt any stirring down there, I would force myself to think about the toilet at Fat Ernst’s. That would be enough to kill any desire in anybody.
Misty put my 30.06 into the gun rack in the back window with the Anschütz. As I lifted myself up and into the seat, she turned the engine over, saying, “I know just the place.”
That got my attention, because I figured we’d simply go over to her father’s ranch, out into the hills. But if we weren’t going to her place … where could we go? Fat Ernst’s toilet!—Fat Ernst’s toilet, I reminded myself.
Misty cranked the radio dial up and some god-awful modern country music filled the cab. At least it wasn’t “Sweet Home Alabama.” She jerked the truck into gear and stomped on the gas. I held on to the armrest tight, trying not to make it look obvious.
She didn’t say much during the ride, just bobbed her head along with the inane music, hair-sprayed blond hair jittering slightly. That was okay. I didn’t know what the hell to say anyway. Instead, I triedto keep an eye on where we were, stealing sidelong glances at her tight jeans. After a while, I figured I’d better say something, and stammered out, “Sorry to hear about your dad.” I winced, realizing I had just repeated the same goddamn thing that Fat Ernst had said. “I, uh, lost my dad too.”
Misty shrugged. “Thanks. It’s okay.” She barely slowed down when she hit the highway and headed east, up into the hills toward the reservoir. She said, “I keep wondering if I’m supposed to feel worse. Dad wasn’t … he had a good heart in there somewhere, maybe sometimes. But I didn’t like how he treated Mom.” She glanced sideways and gave me a cold smile. “And ever since I started seeing boys, me and Dad never got along at all.”
The truck followed the highway farther up into the foothills, up past the long, straight bank the Army engineers had built to contain the Split Rock reservoir. Then she steered the Dodge onto a narrow dirt road that ran parallel to Stony Creek for a ways before it opened out into a huge gravel pit. I’d never been here, but I realized exactly where we were. The Quarry.
The Quarry was part of an abandoned sand and gravel plant that had stood at the edge of Stony Creek. When they had exhausted the supply, the company moved on, taking over a place farther downstream, leaving behind over three acres of wide, empty craters. This was where the juniors and seniors at the high school came to party every Friday and Saturday night, a place that was whispered about in the halls by the younger, less-than-cool kids. I’d heard a lot of stories about this place, exaggerated tales of drunken fights and urgent backseat sex. The Quarry had seemed, to me at least, about as far away as the surface of the moon.
And here I was. With the one and only Misty Johnson, no less. Misty had been the star of many of the stories, but I couldn’t think about that now. I’d save those thoughts for later.
The Dodge slid to a stop in a surge of gravel near the entrance and Misty killed the engine. She pointed at a pile of rusted oil barrels at thefar end of the crater, over a hundred yards away. “Go set up some beer cans on those. We’ll use ’em for targets.”
I was about to ask where the beer cans were when I looked down. Dozens of empty beer cans and bottles lay scattered across the gravel like wounded soldiers after a terrible battle. I climbed out and had a sudden flash of irritation at being ordered around like a servant, but what was I going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. I collected five empty, sticky Budweiser cans and held them against my chest as I jogged through the puddles and mud toward the pile of barrels like an obedient puppy.
I pulled one of the barrels down, rolling it against several that were standing upright. Then I set the cans up, propping them one by one up against the barrels behind the barrel lying on its side. This way, I could track the path of the bullets by wherever they left holes in the barrels around the cans.
When I got back, Misty already had the rifle loaded, bracing it casually on her hip.
I skirted around a blackened fire pit and felt something stick to the bottom of Grandpa’s boot. I twisted my ankle around and reached down to pull off whatever it was, when I saw it, twisted and semitransparent, wedged into the waffled sole. I flinched, jerking my hand away.
For a heart-stopping second, I thought it was one of the worms. Then I figured out what it was, even though I’d never seen one before. A condom. Used, by the look of it. My stomach rolled and dropped somewhere down between my feet. A hot, tight feeling crawled over me, scary and exciting at the same time. I looked up and Misty winked at me again. I shrugged and tried to grin back, scraping off the condom on the gravel.
“So, what do we do first?” she asked.
“Well, we need to brace the rifle, get it steady, find out where it’s shooting.” I looked at the truck. It was too high; we couldn’t brace the rifle across the hood. “You got a blanket, or something like that?” I asked. “We’re gonna have to lie down.”
Misty gave me an amused look and I suddenly realized what that had sounded like. I giggled nervously. “I mean, you need a pad … or something … to, uh, put on the ground,” I finished lamely, sweeping my hand out to indicate the rough gravel.
She handed the rifle to me. I carefully laid it out on the tailgate, examining the scope as she opened the door. Misty came back and set a balled-up blanket next to the gun, saying, “Will this work?”
“That’ll work, uh, just fine.” I shook out the blanket, trying to ignore the slightly musky smell, and it fluttered out to the ground. I smoothed it down and grabbed the rifle, kneeling on the blanket. Misty dropped to her knees next to me, close enough that I could smell her perfume. Fat Ernst’s toilet, I kept reminding myself, and managed to focus on the rifle instead.
“Okay. Go ahead and lie down,” I told Misty. She gave me another bemused snicker and leaned forward until she was on her stomach. “Get into, uh, a prone position. Okay, good. Prop yourself up on your elbows there, at an angle, and”—I almost said and spread your legs a little, but caught it just in time, choking out—“and, and there you go.” I handed the rifle to Misty, desperately trying not to look at how the fabric of her jeans clung to the ripe, curving cheeks of her ass. Fat Ernst’s toilet …
She settled into position, left elbow forward just a little, right arm out to the side.
“Okay good, good. Now, when it feels right, go ahead and take a shot.” I had barely finished the sentence when she pulled the trigger. A distant puff of dust, just about five inches over one of the barrels. She jerked the bolt back, then slammed it home.
“Give yourself a sec, then take another.” Again, the rifle cracked before I finished. Another little burst of gravel, this time off to the right of the barrel. “One more time.” The bullet whizzed above the barrel once again.
“Okay, hang on.” Still kneeling, I bent over the scope, and gently inserted a dime into one of the two adjustable knobs. I counted four clicks as I twisted the dime counterclockwise. “Try it again.”
The first round was off to the right, but the second shot nailed the can, crumpling the top half and sending it flying. “Nice shot,” I said, reaching for the box of shells just as Misty pulled the trigger once more. A dry snap; the gun was empty.
I inserted the dime into the second knob, twisting it clockwise for two clicks. Then I loaded the rifle, handed it back to Misty.
She hadn’t moved; her eyes were still focused on the cans at the far end of the quarry. As she concentrated, I couldn’t help but steal a quick glance at her behind. I ripped my eyes away and handed the rifle back to her. She fired off the five rounds in rapid succession and missed every time, throwing the bullets all around the can.
They weren’t landing in one area, so I couldn’t tell if the scope was sighted in. “Let me try it real quick,” I said, and added quickly, “if you don’t mind.”
“No, that’s okay. I’d like to watch you shoot,” Misty said, and scooted over on the blanket.
I eased myself down next to her, grateful that I was lying on my stomach and could hide the growing bulge in my crotch. I loaded the rifle, then pulled it up tight into my shoulder.
“You’re putting the crosshairs right in middle of the can, right?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Through the crystal clear Zeiss scope, the red and white can looked enormous. I settled the crosshairs right into the center of the huge “B,” let my breath out slowly, and squeezed. The gentle snap of the trigger was like touching a DaVinci sketch.
The can rocked slowly, but it wasn’t hit. I searched through the scope until I found the bullet hole—directly under the can, about a foot down, a small fresh hole in the barrel. I brought the crosshairs back up and fired again. Same thing. The bullet struck the oil drum just to the left of the original hole. A third round. This time, the bullet nicked the edge of the first hole, nearly grazing the second. All three holes could have fit inside a dime. Okay.
The rifle was sighted in. It was shooting low for me simply because the drop was different. In other words, when my cheek was settled on the stock, my eye occupied a different point in space than Misty’s, but it should work fine for her.
I found the can in the crosshairs one more time, then raised the barrel until I was pointing somewhere above the can, about the same distance from the can to the holes in the barrel. I squeezed the trigger, and the beer can popped off the oil drum, spinning end over end until it disappeared behind the barrels. I’d hit the bottom edge, and that had knocked it into the air.
