skeet

The letter burned Mason’s hands. He reread the words for the hundredth time because he was a masochist at heart, or a sadist to that part of himself that earned this letter. He shoved it back into its manila envelope and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his leather duster. Cotton-mouthed in his idling Ford Explorer, he gazed out at the range. Colby sat on his flimsy tripod chair, hair a medusa mess, flannel loose, cigarette dangling, lost in his cell.

“Goddamnit that cheesy bastard beat me.”

Mason killed the engine and clambered out of his Ford

October air licked his face. Haze dulled the thumbprint sun. No shadows. If it stayed like this the clay pigeons would be easy pickings. He prayed it’d hold. Something had to. He smoothed his duster and thought of a line from an old song: nothing’s gonna change my world. Some woman sang it. He couldn’t remember who.

He inhaled traces of tobacco smoke and tweaked on reflex. He surrendered a world-weary sigh, opened the hatch and retrieved his slumbering Browning. He’d bought it because it shared its name with a Victorian poet. See, I do have a sense of humor, he wanted say. As if anyone would ever listen. He stacked the shells—too much, never enough—on top of the orange clays and crunched on over.

Colby frowned into his phone beside the trap thrower. Shotgun blasts cracked the morning. The crowd beside him whooped and laughed. God they were loud. Mason side eyed them. “Couldn’t have picked a quieter lane?”

Colby shoved his phone into his pocket. He raked his disobedient hair, a tic that made Mason want to buzz it all off. “We can move if you’d like, your majesty.”

“Nah. That’d be rude.”

“When that ever stop you?”

“Don’t start. Not in the mood.”

Colby tossed him a brown paper bag. “Here. Got you a sausage croissant.”

“Not hungry.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Who’s up first?” Mason asked.

“Hmm. Looks like you’ve gotta get something out of your system.”

That was his chance. Whip out the letter. He almost did. Halfway through a pivot, he recalibrated and delivered the clays to Colby.

“Jeez, dude. You planning on us being here all night?”

Mason stared out at the distant hills, the tattered bushes and scabbed pines. “You know how this goes. How it always goes.”

Colby stubbed his cigarette on the sole of his Timberland. “Some alien spaceship crashed out in New Mexico. Like for real, this time. Video and all. One in Russia, too, I hear.”

Mason flexed his tightening jaw. “Got enough to worry about besides the end of the world.”

“Who said anything about the world ending?”

Anxiety crawled through Mason’s muscles like an alligator in a swamp. “Just load.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mason freed the Browning from its sleeve. He had other weapons—a couple ARs, a few handguns—but this Browning with its stallionlike beauty was his favorite. He savored the shine of the wood, the sheen of the metal. It whispered with more grandeur than anything Miss Elizabeth ever committed to paper. He pulled a handful of red shells from the box and shoved them into the pocket of his duster, saving two to load.

Colby motioned to the group to their left. A mini speaker boomed a Biggie Smalls beat. He nodded to a bald man wearing an eyepatch, dark-skinned and muscled in a Betsy Ross flag t-shirt. “Hey what’s up. Yeah, good. Classics. I like it.”

Mason glared, not caring whether they caught his ire, not caring about anything except blasting orange from the sky. “Not distracting. Not in the least.”

Colby swayed. “Gets the blood pumping.”

“My blood’s ice.”

Colby scoffed. “Okay, Captain Darkness.”

Mason’s left hand felt oddly light. “Just load.”

Wind gusted across the brown scrub, rippling dead branches, kicking up eddies of dust, tousling Colby’s curls, battering Mason’s face, delivering a hint of smog, a dash of smoke and a moment of quiet that he took into his lungs and heart and soul. He stuffed his foam buds into his ears, raised the Browning and focused on the line of clouds that threaded the somber blue. He exhaled as if he could expel every worry, every doubt, every fear, and for a moment he did. He flicked the safety off, inhaled, and halfway through his exhale he barked, “Pull.”

When Colby pulled the trap thrower’s handle, two orange clays soared across the sky, twin sparrows desperate to transcend. He sighted them, traced their path with the gun’s barrel, finished his exhale and fired two successive shots. The recoil bucked his chest like an angel slap. Both clays shattered and sprinkled the ground.

Mason reloaded.

“Pull.”

He repeated this ritual until his pocket emptied. He inhaled gunpowder acrid like incense. The dead foliage speckled with the carnage of orange shards calmed his heart.

“Bastard,” Colby said. “Not one miss. What, were you born with a gun in your hand?”

Mason wiped moisture from his eyes. “Nah. Guns came late to me. I was a builder. Blocks and such. Cities, worlds. Then my dad stuck a gun in my hand. A new door opened. I tried to go back to building, leave guns behind.” He gazed at the Browning. “I just couldn’t shake the taste.”

“Daddy issues, is it? I had some nasty ones myself. I read a lot of Chekhov. That cured me.”

Mason cocked an eyebrow. “You’d better ask Mr. Chekhov for a refund.”

“Should’ve seen me before.”

The lane beside switched to Tupac. Mason slipped into another universe. California. Cold water beach. Sun-hot skin. Heinekens. Hair that smells of coconut. Eyepatch swiped someone’s phone. “None of this West Coast shit.” Tupac died. A country song warbled through the speaker. Eyepatch started singing along with Waylon Jennings. “Just a good old boy…”

The coconut smell vanished, leaving Mason with nothing but gunpowder. He gave Eyepatch a nail-gun stare. Eyepatch winked at Mason with his good eye. “Wanna beer?”

“Sure,” Colby said.

Eyepatch tossed him a Modelo. He held one out to Mason. “You?”

Mason wanted that Tupac song back. He wanted that day back. That moment. That life. Anger sirened all around him. “No.”

“No need to get all snippy. Just trying to be nice.”

“I don’t drink at the range,” he said, his voice like a fist.

Eyepatch sucked air through his teeth. “Well look at you all high and mighty.”

“Don’t mind him,” Colby said. “Unresolved daddy issues, you know how that goes.”

“Should practice being a bit more neighborly, you get me?”

Mason took a single step forward, a provocation, a dare. Pure instinct. Eyepatch crossed his arms. His face contorted with centuries of rage. Colby leaped up and broke their line of sight. “This guy,” Colby told Eyepatch, thumbing behind him. “Always embarrassing me.”

Mason looked across the fallow field and sighed. Eyepatch shook his head and returned to his group. Colby leaned in to Mason. “You’ve got this habit of turning a perfectly nice interaction into a total shit show.”

Mason gazed out at the orange carnage. He tapped his upper lip. “When I was six my front tooth came loose. I kept wiggling it until it hurt like hell. My mother told me it was the pain of becoming a new person, that I had to buck up and bear it,” Mason scoffed. “You know what my dad did? He grabbed his pliers, yanked that tooth clean out and handed it to me, bloody roots and all. I nearly got sick from the copper taste. I wanted that damn thing away from me, so I buried it. That night I dreamt a bone man sprouted from that tooth like some evil sunflower. The next morning I went to where I’d buried it. The ground was broken, like something climbed out of the earth. The tooth, it was gone. Sometimes I think he’s out there, that bone man, causing me all sorts of trouble. Sometimes I feel him close, like he’ll strangle me and take my life for his own.”

“Or maybe a dog ate it. Dogs’ll eat anything.”

Mason grunted at his crumpled fist. “Asshole.”

Colby twisted an unruly clump of hair. “When I was twelve my dad brought home a baby alligator for me to fry up. Don’t ask me where my mom was. Didn’t know jack about cooking, except for heating up a can of Chef Boyardee. Even told him as much. He says, just coat it in egg and flour and drop it in a pan full of hot oil, so I dumped egg and flour all over its hide, and as I’m setting to stick it in a frying pan, it opens its eyes and snaps its teeth at me.”

“You didn’t skin it and fillet it?”

“I was twelve, for chrissake. So anyway this baby monster, it eyes me like it knew exactly what I’d planned for it, then it ups and scurries off. Couldn’t tell anyone what happened, not my dad, not my mom, when she finally did decide to come home.” Colby let out a titanic sigh. “Not like either of them would’ve cared about some alligator trying to get its revenge on me. He’d laugh at me. She’d whip me for sure. Spent a dozen sleepless nights hunting the whole house for it. Never did find it.”

“You learn anything?”

“Yeah. Don’t fuck with anything that has sharper teeth than you.”

Mason touched his breast pocket. “I never learned that particular lesson. Let’s go again.”

“Guessing this is some special Mason Day thing, where you do all the shooting and I do all the pulling. Did that Bone Man screw up your life again?”

Mason gathered a handful of shells, loaded the Browning, and raised the barrel to the soupy sky. “Pull.”

Orange discs sliced the gray. Mason traced their path, completed his exhale and fired. Both splintered.

“Just in case you care,” Colby said, “he called me again.”

“Pull.” Clays flew. Mason exhaled. He fired and felt the kick of the stock as he dug into the crusty earth. “He’s an asshole.”

Colby aimed his cinnamon face toward the ground. “He’s not all bad, you know. Mostly not, in fact.”

“Pull.” Streaking orange. Aim. Exhale. Fire. Recoil. Dig in. “He’s not fit to tie your sneakers.”

Colby whipped out another cigarette. “He apologized, you know.”

The smoke tickled Mason’s nose, that discarded habit roaring back. “He’s a walking embodiment of your daddy issues.”

“Told you. Chekhov cured me of that.”

“Yeah, right. Pull.”

Orange sliced the sky. Exhale. Fire. Shatter. Heels in.

“I won’t,” Colby muttered between drags. “I swear.”

Mason aimed the Browning toward the dirt. When the sun punched a hole in the haze of clouds he caught his shadow beside the shotgun, there and gone again. “Hey, give me a cig, will you?”

“You quit.”

“I stopped.”

Colby shook his head. “You’ll get cancer.”

“Nah. It’s bad hearts that kill my people.”

Colby took a deep drag. “All mine die of cancer. Or plane crashes. Cancer, I can deal with. Plane crashes?” He spat on the ground. “You’ll never catch me on a plane again.” He stood and stretched his arms to the sky. He looked around as if he’d just woke up. “Hey. How long you guess we’ve been here? Feels like forever. Everything feels like forever.”

The urge to smoke left Mason, like that vengeance against Eyepatch, like that fear of Bone Man. Nothing left but hollowness. Emptiness as home. “Pull.”

Colby muttered something Mason didn’t catch. Just as he was about to send two more clays into the stratosphere a Britney song assaulted the air: soulless bassline, robotic warble. A red Wrangler lurched to a stop in the lot.

“Oh, shit.”

Six women climbed out of the Jeep. One, wearing a rhinestone tiara, grabbed a Remington from the back and settled in the empty lane beside Colby and Mason. Another, her black hair in a thick braid, led the others with all the energy of a funeral march. They set up the gear while the woman in the tiara jabbered on the phone. Mason couldn’t catch the conversation but he caught her scorching tone.

“You gonna gawk at them all day like some creep?” Colby asked.

“Asshole,” he muttered. “Pull.”

Mason blasted the clays, savoring in the kick, the tang, the boom, the breeze. For a few moments everything died away: Colby, the old crowd to his right, the new crowd to his left, his past and future and every failure, gone. All he had were red shells and orange clays.

And then he spent the last shell in his pocket.

He dropped the Browning’s barrel to the ground and exhaled. He wiped sweat from his hairline and heard the gun in the lane to his left fire at two clays that hit the ground intact.

“Pull!” Tiara woman yelped.

Two more discs sailed through the air and hit the ground whole.

Tiara flicked a manicured hand through her hair, chin jutting, lips parted. Fragments of memories floated into Mason’s consciousness like scum along the shoreline.

“Pull!” she shouted.

Two more discs crossed the sky unscathed.

“Goddamnit! What’s wrong with this gun?”

“Timber, your not aiming right,” Black Braid said.

Tiara shook the shotgun like it was a screaming baby. She reared the barrel toward the cluster of girls, who screamed like seagulls.

“Quit pointing it at us, Timber!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Audrey.”

Black Braid grabbed the shotgun from Tiara’s hands, loaded two shells and glared at her friend. “Pull,” she ordered, again and again. Ten clays flew. She nailed them all save the last. Then she shoved the shotgun back into Tiara’s arms.

“That’s how you shoot, you idiot.”

“I’m this close to kicking you out of my wedding party.”

“Please. Do me the favor.”

“Consider it done.”

“Jeff’s an asshole,” Black Braid said. “And so are you.”

“I never wanted you in my wedding party in the first place.”

Black Braid flipped Tiara off as she stomped away. “Oh, by the way, Jeff can’t keep his dick in his pants. Just ask Rebecca.”

“Glad I decided to be gay,” Colby said.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Choose your own adventure, dude. I’ll choose mine.”

Black Braid returned to the Jeep. Tiara bellowed mangled curses. The other women erupted into a squawking cacophony. The lane to the right switched to a Beyonce beat that jackhammered Mason’s ears. A fist clenched inside his sternum sending waves of tension down his arms and into his fingertips. He gripped the Browning so hard his knuckles turned white. He prayed for Armageddon.

“Looks like you’re set on murder.”

Tension spiked into Mason’s jaw. “Nah. Murder’s the provenance of Bone Man. Not me.”

Tiara kicked over the trap thrower as she shrieked every curse known to man.

“Hell’s empty and all the devils are here,” Colby said.

“Chekhov?”

“Nope. Willy S.”

Tiara plonked down on the earth and fell silent. That fist in Mason’s chest unclenched. “I’m guessing he’d make a better substitute father than Chekhov.”

“Why’s that?”

“Just look how you turned out.”

A wind whipped Colby’s curls. He smoothed them. “Pretty damn fine man, if you ask me.”

“A man with a penchant for the worst kind of partner.”

“Look who’s talking.” Colby sucked in a breath and dug his Timberland into the dirt. “Sorry.”

Mason grabbed a handful of shells. “I deserved that.”

Colby nodded. “Yeah, you did. Let’s go again.”

“A couple assholes we are.” Mason hoisted the Browning toward the horizon. “Pull.”

Two clays soared. Mason’s heart swelled. He exhaled and fired. The shotgun recoiled against his body. Orange shards peppered the slumbering earth.

“I’ve got a new theory,” Colby said.

Mason grunted. “Like Finland not being real? Illuminati? Lizard people? Aliens? We’re living in a simulation? What now?”

“You make me sound like a lunatic.”

“Pull.” Two clays sacrificed themselves at the altar of Mason’s serenity.

“We’re in purgatory.”

“Why’d you say that?”

“Feels like we’re always right here.”

Mason shivered. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Maybe we’re dead. Maybe we’re all dead. Like I, I don’t know, I died in a plane crash, and you...a shotgun accident. And this is purgatory.”

“You seriously believe in purgatory?” Mason asked.

Colby’s eyes searched the ground. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether it’s real or not.”

“How would you know that?”

“I don’t. That’s why I said depends.”

“But you want it to be real,” Mason said.

“There’s got to be some way for us to make up for all the bad stuff that happened, for everything we did. It can’t just linger on us like a stain, forever.”

That envelope in Mason’s pocket burned a hole in his skin. “There’s always consequences.” He dropped his beloved to the ground. “Give me your lighter.”

“Dude, no. Not gonna let you unquit.”

“Not the cigs, just the lighter.”

Colby fished the red Bic from his pocket. When Mason reached for it, Colby caught his hand. “Your ring’s gone.”

Mason gave Colby a murderous glare and yanked his hand free. He rummaged inside his duster, removed the envelope, held it up in the gray air and flicked the lighter. An orange flame sucked at the corner. The newborn flame grew. When it came close to burning Mason’s fingers, he let it flutter to the ground.

“Should I even ask?” Colby said.

“Bone Man.”

“Ever give him a real name?”

Mason shook his head.

“How about Skeet?”

Mason grunted. The flames died, leaving nothing but curling ash. He picked up his Browning and cradled an apology. “This is the way it should’ve been all along.”

“Bet Skeet’s been living with that baby alligator of mine all this time.”

“Your baby alligator would be all grown up by now.”

“Should’ve never let them get away from us. Your Bone Man. My alligator,” Colby whispered. “That was our first mistake.”

The red Jeep bridal shower rolled out of the lot, far quieter than when they’d entered. The group to their right had packed up sometime earlier; Mason never even noticed. He looked around and realized he and Colby were the only ones left.

“Let’s go again.”

Mason raised the shotgun. His arms steadied the weapon, arms that felt like they belonged to someone else, like his body was nothing more than a collection of parts: limbs and bones, fingers, skin, hair, none of them connecting into a whole, just separate elements tied together. What about his soul? That cage in his chest was empty. His soul had flown away, like a sparrow, an eagle, a moth, a mosquito, a vulture.

“Pull.” His voice cracked.

As the twin clays flew across the sky Mason savored the silence. He sighted, exhaled, tightened his index finger on the trigger, and felt the gentle kicks as the first bullet hit its target, then the second. All wasn’t right with the world, but all was right enough. He was about to say pull once more,when a boom rumbled beyond the horizon.

Colby jerked in his chair. “What the hell was that?”

Mason half shrugged. “Sounded like an explosion.”

Another boom echoed past the hills.

“Bet it’s aliens,” Colby said.

A fresh explosion shook Mason’s teeth. A wisp of black smoke cut the distant sky. “Pull.”

“Seriously, dude? The world’s ending and this is what you wanna do?”

Bone Man, those California days, his naked left hand, the ashes on the ground, all those dead things, all those failures haunted him. But he had this day: the Browning, Colby and the smoky sky, all these true things. The name of the woman who sang that song came to him, and he summoned a heartfelt smile. “Like Fiona Apple said, nothing’s gonna change my world. Now pull, you bastard.”

Kevin Singer is an army veteran and medical editor who loves snowboarding and writing. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines, most recently Folklore Review. He lives in Jersey City.