Chris gave me another look like he thought I was being funny. I’m not talking about that, he said. I mean real hunting, with a rifle. I’m asking if your father ever took you out and taught you how to shoot.
I blinked and lowered my head and knocked my shoes against the boards to dislodge the stuck-on dirt. I could picture Dad at home in July with the sunlight absorbing into the dark fabric of his suit as he strolled leisurely between the rows of sagging vines, thumbs through his belt loops, strange smile stretched out over his face. Every one of our grapes was destined for the raisin box, to spend the hottest months of the year shriveling on burlap mats on the ground while fruit flies risked poisoning for the chance to taste the warm sweet juices inside. But for the few weeks each summer when Dad was around, before the drying commenced, he liked to play the part of the winery baron, to run his hands over the grapes and feel the yeast clinging to his fingers. Sometimes, when he thought no one was around, he would raise his heavy arms over his head and shout some triumphant phrase in French or Italian, I didn’t know which.
He wanted to teach me shooting when I was younger, I lied. But Mom wouldn’t let him. She said I was too young, and it was too dangerous.
Understandable, Chris said. But do you think she’d let you learn now that you’re older?
I don’t know. Maybe.
Chris smiled. I keep a couple of .22s in storage up at the camp, he said. If the misses says it’s all right, I’d be happy to teach you how to use one of them in the afternoons and evenings. The neighbors’ orchards are deserted then. We won’t be a bother to anyone.
While my head maybe sprang up a little faster than I would’ve liked, I still did a good job hiding just how exciting the prospect was for me. Yeah, sure, I said. That could be cool.
Okay, then, Chris said. I’ll talk to your mother this evening.
Sounds good.
He nodded and fished through his pocket for another cigarette and another a match. Sometimes in life there are moments that are so liberating you’re almost repelled by the new sensations they carry. Still I said a prayer of thanks under my breath. I knew in my heart that Jesus might not approve of hunting for sport, that he was a shepherd and not a butcher, and he laid down his life for his flock. But I wanted to learn. I wanted to hunt. I wanted a new kind of communion with a different kind of blood.
Who am I, if not my father’s son? What am I, if not my brother’s keeper? Brother’s keeper. Keeper and captor. Poor confused prisoner. Poor little Oscar, dead before I was even alive. Little brown body covered in red sores. Sores. Bubonic plague. Brown body, Black Death. Father Ramsey used to show us the medieval pictures in his theology book. Hooded figures with long proboscises walking side by side with the image of death. Unclothed Santa Muerte, sexless before fields of the ulcerous and dying. Total breakdown of society, custom and decency abandoned. One family member falls ill and the rest band together to help. Half the family and the sick are sectioned off by the healthy, two halves living in mutual quarantine side by side under the same roof. Bread tossed through windows into rooms whose doors are never unlocked, loved ones waiting with dark eyes and guilt-ridden hearts for the moment the food stops vanishing. Hear the bells of the death carts making their rounds through fetid streets. Would you kiss him one last time in parting? Could you bear to throw her face-down upon the stack? They believed the air had turned foul and betrayed them and looked to leeches to thin out their blood. They believed it was sin that had brought the scourge upon them, and laid whips upon their backs and shards of glass beneath their feet and crowned themselves with thorns to suffer as He had suffered. Blood was always the answer, until it became the problem. Blood of the Redeemer turned spiteful overnight, Old Testament voices echoing amid hoarse and congested cries. Blood of the family rendered meaningless as all stared down the same cataclysm, all alone, all fending for their own sake. Got to get away. See him running now, escaping to the country. Histories forgotten, names invented out of nothing. What’s that? Oh, yes, Mister Cooper. John Cooper. Why, no, I don’t know nothing about the troubles going on down south. From the north originally.
Sins of the modern world piling up around us, like dark-age corpses in a lye-caked pit. Mother abandons her husband. Father neglects his families. Grandparents desert their homeland and desert their troubled daughter and desert their adopted country for the homeland they deserted before. No principles anymore. No faith in blood of any kind, divine or otherwise. Jennifer had faith in blood. Can’t fault her there. Only words to keep her in our corner, shrugged off as soon as the shit hit the fan. Excrement in the fan. Shit-caked walls. Only words to keep any of us together. Broken vows, promises unkept. No shame going AWOL as the nation takes its last breath. Not my nation, though. One had to burn for the other to rise. Phoenix from the ashes, Arizonians camping outside our borders. Patrolman thinks himself slick if he can sneak a shot through the fence links to thin out the herd. A real badass, vanguard of the Republic, defeating evil through murder one sunspotted grandma at a time. I could be the real deal, though. I could fight in a real war. I could endure and keep my post and stay standing while others fled. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. A whole valley full of them. Beautiful death, virtues extolled, glorified forever by God and by Caesar. And yet I feel my own knees buckle. And yet I feel my own heart sink. The hired hand will flee when the wolf approaches. Godless Chinese or ghoulish Russian. What would they say if they saw me standing at the gate, under the Bear Flag, with my brown skin wavering in the fickle light of distant fires? Would they burst out laughing? Yes, they very well might. Where is your blood? the Han will ask. Where is your blood? the Cossack will ask. Here, here, I will say. See, it is only half of me, but it is real. What, that half? they’ll reply, faces grinning under the shade of red and white banners. The father who lied to you, who from the moment of your birth tried to tie you to the land like an illiterate peasant? For that blood you will die? For that you will risk everything?
Yes, yes, I will cry, and turn away sobbing. God help me, yes. I want to suffer and I want to sacrifice. I can’t be alone.
Where is the city we were promised? How do we begin to build?
After recuperating in darkness for the better part of two weeks, Sandra finally came out to rejoin the rest of the family right as the summer harvest was about to commence. Her appetite had returned in short jumps over the course of her seclusion, with the biggest jump, from liquid to solid food, giving us the most anxiety along the way. Whatever expired medicine she had taken in her moment of weakness, none of us had any idea what the long-term damage might be and whether her system would ever fully recover. Dawn stayed close by her side all through her recovery, just as she had with Beth some months before. She was the one who figured that calcium would help to repair her stomach lining, and who drove into town each morning to make sure we had plenty of fresh milk on hand. And when Sandra at last agreed to come out from her bedroom, it was Dawn who held her arm on the slow walk down the hallway.