“Your shot,” he said.
Ray nodded, surprised by Franklin’s accuracy and the ease with which he handled the gun. The streaked barrel needed blueing, and the burnished walnut stock would be hard to find these days. Franklin kept it behind a door, wrapped in plastic, with a glove covering the barrel’s end. Ray had assumed it was a relic, not a tool Franklin could still use.
Ray centered the wedge in the near sight’s notch. He relaxed his shoulders, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. At the breath’s end, he tightened his finger on the trigger. The walnut vanished in a shower of shell. The automatic action ejected the spent cartridge and forced another bullet into the chamber. Ray aimed with care. The barrel swayed and he moved it too far, then overcompensated the other way. His hands were sweaty. He lowered the rifle and blinked into the woods, focusing on the buds of a crab apple tree. A breeze carried its scent his way. Ray raised the rifle, aimed, and shot. Nutshell scattered in the bushes.
He went across the clearing and placed more nuts on the board. As he walked back to his father, Franklin upended the rifle and slipped the barrel in his mouth. He held it steady, looking down the sights in reverse. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his back to accommodate the weapon’s length.
Ray knew he couldn’t get to him in time. If he made a grab for the rifle, he’d knock his father’s teeth out, and Franklin would get mad about that. Ray was struck by a sudden, terrible thought — a shotgun was better for the job.
Franklin inhaled through his nose. He closed his eyes and slowly let his breath go into the gun. His cheeks sank as he blew. He took another breath and did it again. He lowered the rifle and offered it to Ray.
“Barrel’s clean now,” Franklin said.
Ray crossed the ground to him. As they switched rifles, there was a brief moment when Ray held each gun. He wanted to run down the hill and throw them in the creek. Instead, he released the rifle, unable to resist his father’s pull.
“Never shot an automatic before,” Franklin said.
He sighted on the first walnut and fired rapidly eight times. Each shot made a quick noise that echoed along the ridge in one long sound until the trigger clicked against the empty chamber. Franklin’s face was flushed. He was smiling.
“Always wanted to do that,” he said.
Ray aimed his father’s heavier gun. The walnut faded into the mud and seemed to move. He lowered the rifle and shut his eyes, still seeing the gun in his father’s mouth. Ray wondered if Franklin had done it just to rattle his aim. When Ray opened his eyes, his father was waiting and Ray shot too fast. The walnut didn’t stir.
“I never miss with that,” Franklin said. “It was my dad’s gun and his dad’s before that.”
“With any luck,” Ray said, “all my children will be girls.”
“I wasn’t that lucky.”
“Neither was your dad.”
“No,” Franklin said. “Our family’s full of hard-luck fathers. You know how mine died?”
“Stroke, you always said.”
“No. He ate his gun.”
His voice was casual, as if they were discussing weather. Every time Franklin talked about his dad, he told a different story. Ray had stopped trying to figure out the truth.
They traded rifles and reloaded. Ray decided to tell him that his wife was gone. They were in similar shape — the last men in their family, living alone on the hill.
“I’m glad you came over,” Ray said. “Why do you stay away from me?”
“Because you act like my dad.”
“I ain’t him.”
“You can hurt me just as bad.”
“I won’t,” Ray said.
“You don’t know that.”
Franklin stared at his son. Ray knew that his father would never look away, that if Ray didn’t break the stare, they’d stay there until dark. Ray grinned and turned his body. He didn’t stop looking at his father, but slowly pivoted until he was out of sight.
Franklin began walking downhill, his coat flaring behind his stiff back. Ray knew he was very angry. He followed him off the ridge, wondering why things between them had to go bad so fast. When Ray went north, Franklin had criticized him for leaving Kentucky, and Ray thought that buying property and coming home married would make his father like him. Instead, Franklin told him it was stupid to throw away a good job in Detroit.
Mist blurred the ragged seam where the treeline met the sky. This was the highest spot on the hill. It belonged to Ray. He thought he should be proud. Instead, he missed the Chrysler plant. It was dangerous and dirty, but Ray always knew where he stood with people. He could get his old job back. The guys on the line would be glad to see him.
Franklin was standing behind the woodpile at the bottom of the hill. Ray decided to tell him that his wife had left, and that he was leaving, too. When he came within sound range, Franklin spun very fast, the barrel of his rifle pointing at his son. Ray fired twice. The first bullet went wide but the second one made a hole in the part of his father’s coat that covered his chest.
Ray felt hot but his skin was cold.
Franklin stepped forward. There was an expression of respect on his face, almost as if he approved of his son. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. He braced his arms on the chopping block. His eyes were clear as glass.
“My daddy made me kneel on rocks,” he said.
He slowly slumped over the chopping block. His hat fell off. The top of his head held a bald spot that was a perfect circle of cleared skin, bright pink. Ray realized that he’d never seen it from above. His own hair was thinning in the same place, following the same pattern. Ray remembered a man with a knife who had tried to rob him outside a bar in Detroit. He’d fought the guy and kept his wallet, and everyone at work told him how stupid it was. Ray had agreed, but he’d reacted without thinking, the same as now.
His father looked as though he was resting, like a child who’d fallen asleep with his head on a table. His shoulders were rising and falling as he breathed. Ray didn’t think there was enough blood to have hit an artery. It wasn’t so bad.
The sound of an engine carried along the ridge, getting louder as the trash truck’s tires spun a rut in the driveway. The trashman leaned out the window. The woodpile blocked his view of Franklin.
“Figured that racket was you,” he said.
Ray nodded. The trashman rubbed his jaw and sucked his lower lip between his teeth. His voice was casual.
“If you want, there’s other stuff I can get. Shotguns. Pistols and such. They might run you more than that rifle. How about a belt buckle with a derringer that clips on and off it? Never know when you need a belly gun.”
Ray considered asking the trashman to help him with Franklin, but decided against it. Assistance from outside the family was the kind of thing that his father would resent. He might hold it against Ray later.
The truck backed down the driveway and Ray hoped the trashman didn’t think his silence was rude. He went in the house for towels to wrap his father’s wound. It was high on his chest, a clean hole. The bleeding had already begun to slow.
Ray drove his car around the woodpile, got out, and studied the situation. It would be easier with a four-door. He could borrow one from his neighbor but he didn’t want to leave his father that long.
He held Franklin under the armpits and gently moved him into the car. Twice he had to go around, climb in the driver’s side, and tug on him. As he circled the car, Ray realized that he’d never touched his father before. He couldn’t remember a hug from him or even a squeeze of his shoulder.
He finally got him wedged inside. Blood was coming from under the towels. It had gotten on Ray’s hands and he wiped them on his pants. He sat in the driver’s seat and rested. Franklin’s face was relaxed, his mouth slightly open. He seemed younger. Ray looked at him for a long time, seeing the pores, the lines beside his mouth, the sagging skin beneath his eyes. It was the first time he had ever looked at his father without being afraid.