The Forgetting Time(79)

“Wow. That is cool.” Tommy seemed suitably impressed. “That yours?”

He grinned. He liked this boy. He was a damn fine kid. “Yep. Genuine .54-caliber Renegade. I’m doing target practice. Want to take a shot?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy’s face wavered. He grinned and then he grimaced like he couldn’t decide. Paul could almost read his mind: my mom wouldn’t like it, he was thinking. For some reason this made Paul want him to come even more.

“Come on. Onetime offer. Ends today.”

“I’m going to Oscar’s.”

“Come on. Just for a minute. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll bet you’ve never tried it before.”

Tommy’s face turned up to him with this weird look, like he wanted Paul to tell him the right thing to do. Like he really wanted to go to his friend’s house but he also really wanted to try the gun and he couldn’t decide which person to be.

“You’re probably a good shot, too, what with your pitching and all.”

He knew that would do it and it did. “Well … okay. Just one shot.” And Tommy set his bike aside by the low wall of corn and they walked together down the road and into the woods.

*

His dad always used to bring a piece of cardboard with a bull’s-eye on it when they went out to target practice, but he hadn’t thought to bring that with him. They had gone shooting once at a place in the woods where there was an old well with a bucket swinging from the top and some trash around from when hippies and bikers used to hang out in that part of the woods.

“Hey, Tommy, watch this.”

He grabbed a soda bottle and set it up on the well. He picked up the gun and felt its weight in his hands and looked through the viewfinder and without thinking took a shot. The recoil almost knocked him down but aiming it wasn’t so different from one of his video games.

“Hey!” Tommy said. “Good one.”

He looked on the ground and saw that he had hit the bottle right off that old well. The not thinking part was the part that had done it. Anytime he thought too much about anything he messed it up.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

All the video games must have really helped with his hand-eye coordination. His dad was always giving him a hard time about playing them, but if he could see him now he wouldn’t call him a wuss at all. Except that he would kill him for handling his gun.

“Can you set one up for me?” he asked Tommy.

“Okay.” Tommy ran back out there and set up another bottle on the well. Really nice kid.

He aimed at the bottle and knocked that one over, too. It was amazing. Two for two.

The boy ran back to him breathlessly.

“You’re good at this.”

Tommy was looking up at him like he had just single-handedly won the marksman championship of the world.

“You think I can do it again?”

Tommy nodded. “Sure you can, Pauly. But can I have a turn next?” The boy was itching to get his hands on the rifle and show what he could do. Paul wondered if the boy would be a better marksman than he was. It was possible. “Just one more,” Paul said.

Tommy put another bottle up on the stone well and stood back.

Paul aimed at the bottle and then moved his aim to the old half-rusted bucket glinting above it in the sun. He thought of his dad’s face saying “fucking disappointment” as he squeezed the trigger. He heard a sharp ding of metal as the bullet hit and bounced off. Ha!

The bucket was swinging on its rope. Try that, kid, he thought.

“I did it!” He turned to the boy. He was excited. “Three for three,” he was saying, but the boy wasn’t there. He was lying flat in the dirt.

Tommy didn’t move. There was a weird red splash on his back.

Paul looked around him. The forest was completely still. There was nobody there. There weren’t even any birds singing. It was a warm, clear day. It was as if nothing had happened. He closed his eyes and wished that he could go back fifteen seconds to before he had aimed at the bucket, but when he opened them the boy was still lying on the ground.

Why couldn’t he have aimed at the bottle and not the pail? Nothing would have ricocheted from the bottle. The bottle would have smashed.

He let the current of that thought carry his mind for a period of time he had no sense of (a minute, an hour?) as if by surrendering to it he could remain there, in the past. But the present asserted itself at last in his dry mouth and the heat beating down on his head. There was no taking it back. He was here. Tommy’s body was there. His life was ruined. He was probably going to spend the rest of it in prison. There was nothing anymore to look forward to. He couldn’t be a veterinarian, or anything at all.

It was unreal. His life was over because of the body lying there. But if the body wasn’t there, then his life wouldn’t be over, and would go on as before.

He closed his eyes and opened them and closed them again. But every time he opened his eyes the body was still lying there and he could hardly stand to look at it.

How could your whole life end so quickly? One moment it was there before you, not perfect, but yours, and the next it was gone. He put the gun down on the ground. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

He hadn’t meant to kill Tommy, but nobody would believe him. They’d probably think he was a racist ’cause Tommy was black. His dad was going to murder him. He’d strangle him with his bare hands. His mom would never talk to him again.