The Shooting (15 page)

Though he is seduced, hypnotized by the solitude of his home, the new Boo Radley begins forcing himself to go out and spend the nights in the rain and cold, on patrol, vigilant in the face of the
random and uncontrollable, circling the block on foot with the gun, keeping an eye out for those who want to hurt kids.

Soon the children no longer come whispering and giggling outside his door anymore. It occurs to him that they have grown, that it has been seven years and they are not kids anymore.

He still patrols the block at night. Whether there are children who live here these days he does not know, but the people of the building are still good people, he believes, though he does not know them, they are good people and he is still Boo Radley, he is still the hero.

To keep his skills sharp on patrol—bad guys do not stay stagnant, their weaponry and tactics are forever evolving to keep a step ahead of the good guys—Boo Radley of the West Village attends self-defense seminars around the country. The seminars are educational and necessary but also healthy, for they satiate the irritating human need he has for socializing, communing. The seminars also provide a good deal of entertainment—some real weirdos attend these things. He gets a kick out of checking them out. The seminars are also important for business, not that he has a business, not a real one; he is still looking for
it,
his calling and purpose, the big thing he will do that will connect him with his world in meaningful ways. Also, the seminars give him something to do, somewhere to go where he is expected, his name printed out on a badge waiting for him.

The chitchat with sales reps and firearms instructors and NRA marketing guys and fellow Boo Radleys he recognizes from previous conventions—there is a whole roving circuit, a shadow army of citizen patriots convening along interstates in Radisson Hotel ballrooms, always ready for muster—and UFC fighters and international shooting champs making appearances to sign autographs and pose for pictures in the apparel and gear of their sponsors are the closest thing Lee has to any kind of social life, though he is quite well known and very respected, even feared on several online forums. He can subsist for months afterward on the nourishment of sales pitches and new weapons demos and bull-shooting over soda water at the hotel bar.

At one such bar, at a seminar outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, there is a woman. Such rare phenomena receive due attention. A crowd of men surrounds her. Lee does not bother trying to elbow his way in to join them. It is a very distasteful display. A woman should be able to learn self-defense skills without being dry-humped, in his personal opinion. He stands instead on the edge of the crowd, drinking his soda water, heart swollen with affection for himself for how much respect he has for women. Finds himself talking to the sort of person he for some reason always finds himself talking to at these things: Tim, with a flattop and a red face and long nose hairs, his gun in its underarm holster bulging beneath his cheap sport coat. Tim keeps leaning in and saying things to Lee like,
Look at this, look at all these dipshits bending over backward to appease this woman. And yet you know she'll still cry about unfair treatment. Oppressed. Wish someone would oppress me like that, buying me drinks, offering to take me in and pay my way, then give me half their shit, give me the house, give me the kids. Oppressed. Know who's really oppressed? The most oppressed person in American society today is the straight, white, hardworking Christian male. Me. You. Us.

Lee is trying to pay no attention to Tim, he is instead zoned out on this woman. This woman. Whenever the cloud around this woman moves in such a way that she becomes visible to him again and her voice breaks through the din to reach him, Lee becomes a little happier. They make eye contact. Usually they look away. Or he looks away. Someone always looks away, ending whatever moment that might have been. But then this woman, at this convention outside Scranton, does not look away. Neither does he. And for a brief moment she pauses whatever she is in the middle of saying, her lips hanging apart as though she recognizes Lee, and then she resumes her conversation, still looking at Lee as the cloud swallows her up again.

Tim tells him to come on, let's go rejoin the convention, but Lee declines. Because the woman is pushing through the cloud and coming his way, and she is walking right up to Lee, for God knows what reason, and she is saying, —Hiya! Lee feels Tim's resentment as he peels away on his own, muttering, —
Jesus...

Lee does not know what to say to the woman. Or to any woman. What do they like? What do they want? Food? Things? With the exception of one freak night years ago, he has never known how to be with them, what to do. His mind always goes blank and they realize how boring he is, how irrelevant, and they lose whatever misguided interest they might have thought they had. But that night. That night. It was years ago. Another woman, another bar. Another life. He was a maestro, he was Don Juan—a brash, cocky stud. Maureen melted for him. Hardly had to say more than a few words to her before he brought her to her room and played her body like an instrument. Afterward she begged him not to go. She wanted more. God, to recapture the confidence he had as a younger man, when everything was so much clearer!

Now he is just a man in his midforties to whom nothing is clear, a man with a mind that now, as this woman speaks to him, goes blank. But this time it is okay, because she is doing all the talking. Laura is her name, she says. This is her first time at one of these things. While he stands there listening and doing his best to smile, having read somewhere that women like you to smile, Laura goes on and on about what she has learned today about strangulation techniques, knives. All he has to do, he finds, is stay quiet and keep smiling and she will continue talking to him, to the tangible dismay of the jilted suitors all glancing over from the bar. So this is what he does, feeling like the most handsome, most desirable man who has ever lived.

She wants to eat, so he takes her to the hotel restaurant, called Smooth or Silk or SoHo or something, and they wait for a suitable table. A suitable table is one located in the corner, where you can sit with your back to the wall and have unobstructed visuals on all entranceways. Demand for such a table at these conventions is very high, and Lee and Laura have to wait nearly two hours for one but it is worth it if you wish to dine safely. Laura is a big, tough woman in hiking boots with thick wool socks even though it is summer. Her hair is in a ponytail, and she wears no makeup. Her big, clear voice is unrelenting. So is her self-certainty. She eats voraciously and without apology, like she has been starved. She is from Michigan,
she says, and now lives outside East Germany. East Germany? Scranton, she clarifies. She lives outside Scranton, which she calls East Germany because of all the regulation and taxes and wanton violations of its citizens' American freedoms. She works in IT for the county. She calls it the Stasi.

She asks where Lee is from. Lee tells her about his childhood. The mountain. The outdoors. Big green trees to climb, blue sky, his daddy teaching him how to change a transmission and mend a fence and stay true to his word and do unto others and respect women, how to shoot a gun, how to take care of a gun. How to be safe with a gun. He tells Laura about him and his daddy taking care of themselves, making the most of rough circumstances, namely his mother up and leaving. Children were free back there, at home, he tells her. They ran barefoot through the grass and were happy. Folks were Christian, they went to church.

—Did you go to church? Laura says.

—Of course we went to church, he says. And he and his daddy, he remembers, lived off the land, they ran a little farm for some time, raised all kinds of animals—chickens, pigs, horses. Needed no one and nothing. Self-sufficient and independent. They had a barn—he laughs just thinking about it: he remembers how he used to hide in that barn for hours, his little sanctuary; he loved it there, he would go there to disappear into his little-boy fantasy worlds and his daddy always let him be. Then high school where he had his rowdy group of buddies and his little sweetheart. He and Tamra Riley were two fools in love, he remembers, it was always him and Tamra and his best friend, Joey Whitestone, raising hell and having good times and getting out of trouble. He will never forget those wild-hearted American nights out there, back home on the mountain. They would cruise that little town for hours in Lee's pickup truck. They did not want much—folks back there were modest—just to be safe and happy. His father was his hero and still is, he tells Laura. Taught him how to be a man. And now he finds himself living in New York City, of all places.

She snorts.
—New York City?
Guess you like being told what to do and how to do it and paying out the behind for the privilege.

He tells her he has to be in New York for work. The family business. His presence is crucial. He is a crucial asset. Without him, he doesn't know what would happen. He's also a small business owner. He thought he would hate it in New York, he tells her, but he finds everyone's so daggone busy screwing each other over and being up their own you-know-whats that you can find real privacy and solitude there.

She thinks about it and stuffs more meat into her already full mouth and says, chewing it, —I do like Times Square. Got those Elmos.

Then she talks about how she has hiked the Appalachian Trail twice, all by herself, with no help. And when the check comes and he tries to pay it she will not let him.

—We split it, she says, reaching into her side pocket and pulling out a man's leather wallet.

He thinks she is just being mannered and in fact expects him to pay, so he holds out the bill and the money for the waitress to come take, but Laura reaches across the table and twists his thumb back until he shrieks in pain and lets go. She takes the bill, looks at the total, and counts out her share in cash. She winks at him as he tends to his throbbing hand. —I've never taken a handout and I don't plan to start now.

They go upstairs to his room. —Take off your gun and trousers, she says, standing hands on hips in front of the television. He does so, then sits on the bed. —Well, that was dumb, she says, bending down to pick up the gun and holding it in her hand. —Never listen to anyone who tells you to put down your weapon unless it's a police officer, and even then demand to see his badge first.

She undresses where she stands, then comes over. Beneath her hiking shorts and old T-shirt her body is soft, her skin white and smooth like milk, breasts beautiful with bright pink nipples as fat as the tip of a pinkie. He barely gets past her fistful of bright orange hair before crying out with pleasure and relief. She says, —Whoa, baby, I'll get some TP.

She unsaddles, lifting one leg high, and waddles to the bathroom, her hand cupped between her legs. He listens to her urinate. She
urinates for a long time and very heavily. Then he listens to the toilet paper roll going around and around and around. She must use the entire roll. Toilet flushes, she comes out with more toilet paper and wipes him down. She returns to the bathroom and he hears the toilet flush several more times, then she reappears, stands at the foot of the bed, spreading her feet apart wide and squatting, stretching her leg. —Got a cramp in my groin, she explains cheerfully.

—I'm sorry, he says.

—It's not
your
fault. I should have hydrated more.

—No, I mean I reckon that I was kind of faster than you probably expected.

She twists up her face. —You kidding? It was great. Who has the time to futz around all night like California yoga yahoos?

—It's been kind of a long time.

—How long?

She stands up straight and bends her left leg up behind her and holds it, stands like a flamingo, leaning on the TV for balance. Then she does the other leg.

It has been fifteen years but Lee says, —Maybe about a year. I've been so busy. With work.

She puts her underwear and hiking shorts back on and, still nude from the waist up, comes over to the bed, the nightstand, bends over the clock radio looking for the conservative talk station. Lee watches her breasts dangle, sway.

—Shouldn't have answered that, she says. —It's none of my business and now I know more about you than you know about me. Puts me in a position of advantage over you.

—Then let's even it out. Tell me something about you, he says. —How long has it been for you?

—Nope, she says, joining him in bed. —Never give up ground already gained. Fundamental principle of self-defense.

Before he can answer she is instantly, deeply asleep. She snores, sweats, her body draped over his like a Great Dane's. His hand is falling asleep beneath her and he tries to move her off it but she will not budge. It is like she has not slept in weeks.

Later she wakes up with a start, bolts upright, and looks at him. She seems different. He feels like he is looking into the eyes of a different person. Then she blinks and that different person is gone and the Laura he knows returns. —Hiya, she says.

—Howdy, says Lee.

—What time is it? She reads the clock radio and grunts. —Don't worry, I'll leave you alone now.

She starts to rise but he puts his arms around her and pins her to him.

—No, he says. —Please don't go.

Laura comes back with him to New York, moves in. Says she does not own anything that is not in the giant suitcase she brought with her to Scranton, so there is nothing to go home and get. She has, she says, no loose ends to tie up, no one to say good-bye to. —I'm a loner, she says. —I prefer it that way.

—What about your job? he asks her.

She waves off the question. —I can do what I do from anywhere.

Every day she goes out into the city and returns with a small broken electronic or kitchen appliance: a dusty obsolete printer, a coffeemaker. She says, —We'll sell them. All they need is a little tinkering and they'll be good as new. But Laura never tinkers with and never sells anything, and after a few months the junk has only piled up. Lee asks her to please start fixing things or else get rid of them and to stop bringing in more.