“Listen—” Hanson began, but the connection went dead.
He stared out across the Mississippi. The river rose here in Minnesota, and the shit floated downriver. With every state it ran through the body count rose, until the blood water reached the sea and the chance of ending your life with a bullet was three times what it was here. That must have been why the chance of getting away with murder was higher down there. A cloud passed in front of the moon, the blackness returned and for an instant he felt an almost irresistible urge to throw himself into the water and just drift away. But he didn’t want that. He wanted to survive. That damned survival instinct would be the death of him one day—but not yet. He straightened out his bad knee. He’d worked, and he’d worn himself out, and mostly it had been honest work. He’d been robbed of opportunities before, been overlooked before, life wasn’t fair, death wasn’t either.
Sure, but we have to talk about the price.
Word for word that was what he had said the first time, when he made his choice and let the genie out of the bottle. He spat in the direction of the river and saw the foamy white ball carried off into the darkness. All right then. But this time, he wouldn’t be the one going under.
19
Four Hundred Yards, October 2016
There was a Donald Duck in the store. The noonday sun had cast a strip of shadow across its bill. A target had been drawn on the forehead and he was holding a pistol that was pointing at me. I walked to the counter. The wall behind it was hung with rifles for sale. They stocked magazines and pistol butts and put you in mind of Iraq and Afghanistan rather than deer hunting. A poster hanging on a pillar had a picture of a machine gun and the text:Because sometimes the only thing that is going to make you feel better is shooting a machine gun.
A man wearing a camouflage cap and a T-shirt with TOTAL DEFENSE on it appeared.
“Welcome to Mitro,” he said. “What can I help you with today, sir?”
“I have an hour with an instructor booked.”
The man looked down at something on the counter in front of him. “Mr…. Jones?”
“That’s right. I have problems with targets that are low down in the terrain.”
“Yes, that’s what’s noted down here. Is that a rifle you’ve got there?”
I nodded and held up the bubble-wrapped package.
“Then just let me get a little ammo here. Follow me. The name’s Jim.”
“Tomás.” It just slipped out. No big deal but I would have to watch out, be on guard for any signs my concentration was slipping. Think. Think. All the time.
Jim took me outside. We passed two standard shooting ranges, one where you shot at clay pigeons and one with targets in the shape of human beings. Three-hundred-yard ranges for standard rifles, Jim told me. Two normal, nice-looking armed teenagers standing on a rise greeted us politely, him wearing a jacket with a Stars and Stripes logo, her in a sweater with PRO-GUN written on it.
“Hi, Ola. Can you and Sigrid take a coffee break?”
The two nodded and disappeared. Behind the rise, down on the flat, was a wooden wall with ordinary round targets mounted on it.
“Can you tell me what your specific problem is, Tomás?”
I said again that I couldn’t seem to adjust my sights to correct for the difference in height between myself and my target.
“I see.” Jim nodded, serious as a priest who’d just heard my confession. “But don’t worry, Tomás, you and me are gonna fix that here today.”
“Thanks,” I answered, couldn’t think of any other response.
“Can I see your shooting position, Tomás?”
I unpacked my rifle and lay flat on one of the two rubber mats.
“Aim and breathe,” said Jim. I did as he said. He walked around and behind me, grunting as he used his foot to adjust my position here and there. Then he lay down next to me on the other mat.
“Right,” he began, clearing his throat. “It’s three hundred yards to those targets and they’re quite a bit lower as you can see. A lot of people protest when I say that even though the target is below you or above you, you’ve got to aimlowerthan you normally would. They can accept it when—as is the case here—the targetislower. But not that you have to aim lower even when your target ishigher.Their logic protests—”
“I’m not protesting, Jim, I just want to—”
“—because they don’t understand that the line of a horizontal shot is affected more by gravity than a shot straight up in the air or right down in the ground. Now just imagine that—”
“I know all this, Jim. I just have one concrete question.”
