wanted to tell you something.” I braced myself, for what I wasn’t sure, then
he said, “I wanted to tell you that your singing is about the best I ever heard.”
I came home one afternoon from packing macadamias to find Dad and
Richard gathered around a large metal box, which they’d hefted onto the
kitchen table. While Mother and I cooked meatloaf, they assembled the
contents. It took more than an hour, and when they’d finished they stood
back, revealing what looked like an enormous military-green telescope, with
its long barrel set firmly atop a short, broad tripod. Richard was so excited he
was hopping from one foot to the other, reciting what it could do. “Got a
range more than a mile! Can bring down a helicopter!”
Dad stood quietly, his eyes shining.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a fifty-caliber rifle,” he said. “Wanna try it?”
I peered through the scope, searching the mountainside, fixing distant
stalks of wheat between its crosshairs.
The meatloaf was forgotten. We charged outside. It was past sunset; the
horizon was dark. I watched as Dad lowered himself to the frozen ground,
positioned his eye at the scope and, after what felt like an hour, pulled the
trigger. The blast was thunderous. I had both palms pressed to my ears, but
after the initial boom I dropped them, listening as the shot echoed through the
ravines. He fired again and again, so that by the time we went inside my ears
were ringing. I could barely hear Dad’s reply when I asked what the gun was
for.
“Defense,” he said.
The next night I had a rehearsal at Worm Creek. I was perched on my
crate, listening to the monologue being performed onstage, when Charles
appeared and sat next to me.
“You don’t go to school,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
“You should come to choir. You’d like choir.”
“Maybe,” I said, and he smiled. A few of his friends stepped into the wing
and called to him. He stood and said goodbye, and I watched him join them,
taking in the easy way they joked together and imagining an alternate reality
in which I was one of them. I imagined Charles inviting me to his house, to
play a game or watch a movie, and felt a rush of pleasure. But when I
pictured Charles visiting Buck’s Peak, I felt something else, something like