Shooting Traps
by George Slanger
 

"Let them come," thought Father Jackson grimly to himself. "Let them by God come."

He rubbed his palm hard against the stock of the shotgun, rubbed hard until the oil from the gun stock and his own dead skin began to ball up at the base of his palm. He looked at the specks of moist grit and saw his pulse beating, not steadily but with intermittent single and double pulses and occasional complete rests. He watched and concentrated until the beat became regular. Then he poured the last of the bottle of Jim Beam into his glass and drank.

"How are we doing out there?" he bellowed at the door, which was held shut by a length of clothesline running from the: knob around the chest of drawers and into a closet where it was tied to the iron pipe which held his black coats and shirts. "What's the matter?" he said, reaching out with the shotgun and letting the barrel rest on the springiness of the clothes line. "Not enough guts out there to haul a drunken Episcopal priest away to Sahara Hilton?"

That was his own name for the alcoholic treatment center where the parish had agreed to send him to dry out. Dry, he had thought when he heard. Those people don't know anything about dry. Out loud he said,"Wilt thou frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff," but no one recognized he was quoting scripture. For thirty years he had been dry, dry to the soles of his black shoes, dry with a dryness that the extra communion wine and finally the Jim Beam could disguise but not assuage. Dust clogging the bowels, lingering on the teeth. Dry ends of bones grating against each other.

He reached under the pillow and pulled out a full bottle of Beam, heard its comforting slosh. He hefted the square shape lovingly, the shape he knew as well as he knew the shape of the communion chalice, as well as he once knew the shape of his wife's breast.

"Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again," he thought, slipping his thumbnail into the seal. It yielded cleanly. He shifted his weight on the bed, poured a glass nearly full and recapped the bottle, holding it unsteadily between his legs.

He drank about half the glass without stopping and put it down on the night table beside the Bible. That left him both hands free for the shotgun. He pushed the thumb release to the side and felt the barrel drop cleanly, exposing the twin brass eyes of the shell casings. He removed one shell, swung toward the light and looked into the breech.

He was transported, as he always was, by the bright patterns of shadow and light that played along the sides of the shimmering tube. A tiny disk of leafless tree, glimpsed beyond the window, hung at the end of the tube. He managed to tear a piece of white paper from the margin of The Living Church that was lying by the bed and held the scrap at arm's length over the opening. The shadows brightened. A speck of dust here and there, but not a trace of powder. He knew how to care for a gun.

He knew how to shoot too. That was the only thing he really did for himself, now that the children were grown. Twice or three times a year, he would take some of the carefully hoarded money the parish gave him at Christmas, buy five boxes of trap loads and drive out to the range. There, as the day cooled into evening, he would tie on the apron which held the shells and take his place on one of the concrete slabs behind the low shabby building.

"Pull," he would say, almost quietly when the shotgun was loaded. He was always amazed at how softly you could say that and somehow the teenage boy in the hut would hear and release the catch, driving the clay disk out into the twilight.

He would pull the trigger at the instant the black disk hung in the beaded groove of the sight, and the disk would spin on, unharmed. Then a bird or two would break, but they would be dirty hits, with chunks of clay veering off at turbulent angles, but his arm would draw strength from the break and slowly weld itself to the stock of the gun. The world would shrink to an intense shape only large enough to contain him and the walnut-and-steel extension of his eyes. Then disk after disk would be flung out by the power of his voice and exploded into dust.

He dropped the shell back into the chamber and drove the barrel hard down into the bed at the same time jerking the stock up. The sound of the breech closing was so absolute that he thought for just an instant he could live by that alone.

"Is anyone out there," he yelled at the door. "Ethel?" No answer. Then a thin, "Jack?"

"Yes Ethel." He dropped the gun barrel down and let it rest across his knee.

"Are you all right in there?"

"Sure, I'm all right. Why don't you come in and have a drink?" There were whispers outside the door.

"Goddammit, get rid of those pukes out there, if you're coming in, or I'll shoot the sons 'a bitches and then give them extreme unction."

"OK Jack, they're going downstairs. I'm coming in."

"Not until I unlock the door you're not. Just a minute."

Father Jackson laid the gun aside and fumbled with the knots.

"OK, the door's open."

"You won't shoot me will you Jack?"

"Oh for Christ's sake, come in, Ethel." The knob turned timidly and the door eased open.

Ethel Jackson, thin, tall, walking slightly bent from the waist, entered. Father Jackson smiled.

"Well. Sit down." He used the shotgun to point to the

vanity bench. As she moved nervously around him, he redid the knots in the rope and then poured a drink and held out the glass "I was serious about the drink, " he said.

"Oh Jack," was all she said, and he repented.

"OK, OK. Sorry. Sit down. Thanks for coming in. You could have called the cops and brought in the tear gas."

"The police have been called, Jack, " Ethel said, sitting quietly, her knees together and pressed to one side.

"Oh Jesus."

"But they aren't coming yet. Floyd told them to wait for an hour and he'd call back."

"How about the press and the television cameras. Will they be here in time?"

"Floyd thinks it won't come to that."

Then there was silence. Father Jackson reached out and rubbed the stock of the shotgun thoughtfully with his fingertips. His wife stiffened, but did not change her position. Father Jackson noticed and pulled his fingers away quickly.

"Sorry." He looked apologetically at his wife.

"Is the gun just an act, Joseph?" she asked. Joseph was a name she used only in times of tenderness and entreaty. No one else ever used his given name.

"I don't know, Ethel. I just wanted to see people squirm, I guess. Power, Ethel. God, do you know what power this thing confers? I can make you jump just by touching it." He did touch it, but she held her ground this time deliberately relaxing. But he curled his fingers around the thin part of the stock, and she turned her head away. "There, you see?

"Is that why you drink--to have power?" She kept her face turned away, even though he had removed his hand from the gun.

"It was at the beginning," he said slowly. "I can remember thinking about it, thinking that every act of evil is done with a crow of triumph while every act of virtue is done with a sigh. I probably wrote it down somewhere just that way, or put it in a sermon. When I started to drink, I used to say, 'I will do this. I defy. I overcome.' I would take a swig and say 'To hell with them,' or 'To hell with it.' I would become God and damn mankind. It feels good to sin, Ethel. It feels very good. I feel very good just now. I feel like I could fly. I can do anything I want."

"It won't last Jack."

"No, I suppose it won't."

"Do you know what you are going to do?"

"No, I don't, but that's exactly the charm. I'm free. I've given myself over to circumstance. I've stepped over the edge. I'm in the hands of fate." He sipped quietly on his drink and they sat in silence for a time. "Have you called the children?" he asked.

"No--what would be the point?"

"No point. I'm glad you saw that."

As the silence grew, they both found themselves looking at objects in the room, as they sometimes did at the doctor's office. Father Jackson's eye lit on the framed wedding picture against the west wall. He glanced at his wife and saw she had been looking at the same thing. For a second, their eyes met before his dropped quickly. The picture showed a young man, resplendent in a clerical collar and multi-colored suit. He had dark, curly hair, cut fairly close, and an open, untroubled face. His bride stood beside him, her long white gown arranged carefully in semicircle in front of her. She was holding her flowers tightly, looking hesitant and shy.

"Do you remember, Jack, that trip we took to the mountains, right after we were married?" Ethel asked.

"I remember Calamat Pass."

His wife looked down at her knees. "Well, that too," she said. "But I was thinking about the mountains, and about the creek that ran through the meadows. Where we took off our shoes and waded."

"Didn't we hunt rocks?"

"I had my rock hammer and my degree in geology, and we ran around chipping off samples, and you had to climb up one face to chip out a vein of gneiss."

"It was daring for a woman to know geology. I was so proud of you. You were so advanced."

"You read Augustine."

"In Latin. I was going to be such a scholar. Now I don't know where my Latin dictionary is."

"I don't know where my rock hammer is."

"Oh God, what happened?" Father Jackson said and bent double over the gun which still lay in his lap. He hugged his knees until his face was drawn down against the checkered forestock. He made low moaning noises, almost like an epileptic. His wife looked on, with almost clinical curiosity. After a moment, he raised his head. His face was ashen, but calm. A patch of his face kept the checkered pattern for several moments.

"Demons," he said, matter-of-factly. "They make a noise." "Oh Jack."

"I know, Ethel. Don't try to understand. I'll have a

drink. That keeps them in, and quiet." He poured himself a

drink, one hand still on the shotgun, while his wife covered her

face with her hands and rocked quietly back and forth.

"You can't have it both ways, Ethel," he said, sipping at the glass and staring at his wife. "Demons or liquor, a man has to chose."

"Liquor is a demon," she said, her hands still across her face, so her voice was muffled. Father Jackson had to pause a moment of decide what she had said.

"No, you've got that wrong," he said. "Everybody gets that

wrong. Liquor calms the demons. Puts the little bastards to

sleep. They thrive on it and get fat." He paused. "Of course,

it takes more liquor to calm them down the next time. That

follows, theologically."

"Don't be ugly, Jack. You haven't been ugly since I came in

"I'm being how I feel like being," he said, with just a hint of a quiver in his voice. "It's my show today. And if my show includes sharing my theory of demonology, then you're going to have to watch. Now let me tell you the rest of the theory, at least. This is the important part. A person that has given himself over to a demon has at least given himself over to something. He has given up. He trusts in circumstance. Better to trust in the wrong thing than to trust in nothing. My only mistake was, I never really introduced myself to my demon. I never went down there and said, 'Hello demon, I'm Jack. We're both going to be here awhile. Let's talk.' Now all I can do is say, 'Have a drink, demon.' He swirled the remaining liquor in the glass and drank it down in a single swallow.

Ethel continued to sit motionless, her hands pressed in between her knees. There was a creak on the stairs outside the door and a gentle knock.

"Ethel? Jack?" came a strong voice, speaking softly. They both recognized it as Floyd Hoople's, contractor, senior warden.

"It's all right, Floyd," said Mrs. Jackson. "We're just talking."

"You understand my being nervous," Floyd said. "I think

it's nice you two are getting together, but I just can't take it.

Either I want to come in or I want somebody out of there." He

paused. "Come on, Jack, this has gone far enough."

"Oh," Father Jackson drawled. "Did you have a pretty good idea of how far it should go, Floyd?" He sat quietly, staring straight ahead, his face glowing. When he next spoke, his voice had taken on a high, unnatural sound, as if he had been running and wanted to pant, but was forcing himself to speak normally.

"Floyd, you're a hell of a contractor, and a hell of a vestry member, but I don't think you are going to do anything I don't want you to do, as long as I have this pretty lady here, this gun."

"Jack, for God's sake," said the voice.

"Who else's?" said Father Jackson.

"Oh, don't worry," Father Jackson's wife said suddenly and almost wearily. "Let the old goat shoot me, or himself, or whatever he is going to do, and be done with it. What difference does it make anymore?"

"Should I call the police, Ethel?" said Hoople's voice.

"Wait ten minutes, then call. I don't have all day to sit here and let things drift. We're in this mess because I let things drift."

"OK, Ethel, ten minutes," said the voice.

Father Jackson was looking at his wife with widened eyes. Silently he poured another drink and drank it down with trembling hands. There was silence for a long time. They both began to hear sounds they seldom heard: the uneven grinding of the electric alarm, the far away pounding of the fish tank motor.

"Damn you," Father Jackson said into the silence.

"Damn You," his wife said, immediately, her head snapping round to look at him.

"I ought to shoot you, you know," Father Jackson said.

"I would hardly notice,"his wife said. "You killed me a long time ago. She moved her elbow so it pointed at the bottle still sitting on the night stand.

"Yes, I guess I did, but I didn't think of it as poison. I thought of it as antidote."

Father Jackson's wife opened her mouth to speak but sat staring at her husband. He stared back, over the top of his glass, then calmly drank, still staring. She turned away, trembling.

When he had drained his glass, he laid his gun to one side and got up, staggering slightly. He steadied himself against the large mirror on his wife's vanity table, glanced for a moment into the mirror at the ravaged image, then walked with porcelain dignity to the window. "What are you going to do?" his wife said to his broad back outlined against the brittle morning light coming in through the window. Father Jackson had taken off his coat, and his high collar rode up on his neck.

"I don't know," he said without turning around. "I have never in my life known less what I am going to do. I have never been more free." Exhilaration edged his voice. "I wonder if this is anything like a state of grace. I never did understand grace."

"I don't think you do now," Ethel said, shifting her weight. "It isn't a negative thing. It's wanting to do what you should and having the power to do it. It's not an absence, it's a presence." Her left hand reached toward the bed.

"Pretty good theology for a geologist," Father Jackson said. He began to turn away from the window, back into the room, but he stopped his turn halfway, frozen by the sound of his own shotgun being cocked. His wife had braced the butt of the gun against the dresser and held it at the level of her hip, fingering the trigger from above, the barrel level at his stomach.

"I may have forgotten all my geology," she said, "but I know I'11 shoot you before I'll let you shoot yourself or someone else.

"Ethel, please." There was only a trace of a whine in Father Jackson's voice.

"You taught me to shoot, remember? I didn't break many birds,

but I did learn to use a gun. I know it will kick."

Father Jackson blinked and stared. "My God, Ethel, be careful," he breathed.

"I am being careful," she blurted. Then she said it again, more slowly. "I am being careful. I was never this careful before. I could never be careful before. I never had this." She hefted the gun gently. "How could I be careful when I had no power?" She paused for a long time, then leaned lightly back against the dresser. "My God, Joseph, I think I almost love you," she breathed.

"A strange kind of love," Father Jackson said.

"All love is strange," Ethel said. "You even said that once in a sermon."

"I did?" Father Jackson said, a trace of wonder in his voice.

"Yes, you did. And I think I have a new idea for you. I love you now because I have the power to destroy you. Love is based on the power to destroy."

Father Jackson's tired face tightened and resolved itself for a moment, drawn, despite itself, into the intricacies of an idea. But it sagged again in an instant.

Father Jackson took a half-step forward. "Ethel, this is crazy. Put that thing down."

But she jerked the shotgun to her shoulder in an awkward movement and held it tightly. The stock was far too long and both her arms were stretched out so that she looked as if she might topple over forward.

"No, by God, I won't," she said. "I'm enjoying this."

"Ethel, the police. . . They've probably been called by now,"

Father Jackson began. Ethel paused and half lowered the gun. Then she stopped.

"Well, if they're going to come, let them find something,"

She swung the shotgun sharply to the left and fired. The recoil staggered her backward and slammed her against the dresser. She lost her grip on the gun and it clattered to the floor. Where the wedding picture had been there was now only bits of frame holding slivers of glass, and a dark hole from which curled wisps of dust and smoke. The roar of the explosion seemed to repeat itself over and over in their ears as if it has been recorded, so they did not hear the thundering steps coming up the stairs or the rattle of the door which opened easily, the knots stretching and slipping.

Floyd ducked under the rope and ran to Ethel to put his arm around her shoulder. She did not respond but stood glumly."Did he try to shoot you?" Floyd said.

"No, I did the shooting," she said, pointing to the gun on the floor and holding her shoulder. Father Jackson had turned back to the window and was looking through the leafless branches at the sky.

Floyd Hoople had to call his name twice before he turned.