Wolf Hour

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. An advertising 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-wrap 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 aim lower than you normally would. They can accept it when as is the case here the target is lower. But not that you have to aim lower even when your target is higher. 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.’

‘Now just imagine that you’re lying on a hillside three hundred yards from a deer down on a plain that—’

‘Four hundred yards.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The deer is four hundred yards away from me. And from where I’m standing there’s a fifteen-degree angle.’

‘Sure, but let’s take the example with three hundred.’

‘No,’ I said.

Jim looked a little confused now; he’d lost his place. But I could see his brain looking for a way to continue playing a game he knew to perfection.

‘I don’t recommend that a beginner start by shooting at something that’s over three hundred yards away,’ said Jim. ‘At three hundred you’re already flirting with what we call maximum point-blank range, doesn’t matter what ammunition you’re using. Further than that and the bullet will be affected so much by wind and weather that the beginner will just wound the deer or frighten it off, and you don’t want that, Tomás.’

I took off my sunglasses. Our eyes met.

‘Four hundred yards,’ I repeated. ‘All I need to know is whether my calculations are correct or is there something I haven’t been taking into consideration.’

He took a breath. Blinked. ‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered, pushed his cap back and concentrated, his jaws moving around like he was chewing grass.

I waited. I was in no hurry.

He rolled over on his side and pulled out his phone. Tapped the calculator.

‘OK, four hundred yards,’ he said. ‘You have to aim as though the distance was four hundred yards.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Good. What d’you say, Tomás, shall we try a few shots at the target on the left down there?’

I shrugged. ‘What are the numbers?’

He gave me the distance and the angle, and I told him I didn’t need the cosine, I already knew it for every angle. And I didn’t need any calculator to work out how much to adjust the sight. I looked at the flags on the front of the store behind me. Lay out on the mat, loaded, adjusted the sight.

‘Shoot when you’re ready,’ said Jim.

I took a breath, held it. Saw Cody Karlstad’s face in front of me the way it looked in the picture. A target on his forehead like that Donald Duck. Pointing a gun at me, my wife, my children. I fired. Loaded. Fired. Loaded. She was so pretty when she laughed, and when her heart broke, my heart would break too. And my heart broke often, because hers could break over the slightest little thing, it could be some stranger she felt pity for, or the way light fell, reminding her of a time she would never get back again.

‘It’s empty,’ said Jim.

‘What?’

‘The magazine. It’s empty. You can quit squeezing the trigger.’

‘Sure.’ I put the rifle down and stood up.

We walked down the incline to the target.

‘Not bad,’ said Jim.

All five shots had hit within a radius of five to six inches.

‘Could be better,’ I said, noting that the spread was more horizontal than vertical. ‘Any advice?’

‘You could work on your shooting position and your breathing, but you have a fine natural trigger action. Hang this up at home, Tomás.’ He took down the paper target, rolled it up and handed it to me. I guessed that was something he did with all his customers, gave them a trophy, something to take home from the hunt.

We headed back up the slope. Jim watched as I packed my rifle back in its bubble wrap.

‘What exactly are you going to be hunting?’ he finally asked.

I carried on wrapping. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘An M24. Not that you can’t use it for hunting, I mean, that’s what it was originally for. With a few modifications.’

‘Beasts of prey,’ I said without looking up.

‘I never heard that,’ Jim said and laughed.

I didn’t laugh.

‘Not that it’s any of my business, Tomás, but you do know that the wolf is protected now, right?’

‘Is it?’

‘Yup. But relax, I ain’t planning to sneak. Wolves have been seen in Cedar Creek, dammit, that’s just a half-hour from downtown, and this is a free country, people have the right to protect themselves, if you ask me. Or am I wrong, Tomás?’

‘Damn right they do,’ I said.

Back inside the store I paid in cash.

‘Don’t see that too often,’ said Jim.

I heard someone enter behind me. Don’t know why I turned, maybe it was something about the footsteps, the coughing, the gravelly voice speaking. Two uniformed cops, a man and a woman. I felt my heart beat faster. I picked up my change, wedged the rifle under my arm, looked downward and marched out. I saw the empty cop car in the parking lot. Nothing strange about police coming to a shooting range, I told myself, they probably come here to practise. All the same I walked faster than I normally would. And when I heard that gravelly voice calling ‘Sir! Wait!’ then I knew that no matter how well you’ve planned things — whether it’s for a family’s future, or for how to handle losing one — you haven’t a hope against the play of chance.

Should I stop? Run? Tear the bubble wrap off the rifle and attack?

I stopped. Turned slowly.

The cop was running toward me. He hadn’t taken the gun out of his holster yet but he was holding something in his hand. I tensed, not quite sure yet what for.

‘Jim says you forgot this, sir,’ he said as he caught up with me.

I saw now what he was holding. The target. I must have left it on the counter.

‘Thank you so much,’ I said. I tried to smile as I wedged the target inside the bubble wrap.

‘Courtesy of the MPD.’ The cop laughed. And I could see then he was a man it would have been easy to like. I laughed too. Because he had no idea he was face-to-face with the man who’d shot a Jordan gun dealer two days before, and in just a few more hours was going to be at work again.