An Anecdotal Life

Little Annie Oakley

         Once, when I was young, my mother's beau was cleaning a pistol at our coffee table as I entered the living room. I had seen guns before--both my mother and father had been officers in the military, and guns were almost essential in the farm life that my grandparents led. I had simply never seen one being handled so close up.

         The pistol was in pieces, quite obviously not loaded and utterly harmless except possibly to squash bugs or stop doors. Still, I was afraid.

         "Come and look at it," Hugh urged, holding the dismantled weapon out on the palm of his hand as though feeding an apple to a skittish horse. I snorted slightly, like the metaphorical horse, and shook my head.

         "I'd really rather not." Keeping a wary eye on Hugh and the gun, I took a seat on the floor and turned on the television, trying to ignore the goings on behind me.

         "You'll have to learn someday," he said with a sigh. I shook my head resolutely, crawling beneath the coffee table under the guise of getting a better view of the set. I didn't come out until Hugh and the gun were gone.

         Ten years later, Mike and I were sitting in his 1978 Cougar, bumping along the dirt road of a national forest shooting range, his pump-action rifle laid lovingly across the back seat. I angled in my own seat to peer at it uneasily in the sideview mirror.

         "We don't have to if you don't want to," Mike said, glancing at me from the corner of his eye. He kept a straight face, but I heard the hint of amusement in his tone. Bristling, I sat back and assumed a nonchalant attitude.

         "I do want to." I glanced over with a forced smile. "I'm fine."

         He took my hand and kissed it, giving me an encouraging smile as we turned the corner toward the parking area. It was Thanksgiving morning, so we expected a reasonable amount of privacy for my first shooting lesson. Privacy, however, was not in the cards. The lot was full but for a muddy space on the very edge that Mike managed to slip his gargantuan land yacht into. I gaped at him across the car.

         "What the hell is this?!" I demanded, as though he'd put out a call for all these idiots to show up. He leaned over, kissed me quick, and reached across my body to open my door. Shooting him a look that clearly branded him a traitor, I got out of the car.

         It was cold that day--understandable for Pennsylvania in late November--and my being a Southern girl was not helping my comfort level. Grumbling the entire time about idiot men and their idiot guns, I pulled my gloves from my pockets and yanked them onto my icy hands while Mike unloaded the car.

         It was about that time when the first gun went off. I jumped a good foot straight up, only saving myself the further indignity of screaming by telling myself that I'd look like a bloody idiot girl if I did. Mike froze in his gathering to give me a concerned look over the top of the car. I flashed him a somewhat sharp smile in reassurance, snatched up the ammunition box, and stomped over to the table area.

         It would have been quite an impressive show of bravery if not for that damned box. The thing weighed ten-thousand pounds and I had to cradle it to my chest with both arms, waddling under its weight like a penguin. Grinning, my heartless boyfriend set the gun case on the table and took the ammunition from me. I think he was showing off a little by only using one hand.

         "Thank you, honey," he said sweetly. I stuck my tongue out at him. His grin widened as he patted my head with his big, gloved hand. "Wench."

         "Toad," I grumbled.

         "We have to wait for everyone to shout 'clear' before we can put our targets up, so in the meantime, let me show you a few things," Mike said, ignoring my insults. We sat at the tiny table, huddled close as he pointed out various gun and ammunition parts, going slow so I would remember all the names and functions.

         The guns going off around us were loud and distracting, drawing my attention from my lessons when they fired too closely. Finally, he stopped and put his hand on my knee, smiling kindly at me.

         "You'll be fine. As long as you do everything I tell you, you'll be perfectly safe." I patted his hand, smiled back, and jolted when the man at the next table took a shot. Mike sighed, squeezing my knee and leaving his hand there. We were silent until the "All clear!" call came.

         He put our targets in one hand, my arm in the other, and took us both down to the long wall at the other end of the range. I watched in silent fascination as dozens of men, total strangers, clapped each other on the back and laughed over shots gone wild. One man stood out in particular. There with his son, they stood before their target, making circles on it and beaming at one another's marksmenship. When they stepped back, I saw that their target was in the shape of a deer and I let out a horrified gasp.

         Mike glanced up at me from where he was stapling our own very normal circular targets, then over at where I was looking. I glared at him when he chuckled, and at the backs of the retreating shooters who had put up such a terrible thing. I had nearly made up my mind to rip it down when Mike took my hand and led me back to the tables once more.

         The time had come for me to put my money where my mouth was. I had been the one to ask Mike to teach me to shoot. He'd been hesitant, well aware of my fear of guns, but he wasn't too hard to convince in the end. He was an avid target shooter himself, and felt strongly that I should learn gun safety at the bare minimum. I eyed the big gleaming black rifle laying on the table and shook my head.

         "You first," I insisted. Mike studied my face for a moment, then nodded and took a seat.

         I watched carefully as he loaded the clip with four big bullets, then jammed the clip into the gun and moved the pump fluidly. He said it had something to do with putting a bullet in the chamber, but that meant nothing to me. He showed me the safety before pushing it, squinted into his spiffy special-order Russian scope (complete with a tiny red star stamped into it), and fired.

         Oddly enough, I didn't jump. We'd both put in earplugs the second we got to our table, but it wasn't that. For some reason, the closeness, the ability to feel the power of the gun so near, made it bearable. Mike gestured for me to use the field glasses to locate the hole in the target as he pumped the rifle again. This process repeated itself three more times, and I was just beginning to get used to the routine when he laid the gun down, removed the empty clip, and rose. I blinked up at him.

         "Your turn."

         Unwilling to be thought of as a coward in front of the horde of men at the range that day, I put on a brave face and took the shooter's seat. Mike walked me through the loading process and helped me to pump it the first time. Finally, however, I was on my own.

The gun--a 30.06, I was told later, whatever the hell that means--was somewhat heavy, but mostly it was awkward and unfamiliar in my short arms. Mike had offered to teach me on his sister's smaller rife, but I had been insistent. If I was going to learn to shoot, I was going to learn on his big gun. I was quite the stubborn little idiot, I realized now as I raised the gun to sight on trembling arms.

         "Make sure that scope doesn't hit her in the face," I faintly heard an unfamiliar voice say. "That gun's got a--"

         KAPOW!!

         I would have gone flying backward off my seat but for Mike's hand on my back. To say that I'd been unprepared for the kick would have been a severe understatement. My shoulder was tingling, but luckily I'd had my head far enough back from the scope to keep from losing an eye or two.

         "Jesus H. Christ," I squeaked, setting the gun on the table shakily.

         "Are you okay?" Mike asked, giving me a thorough once over. I giggled slightly, drawing his concerned gaze up to my face.

         "I didn't know it would do that," I explained.

         "Baby, I told you it would kick. Did you brace--"

         "No," I laughed, waving a hand toward the target wall. "I didn't know it would shoot. I thought I had to pull the trigger all the way back before it did that."

         Satisfied that I was unharmed, he snorted in disbelief and lifted the binoculars to locate my first shot. I worked on pumping the blasted weapon myself in the meantime.

         "I don't see it, sweetie. You must not--holy crap!"

         "What?" I asked, snapping my head up to look for some rogue shootist or wild animal that may have ventured onto the scene.

         "You got a damn--MY GIRLFRIEND GOT A BULLSEYE!" he shouted to anyone who might care. I blushed, snatching the binoculars from him as he shook hands, hugging and thumping the crowd of men behind me.

         "Her first shot!" I heard him repeating over and over. "Never fired a weapon before in her life!"

         Completely pink, I steadied the gun as best I could to sight it, waiting to fire until Mike was seated beside me once more. To my eyes, the target was veering drunkly in the sights and it was taking forever for me to bolster the courage to pull the trigger again. I was no more prepared the second time it went off than the first, letting out a muffled squeak when the gun bit into my shoulder.

         And damned if I didn't hit that bloody bullseye again.

         Mike was practically doing cartwheels at that point. It was with no little alacrity that he strode down the hundred yards to the target wall the next time "All clear!" was called. I followed a little more sedately, unsure whether to be proud or ashamed. That was a gun I had fired, a deadly weapon, and not two feet from that hideous deer-shaped target. When we got to the wall, though, any unease I might have felt washed clean.

         I was bloody good!

         Beaming with pride, Mike kissed me. I rolled my eyes a little but grinned back.

         "You're such a guy," I muttered. "Now you can say you've got the perfect girlfriend: she can watch football, wash a mean dish, and outshoot any man alive."

         He smiled down at me as we walked back to our table, catching my arm once we got there to turn me around. I looked up quizically, eyeing the target he held in his other hand, taken down to be saved for posterity.

         "Casey, I'm not proud because you shot well." I lifted both brows. "Okay, I'm a little proud of that, too. But what I'm most proud of is that you came out here and did this at all, baby."

         I blushed again and shook my head, starting to argue. He quieted me efficiently by putting an arm around the back of my neck and pulling me to his chest.

         "My brave girl," he murmured into my hair.

         I felt bad. I knew I wasn't brave; it still scared me to lift that big black gun, to touch the bullets, to pull the trigger. I wasn't comfortable with it, but at least now I knew I could do it without crying or flinching away. Knowing that did make me feel a little brave after all.

         I put my arms around his waist and hugged him back, somewhat self conscious of our surroundings. I wasn't quite sure if the others would think Mike a wuss for mushing on his dippy girlfriend out in the open on a firing range. When I told him so, he laughed.

         "Casey, I'm standing here with my arms around a gorgeous woman who just happens to be the best shot on the range. I don't think my manhood is in danger."

         I rolled my eyes again--I do that often around him--and made grumbly noises, but he and I both knew that inside, I was pleased. We took turns shooting again (I eventually learned to keep the gun tucked tight into my shoulder so I wasn't knocked back a zip code when everytime I fired) until it got to be time to get back. Thanksgiving dinner with his family was my next challenge, much more daunting than learning to shoot.

         Courage gathered, we trooped back to the car. When we got to his parents' house, I surreptitiously tucked my target into my bag to bring home with me. It hangs gaudily now on the side of the bookcase in my room, an ugly khaki sheet with neon orange circles and Mike's messy handwriting beside a hole in the center, proclaiming my first shot ever.

         And I am proud.