brother bristled. “Hey, you put enough rounds into anyone, they’re goin’ down.” Micky moved toward his partner and shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Art.”
Art’s face was twisted in annoyance, and it washed over us as he looked up. Cops take pride in their abilities. I could understand that. In many ways, Micky and Art lived in a very different world than I did. But we shared things.
I’d come along with these two to the pistol range as a lark. I spend my time with simpler weapons. But I was also there because we found something in each other’s company that was deeply reassuring.
Danger shared creates its own odd connections. Sometimes, I still dreamed about the wash of blood and fear, a swirl of shadows and faces and struggle. We three had come through that ordeal, hoping that things would be like they were before. But it was a vain hope. Events had changed us in ways that were both good and bad. And there were reminders of the fact in the most unexpected places.
The two men cleared their weapons, taking refuge in the familiar actions. They picked up the spent shell casings and dropped them in a plastic bucket. Farther down the range, a marksman with a scoped revolver the size of an elephant gun blasted away. He wore a swank shooter’s vest and had yellow tinted aviator sunglasses. He was very serious. Probably had seen too many Clint Eastwood movies. I swear you could feel the concussive blast of his weapon from where we stood.
I walked up to the counter where Art and Micky worked in an awkward silence. “Can I try?”
The two men looked at each other in surprise. I had never asked to shoot before. There was an unspoken agreement that each of us had different areas of expertise. We tried not to step on each other’s toes. But, I owed them a great deal. I thought maybe I could help.
Art shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. Hard to be much worse than me.”
Micky looked like he was going to say something to his partner, then thought better of it and prepared his pistol for me. “OK, Deadeye,” he said to me. “You’ve seen it done often enough. But one important safety tip.” He held the squat, black pistol in front of me, turned to one side. Then he pointed at the muzzle and smirked. “The bullets come out this end.”
He slotted a clip into the handle and placed it down on the shelf that marked the firing line. Then Micky stepped away. “The safety is on.” I picked the pistol up and slid the receiver back to run a shell into the chamber. I took off the safety off. The target was fifteen yards away: a long shot for a pistol.
“You want it closer, Connor?” Micky asked. He wasn’t being a wise guy. Cops train for relatively close shooting scenarios. I shook my head no.
I held the weapon and pointed it out toward the target, getting a sense of balance. I slowed my breathing down. Then I fired a shot off. I wasn’t too interested in where the bullet hit the target; I wanted to get a feel for the recoil, the weight, the tension in the hands as you squeezed the weapon into life. I slowly went through the clip. Then I placed the pistol down and Micky hit the switch that brought the target to us. There were holes all over the place. And there weren’t even seventeen of them.
“Well,” my brother said. “Not bad for a rookie, but I wouldn’t give up my day job.”
I picked up the pistol again, getting a sense of its heft. Wooden weapons feel different. There’s a special type of connection forged with primitive arms. The whole process feels more integrated. With the Glock, you got the sense that you were trying to control something that had a life of its own. But still…
“All weapons are the same in some ways,” I said. “They’re extensions of us. Of our power. Or our will. Know what I mean?” The two men looked blankly at me for minute. I plowed on anyway. “When you use something like this, you know what you want to happen. The trick is to somehow get the tool to obey your will.”
I reached over and clipped a new silhouette target to the wire. I ran it back out. Then I hit the button and ran the target toward us a few times. Watching.
“Seems to me, though, that if you worry too much about how to use the tool, you end up losing sight of the target. Know what I mean?”
The two men saw I was serious and nodded.
“I mean, you shoot the target. Not your hands. Or even the gun.”
My brother’s face brightened. “Like the bumper sticker. Guns don’t kill people…”
Art smiled at us, his left hand on his hip, the right curled slightly at his side.
“So,” I said, and I held out my hand to Micky for another clip, “you need to know what you’re doing with your hands, but you’ve got to look beyond it. To the target. It’s not a question of the hands being strong or skilled.” I tried not to look at Art as I said it. I put the clip in and let the target run back out. “They are simply there to help you meet the target.”
I nodded and Micky hit the button. The target ran in toward us. I fired the Glock until it locked back empty.
My shots were pretty nicely grouped above the neck. Micky took the shredded paper off the clip and both men looked at the target. And then at me.
“Yamashita says you get the head and the rest follows,” I commented.
Micky looked at the target again. “You,” he said, spacing the words out for emphasis, “are… one… weird… dude.”
“I gotta agree,” Art said. “But if you’ve got a secret hand-shake, I’d like to learn that, too.”
We talked a little about breathing and muscle control. Focus. For the most part, these two guys thought that the training I did was an exercise in delusion. Years ago, my brother had come to a dojo and taken one look at the exotic costumes and odd movements. He called it a pajama party.
That was before Yamashita.
Now we were on common ground, talking about weapons and the skill that lets you use them. Cops are a clannish bunch—they have experiences and perspectives most of us are fortunate to escape. It means that it’s hard for them to let you in. Even when you’re a brother. Or a friend. But, for a while at the pistol range, I got the feeling that the barriers had broken down a little bit.
As we wadded up the paper targets, Micky looked at mine. “Sort of reminds me of that Sakura guy,” he said. “How’s that mystery clue thing going?”
I shrugged. “Eh. I met with Sakura’s calligraphy teacher. Tried to get a sense of whether the phrase shumpu had any significance.” I could still see the diminutive shodo sensei in my mind. She sat sadly, an old woman who had seen too many lives pass away. She answered what questions she could in a listless voice. The bold strokes of her brushwork were in odd contrast to her physical presence. She was a fragile and faint presence in the quiet of her studio, like a ghost slowly fading from sight. Nothing she said seemed to offer any insight into Sakura’s final testament. I summarized it for Micky and Art. “I’ll keep at it,” I told them.
“We’re working what we can from our end, too,” Art said. “The guy from Brooklyn, Strakoswki, would like to keep us on a nice short leash.” He grinned at me. “But it doesn’t quite fit our unique genius.”
“That’s an understatement,” I answered.
“It’s killin’
