Have Gun, Will Tremble

One would expect The Gentlemanly Farmer to be practised in the manly sport of hunting, but one would be incorrect in one’s assumption (ergo, that age-old adage about assuming and donkeys).

No, if truth really should be told, I have never fancied myself a hunter, nor have I ever been drawn to ammunitive paraphernalia of any sort. Not that I am not a man’s man, but the kind of man’s man who would much rather polish off a nice big American piece of meat without thinking too carefully about where this said piece of nice big American meat was coming from. This was the kind of blissful ignorance that allowed me to cut a wide swath through the animal population devouring with rare abandon and gusto even all that their life had to offer me.

Now that I was attempting to gently settle into a semi-retired kind of life, I was forced to re-evaluate this blissful ignorance. A man’s man who does not hunt the meat that men’s men polish off is probably not much of a man’s man for men’s men everywhere. And any good hunter must begin at the beginning: the gun. A major component of this semi-retirement was to be my striving for self-improvement. If I was serious about continuing this journey of perpetual self-improvement then I would have to confront my fears head-on, my manly manliness depended on it.

It was with trepidation and much hesitancy that I asked my friend, a decorated, celebrated even, Law Enforcement Officer if he would teach me how to shoot a gun. Since he had never seen me slice a golf ball, or dump a serve into the net, or attempt other horrifying acts of aggravated in-athleticism, he acquiesced to my gentle demands.

I was nervous as we approached the shooting range. Being that I was in the business of assumptions, I was pre-intimidated by what I thought the denizens of the range would be like. My mind travelled the backwoods of my imagination; images of nice big American men with nice big American bellies with nice big American beards with not-so nice not-quite American small minds with nice big American assault rifles flooded my already weak heart, my knees were either trembling from fear of were already tired out by the long walk to the entrance.

I gently entered the large space and the pre-intimidation turned into full-on intimidation. Foreboding men stood behind a large counter, muscular arms threatening to burst from their shirt sleeves, guns holstered to their sides, taciturn and menacing.

LEO asked me what kind of gun I wanted. I was still in the throes of post pre-intimidation, and weakly replied that I would go with his recommendation. Well, he said, I use a forty-five. A forty five, is that how much it weighs? No, he sighed, a .45, that’s the calibre. I do not care about the high moral standard of a gun, I just want to confront my fear and take an important next step in this continuing journey of self-improvement that is a major component of my semi-retirement.

LEO sighed, let me handle this. He turned to the taciturn and menacing men and whispered something, pointed at me, they turned to look at me, their expressions betraying nothing, and then handed him a tray filled with bullets and a strange-looking hunk of jet-black metal. It was a gun!

Immediately, a jackhammer appeared inside my chest, a tub of gelatinous dessert in my knees, and a windtunnel in my lungs. LEO looked at me with concern, I waved him away, I’m fine.

I gently followed him, a little uncertainly, up to the big metal door separating us unmanly men from the Valhalla that surely lay beyond. We walked through only to discover another door. Before I had a chance to think about those sounds coming from the other side of the other door, LEO pulled it open…

BOOM!

I was almost physically propelled backwards by the sounds of cannons being fired, rattling my skull, loosening my teeth, metaphorically removing my spine from my body.

BOOM!

It took every ounce of self-pride and remaining manly man-ness to keep myself from bolting the scene (the other door was closing, but not closed, I still had an opportunity to escape). LEO placed a pair of large headphones over my ears, the kind you always see aeroplane pilots wear in the cinema, and the BOOM!s gave ways to thwoks, the kind you hear in the middle of the night hoping to the Lord above that it is your drunk neighbour stumbling around in the dark after a rather brutal night of carousing, and not, you know, something else. The thwoks, oddly enough, began to comfort me, the metronomic regularity (of the neighbourly, not something else, kind) paced the chest jackhammer down to a manual hammer, swung by a very weak man.

Once the gelatinous dessert and windtunnel had been dissipated, I began to notice my fellow manly men aspirants. This time it was not the BOOM! that nearly propelled me backwards, it was that age-old, um, adage, about assuming, and assumptions, and donkeys and you and me and whatnot. No, the backwoods of my imagination were indeed mistaken. These were not the sort of nice big American men with nice big American bellies and nice big American beards and not-so nice not-quite American small minds that I had expected to be here. Instead, we had people of every type, gender, age, height, ethnicity, colour, creed, musical preference, dietary restriction. The intimidation, once in the post pre stage was now slowly moving past every stage.

LEO took out the something called a magazine (it certainly did not look like any glossy publication I had ever seen before) and began stuffing bullets into it. Bullets! Real bullets. Not some abstract concept I had seen in countless action films that had been the vice of my ill-spent youth, but real pieces of metal that could at any point take away a man’s life. And there he was, my friend LEO, stuffing them into this metal cartridge, this magazine. I took the first bullet, held a life in my hands, and slowly, reverently put it inside this magazine Okay, that was not terribly awful. I followed that with the second bullet, and the third, until I could no longer put any more bullets in. No matter how I tried, how much force and effort and will I expended, I could not put another bullet inside this magazine. I showed this magazine to LEO, he sighed, and proceeded to fill up the rest of the magazine. I was not off to a good start.

Words were useless at this point. Not because of the enormity of this moment in time, but due to these headphones one could not hear anything beyond those metronomic thwoks. LEO indicated that I should place my feet shoulder-width part, my left leg slightly in front of my right. My knees (ever-so-slightly beginning to fill up with gelatinous dessert) bent. I placed my right hand on the handle of the gun (the gun!), but LEO made sure that my index finger was out of the trigger guard and placed along the barrel (unless I was ready to shoot, I should never, ever, not in a million years, have the index finger anywhere close to the trigger). My left hand was to go over my right, steadying it, the left thumb up against a little notch in the barrel, the two thumbs lined up side by side, like old friends at a bar, a black metal bar with a man’s life at stake. I was to close my left eye and line up the notch on the top of the back of the barrel with the sight on the top of the front of the barrel. My arms were extended, with a slight bend at the elbows. Take a deep breath, LEO, said and exhale when you press the trigger. But, he cautioned, do not press the trigger unless you mean to take a shot. The chest jackhammer was back, the gelatinous dessert, the windtunnel, I did not want to be here, I wanted to be far away, a manly man was not in my destiny, I could not hold the power to take away life in my hands, I was not up to this task, I was ready to run, run away as fast as I could, leaving every last shred of manly dignity behind me, and before I could stop myself, I squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

LEO pointed at the strange little button near the trigger guard, the safety. I took it off.

The jackhammer, gelatinous dessert, windtunnels all returned, destiny, life, everything swirled around me, I squeezed the trigger.

Pop.

Okay.

I lowered my gun. I could see a hole in the target sheet. I looked over at LEO. He seemed concerned. I was a little confused. There was a Pop, sure, but it was not a BOOM! The gun had recoiled, sure, but it hadn’t flown out of my hands and into the ether. There was a hole in the target sheet, sure, but no one was dead. It was a strange feeling that overcame me. You see, more than the jackhammer, the dessert, the windtunnel, more than everything, I saw the hole on the target sheet and realised that I had missed what I was aiming for.

That was not acceptable.

Before jackhammer, dessert, windtunnel, everything, had a chance to lodge a formal protest, the gun was back up again, the sight and notch were aligned, the trigger was squeezed, Pop, and another hole appeared on the target sheet, closer to where I intended. Another squeeze, another hole, this time much closer to where I was aiming. Squeeze, hole, squeeze, hole, now my Pops were becoming metronomic. Eventually, I squeezed, but there was no hole. I looked at LEO.

My magazine was empty.

He pressed a lever, and my target sheet made its way back to me. We looked over the holes littering the sheet, the majority of which were in the target area. Now, in another time and another place, the fact that the target “area” looked suspiciously like a human being may have given me pause, and perhaps even made me question what it was that we were doing there, shooting at a “human being” on a target sheet. But this was not that time and it was certainly not that place. No, what I was considering was the pattern on the target sheet and how I could hit what it was that I was aiming for.

LEO seemed impressed. He took another target sheet (another “human being,” but like I had stated earlier, this was not the time, nor was it the place) and this time he sent it further away. Once again, I took my stance, but this time it was bereft of the jackhammer, dessert, windtunnel, everything, instead I was filled with this overwhelming urge to make sure I hit the “chest” twice, and then the “head” (not the time, not the place) once. I squeezed the trigger, three times in succession, and the holes appeared where I had intended them to appear. I followed the pattern. Squeeze squeeze squeeze. Pop pop pop. Hole hole hole. I improvised. I targeted the “shoulders,” the “stomach,” finally the “wrists.” Magically, the holes appeared everytime.

The target sheet came back to me. LEO was impressed. He placed another one on the line, and this time he sent it away, far away, into the distance, back beyond everything, it kept receding, until it was but a speck in my imagination.

This was the Law Enforcement distance, everything before had been but mere practice.

I could feel the jackhammer, dessert, windtunnel, everything begging to creep back again. I would not allow this to happen. I squeezed, the pops popped, but the holes, the most important part of this whole process, they did not seem to appear.

The target sheet came back, the closer it got to us, the more it seemed that my manly manliness receded, beyond even the LE distance.

LEO was about to shake his head, about to render this entire endeavour meaningless, when something seemed to catch his eye. He looked at me, I looked at him, and then I looked at a single hole in the sheet.

It had caught the very edge of the “head.”

I looked at LEO and smiled. Another target sheet was flown out there, at the LE distance, and I swear I could see just the very beginning of a hint of my manly manliness begin to appear.

I looked around me at the other manly men aspirants, these souls of varying type, gender, age, height, ethnicity, colour, creed, musical preference, dietary restriction. In the lane next to me the young woman in her sandals, jeans, dark nail polish, and nonchalant insouciance nodded at me. I nodded back at her, turned to my target sheet out there in the LE distance, took my position, raised this small piece of metal in my hand, this destroyer of worlds, this machinery, this everything…

I squeezed.