Learning to shoot

Yesterday, Ian and I went out in the backyard and shot a rye crisp box seven times. It was fun.

That was not what I expected. For the past 14 years, I have hated the sound of gunshots because they took me back to the afternoon when I answered someone's calls for help and ended up witnessing a man shoot his girlfriend to death with a handgun. Sharp sounds, even the sounds of dumpsters closing, have been pits of menace. I can slide down those pits and end up in a place where nothing feels safe. Except those sounds have not been bothering me as much lately. Last fall, I often woke up to the distant shots of hunters, and I did not feel afraid.

So when Ian invited me to try out our new rifle, I was not sure how to feel. We bundled up and headed out, first to the recycling can, where Ian rummaged around and found the unfortunate rye crisp box. He thought about using a larger box which had held one of our son's Christmas presents, but decided it did not feel right to be shooting at a box that had a picture of Buzz Light-Year on it. So he propped the rye crisp box up on the snow-covered brush pile, backed away several paces, and loaded the gun. He showed me the different buttons one must push to get ready to shoot, then he put the rifle to his shoulder and tilted his face down toward it. I backed off several paces and put my fingers in my ears, waiting for a terrible noise, but the sound was not as bad as I had imagined. It was a crisp sound, a little metallic, and not even terribly loud.

He asked me if I would like to try it, so I put it up to my shoulder like he had done and tried to look through the sights, which were little metallic guides along the top of the rifle barrel. I was amazed by how much they swung around as I stood there, trying keep them pointed at the rye crisp box. I breathed deeply, trying to make the gun hold steady while Ian offered suggestions as to how I should stand. Finally, I pulled the trigger.

The light around me stayed clear and strong, and the sound of the crisp shot rang over our fields. A bigger rifle, like the one my father had, would have pushed back hard against my shoulder because bullets from that gun were almost as thick as my dad’s thumb. Our rifle, a 22, has bullets that are just a little bit thicker than a really hefty screw, so it rested lightly in the curve of my shoulder even after I took a shot.

We thought we could see a tiny hole in the rye crisp box. We took turns shooting until our 10 bullets have been spent. They shaped the snow into tiny burrows in the brush pile behind the rye crisp box, and their little golden casings flew out to the side and landed on the hard crust of snow. After every shot, we smelled a sharp smell of gunpowder for just an instant, and then we smelled the crisp smell of snow again. I did not want to go back inside. I wanted to stay out with Ian in the cold, smelling snow and gunpowder, and learning how to look down a long narrow strip of wood and metal while holding perfectly still.

Finally, we examined the rye crisp box and found seven holes. I went back into the house in a flush of victory, feeling as though a weight had lifted from me.