Ryan Thomas: The Summer I Died

“Steady,” Tooth whispered, “just relax. Once you feel it, then fire away.”

I felt the weight of the gun getting heavier, like when you hold a dumbbell out to the side of your body and see how long you can keep it level. I added a little backbone to it, took another breath, and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

The bullet careened off the lip of the barrel, sent sparks flying, and struck the branches in the trees beyond. I stood for a moment, realizing that while I’d shot a bit wide, I’d still managed to hit the target. At fifty feet away, that was a glowing accomplishment. My dick was indeed hard. Tooth threw his Red Sox hat in the air and said, “I can’t believe it, you actually hit it.” He ran toward the barrel. “Not bad, not bad.” He poked at the indentation the bullet had made, somewhat tentatively, then turned back and yelled to me, “Hey, you gotta see this!”

I put the gun on the ground because I didn’t want Tooth doing anything stupid like jumping on my back and causing it to go off. He liked to jump on people when he was drunk, and he’d downed about four beers already since lunch.

At the can, Tooth pointed out what he found so fascinating. It was a bee.

“It musta been sitting on the lip and you winged it.”

The bee was still alive, but its abdomen was now fused to the barrel where the bullet struck. It was trying to crawl away but all it could manage was a feeble circular pattern.

“That’s the weirdest thing I ever seen,” he said. “Look at it, it’s like it don’t even know it’s been shot.” Then he got a funny look on his face and hit me in the shoulder. “You shot a bee and didn’t even kill it. You fucking pussy. Man, wait till I tell everyone.”

Great, that was all I needed, Tooth spreading stories. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Tooth. We’d been friends since kindergarten, when he stole my cookies and I socked him in the eye-the only time I’d ever beat him in a fight, and even then I probably would have gotten a good ass-kicking had the teachers not pulled us apart and made us apologize. Then they made us play together; I guess they fancied themselves diplomats. Anyway, the next week we figured out that by working together, we could distract the teacher long enough to steal the good toys away from the other kids during playtime. You might be thinking I was the brains and he was the brawn, but actually it was the other way around. Don’t get me wrong, he was definitely stronger, but he was much better at getting people’s attention, and I was adept at being invisible, which made swiping Matchbox cars all the more easy. If they’d only known what they’d created.

Tooth and I had been through everything together, which was weird, because our interests began to split in junior high school. I got hooked on science fiction and became an expert on comic books, and Tooth took an interest in beer. But I guess we realized we’d always stay friends, especially after the two nights we’d spent together in jail when we were sixteen.

See, we thought it would be funny to steal the lawn ornaments off everybody’s yards in town. You know, those obnoxious little ceramic gnomes and cardboard sheep that people think add flare and fun to a garden. Well, we must have stolen about a hundred of them, went over to the police station and started placing them all over the little lawn out front. I don’t remember how many cops we got in our town, I think five now that Bruce French is one, but anyway, usually they’re out driving around and only Mrs. Stefanko is in the office answering calls. But we apparently have the worst luck around, because they were having a meeting that night, and after Tooth and I finished putting the last gnome on the hood of one of the cop cars they all came waltzing out the door and caught us red-handed.

The incident made the local paper, complete with photos, and because my parents, who are both teachers at the high school, were in Boston for some teacher conference, I had to wait in the cell till they could come back and get me. Tooth’s father, tired of his shenanigans, actually told the officers to keep him locked up till he thought about what he’d done. So we spent two entire days as cellmates. It was the first time in a while that we’d really talked, not just got drunk together.

It was the first time I realized that Tooth was smarter than he let on, that his poor grades didn’t mean he was dumb. He was just interested in other things besides fractions and social studies. He said he was gonna learn how to build motorcycles, that he was gonna build one and take Route 66 out to California like in a book he read. Which also surprised me, because I didn’t know Tooth read. He was always making fun of me for picking up the latest Frank Miller or Todd McFarlane comic. I guess we just had different tastes in reading, but I felt maybe I had never given him credit beyond the growing alcoholic most people took him for.

He was still laughing at the bee. I punched him back. “Fuck off! I’d like to see you shoot a bee off the lip of a trash can.”

“I bet I could.”

“Yeah, right. It’s your turn. Go back and hit it.”

He gave me a shove and sprinted back to where I left the gun. Like some Hollywood detective, he rolled on the ground and came up with the gun in his hand. Standing next to the barrel, I yelled, “Wait a sec!” And threw my arms up and dove to the side. When I heard the report I nearly wet myself, went weak-kneed expecting my guts to explode out of my back. Thankfully, I heard the bong as the bullet struck its target and not me.

“Youmotherfucker!” I yelled. “Don’t mess around! It’s a gun!”

He just kept laughing like a toddler all hopped up on sugar. He went and picked up his hat, which had flipped away during his stunt, and put it on his head backwards. He aimed the gun again and said, “Move. I got one shot left.”

I jumped up and ran out to the tree line. This time when he fired, I plugged my ears. Again, he hit the barrel. I had to hand it to him, he had good aim, a regular Billy the Kid. Together, we walked over to check on the bee. Tooth’s two shots had struck about a foot below it each time. The bee was still buzzing, still fused to the trashcan.

“Yeah, all right,” he said. “So I can’t hit it. But it’s not like you aimed for it. You hit it by accident and that still makes you a pussy.”

“Bite me,” I said, bending down to look at the bee.

“I’m hungry. Let’s get outta here and get some fuel. Lucy Graves works over at the Wendy’s now, and they got these tight uniforms, and I swear her nipples are so big you can hang your hat on ’em.”

“What about the bee?”

“What do you mean ‘what about the bee’?” he asked, as if I’d spoken in Martian.

“We gotta kill it. I read once they can send out distress signals to other bees. It’s like a chemical scent they emit or something. Next time we come back there might be a whole swarm waiting for us.”

“God, you are such a geek. Just kill it.”

“With what?”

And out of nowhere, Tooth’s boot flashed by my face and smashed the bee into nonexistence. Maybe I was imagining it, but I swear a bit of bee goo hit me in the nose. Disgusted, I wiped it off with my arm. “Thanks.”

“What?” he said. “Better it dies quick than just stays there suffering in agony till it does. C’mon.”

When we were done eating and gawking at Lucy’s huge tits, which I had to admit were as plump and firm as water balloons, we drove toward my place to catch a John Carpenter film that was scheduled to play on television later that night. Tooth insisted we pick up more beer before the movie because the food was sobering him up and he swore movies were more fun to watch when you’re drunk. I doubted the movie had anything to do with it; beer for Tooth was like water for fish.