Whitehead Colson - Sag Harbor

Or so my young self theorized. Today we were armed.

Randy had the spot all picked out. The abandoned Karmann Ghia. It made sense. We'd tried to make a plaything of it many a boredom-crazed afternoon, but it was too rusted to approach and properly incorporate into high jinks beyond throwing rocks through the dwindling windows. We were a dutiful and tetanus-phobic group, lockjaw being the most sinister villain we could imagine. “His face twisted into a grimace of horror.” But not anymore. The guns gave us the distance to hasten the car's ruin.

Whenever you saw the red Karmann Ghia, that debased victim of the Rust Gods, some other kids had ripped off another piece in the interim. The hubcaps, the mirrors. One day the windshield wipers were stuck out like antennae, and no one touched them because the effect was cool, satisfying adolescent aesthetics of destruction. Another summer we ventured out and the upholstery hung out of the driver's window like a ghastly tongue. Kids all over like to mutilate it. Since this is a What Happened tale, I wonder how the car got there, who owned it. Abandoned by joyriders, left to die by a summering specimen who couldn't keep up the payments. Had I seen them just the day before, these faceless elders, sailing through the crosswalk in their new fab ride even though I had the right of way, had I served them ice cream at Jonni Waffle for no tip, did they throw a Hush! our way when we got too loud at Conca D'Oro? We didn't know each other but we had this hidden link. We were related by rust.

Randy's first attempts were unspectacular. But as his aim improved and he figured out the key pressure points, a BB disintegrated a nice section of the car's weakened frame instead of zipping straight through and leaving a tiny fingertip-sized hole you had to get up close to see. “You see how I pump it?” Randy asked rhetorically. “The more you pump it, the faster the FPS.” Feet per second, I guessed, and later confirmed when I sat on some ketchup-stained rifle literature in the backseat of Randy's car. “Low FPS is good if you just want to scare a deer or another critter off your property. Higher FPS is when you really want to send a message.” Yee-haw!

NP and Clive took turns with NP's pistol — Randy clung tight to his baby today — and while it was diverting for a while, I started to wonder if we had enough time to drive to Bridgehampton and back before my shift.

“We just got here, dag,” NP said.

“I'm not ready to go,” Randy said as he reloaded his rifle. His car, his keys.

Clive had taken a few shots. He was the only sensible one among us, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Why don't you go and try it?” he asked me. Co-opt the complainer.

I thought about Reggie and Bobby taking potshots at squirrels and dead horseshoe crabs. I took NP's gun. Identical to Bobby's, except in silver. Clive offered the carton of BBs to me. In their small blue box, the copperheads turned molten in the sun. NP said, “Let's break out the stuff,” and opened the box he'd brought along. It was filled with items scavenged from his basement, a porcelain vase, a bunch of drinking glasses with groovy '60s designs, a Nerf football with tooth marks in it, a bottle of red nail polish, and other junk chosen for its breakable qualities.

“Here, do the radio,” NP said. “Don't shoot!” He dug into the box and perched an old transistor radio on top of the Karmann Ghia. I took my time. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I held my shooting arm with my left hand, gunslinger style. Drew a bead.

The radio made a sad “Ting!” tottered in cheap suspense, and fell in the dirt. I'd hit the radio toward the top, knocking it off-balance. The words “Center of Gravity” occurred to me, secondhand track-and-field lingo from my vain attempt to place out of P.E. that spring through the glory of high jump. I couldn't throw a ball worth shit with my girly arm but somehow I'd hit the radio. NP and Clive whooped it up, slapping me on the back. Clive offered a terse “Good shooting,” like a drill instructor trying not to be too affirming. I grinned.

We positioned the other relics from NP's basement. The vase didn't explode, but each time it was hit, another jagged section fell off so we could see more of its insides. It finally collapsed on its own while we were reloading. I aimed at an old lampshade of rainbow-colored glass, and while I didn't re-create the swell marksmanship of my first attempt, I had to admit it was fun. Not the shooting itself, but the satisfaction of discovering a new way to kill a chunk of summer. It was like scraping out a little cave, making a new space in the hours to hide in for a time.

I placed the final victim on top of the car — the neon-green Nerf football. We'd saved it for last because nothing topped Nerf abuse. It was Randy's turn, but NP established dibs, as it was his Nerf ball. Which, looking back, was a rare case of one of us challenging Randy, since he had the car. It turned out NP couldn't hit it. Time after time. We'd been out there in the sun and were dehydrated. The rush, the novelty, was gone, and we all felt it.

Finally, NP gave up and handed his pistol to Clive. Randy said, “NP couldn't hit the broad side of a barn,” that hoary marksman's slur.

NP exploded. He had put-downs to spare, but now he grasped after his trademark finesse. “I could hit your fat fuckin' ass fine, you fuckin' Rerun from What's Happening —looking motherfucker.”

“What the fuck did you say?”

“You fuckin' biscuit-eatin' bitch!”

Randy's hours of picking off his old toys in the backyard finally found their true outlet. He stroked his rifle, clack clack, and started shooting the dirt at NP's feet. “Dance, nigger, dance!” he shouted, in Olde West saloon fashion, which was pretty fucked up, and the copperheads detonated in the ground in brief puffs. NP skipped from foot to foot, his bright white sneakers flashing like surrender flags. “Dance!” I don't think Randy was aiming at NP's feet, but I couldn't be sure. What if he missed? One of those BBs, depending on the FPS, would rip through the sneaker, definitely. “Dance!” How much deeper, I didn't know.

Clive and me shouted for Randy to knock it off. We were on either side of him, out of range, making it easier to confront him. Clive took a step toward Randy, hands out defensively. He was fast enough to rush him, but nevertheless. Randy glared at Clive, I swear he made a calculation, and then lowered the rifle with a “I was just playing.”

NP charged Randy, cursing like a motherfucker. Clive restrained him. “That's uncool,” I said, but no one chimed in with the other-shoe “That's so uncool.” The boys boiled off in their neutral corners and we left soon after, scratching the Bridgehampton excursion without discussion.

I HADN'T SEEN THATin a long time, that old fighting thing we used to do. We used to fight each other all the time out in Sag. We honed special knuckle punches, wherein the knuckle of the middle finger was cocked underneath by the thumb for lethal blows, according to our lore. Reenacted kung fu poses from Bruce Lee's too-brief oeuvre while wrinkling our faces into Muhammad Ali frowns and trying to remember the positions of key nerve clusters. There were places on the body known to aficionados, vulnerable to a single blow. And that meant me, too, for a time, despite previous descriptions of my temperament and personality. No, really. It's how we were raised.

I got my training early. One night in the fourth grade I was playing with my Star Wars action figures when I heard my father yell “Benjamin!” from the living room. I dropped Greedo immediately. I'd moved on from playing the Caucasian heroes of the Star Wars universe, preferring instead the alien and armored and masked. I'd been Luke Skywalker for a long time, the bright rays of the whole “great destiny” thing appealing to my overcast soul, and then Han Solo, his wisecracking ease in the face of hardship a kind of tutelage. A light saber for a blaster pistol. Then I decided that being them was tainted. I'd seen something on TV about it. One Sunday morning my parents were watching the black affairs show Like It Is , when Gil Noble welcomed a psychologist who railed against Barbies and the cult of the blonde. Gray waves swept through his Afro and he wore a green-and-yellow dashiki, a silver Black Power fist hanging on a chain around his neck. Swear to God. He described a study where a group of black children was told to “pick the pretty doll,” and when they passed over the brown princesses, time after time, what was there to say? “Why are our children being taught to hate themselves?” Barbie, Luke. Brainwashed by the Evil Empire.