Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

“Your old hangout,” Dodge announced to Cade and Elias, climbing out of the cab of his truck. “You know you missed it.”

Elias looked over the scene before him. “Not really.”

Dodge chucked the package of paper targets onto a fallen log. Cade reached into a cooler and retrieved two beers, offering one to Elias, who held up his hand to decline it. Even Candy had come along; she stood at a card table removing sheets of plastic wrap from bowls of pasta and potato salad, scooping a spoon down into each one. Scooter looked expectant, standing on the sidelines squinting at us through his little glasses, arms crossed over his chest, displaying the oversize tattoo winding around his biceps. Beside him squatted Matthew, balancing his small weight against the butt of his rifle pressed against the ground. He had received the gun for his eighth birthday, Candy had told me, and he often shot birds and squirrels with it in the woods behind the house. According to Candy he did this only with Dodge’s supervision, but that seemed to be a flexible rule. He wore it slung on his back at every opportunity, regardless of whether his father was home.

The other men moved easily around the space, but Elias stood more or less where Cade had left him, holding the uncomfortable posture of a new kid approaching the high school cafeteria. I got him a cheeseburger from the grill and carried it over, offering it to him on a paper plate with a flourish and a friendly smile.

“Keep it for now,” he said. He looked around the perimeter of the clearing, eyes steady. “Know what, I don’t think this was a great idea. Why don’t you walk me back to the house.”

“No, you don’t,” called Dodge. “It’s a beautiful day and we’re about to get started. Leave now and you’ll miss all the fun.”

Somebody pulled back the slide on a handgun, and at the click of it Elias shook his head. “No. I don’t like this.”

“I’ll walk him back,” I called over to Dodge. “It’s not a problem.”

Cade planted a foot against the fallen log beside him. “Come over here and sit down, Eli. I’ll hang out with you until my turn comes up.”

Elias looked at Cade’s earnest face, then at the log, and brushed past me to where his brother stood. He eased himself down beside Cade, but at the metallic clunk of a magazine being locked into a rifle his arms twitched, and I watched as he pushed a hand back across his hair to make the sudden jerk of his muscles look natural.

Dodge was standing at one of the wooden posts wedged into the dirt, unwrapping the pack of targets. I sidled up to him, turning my back to Elias and Cade. “Hey, I think Elias ought to go home,” I said. “I think he’s too nervous for this.”

He picked up his staple gun and glanced at me as he fastened a target against a post. “I think he can be the judge of his own self. How about you stick to cutting the balls off the poultry and let Elias keep his for the time being.”

I breathed in deeply through my nose, not eager to create a scene that would make it obvious to Elias that I had been talking about him. As I retreated toward the grill, Dodge barked, “Jill. Cade. You two get to go first.”

He handed a .22 to me and another to Cade, then rattled off a list of rules that appeared to be for Matthew’s benefit. When I racked my rifle, Cade snickered and shook his head. “I’m so screwed,” he said. “You’re probably a hundred times better than me at this.”

“Probably.”

He grinned, and I focused on the target and sighted in. Candy laughed and said, “A pregnant lady shooting a rifle. If that isn’t the doggone funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Dodge gave the signal, and we both fired. When I glanced over at Elias his shoulders had relaxed, and he watched us with more engagement in his eyes than I had ever seen when he sat in front of the television. This turned out to be a good idea after all, I thought, lining up my second shot. Even Cade looked happy, and with only a few shots left to go, he said in a cheerful voice, “You are indeed kicking my ass.”

“I try.”

“I had no idea they’d trained you so well at militia camp.”

“It’s not militia camp, it’s homesteading camp.”

“Or so Dave claims. Looks to me like—”

A loud cry from Matthew snapped my attention to the sidelines. As I lowered the rifle I saw the boy hurrying toward his father with his arms extended, a black plastic zip tie tight around his wrists. “Now, what in the hell did you do to yourself?” demanded Dodge.

“I was just playing. I pulled it with my mouth.”

“Well, that’s not a good way to play, is it?”

He whipped out his buck knife from its case on his belt and set to work trying to convince his son that he wouldn’t cut off his hand at the wrist in the process of removing the tie. I rolled my eyes and unloaded my rifle. Beside me, Cade grinned and did the same. “Game over,” he said, and only then did I focus past the tussle between Matthew and Dodge to see Elias doubled over behind them. Candy was rubbing his back, her long hair falling forward as she leaned down to talk to him.

“Hey, I think Elias is sick,” I said.

I hung back while Cade rushed over. Even from a distance I could hear Elias’s gasping, stilted breathing, see him nodding rapidly at the soft things his siblings said to him. Sweat trickled down his temples in slow, broad droplets. “Matthew’s fine,” Cade was assuring him. “It wasn’t even all that tight.”

“I know. I know.”

“So don’t worry about it. Just breathe.”

Candy fluttered around him for a few more minutes, and finally Elias rose to stand, taking unsteady steps toward the path as Cade draped his arm around his brother’s shoulders. I watched them until they vanished beyond the trees.

“All right, enough of that drama,” shouted Dodge. He snapped the buck knife closed and patted his son on the back, sending him running back to the food table. “Who’s up next?”

“Apparently he just doesn’t like the sight of zip ties,” said Cade. We were speeding down the road toward Liberty Gorge, a spontaneous excursion Cade had announced as soon as I walked in the door from the gun-club get-together. I understood exactly why: tonight he couldn’t abide another family dinner, sitting across the table from Dodge as he offered a postgame analysis of the gathering. I’d offered to go with him, gladly.

“That’s a little strange,” I said.

“Sounded like he had to use them on people before, so it really bugged him to see his nephew bound up like that. I only ever saw him like that once before, over Christmas. We drove into town to see a movie, and once we got there he saw a piece of trash in the parking lot and freaked out. We ended up going back to the car and driving home.”

“Over a piece of trash? ”

He flipped his visor down against the lowering sun. “Yeah, well, apparently over there people hide IEDs under pieces of trash along the roadways. And he’d just gotten back, so I understood he was still in soldier mode and all that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think freaking out at trash is ‘soldier mode.’”

“Maybe not. I dunno. Makes more sense now why he never wants to leave the house, though. I figured he was over all that.” We approached a turnoff marked by a mailbox—a simple dirt path that led through a field. “You know what, let’s go to the quarry. I’ve been wanting to show it to you anyway.”

I braced myself for the sharp turn. “So are you going to talk to him about going back to the doctor now?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. That’s got to be embarrassing, what happened to him today. If it was me, I wouldn’t want to be going around like that.” He parked on the scrubby grass beneath a tree. “This is it. Our old parking spot and everything. Hasn’t changed a bit, except there’s no water. Which was kind of the whole point.”