Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Professor Anderson and his wife had been the moving force behind an initiative to outlaw the discharge of firearms within the boundaries of East Ilford Township. The initiative had been defeated, because East Ilford was not that kind of town.

“I think I’ll go over by the river,” Elliot said. He said it only to have something to say, to fill the silence before Anderson spoke again. He was afraid of what Anderson might say to him and of what might happen.

“You know,” Anderson said, “that’s all bird sanctuary over there now.”

“Sure,” Elliot agreed.

Outfitted as he was, the professor attracted Elliot’s anger in an elemental manner. The mask made him appear a kind of doll, a kachina figure or a marionette. His eyes and mouth, all on their own, were disagreeable.

Elliott began to wonder if Anderson could smell the whiskey on his breath. He pushed the little red bull’s-eye safety button on his gun to Off.

“Seriously,” Anderson said, “I’m always having to run hunters out of there. Some people don’t understand the word ‘posted.’”

“I would never do that,” Elliot said, “I would be afraid.”

Anderson nodded his head. He seemed to be laughing. “Would you?” he asked Elliot merrily.

In imagination, Elliot rested the tip of his shotgun barrel against Anderson’s smiling teeth. If he fired a load of deer shot into them, he thought, they might make a noise like broken china. “Yes,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t know who they were or where they’d been. They might resent my being alive. Telling them where they could shoot and where not.”

Anderson’s teeth remained in place. “That’s pretty strange,” he said. “I mean, to talk about resenting someone for being alive.”

“It’s all relative,” Elliot said. “They might think, ‘Why should he be alive when some brother of mine isn’t?’ Or they might think, ‘Why should he be alive when I’m not?’”

“Oh,” Anderson said.

“You see?” Elliot said. Facing Anderson, he took a long step backward. “All relative.”

“Yes,” Anderson said.

“That’s so often true, isn’t it?” Elliot asked. “Values are often relative.”

“Yes,” Anderson said. Elliot was relieved to see that he had stopped smiling.

“I’ve hardly slept, you know,” Elliot told Professor Anderson. “Hardly at all. All night. I’ve been drinking.”

“Oh,” Anderson said. He licked his lips in the mouth of the mask. “You should get some rest.”

“You’re right,” Elliot said.

“Well,” Anderson said, “got to go now.”

Elliot thought he sounded a little thick in the tongue. A little slow in the jaw.

“It’s a nice day,” Elliot said, wanting now to be agreeable.

“It’s great,” Anderson said, shuffling on his skis.

“Have a nice day,” Elliot said.

“Yes,” Anderson said, and pushed off.

Elliot rested the shotgun across his shoulders and watched Anderson withdraw through the frozen swamp. It was in fact a nice day, but Elliot took no comfort in the weather. He missed night and the falling snow.

As he walked back toward his house, he realized that now there would be whole days to get through, running before the antic energy of whiskey. The whiskey would drive him until he dropped. He shook his head in regret. “It’s a revolution,” he said aloud. He imagined himself talking to his wife.

Getting drunk was an insurrection, a revolution — a bad one. There would be outsize bogus emotions. There would be petty moral blackmail and cheap remorse. He had said dreadful things to his wife. He had bullied Anderson with his violence and unhappiness, and Anderson would not forgive him. There would be damn little justice and no mercy.

Nearly to the house, he was startled by the desperate feathered drumming of a pheasant’s rush. He froze, and out of instinct brought the gun up in the direction of the sound. When he saw the bird break from its cover and take wing, he tracked it, took a breath, and fired once. The bird was a little flash of opulent color against the bright-blue sky. Elliot felt himself flying for a moment. The shot missed.

Lowering the gun, he remembered the deer shells he had loaded. A hit with the concentrated shot would have pulverized the bird, and he was glad he had missed. He wished no harm to any creature. Then he thought of himself wishing no harm to any creature and began to feel fond and sorry for himself. As soon as he grew aware of the emotion he was indulging, he suppressed it. Pissing and moaning, mourning and weeping, that was the nature of the drug.

The shot echoed from the distant hills. Smoke hung in the air. He turned and looked behind him and saw, far away across the pasture, the tiny blue-and-red figure of Professor Anderson motionless against the snow. Then Elliot turned again toward his house and took a few labored steps and looked up to see his wife at the bedroom window. She stood perfectly still, and the morning sun lit her nakedness. He stopped where he was. She had heard the shot and run to the window. What had she thought to see? Burnt rags and blood on the snow. How relieved was she now? How disappointed?

Elliot thought he could feel his wife trembling at the window. She was hugging herself. Her hands clasped her shoulders. Elliot took his snow goggles off and shaded his eyes with his hand. He stood in the field staring.

The length of the gun was between them, he thought. Somehow she had got out in front of it, to the wrong side of the wire. If he looked long enough he would find everything out there. He would find himself down the sight.

How beautiful she is, he thought. The effect was striking. The window was so clear because he had washed it himself, with vinegar. At the best of times he was a difficult, fussy man.

Elliot began to hope for forgiveness. He leaned the shotgun on his forearm and raised his left hand and waved to her. Show a hand, he thought. Please just show a hand.

He was cold, but it had got light. He wanted no more than the gesture. It seemed to him that he could build another day on it. Another day was all you needed. He raised his hand higher and waited.

DAVID WONG LOUIE was born in 1954 and raised in New York. His parents were immigrants from China, his father entering under an assumed name and his mother, by way of Ellis Island, also claiming another’s identity. They spoke only Cantonese, so that was his language too, until TV and kindergarten stole him. He earned a BA at Vassar and an MFA at Iowa and taught for many years at multiple schools before settling at UCLA, where he has worked for more than two decades.

Louie is the author of the novel The Barbarians Are Coming and the short story collection Pangs of Love , which won the Los Angeles Times Book Review First Fiction Award and the Ploughshares First Fiction Book Award and was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Voice Literary Supplement Favorite. Louie’s work shares an interest in identity, alienation — in the psychic dislocation at the intersection of race, class, desire, and obligation. His fiction is widely taught and anthologized. Among other honors he was awarded Lannan Writing Fellowship and a Lannan residency. He lives in Venice, California, with his wife and daughter.

★

MRS. CHOW HEARD the widow. She tried reading faster but kept stumbling over the same lines. She thought perhaps she was misreading them: “There comes, then, finally, the prospect of atomic war. If the war is ever to be carried to China, common sense tells us only atomic weapons could promise maximum loss with minimum damage.”