Parker and Damon wanted the BB gun. 

They sat in an indoor idleness, bored with Nintendo, bored with the limited channels of television they received over the antenna. The two brothers had a strong compulsion to shoot at glass bottles, molted shells of broken lawn tractors or mounds of discarded paint cans. 

Why did a BB gun exist if not for boys?

The problem was that the BB gun was in their parents’ closet, tucked in the corner next to a compound bow. The rifle was strictly off-limits, thanks to some less-than-careful shooting behind the house earlier that summer.

The two brothers appeared unoccupied, merely taking up space in the living room, waiting. Finally their father fell asleep in his plush, oversized reclining chair. The large, bearded man’s jaw fell agape, his throat croaking with gasping snores. An over-the-air television station blared through a worn speaker, loud enough to compensate for their father’s diminished hearing. Parker looked at Damon and their eyes met. Damon glanced at their dozing father and lightly nodded. They stood up and walked to their parents’ bedroom without a sound. Damon pulled at the closet door and it rolled on its track, grinding and creaking. They winced at the sound. Parker reached in and pulled out the gun, a beat up old Daisy air rifle handed down from some older cousin.

Casual and calm, the two boys left the house and entered a small shed to stock up on BBs from a container that looked like a small milk carton. They exited the shed to the front yard and were free, smiling and jogging in the warm grass. They circled around their family’s trailer and climbed the back hill into the woods. In the trees there was a pile of refuse that was essentially a private landfill but to the boys it was a playground. They saw it as an old city they could run to, gun in hand, to keep the peace and defend against all imaginary invaders.

Parker aggressively pumped the rifle and shot at one of the tractors. It was a deeply satisfying noise, the quick ping of metal on metal, a brief echo, a hollow reverberation. Parker handed the gun to Damon, who tried to top his older brother’s 10 pumps, fell short, and narrowly missed an old plastic water bottle attached to an old rabbit cage. 

In turns, the brothers unloaded their pellets all over the messy sanctuary. They challenged one another with new tests of aim. That mirror. That pine cone hanging just above the Suburban. That old plate in the brush pile — a nice little bullseye to practice on. By now they had started to develop decent aim with the little rifle and liked to think they were developing some level of skill with it.

“Ok, one more,” Damon said to Parker, who held the rifle against his shoulder. “Middle of the steering wheel, the blue lawn mower.”

Parker raised the rifle and aimed. He breathed out, knew he had the shot, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

“You forgot to pump, ya dummy!” Damon said.

“Ah, crap.”

Parker pumped just once in anger, extended the rifle out with one arm and pulled the trigger. The BB merely rolled out of the small barrel and hit the ground 10 feet in front of him. They laughed, then carried on shooting the rifle underpowered for a while. 

“I bet you could do just one pump and hit me and it wouldn’t even hurt,” Damon said. The sun was close to setting and the boys knew their time was nearly up.

“I’m not gonna do that,” Parker said.

“Oh c’mon. You saw it, it’s wicked slow. It’ll be funny.”

Parker stood in the reddening twilight, facing his brother. “Alright here it goes.” Parker pumped just once. He raised the rifle to Damon, aiming for the abdomen, to the side a bit. He thought he looked too aggressive staring down the sight, like he was hunting his little brother. He lowered the gun down half a foot, holding it more to the side of his shoulder. Then he shot Damon.

It hit him with a smack and he instantly drew in a sharp breath through the sides of his mouth, wincing and squinting. “Ah…crap. Ah…”

Parker could say nothing. His eyes grew, his jaw lowered. He dropped the stupid old BB gun on the ground and ran to his brother.

Damon looked down and pulled up his shirt, revealing a growing bruise. A welt.

“Is it bad?” Parker asked.

“I don’t think so. It felt like a really bad bee sting. There’s gonna be a mark.”

Parker felt like crying, if only for the proximity of disaster. One or two more pumps of the Daisy and skin would have been broken and there’s no hiding that little detail from the parents. That confession — Parker couldn’t think of that. “I…I’m sorry. That was a bad idea,” he said.

“No, I told you to do it. And it’s not so bad. It hurt worse than I thought it would, but it’s not so bad,” Damon said. He inhaled another swift breath of air again.

It was quickly turning dark. Their mother was still gone and surely father would still be sleeping in front of the loud television. The boys replaced the gun, then sat down in the living room.

The large man stirred. “Oh. Hey. Whatcha been up to?” he said when he saw his two sons.

“Just playin,’ ” Damon said. “Climbin’ trees.”

“Well, be careful,” their old man said, then closed his eyes again.

The brothers took a break after that. They didn’t speak of the gun for weeks. Damon had to let his nasty bruise heal and he was careful to make sure their parents never saw him without a shirt.

School started up again and the boys found themselves alone many afternoons. The shootings commenced. This time Parker and Damon knew not to shoot one another. 

Parker thought of the gun one afternoon when he and Damon were alone after school in the early autumn. The old man was at work until 5 or 6, unless there was one of his overtime shifts, then he’d be gone until late into the night. Their mother was strangely absent. She’d appear at the house only occasionally. She said she was “taking a break.” It was normal for Parker to function as a de facto babysitter in those years.

The brothers ran around outside, firing the air rifle at trees and stonewalls and the junk in the back woods. They practiced long-distance shots and felt a rush of fulfillment when they hit targets. For an eight-year old, Damon was quite good. It was the noise that they wanted most: the dull flick against the bark of a thick pine tree; the ringing bell of a strike on aluminum cans or rusted steel; the sharp crack of an old, discarded window pane breaking apart.

The Daisy resting on his shoulder, Parker marched through the forest with his brother behind. They hiked to an old stone foundation and shot at pottery shards sticking out of the mud. From that former homestead there was a barely discernible abandoned road that led up a hill. They followed it through, feeling grown and relishing a new confidence. This was their land and they weren’t scared. They stumbled upon a hunter’s tree stand, camouflaged well and mounted in a thick pine tree. It was a curious sight, since they knew that it didn’t belong to their father, who had given up hunting years ago. The boys couldn’t resist. Parker always did like climbing things, so up he went, using the crude ladder to get onto the platform above. Damon waited below, jealous.

“C’mon c’mon, I want a turn,” Damon pleaded. 

From the height, Parker surveyed the forest around him, bracing himself by wrapping a hand around a branch. The forest was starting to gain that rustic color of autumn. He was looking for his next challenge when he spotted the bird: a red cardinal, perched on a low branch of a tree, waiting, unmoving, but far. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to aim in its direction, wasn’t sure he was ready to feel something resembling a real hunt, but the longer it didn’t move from that branch, the more he wanted to prove to himself — and his brother — that he could hit it. Silent as he could manage on the old gun, he pumped. The more he pushed on that lever, the louder the action seemed to be. Parker was surprised that the cardinal never moved. At one point, its head turned, but it remained on the low branch. It didn’t call or sing, only turned its head once in a while as if it was looking for something.

The gun sufficiently primed and pressurized, Parker raised up and stared down the sight with his left eye. Then he waited. He waited for a noise to scare off the bird, waited for the little cardinal to see that some kid with a gun was threatening it. Parker waited, then knew he had his shot.

But he couldn’t do it. Finally, Damon got impatient.

“Do it. C’mon.”

Parker shook his head. He climbed back down from the stand. Damon grabbed the air rifle out of Parker’s hands and climbed in a hurry to the stand above. He stood confidently, raised the rifle up on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. 

The brothers watched the bird fall into the forest underbrush, a quick flash of red tumbling against the dark forest backdrop.

Oh God, Parker thought. He didn’t like the noise this time. It was almost inaudible, but he did hear the bird’s body fall into the brush and that was a more terrible noise than the smack against his brother’s belly. Nevertheless, Parker needed to go look at the bird, to simply see it. To see what his brother had done.

He strode quickly to the area where the bird was. He found the branch and looked down around his feet. He saw it. The cardinal lay on a bed of dry leaves, still alive, seeming to gasp. Its beak opened and closed slowly, its dark eyes searching. Parker had a sickening, haunting shock. He looked down at the bird, tears welling in his eyes. Behind him Damon appeared.

“Whoa,” Damon said.

Parker snatched the BB gun out of his brother’s hands. He pumped the gun and killed the bird with a single shot to its tiny head.