We made it to the pond. Off to the left stood a wooden pavilion, beneath which were scattered chairs and picnic tables and two artificial deer with bull’s-eyes on their sides meant for arrows. On the opposite side of the pond, to the right, was the wooden table on which we stacked our cans. It was a flimsy thing that had seen its share of errant bullets, and because of this, the table was splintered and largely held together with layers of duct tape. I walked to it, dumped the cans on the ground, and lined up five for Jason. I walked back and stood behind him. He was forty feet away. He unloaded the gun as though in a Western, snapping the hammer back as quickly as he could with his left hand while pulling the trigger with his right. He hit only two cans in the six shots fired. He then set them up for me.

“I don’t have to cock this after every shot, do I?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it does it itself.”

I pulled back the slide and a bullet clicked into the chamber. I held it up with both hands, looked down the rear sight, and lined the front sight on the middle can. I took a deep breath, held it, and slowly squeezed the trigger. I hadn’t anticipated how hard the kick would be, or how deafening the sound. The gun snapped back in my hands so hard it nearly hit me in the chin. I couldn’t hear anything other than the shot’s echo.

“Damn,” I said.

Jason had his face screwed up with his hands pressed tightly over his ears.

“Shit, that was loud,” he said. “I think I’m going to go deaf now.”

The can had shot straight in the air, which meant I had aimed too low. I set the gun on the ground and we walked to the table. The bullet, which had missed the can entirely, had split the front board in two, and half of the board beside it. There was nothing clean about the impact. The hollow-points were meant for destruction, as Jason’s dad had said, and the bullets held up their end of the bargain.

“Man, I pity the fool that breaks into your house in the middle of the night.”

“No kidding.”

We walked back and I picked up the gun. Jason shot a few more cans with his, and when it was my turn, I took aim at a large oak fifty yards away and unloaded the seven remaining bullets into the side of it. He had been right, there was no need to cock the gun after each shot. We walked to the tree. Each bullet had taken a grapefruit-size chunk out of its side, four or five inches deep.

“My dad will be pissed if he sees that.”

I put my arm around him as we headed back.