Family bonding, for Momma, is when she’s not involved, and instead it’s me and a man who’s older. It’s why she always wanted Bill to help me build a tree house but didn’t want to help me herself.

I always hear her in the other room on the phone with Uncle Rod. “Talk to him? I think he just needs someone to talk to.”

My dad is gone, so family bonding amounts to weekend shooting trips with Uncle Rod. He leaves his cooler open so he can drink and shoot at the same time.

The Hapeville doctors were explicitly clear about me not having access to weapons or proximity to mind-altering substances. I don’t think Momma was listening. Maybe she doesn’t care.

I took the military-standard Mossberg, and Rod took the classic Remington. Tactical shotguns are fun to play with, even if our targets are just barrels and bottles. Why, if there are deer, rabbits, and fox in the forest, do we shoot at soda cans and beer? Seems futile not to make another animal our prey, cut it up, and eat it.

“I was worried when you were in the hospital last summer,” he told me. He put his gun down, sat on the log with his elbows on his knees. A real bonding moment. He took a graceless swig of beer and told me, “Depression ain’t permanent. Probably because your scumbag dad left you. You’ll get over it.”

Funny. Bill and Rod seemed like great friends when they were both here.

“You wanna know why I gave you that gun?” Rod said. “Why I brought you out here? It’s ’cause a man needs to feel that kind of power in his hands to know what he’s capable of. My uncle, your great-uncle Jimmy Beasley, thought there was something wrong with me because my earliest friends were girls. Told me I would have to get into sports. Told him the tetherball court was where the girls was, not the baseball court.” Rod laughed and looked sadly at the pine needles. “Just liked girls real young and wanted to be around ’em—no harm in that. Startin’ early. You had sex yet, Sawyer?”

I shook my head. I haven’t thought much of it, much less tried to have it. But I was so intrigued by his tangent. It made no sense.

He ran to set his empty Heineken on a log, baggy overalls threatening to slip off his skinny shoulders. He’s long in shape, but with a round belly. He tried to shoot the Heineken but kept missing, until finally, he screamed, “FUCK!”

Red-faced, he dropped the gun and dragged his fingers down his forehead. He was so furious with himself, and I understood why. I’d hate myself too if my whole personality was based on shooting guns and I couldn’t even do that right.

Jake