14 - shooting with Frankie

Frankie never required much effort. He was my best friend for fifty years until he got lung cancer and died. If you wanted to talk he would listen. If you didn’t want to talk he would talk and listening was usually optional. That’s how it was walking down the path behind his Aunt Charlotte’s farm. He talked and I nodded and muttered a few “um hms”.

The path was an old farm road that went generally downhill toward the river and a field which had not been cultivated since before Frankie’s Uncle Charlie died. Pines and oaks grew in close only allowing patches of light to shine through. The red clay was crusty, hard on the surface and loose just below. We walked single file to one side of the road; a gulley had been washed out on the other side. I tried to stay in Frankie’s footprints. Wearing the Luger now in the shoulder holster under a short sleeve shirt I remembered walking with a gun down another trail, following another person, and being followed. Depending on how you figured the time, it was either 45 years in the past or seven years in the future.

Frankie carried a paper bag filled with tin cans and bottles which rattled and clanked.

“Hamrick!”

Frankie was trying to tell me something. I said, “Yeah, sorry.”

“I been trying to ask you a question.”

“What’s that?”

We had left the farm road and were traversing through the woods. The way was easy. The ground was covered in leaves and there wasn’t much undergrowth. The trees were large and old; maybe part of the original forest. We would have been easy targets. I reached up and touched the butt of the Luger.

“School. What are you going to do this fall? Are you still going to switch to Carolina?”

“My mother asked me the same thing this morning. I don’t know.“ I hesitated. “Maybe I’ll stay at State.”

“I thought you were having trouble, couldn’t get the math?”

“Well that’s right. But maybe I could figure it out. What about you?”

We had arrived at the washed out bank which served as a back stop. It was like a small amphitheater. Frankie walked over to a log that had fallen in front and reaching into his bag, carefully placed the bottles and cans, half for him, half for me.

“I guess I’ll stick with economics.” He looked at me, “You want to start out at 25 feet then move back to 50?”

“Sure.”

Heel and toe, he paced 25 steps from the log. “Me first, the targets on the left?”

“Be my guest.”

Reaching into the hip pocket of his jeans, he pulled out the Smith and Wesson .38 which he had inherited when Uncle Charlie died. Holding the pistol straight out, like a target shooter, he took off the safety, thumbed the hammer and fired. The gun went boom and the clear glass jar on the far left exploded. I said, in a louder voice, “Good shot.”

He smiled and fired again, causing a tin soup can to go flying off. He hit three of the next four targets, missing the last one probably because he was shooting too fast.

Gesturing with the empty pistol, he said, “Your turn.”

I pulled the Luger from my shoulder holster, jerked the slide back and quickly popped off eight rounds. I hit all of my targets, the sounds of shattering glass mixing with the pistol’s crack. Afterward, neither of us said anything for a moment. The noises reverberated in the confined space.

Frankie said, “Holy shit.” He rarely cursed. “How did… where did that come from?”

Already beginning to stuff squat bullets back intro the Luger’s clip, which I did not remember removing, I said, quite honestly, “I don’t know. The rules don’t seem to apply to me anymore.”

Frankie looked at me oddly.