Taxi Driver by Richard Elman

to touch the trigger. I asked if he knew of a good firing range in the neighborhood.
    “Oh, sure, here, take this card,” Andy said, handing me a small embossed white business card. “You go to this place and give them the card. They’ll charge you, but there won’t be any hassle.”
    Well, so then I was pulling out my roll and counting off seven brand new hundred-dollar bills, just like that, seven of them, seven big ones, and Andy watched me and seemed pleased with himself and with me and the light in the ceiling fixture flickered a little and turned waxy orange overhead and I heard him ask, “Say, you must have been in Vietnam. Couldn’t help but notice your jacket.”
    Well I was startled, managed to say, “Huh?”
    “Vietnam,” Andy said. “I saw it on your jacket, Travis. Say, where were you? Bet you got to handle a lot of weapons out there.”
    I just handed Andy that stack of bills and he counted them and crinked them and then counted them again. And then looked at me waiting for me to say more.
    “Yeah,” I finally said, “I was all around. One hospital and then the next.”
    “It’s hell out there, all right,” Andy said in his friendly way. “A real shitty war. I’ll say this, though: It’s bringing back a lot of fantastic guns. The market’s flooded. Colt automatics are all over.”
    He wet the tip of his finger and counted again. Then he pocketed my money and for a second, I felt the loss, heard myself saying in a loud voice, “They’d never get me to go back. Never. They’d have to shoot me first. I’d never go back alive.”
    Well then I realized I was just talking. Talking too much. I mean what was the point? I asked Andy if he had anything to carry the stuff in and he found me a little blue nylon gym bag from under the bed and dumped the stuff out and wrapped the guns into an old sheet and put them in the bag and zipped it up and handed it to me. All the while he was doing this, he seemed a little scared of me, I thought, like I said a little too much for him just then. The light seemed very bright in my eyes, and when I took the gun bag in my hand, there was a spark where my fingers touched the material.
    Andy looked away to close up his suitcases and lock them again and stick them back in the closet. I started out the door. “Wait a second, Travis,” he said, “I’ll walk you out.”

Travis Gets Organized
    From that day on, it was practically all dreams for me. Day after day of getting organized. Fixing up the apartment: charts, pictures, newspaper clippings, maps. There was this thing that I had to do and I had to do it right. It was my whole life, you might say.
    To compensate for my weakness from being wounded and the scars I did twenty, thirty, forty push-ups a day. Too much sitting around had ruined my body. I had to get in shape. I practiced Yoga too and resistance to pain and suffering. I would try to pass my arm through the flame of the gas burner without flinching a muscle, for instance, on the theory that total organization was necessary, and every muscle must be tight to be effective.
    At that range Andy told me about I always got down to business in a hurry, learned how to stand rock solid with that Magnum at an arm’s length squeezing off the rounds and holding the sight on target after each blasting discharge. My body would shudder and shake, my arm rippling back and I’d be sprung bolt upright from the recoil but I held my position, firing as quickly as I could round after round on the big Magnum.
    I also became proficient on the .38 Special which I could throw toward the target like a baseball and begin firing as soon as my arm was outstretched. The same with the little .25. I musta fired thousands of rounds. And got very good at hitting a human figure at various ranges. Whenever I came into that musty smelly place, the counter man would shiver and shake. He knew I meant business.
    Well it seemed, you know, that there was this . . . there was this thing that I