The Shooting by James Boice Page A

continues. At the hospital they know who he is, the nurse takes him by the hand without asking him any questions, as though she has been waiting for him. People waiting in chairs holding wads of bandages to bleeding bodies call out in protest but she ignores them, leads him back through a winding hallway. On the way Lee looks over a doorway and his own name is there: THE LEE FISHER WING . They give him medicine and a man wearing a tie drives him home. It is night and he is in bed when he hears his father come home. He listens to him going through drawers in the kitchen, pulling things out, putting things away. Glasses clink. He is talking to someone. Lee thinks he hears another voice, a man’s. He holds his breath and listens very intently but does not hear the other voice again. Lee gets out of bed, stands against his closed door, listening, his heart beating very hard, lungs burning from holding his breath. Then it is quiet. Lee slips out of his bedroom, goes down the long hall, squats at the top of the stairs. A dim orange light Lee has never seen emanates from down there. His father’s long shadow is cast upon the wall. Lee hears the other voice again.
    His father appears at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him as though suspecting he would find him there. —What are you doing, Lee?
    â€”Nothing.
    â€”Go to bed.
    â€”Who’s here?
    â€”No one.
    â€”I heard someone.
    â€”No one’s here.
    â€”I heard a man.
    â€”There’s no man. Go to bed.
    Lee does as he is told. In the morning his face is almost back to its normal size and he sucks in gob after gob of air. Two days after that,as he keeps taking the medicine in secret, hiding it from his father under his mattress, the infection clears.
    â€”Look at that, his father says. —Just like I told you it would.
    Lee finds him in his bedroom pulling everything from the closets. A pile of clothing rises in the center of the room, all his cowboy hats and fringe vests and leather chaps and boots and dungarees and Levi’s. He tosses another armload of clothing atop the mound and mops a swath of sweat from his face with his palm. He is not a cowboy anymore. Now he is a soldier.
    Soldiers train. They join with others to form armies. They drill on the new course built where the farm was by a former drill sergeant who was responsible for the training courses on Parris Island, where they trained US Marines for battle in Vietnam.
    Soldiers go to church. They bring along their son, to be a good example to him. They manage their son’s activities and diet. As virtue is measured in indirect proportion to hair length, they shave their head, they shave their son’s head.
    Strange new men are around now, each with a rank. They wear camouflage. They shoot. After days of wearing camouflage and shooting, they sit around bonfires drinking beer in the shadows.
    â€”These are the most dangerous times in our history, the man called the General says. —Nothing less than the future of our country, the lives of our people, nothing less than our very freedom is at stake. Never in any time since our Founding Fathers waged war for this great free nation have our fundamental rights been under attack like they are now, at this very moment. We are living in crucial times, men. Our families, our beloved nation, the futures of our children and grandchildren are depending on you. Only you stand between freedom and tyranny. Wicked elements are at work in America today. Jackbooted government thugs are kicking down our doors as we speak. They will seize our homes, our arms, make off with our women, our children. All governments are bent toward tyranny. Ours is no exception. The ones you must be most wary of are the ones who come to you under the guise of democracy. Do not be fooled—they want to take our country from us.
    Lee feels despair and hatred for these people, the ones who want to take his home and his country from him.
    â€”There is no