caused him to hike the bench up extra high in his grasp to show “his woman” how much control over the bench he really had.
After the cans were all set up, the three friends took turns teaching Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, and Pepsi a lesson…the cans, that is. Jayson was clearly the least talented in the bunch when it came to shooting (or anything, really), but neither Lilith nor Tyler missed one shot. They were surgical with that air rifle. Showing off a little, Tyler even called one of his shots and put a bb right through the center of the “O” in “Cola.”
“Whoa! Holy shit! Nice shot, Ty!” Lilith exclaimed, smacking him on the shoulder. Jayson said nothing and just stewed in his beet-red and less talented jealousy.
Not only did Tyler love the competitive spirit that Lilith possessed, but he found a woman holding a fire-arm, albeit one less lethal than a rifle that fired actual bullets, to be very attractive…very attractive indeed. Holding the Sure-Fire air rifle, Lilith reminded him of the women from the ads that he loved in the SHOOTER’S DIGEST magazines that his father had kept in the bathroom. He had hoped that his father would keep renewing his membership to the NRA, which promised with it a free two-year subscription to SHOOTER’S DIGEST, at least until he was old enough to find another intended use for those ads with the swimsuit models donning a Colt M4 5.56 caliber assault rifle. It is a sin, I know, but find me a human who doesn’t sin and I will show you how I am able to lift a building with one finger.
The sun was starting to fall lower and lower in the sky, not unnoticed by Tyler and his friends. This also meant that the first of Tyler’s parents, his mother, would soon be home. They had been outside shooting cans for the better part of 45 minutes, and the backyard lawn near the fence looked like a scrap-metal yard where the spent up soft drink cans went to die. If inanimate objects could experience death, it had most certainly occurred in Tyler Swanson’s backyard. The cans would have remained motionless had it not been for the petering day’s gentle breeze which made the green lawn (which was a few days overdue for a cut) sway back and forth like sea-plants gliding with a fast underwater current. Between Tyler, Lilith and Jayson, (well, not really Jayson,) they must’ve obliterated better than fifty soda cans.
The three friends began to pick up the bb riddled soda cans, careful not to cut themselves on the very sharp and jagged edges which had developed where the bbs exit had been torn. When the final can had been picked up and placed back into the leaf bag, all ready for Herman the Hobo, Lilith spotted something moving along the fence.
“Hey guys; look at that,” Lilith said with a dash of intrigue.
The boys looked to where she was pointing, which was about twenty yards away at the fence on the other side of Tyler’s backyard.
“So what? It’s a squirrel,” Jayson said.
“No shit, it’s a squirrel, dummy. I know that it’s a squirrel. See if you can hit it Ty,” Lilith challenged.
“Hit it? What do you mean?” Tyler asked although he knew exactly what she had meant and his stomach had free-fallen what had felt like ten stories. Tyler wanted absolutely no part of hurting a living creature, big or small. His father had spoken fondly, on many occasions, of the days when he would start to take Tyler hunting with him and when he would shoot his first buck. He would always smile and nod at his father when he spoke fondly of these not-so-distant future times, but the truth was that he died inside with the catch-22 that waited for him. On one hand he didn’t want to disappoint his father with whom he loved to bond. His father saw his hobby of hunting as THE apparent activity that epitomized father-son bonding and had for thousands of years, and would continue to do so long after they were both dead and buried.
Conversely, he felt that if he