We went outside where my dad had set up the targets. I always liked to start with the cans. I loved the sound of the aluminum clanging as the entire pyramid came tumbling down with one shot.
“You watch Bryce, son. He’ll go first.”
The pistols lay out on a small picnic table. I chose Clark, my favorite. Joe and I had named all the guns. This one was named after Clark Kent.
“Shooting is an art,” my father was saying to Justin as I loaded the weapon. “Every man should know how to do it and to do it well.”
“Why, sir?” Justin asked.
“You might need to defend yourself someday. Or you might have to protect someone you love. Or you might need to buy someone’s silence.”
Buy someone’s silence? The words went in my ears and then out again. How could you buy silence? Silence wasn’t something you found at the store. You didn’t pick up a box of quiet at the market. If you could do that, my teacher would be buying it all the time. That made me laugh. I must have misheard because I was focused on getting ready to shoot.
In the background, more words from my father’s mouth.
“Money buys silence for a time, son, but a bullet buys it forever.”
I jerked out of my daydream. I sat at the table, my cup of coffee full in front of me.
Money buys silence for a time, son, but a bullet buys it forever.
Had my father actually said that to a scared little boy? To Justin? Had he ever said those words to Joe and me?
The whole weekend with Justin was still a blur, thanks to the drugs my father had undoubtedly given Joe and me. Maybe I’d made this up.
But the words were crisp and clear in my head.
I heard them in my father’s voice. That “I’m your father” tone he used when he wanted to make a point and didn’t want any argument.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying desperately to find the image in my mind. Outside the cabin. Target practice. Where was Joe? Had he heard my father? I scanned the picture in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t find Joe. Where had he gone? Probably went to take a piss in the woods. We were little boys, after all. We’d thought it great fun to pee anywhere we wanted.
Yes, I could still hear the words in my father’s authoritative voice. I wasn’t certain he’d ever said the same to me or to Joe. I’d ask Joe, but I already knew the answer.
He hadn’t said those words to us. Only Justin, as if in some kind of foreshadowing.
Justin wasn’t going home.
Justin would be silenced forever.
My father had already decided.
Chills skittered down my back and through my legs. What kind of maniac could say something like that to a nine-year-old kid, especially a kid who’d been bullied relentlessly?
Unless…
I gulped. Oh my God.
We’d found Justin’s body, but…
I squeezed my eyes closed harder, trying, trying, trying…
Justin was olive-skinned. Probably another reason why I’d thought he had a Spanish surname. I’d seen him go paler when we were showing him the guns, but when we found his body beside the river…
It wasn’t pale. He looked normal. His lips looked normal.
If he were dead, his lips would have been blue.
Was it possible?