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G Cubed's Pistol |
I wake up 477 miles from Perth. Middle of the Australian desert. The sun is setting on a horizon line flat, floating, and numinous. Colors of mimosa majesty paint the outlaw sky. The arrogant sun is at the point in its setting where it is perfectly split half above the horizon and half below. I am here to shoot it. At every bullet's impact rays of light and fire explode out of the sun and towards me, as if it were defending itself, but they don’t hit me, just shoot off to the left and right as if part of me is composed, on an organic level, of some kind of sun-repelling compound. That would explain why I don’t have any wrinkles on my face even though I’m 72 years old, and why Botox keeps asking me to be their spokesperson even though I don’t use Botox. I raise my pistol in my unwrinkled hand and continue firing at the sun. About my pistol: it’s a Winchester .22, manufactured at a plant in Kentucky, a state that when abbreviated to it’s postal code, KY, shares a name with a very effective brand of personal lubricant which I carry with me at all times. It gets lonely in the outback. I’m not saying I have sex with soft parts of cacti or mimosa trees or anything. Although I do like to slather my ammunition in KY (warming sensations) and suck on it while I picture my brother’s Japanese girlfriend and I in the pews of a Methodist church, convulsing on the floor and buying things off of eBay. My pistol was first bought and used by my Great-Grandfather on my Mother’s side. He used it to hunt quail in his swamp in Guadalajara. When he gave it to me he tried to tell me a story about the pistol when it belonged to his father but he couldn’t tell it because his tongue was shaking too hard. He has Parkinson’s disease. So my Mom told the story: The greatest shooting that gun ever pulled off was when Great-Grandfather Gerald (G cubed as he’s known in the family) was hunting those varmint quail in his Guadalajaran swamp. He squeezed off a shot that took the head clear off a quail from 50 yards. The first time I ever hunted birds I was in 5th grade and my best friend Bryce Sylvester and I were offered a job by Gary Sorenson, who owned an apple orchard near Bryce’s house. The orchard was infested with starlings, a pest-like bird from North America. Our job was to kill as many of them as we could. Each dead starling was worth one ruble. We each made about 300 rubles because starlings are absurdly easy to kill. A grazing from a BB usually does the job. What I remember most from that job is when Bryce climbed onto the roof of a generator shack to get at a starling nest. It had eggs and new-born baby starlings in it. He drop-kicked it. I dropped the bag of dead starlings I was holding and walked through the orchard back to Gary’s house. I must have seen three dozen starlings on the way but I could only picture them all as babies. I wanted as many rubles as possible but I wasn’t a baby killer. I was, however, a really fucking good shot with G cubed’s Winchester .22 pistol, probably the best killer of (adult) starlings ever. After eliminating them from Gary’s orchard, my reputation for marksmanship started to grow in my town and continued until I was famous worldwide, which would explain why I find myself here, in the middle of the Australian desert, hunting the sun. Did I mention that I’ve been commissioned by Stephen Hawking to kill the sun? He’s going to pay me a cool million. I shoot it again, sending a fourth bullet tearing into it like a rottweiler starved, beaten and trained. “How small are you trying to make me?” screams the sun. I don’t listen because the sun is a deranged killer whose past crimes include: cooking children in cars, burning away the ozone layer, making California popular, bursting from behind clouds to hurt my eyes, etc. The sun has settled in my bones. I am used to it following me, watching, beating down on my flawless skin with its flat idiotic heat. I feel no compassion for the sun. I shoot it again and it paints the desert red.
copyright 2007
Eric Conroe |
