FROM THE BRUSH, A FRANTIC RUSTLING

Penny Leong is eight years old and home by herself. At the kitchen table, she is playing at organizing a large extended family of toys, arranging them with the strong toys along a perimeter surrounding the gentle ones within it. As she plays, a loud knock from the front door startles her. She freezes, stopping in midmotion. She then slowly stretches out her hands across the table, hovering over the toys like a protective mother blanketing her children from harm. Just out of her reach is a Yellow Power Ranger action figure. The Yellow Ranger stands still. It is stationed on the furthest edge of the table, the strongest of Penny’s toys.

The Yellow Ranger’s form is feminine like a Barbie doll. It is dressed in a comic book superhero costume. It wears a mask. It holds a laser rifle. It is missing one leg. It is standing on its one remaining leg.

It starts to teeter. Penny shushes the Ranger.

“Stay still.”

But it falls, and Penny gasps. Then, another knock at the door. Another gasp. Penny stumbles to her feet and then is still again. She places both hands over her mouth, and the knocking stops. She takes a deep breath and decides that, despite being scared, she should investigate. She exhales and makes her way to the front door, stepping only on the floor-boards that don’t squeak. At the door, she looks through the scratched and foggy peephole. The features of the person on the other side are blurred, but Penny can tell who it is by his bulk and his slouch.

It’s Bobby. Bobby is her mother’s ex-husband. Bobby is Penny’s ex-stepfather.

Bobby says, “Lucky, I know you’re there. I can see you through the peephole.”

She thinks that he probably can’t see her through the peephole, but she doesn’t know this for certain. She ducks down. She puts her hands on the doorknob, not yet turning it. Bobby knocks again.

“Come on, girl. It’s Bobby Baba. Open up.”

“You’re not my baba.”

“Oh, come on.”

Bobby laughs and holds up a large rectangular case.

He says, “Look here. I got something. I promise, you’re gonna like it.”

Penny looks again through the scope of the peephole. One eye closed. One eye open. She focuses between the scratchy lenses to find a small clear window. She looks at the case. It’s long and black with chrome trim. On the front is a small brass plate bolted onto the black plastic. The plate has a lightning bolt on it. It looks like the Power Rangers logo. Penny knows Bobby used to be a kind of a ranger. He could have been a Power Ranger. But that’s stupid. But still, maybe.

She turns the knob slightly. Bobby pushes through as soon as there’s give in the door. He does this with authority, but not violence. Penny is moved aside. Bobby walks in. As he passes, he pats her on the head.

“There we are, how’s my Lucky Penny, huh?”

Her hair is messy, tied into two uneven pigtails. Bobby grabs one pigtail and tugs on it. Penny relaxes a little bit, remembering how kind he could sometimes be. He puts down the long, rectangular case and squats next to her. He looks at her and opens his arms. She hugs him. His shirt smells like dirt and cigarettes. His skin smells like beer.

Bobby lets Penny go and heads into the kitchen. He picks up a bowl of cereal. It is one of three that Penny has rationed for the day. He scoops two spoonfuls into his mouth. It crunches as he chews. Still holding the bowl, he rummages through the refrigerator. He complains that there isn’t anything decent to drink, and then returns with a mostly empty two-liter bottle of store-brand diet cola and a mostly full bottle of Thomas Araby’s London Dry Gin. The gin is kept in the freezer. It has frost on its label.

Bobby sits down at the dining table. He pushes aside Penny’s toys. He puts the bottles and a plastic tumbler down next to the Yellow Ranger. Bobby picks the Ranger up, running his thumb over the female anatomy of the plastic figure. A bolt of protectiveness jolts Penny. She wants to rescue the toy. She wants to snatch the figure out of Bobby’s hand. She doesn’t do it. She is scared to provoke him. He looks up from the toy. He looks at Penny. He smiles, putting the figure down, carefully bending it at its one remaining knee, adjusting it so that it balances on its one remaining foot. He then fixes himself a gin and coke. He takes a sip.

“Bleh, tastes like shit.”

He drinks the rest and then pours himself another.

Penny says, “Mama’ll be back soon.”

Bobby bobs his head in small circles. He starts talking in a sing-song voice.

“I don’t think so, no, no, no. No, I don’t think so.”

Bobby grins and raises his eyebrows.

“Yes, she will,” says Penny. “She’ll be back very, very soon.”

“Quit. No secrets between us. Or maybe she’s got secrets from you. But Bobby Baba knows all.”

Penny purses her lips, angry that she doesn’t know how to respond to this, and afraid that it’s true.

Bobby says, “Besides, I am not here for your mom. I am here for you.”

He taps his forefinger on the table as he says this last part. I. Tap. Am. Tap. Here. Tap. For you. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Penny watches her toys jostle on the table with each tap, jarred as if caught in a tiny earthquake. At the last tap, the Yellow Ranger falls over. Penny reaches out and grabs it. As she clutches the toy, Bobby reaches out and holds tight to Penny’s hand.

He says, “You still playing with dolls?”

As he holds her hand, Penny can feel the Yellow Ranger’s pointy foot dig into her palm. Bobby shakes his head as if to clear his eyesight and then nods toward the case.

“I think it’s time to grow up. Put aside childish things.”

Bobby takes another moment to focus and then gets up to retrieve the case. He yanks it off the ground, flinging it through the air and then uses it to swipe everything off the table. The bottles, his cup, and all of Penny’s toys. Everything lands onto the kitchen floor with a clatter. Bobby laughs and fumbles with the combinations on the case latches. He turns the wheels over and over. Penny is tentative, but she leans forward. She’s still holding her toy in one hand, but places the other on Bobby’s shoulder. He undoes that last latch. He throws up the case and says, “Voila!”

Penny crowds in, smushed into Bobby’s side. She drops the action figure and places both hands on the edge of the case. Her eyes are open wide and her jaw slackens. Inside the case, surrounded by fitted green velvet, is a long, black rifle.

Penny nods and looks at Bobby.

“Wow.”

“You like it,” says Bobby. “Course you do.”

“Mama won’t like it.”

“Well good thing she’s not here then.”

Penny takes a small step backwards, away from the rifle.

“Where did you get this?”

“Bought it.”

Penny knows that this shouldn’t be true. She knows Bobby isn’t allowed to do certain things, like work in the casino or reenlist, or buy a gun.

He takes the rifle out. He now seems much more sober. His movements seem controlled and deliberate. He holds the rifle with his right hand, his palm on the grip, his forefinger resting on the outer rim of the trigger guard. Penny stares at the rifle. She takes in its insistent simplicity, so different from her toy guns that are ornamented with endless buttons and switches, lights and speakers, plugs and attachments. Bobby’s rifle is smooth and clean and singular in purpose.

Bobby holds it out to her.

“Go on, girl. Take it. It’s fine. It’s not loaded.”

She takes the rifle with both hands. From stock to barrel, it is just a tad shorter than she is. She seems to have a general sense of how to carry the rifle. She holds it with great balance, as if it is an extension of her arm. Bobby nudges her. She pulls the rifle up, resting the stock in the crook of her shoulder. Bobby starts to help her position it, but then stops.

“You done this before, Lucky?”

The rifle is light in her arms, far lighter than she would ever have imagined a real gun would weigh. She stares down the sight, closing one eye. Bobby places a hand on her shoulder.

“Both eyes open,” he says. “You need to see everything.”

Penny opens both eyes and adjusts her vision. She lines up the rear sight to the front. She aims at a stack of mail on the counter top and, in her imagination, fires the rifle. Pow. She aims across the living room at the record player. Pow. She aims at her music bag. Pow. Her mother’s high-heeled cowboy boots. Pow. The upright fan. Pow. The dusty faux flowers. Pow. The cracked frame with the old picture of Bobby and her mother standing on the steps of a worn brick building, Bobby thin with crew-cut hair and a heather-gray Army of One T-shirt, Penny’s mom young and clear-eyed and ready to make a difference in the world, the two of them still so dumb to the scales of fate and consequence.

Penny pulls the trigger. It’s soft and doesn’t click. But in her head, Pow. Pow. Pow.

Penny lowers the rifle and looks at Bobby.

Bobby says, “Better days, right, Lucky?”

He walks across the room and takes the picture off the wall. He opens the back of the frame and takes the photograph out, looking at it for what seems like a long time before easing it into his jacket pocket. He finishes the rest of his drink and claps his hands together.

“Get your coat,” he says. “Let’s go shoot.”

Bobby has classical music on in his truck, the kind he always liked, the slow sad kind. He hums along as he drives out, out a long way. They go through the city and up into the mountains. They pass at least one shooting range on the way. Penny can see the sign from the freeway. She asks why they don’t go there, but Bobby brushes it off as: regulations. She asks him what that means. He says to her, “Rules, baby. Them’s the rules.”

They get into the winding switchbacks of the mountains. Bobby rolls down the windows. The air is cold and bites at the insides of Penny’s nose. She takes a breath as big as she can. She exhales unevenly. She’s afraid. She doesn’t like this feeling of being afraid. It’s confusing. She’s not sure what she’s afraid of. She is afraid of Bobby. But she’s also glad to be with him. She’s afraid of her mother. She’s afraid that her mother will be angry with her when she finds out she went with Bobby. She’s also afraid her mother will be sad and that Penny will feel like that is her fault, that her mother’s sadness is her fault. She closes her eyes. The sadness seeps into her. She doesn’t resist. Her head feels heavy. She lays her head down in Bobby’s lap. As she starts to fall asleep she says in a voice that is not audible in the noisy cab of the truck, “Night night, Baba.” Bobby says, “Wakey, wakey. We’re here.”

Penny is already half-awake when she hears his voice. She pops up and flings open the door to Bobby’s pickup truck. They’re parked in a dirt clearing. There aren’t any other cars. There are tall pine trees and large boulders in the distance. Closer is a fallen tree trunk. Bobby is opening the gun case and taking out the rifle. He removes the bolt from the rifle and looks down the bore and then through the open sights and then through the bore and then the sights again. He makes adjustments in between views. He does this several times and then reinstalls the bolt and places the rifle back in the open case. He then begins filling the cartridge with rounds of .243. Bobby explains this caliber is light enough for a child to handle, but strong enough to bring down a deer with a single shot. An important feature, he insists, so that the wounded animal doesn’t run off into the woods to bleed out over the course of hours, or worse, to be maimed but not killed, becoming some kind of aberration, ostracized, starving and alone.

“Decisive,” he says.

There’s a brightness in his voice.

“Like flipping a switch. No questions. No take-backs. No negotiations. No hesitations, consultations, or explanations. Just wham, bam, thank you ma’am.”

Bobby seems sober now, as if the drive and the fresh air rejuvenated him. But he’s brought the bottle of Araby’s. It protrudes from his back pocket. Bobby inserts the cartridge and shoulders the rifle. He takes a plastic garbage bag full of recyclables. Penny recognizes the bag from the apartment. Bobby walks into the distance, toward the fallen pine tree. There he arranges cans and bottles along the top of it. He puts up five targets, one for each round in the magazine. He drops the bag with the remaining targets. He walks back to Penny with a spring in his step, holding the rifle out in front of him like a dance partner.

Penny remembers Bobby arguing with her mother about guns. There had been a shooting three cities over. Bobby had been drunk and in tears watching the television reports of children being gunned down in a cafeteria. He’d said that those poor little bastards hadn’t had a chance. Bobby wanted to buy a gun in case anything like that happened around them. Her mother said it wasn’t a good idea. Bobby said they needed protection. He said the world was gone to shit. Her mother called him a drunk and an idiot. Bobby warned her to not antagonize him. She said she wasn’t. Bobby said she was, she always was.

Penny had then changed the television channel. She didn’t know why she changed the channel, but she knew right away that she should not have. Bobby yelled at her because wasn’t it obvious that he was still watching that. She tried to change it back, but the button didn’t work. Bobby kicked a hole in the wall. Penny’s mother yelled at Bobby to leave Penny alone. Bobby knocked her mother down. Penny ran and hid in her room, in the dark, in the corner of her closet. She thought about the kids who’d been shot.

“Okay,” says Bobby. “This is twenty-five yards.”

He scrapes the ground with the heel of his shoe.

“Follow me.”

Penny follows him to the next marker.

He says, “Now, this is fifteen.”

Then to the next.

“This is ten.”

With that, Bobby pivots on his heel, pulling the rifle up to his shoulder as he does. He lands on both feet, turning to face the targets. He fires in one fluid motion. The rifle cracks with a loud pop. Penny covers her ears and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she sees Bobby. He is frowning.

“Shit. Missed.”

He takes the rifle up again. He steadies himself. He takes his time to line up this next shot. Penny can hear him breathing. He inhales a gulp of air. He exhales. He pulls the trigger. He misses again. He looks as if he’s surprised.

“Holy fuck, man. Hold on. One more.”

He tries again. He misses again. He props the rifle against his leg and takes the bottle of Araby’s from his pants pocket. He uncorks it and takes a steady sip. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve. As he puts the bottle back, he picks up the rifle and hands it to Penny.

“Whattaya say, Lucky? Give it a shot?”

Penny takes the rifle. She lowers it, barrel pointing to the ground. She places her right hand on the small metal ball of the bolt, lifts it and pulls a round into the chamber. She brings the rifle back up, up to the crook of her shoulder, like she did at the apartment. She does this with quiet seriousness. Bobby doesn’t need to warn her not to point that thing at him or to keep her finger off the trigger until she’s ready to shoot. It’s as if she knows these things already. He helps her with her stance. With a couple of taps on her feet, she balances her weight and levels the rifle steady, its twenty-two-inch barrel parallel with the Earth. He stands behind her. He tells her to brace herself against him. She leans on his hip.

“Try to stay loose,” he tells her. “This shit’s gonna kick.”

Penny fixes her eyes on the fallen trunk. She thinks about which target she wants to shoot. Roving from can to bottle to another can. She imagines the cans and bottles as the man who had shot up that school. She imagines him lurking in the distance, advancing on her and the other children. She imagines him close, very close, at the front doors. He doesn’t see her, but she sees him. She looks into the face of her adversary. There you are. She takes in an even breath and pulls the trigger. There’s a flash in her retina, a hard pop into her shoulder. A tin can explodes.

“Holy shit!” says Bobby. “Oh my God, Lucky, you did it! Try again!”

Penny doesn’t answer to Bobby’s praise. She cocks the rifle and braces herself against his leg again. She aims and fires. The wine bottle shatters. Bobby taps her shoulder and motions for the rifle. She gives it to Bobby. He reloads the cartridge. He does this quickly. He hands the rifle back to her.

“Okay, baby girl. Back up to the fifteen.”

She backs up. He follows but stands a bit away.

“Now, you don’t need me. Go on. Do it.”

She does. She fires. Her small frame adapts quickly and absorbs the kick without fanfare. Over on the log, the soda can is knocked off. She continues: a blue bottle, a row of three empty beer cans. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bobby applauds after each. When they’re all knocked off, he hurries back to the log and puts more targets up. She hits them all. He reloads the rifle and again sets up more targets. He calls out each, left, middle, left, right, last one. She hits each, on demand, as called. They move back to the twenty-five-yard mark. He calls out the targets again. She hits them all again.

Bobby is beside himself.

“A natural! You are a bona fide natural! Goddammit, I gotta take your ass to the county fair.”

He continues to drink from the bottle of Araby’s, but it still looks halfway full. He laughs and hugs Penny. She doesn’t hug him back. She can feel the ache in her shoulder and the fatigue in her arms and her legs. But she doesn’t want to stop.

Bobby loses his balance. He falls to the ground. He pulls Penny down next to him. He says, “Why, you,” and tickles her. She’s not ticklish. He stops. They lie on their sides, facing each other. She looks at Bobby. His hair is in his eyes. He is smiling and looking back at her, staring really.

“You’re really beautiful, Lucky. You know that?”

She looks away, neither glad nor embarrassed.

“For real. You are. Jesus, I wish I could see you grown up.”

“I’ll be grown up soon.”

“Yeah, but if your mama has her way, I won’t be around to see it.”

Penny looks at him, studying his face. His smile fades and his eyes drop.

She asks, “Why?”

But she already knows why.

Bobby says, “I’m sorry, baby. But she’s right. I’m no good for you. I haven’t been good. I haven’t been around when you all needed me. You did need me. You needed somebody to look after you. Keep you safe.”

Penny doesn’t respond. She thinks about being safe. She’s surprised at how odd that word lands on her mind. Like a strange leaf from a strange tree from a very far-away place.

Bobby reaches over and brushes the back of his hand against Penny’s cheek. Penny flinches just a little bit. Bobby puts his hand at the back of her neck. She pulls away, scrambling to get her footing.

“Hey. Whoa, Lucky.”

He sits up fast. He holds his hands out.

“Whoa. What’s happening, kid? I’m not gonna hurt you. I wouldn’t ever hurt you.”

Penny backs up, looking at the rifle, propped up next to them against the fallen trunk.

“Come on, Lucky. Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad.”

She turns and looks at the rifle again. Bobby watches her. She wonders if she can reach it before he can stop her.

“What are you thinking, Lucky? What’s in that head of yours?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” says Bobby. “Okay, now come on.”

He holds his hands still up and open.

“You want to be the hunter now, little miss Earn’st Hemingway? You want to hunt? What do you say I take you on safari?”

The idea attracts Penny’s attention. Bobby gets on to his feet and tucks the bottle away. He picks up the rifle and holds it out to her. She takes it.

Bobby says, “I didn’t mean nothing.”

He adjusts the rifle strap on Penny’s shoulder. She nods. They go forward into the woods.

Every few minutes Bobby stops and makes a show of tracking something. He picks up a broken twig or sniffs at brush or checks out what might be a paw print in the mud. Each time he finds a clue, he takes a slow and focused sip from the bottle and, with dramatic seriousness, waves his hand at Penny and points forward, deeper into the trees.

Some short time later, Bobby and Penny come into a grassy clearing in between a stretch of brush and an array of big southern live oak trees. Bobby drops onto the ground, flat on his back. He stares up into the atmosphere. It’s close to dusk. The sun is still lighting up the sky in a full blue, but the shadows are long. The temperature is starting to drop. Penny lays down next to him. She can smell his sour sweat along with the clean smell of the gin. He rolls onto his stomach and puts an arm over her.

“Jesus, Lucky. I think I’m drunk.”

Penny lets the weight of his arm settle. It’s heavy. It crushes her a little bit. But she doesn’t mind it.

As she lies beside him, Penny sees something. It’s in the distance, a small, stout figure. She pulls away from the crook of Bobby’s elbow. She sits up cross-legged. She takes the rifle off her shoulder. Bobby turns to look in the direction Penny is looking.

“What is it, Lucky?”

She points to the brush, to a large oak out in front of it. The tree’s trunk looks as thick as Bobby’s pickup. Seven large branches reach out and up from the base. A shadow the size of a large dog moves slowly in front.

“Oh dang, a bear cub,” says Bobby. “What the hell’s she doing out here?”

Penny lifts the rifle to her shoulder. She bows her back to hunch over the sights. She aims at the baby bear. Bobby grabs her leg.

“Lucky, wait. Wait.”

Penny steadies herself. She hears Bobby but doesn’t lower the rifle. She sees the cub’s face. She lines up the front sight with the rear, aiming at the animal’s forehead. She inhales and rubs the trigger guard with the pad of her forefinger.

Bobby pats her on the leg.

“Lucky, wait.”

She exhales, keeping the rifle steady.

Still on his stomach, Bobby eases himself up onto one elbow.

He says, “Now look. You cannot shoot that cub.”

Penny says, “Why?”

“Because it’s wrong, baby girl. That cub’s just a kid, like you.”

Penny thinks for a second.

Penny says, “But that doesn’t matter. That cub’s a bear. Bears are dangerous. They kill people. We need to stop them.”

Bobby says, “Well, now. Maybe. But there’s something else.”

Penny takes one eye off the sights and looks to Bobby.

Bobby says, “That cub, she’s supposed to stay there by that tree, close. The tree’s supposed to be her sitter.”

Penny says, “Bear cubs have babysitters?”

“Well, yes they do. Their mothers leave them by these trees.”

Bobby’s voice drops.

“But I’m telling you, kiddo. You fire that gun, that mother bear’s gonna be on us quick. Maybe we’ll have five minutes. But maybe we won’t have even one. And an angry mother bear, shit, girl, you can pump that Remington empty into her, and she’d still tear us both to pieces.”

Penny says, “I’m not afraid.”

She pulls the bolt, bringing a new round into the chamber.

Bobby says, “It’s not about being afraid, Lucky.”

But no, she thinks. It is about being afraid.

Bobby scoots a little further back. He places one hand softly on the top of the rifle, over the barrel, covering the rear sight.

Bobby says, “You gotta trust me on this, kid. A mother bear’s not fucking around when it comes to her babies.”

Penny stares through Bobby’s hand. She can see a line from the rifle’s sights across the field and into the cub. The line is clear, as if drawn with a ruler across a long sheet of vellum. She thinks about the mother bear. Imagines it. Covered in bristled fur and thick sinewy muscle. Penny imagines it standing tall on its hind legs. It towers over Penny and over Bobby too. It towers over the trees, over the mountains, over the Earth itself. Penny imagines it snarling, its teeth long and sharp with foamy spit dripping off. She imagines the growling. The growling like a language. It is a language that she and her mother and Bobby too, would know. The language of the strong directed at the weak. The language that burrows into the skulls of the vulnerable, echoing against the shone alabaster walls of dark closets and shut eyes. Penny moves her forefinger from the guard onto the trigger.

Bobby says, “Hey, hey.”

He keeps his hand laid on top of the rifle.

“Come on, girl.”

She blinks. Tears welled in her eyes drop onto her cheeks.

“No,” she says.

“Lucky, whatever you’re thinking.”

Penny squeezes the trigger. The rifle fires. Bobby screams. He takes his hand from the barrel. In the distance the bear cub falls. Penny rises to her feet. She reloads the rifle. From the brush, a frantic rustling.