He’s careful to keep his feet dry. There are a couple of trails through the woods, one going back to a glorified junkyard where Earl keeps the burn barrels. The church has a Dumpster that gets picked up weekly, but Earl is country through and through. Jessup’s pretty sure that one of the burn barrels contains a smoldering pile of ash that used to be his jacket and boots and gloves and everything else he was wearing Friday night. He goes the other way, past the campsites that the church youth group uses sometimes, down to the firing range.
There’s a bite to the air—he thinks it’s more likely to snow than to rain—but Earl’s jacket is warm enough. He can hear the pop of somebody firing, isn’t surprised when he sees it’s Wyatt. Waits until Wyatt is reloading and then calls out. Wyatt’s prone on a drop cloth, a sandbag on the ground to keep the rifle steady. He’s wearing a pair of camouflage coveralls and a camouflage hunting jacket, has a dark knit cap pulled over his hair, pulls off his earmuffs.
“Little target practice before church?” Jessup asks. “Hunting for Christ?”
Wyatt carefully sets his rifle in the open case beside him, sits up. His serious look turns happy to see Jessup. “Hunters for Jesus,” he says. “What would Jesus shoot?”
“How about ‘camo for Christ’?”
“That’s good,” Wyatt says, laughing. “Could start a business out of that one. Christian hunting gear. Christian militia equipment. Body armor with a big cross on it, though maybe that’s a little too close to putting a target on yourself.”
He stands up and holds out his fist, bumps, gives Jessup a half hug.
Calling it a shooting range is being generous. It’s an open alley through the woods, but it’s long, cut off by a hill that climbs more than a hundred feet up, bullets going high no threat to carry. There are four standing stalls and two platforms for prone firing, target stands at 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, and 200 yards, the hill starting not long after that. He and Wyatt have spent hours out here, shooting metal silhouettes with .22s at 25 yards, metal plates at 100, the satisfying gong of metal telling them they’d gotten a hit, graduating to long-range shots at 200 yards, Jessup a literal hit or miss, Wyatt working harder at it until he can hit every time. Right now he’s shooting at a target set out past the 200-yard marker, at the base of the hill, call it 225.
“You still come out here to shoot?”
“Yeah.” Wyatt carefully closes up the case. “Earl doesn’t mind, and it’s easy to find an open time when the militia isn’t out here and—”
“Wait. What? A militia? Seriously? I thought that was all talk. They really started the militia?”
“Yeah. Thanks to Brandon.” Wyatt rolls his eyes. “Racial holy war. He wants us to be ready. I mean, I don’t know if it’s technically a militia or what, but they’re calling themselves the White America Militia.”
“WAM?”
Wyatt chuckles. “Yep. Started up last year. Come down here a couple times a week for target practice, do maneuvers in the woods. All that crap. Anyway, I don’t like shooting with anybody from the congregation. They’re either rednecks spraying bullets like they’re holding a hose, or they’re gun nuts. I mean, I like guns and all, but I’d rather be able to hit my shot than tell you why you need such and such a scope or whatever, and half the guys who can tell you everything about guns can’t shoot worth crap either.”
They both laugh. There’s a couple who moved here from Arkansas sometime after Jessup stopped going to church, and Wyatt’s told Jessup about the husband: brags about owning more than forty guns, and he’s an equally crappy shot with all forty.
Wyatt closes up the case, sets it on a ledge in one of the stalls. “You just out for a walk?”
“Yeah. Trying to clear my head.”
“Want company?”
Jessup hesitates. There’s a part of him that does. He’s known Wyatt his whole life. If there’s anybody he can complain to about Brandon, about Earl, even about David John, it’s Wyatt. But even though Wyatt was at the party, knows about Deanne, knows everything about Jessup’s life, has been his best friend since kindergarten, he can’t tell Wyatt about those five minutes in the driveway, the swing of the truck, Corson’s body on the ground. He can’t. Can he?
“No,” he says. “But thanks. I’m good. Brandon and Earl are making a circus out of this. They think everybody’s going to be looking for a scapegoat, and with the family history, I’m an easy target, so they want to, to quote Brandon, ‘control the narrative.’”
“Yeah. He’s a shit weasel.” He looks at Jessup, serious. “But he’s not wrong about controlling the narrative. He’s smart about that sort of stuff. You can’t trust him, but he’s got some tricks up his sleeve. This is a new world, and we’re taking back what’s ours. There’s a lot of things I don’t like about Brandon, but he’s going to get us to where we need to be. It’s our time. We’re taking our country back.”
Jessup tries not to let his surprise show. Wyatt’s always been game to make fun of Brandon, but he’s all in with this. Then again, while there was a time he seemed to be drifting away, at least for the last year or two, he’s gone to church every Sunday; if Jessup was pressed, he’d have to say that Wyatt is a true believer. Not just in Jesus and salvation, but in the Blessed Church of the White America. Still, Jessup wasn’t expecting such earnestness. It leaves him cold.
“This is a big moment for the movement. But don’t worry. You’ll see,” Wyatt continues. “You’ll come out of this okay. I’ve got your back, brother.”
Jessup nods, heads off into the woods again.