They came in through the garage, past the kitchen, and stood in the darkened living room of Ray’s childhood home. The refrigerator hummed and then went silent. He clicked on the lights.
“Where is everyone?” said Sylvia.
“My parents?”
“Everyone,” said Sylvia. “Anyone.”
She was distracted by what she saw. The house was decorated in the style of a country boutique: bowls of potpourri, blue-striped crocks, candles in carved wooden holders.
“They’re visiting relatives in Missouri,” Ray said and then led Sylvia quickly down the narrow hall.
Ray’s mother had converted his old room into a guest bedroom when he went away to college. Now everything was ornamental and ordered, the bed topped with accent pillows, the taupe gray wall adorned with a framed pastel pondscape and decorative tin mirror. There was a calico cloth draped over a stout wooden table. There was a woven basket stuffed with dried baby’s breath.
“It didn’t look like this when I lived here,” he said.
“A Norman Rockwell place,” said Sylvia. “Provincial. Homespun.”
Sylvia spoke like that sometimes. It should have made her mechanical and lifeless but for some reason Ray didn’t mind.
His closet was the only thing that had been left unchanged. Ray’s old clothes still hung above ruined sneakers and boxes of books and videocassettes. He was thankful for the bow and arrows, for the old metal tackle box.
“It’s like a memorial,” said Sylvia.
Behind a partially deflated basketball and a tub of dusty bottle rockets was the carrying case that held the .357 revolver. It was technically his father’s, but Ray had been target shooting with it for the last year, taking it out to the timber whenever he was home on break. His father hadn’t noticed it was missing from the gun safe. It had been stored in Ray’s old bedroom for many months now.
He opened the case and took out the gun.
“Here,” he said, offering it to Sylvia.
She shook her head. Ray opened the cylinder.
“See?” he said. “It’s not loaded.”
He liked the scent of gun oil, the solid click of the cocked hammer. He pointed the gun at his hanging clothes, jabbed it at them.
“A crime against fashion,” he said.
He held the gun to his temple.
“Please don’t do that,” said Sylvia. It broke her out of her robotic rhythm.
Ray put the barrel in his mouth and tasted the slick bitter metal while suddenly picturing Gary Ives, the noseless attendant at the grain elevator, a failed suicide whose face was like a melted Halloween mask.
“Okay,” said Sylvia. “Enough.”
“Just hold it in your hands for a second,” he said, offering it to her again. “Consider it a form of research.”
“Fine,” said Sylvia.
She took the gun from him and gripped it in her hand.
“It feels horrible,” she said.
“Well, now you know,” said Ray.
The lesson in Ray and Sylvia’s film production class the day before had begun with a discussion about whether it was appropriate to distort truth in the service of art. This had led, eventually, to a weekend assignment in which teams of two would be required to create an audiovisual demonstration showing a practical and even necessary instance of such a distortion.
“Life is routinely altered in recorded media,” Professor Anton had said. “Sometimes in attempt to approach a greater truth and sometimes simply due to pragmatic reasons. Examples?”
“Real gunshots are much louder than in the movies,” said Sylvia.
“And why the need for this sonic trickery?” said Professor Anton.
“If the volume were accurate the audience would be rendered temporarily deaf,” said Sylvia. “They’d miss out on part of the film. It would interrupt the intended narrative flow.”
Professor Anton nodded.
“And can you provide the necessary firearms for such a demonstration?”
Sylvia shook her head. Her hair was thick and long and dark. It draped the delicate cheeks of her pale and pretty face.
“Guns are fascinating,” Sylvia said, “but they disgust me.”
“Maybe we just need to find you the appropriate partner.”
Ray’s hand probably shot up a bit too fast, but later, as they waited together to check out the necessary equipment, it seemed to him that being partnered with Sylvia was some kind of ominous Grand Prize, something he’d have to pay dearly for eventually because how could he be so lucky?
The film equipment manager was laconic and droll, but his mind was sharp and he was quick to provide them with additional items they might have neglected to consider. For instance, extra batteries for the audio recorder and a sheath of faux rabbit fur to protect the shotgun microphone from debilitating gusts of wind.
“Cables, batteries, shoulder strap,” the manager said as he placed those things on the counter. His name was Bob Tonka. Ray thought the name had exceptionally pleasing visual qualities. He’d put it in the Special Thanks credits at the end of his three completed short films, The Process of In and Out, Blank Birthday, and Night Machines—BOB TONKA—in tall white letters, burning through the dark like some tribal drumbeat or gypsy curse.
“Film stock,” said Bob Tonka and then disappeared.
“I’m terrified of guns, but I want to know them the way you aficionados do,” said Sylvia while they waited.
“We’ll be extra cautious,” said Ray.
“I think this could lead to some exciting possibilities for me,” she said. “Knowing weapons in a more intimate way, really listening to them.”
“Absolutely,” said Ray, but he wasn’t really sure what she’d meant.
By mid-afternoon on the day of the shoot it was obvious that Sylvia was determined to put off the gun assignment for as long as possible. She told Ray she thought being on Main Street in a small Midwestern town was both fascinating and hilarious, but most of all it was important to her in an anthropological sense because she was from Chicago and knew no one else who resided in what she called, “such a quasi-invisible hamlet.”
“What do you think this is,” said Ray, “some kind of one-horse hick town?”
“It’s more of a boondock kind of place, no?” she said. “An area populated with yokels and rubes.”
She gave him a look that was like testing the boundary between a declaration and a joke.
“If I wasn’t an unrefined hayseed I’d be deeply offended,” said Ray.
“Ah,” said Sylvia. “So, while not technically capable of complicated thought, you people can at least conceive of it.” She looked off toward what was left of the Main Street businesses as if pondering this new development. “Interesting.”
They shot footage as a small construction crew demolished the old bank. At one time Ray thought the planned destruction of the bank was a kind of tragedy, but on that day he was glad it was happening so he could be there with Sylvia, filming something of interest. She weaved through the hardhat-wearing men with her 16mm film camera, catching blinding flashes of daylight off the reflective strips that lined their vests. The boldest of the group said he’d trade his autograph for a date, but Sylvia only laughed at him.
Ray stood at a distance, recording the audio with his shotgun microphone. Through his massive black headphones—which looked like something a helicopter pilot might wear—he listened to the come-ons and to the clang and scrape of the excavator’s claw as it rubbled the old brick walls of the bank. A glimpse of one of the ancient teller stations activated a memory of running errands with his grandmother years ago, a memory so obscure that even as he was having it Ray felt certain it would never occur to him again. He was already consciously letting it go, to be replaced with this current memory of Sylvia standing there looking beautiful, fresh, and flawless, like the shiny new bank building that was already doing business several blocks away.
Now Sylvia was drifting over to the Go Mart gas station and convenience store.
“The green and blue of that sign,” she said by way of explanation for this new detour. “Amazing.”
Ray followed her without question, watching her thin hips shift in mesmerizing patterns beneath her tight black jeans. They went through the double glass doors. Inside, two old farmers wearing seed caps and short-sleeved, Western-style shirts sat in the lone booth near a wall of rental DVDs. They looked at Sylvia and Ray silently.
“Now what’s all this?” said the lady behind the register, her hair an enormous puffball, tightly curled, mouse brown. “You making a movie?”
“It’s more of a vérité experiment,” said Sylvia. She pointed her camera at the woman.
Ray had seen the cashier before, but somehow in that moment he couldn’t remember anything about her, not even her name. Sylvia did what she wanted with her camera, capturing new angles, leaning over the counter.
“Oh,” said the lady. “Okay.” Her veiny eyes remained wide and dull.
Ray slowly swooped his microphone in a horizontal arc. Through his headphones he heard the buzz of the soft serve ice cream machine, the crackle of packaged snacks, the near-silent swub of a gasket seal unlicking itself from the chiller fridge. He’d laughed when Sylvia had compared their trip to a Lévi-Strauss-style data gathering expedition, but now, in the newly heightened environment of this familiar place, he wasn’t so sure of the joke anymore.
A soda can rattle-bounced off its numbed plastic bay. Ray heard the flick of a napkin freed from its metal dispenser, the ratcheting of a printed receipt. A low hum with an air of menace emitted from a hot dog roller grill, its greased rods turning slowly, the spinning meat shriveled and cracked. He went over to it and held his microphone above while Sylvia leaned in with her camera in time to film an over-crisped hotdog split its skin. The wink of pale inner meat released a rivulet of juice that vaporized in a sizzle.
“You want to film meat like that I can take you over to the canning factory,” said a voice behind them. “You can look at meat like that all day long.”
Even before he turned around, Ray knew it was Tunney.
“Hey man,” said Ray.
Tunney wore aviator shades. His arms were crossed in front of his chest and he had recently trimmed his hair. His white T-shirt was smeared with grease, but Ray felt this would only help to authenticate Tunney as a working class hunk in Sylvia’s mind. Tunney held a tall, black can of energy drink.
“Tunney,” he said to her, presenting his free hand.
“Sylvia,” she said and they shook.
“What are you up to?” Tunney said. He cracked open the energy drink and took a few big pulls as though he were deeply thirsty, holding the can high, biceps bulging like in some kind of TV ad.
“It’s just an assignment for school,” said Ray.
“Assignment, huh?” said Tunney. He took off his sunglasses. His blue eyes were so deeply colored that even Ray was momentarily dazzled.
Sylvia rested the film camera on her chest and rose up and down quickly on her toes. She flicked a length of hair over her shoulder, revealing her white neck.
“We’re going to compare guns,” she said.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” said Tunney. “Count me in.”
Sylvia laughed. Tunney grinned. Ray had never thought much about Tunney’s dimples, but now they seemed to swallow the entire room.
“Thanks, man,” said Ray, “but I think we’ve got it covered.”
“An extra pair of hands never hurt,” said Tunney.
“Well yeah, but—”
“It might be good to have another person,” said Sylvia. “It would make me feel more comfortable about the guns.”
She was serious. She looked at Ray with a kind of mild agony, and in that moment a fantasy about what would happen when they were alone together in the woods, a fantasy Ray had been quietly preserving since they’d left Iowa City, was revealed as preposterous. The way he saw himself was suddenly realigned through Sylvia’s perspective, and he realized that there was never going to be anything between them.
“See now that’s some real sensible-type thinking,” said Tunney. “Let me just get some smokes.”
They all loaded up into Ray’s truck. He drove them out of town on Highway 2 and took the first gravel road to the north. They went across a short bridge and then turned off the gravel road onto a dirt path. Two rabbits went bounding off into the high grass.
“Hasenpfeffer!” said Tunney in a cartoon voice.
Sylvia laughed with what was either genuine delight or a very good approximation.
“Wabbit!” said Ray and then felt like an idiot.
“That’s Elmer Fudd,” said Tunney. “Hasenpfeffer is Yosemite Sam.”
“Hasen—” said Sylvia, laughing so much she could hardly get the words out. “Pfeff—er! Ha! Oh my god! Jesus. Hasenpfeffer!”
She laughed so hard she snorted.
“Everything okay over there?” said Ray.
“Oh, yeah!” said Tunney. He held up his hand and Sylvia gave him a high five.
“Cute,” said Ray. He didn’t like girls who could be goaded into high-fiving, he told himself.
The path bisected a recently harvested cornfield and they drove on through and beyond an open fence into his family’s land, eighty acres of prairie and forest. Ray drove up the steep hill he used to sled down as a kid. He parked under a dying white oak.
“They’re all getting to be like that,” said Tunney, nodding at the tree as he stepped from the cab of the truck. “It’s bad out here.” He chugged from his energy drink.
“What’s wrong with it?” said Sylvia.
“Disease,” said Ray. “Lack of nutrients has left it withered and foul.”
Tunney wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“Some kind of beetle,” he said. “Goddamn thing’s sick as hell. Be dead by winter.”
Ray took the guns from their cases and slipcovers and laid them out on the tailgate of his truck: .22 caliber rifle, .30-30 lever-action, .357 revolver. Sylvia unloaded the film and audio equipment and began setting things up a few feet away. Tunney stood looking at the firearms.
“Okay!” he said, clapping his hands together and nodding like he was in charge of everything.
Ray picked up the .357 and re-checked the cylinder, even though he knew it was empty.
“Safety first,” said Tunney.
He walked over to where Sylvia worked. He tried on the headphones, letting the earpads clap tight to the sides of his head.
“Look at all this stuff,” Tunney said. “I don’t know anything about it, but I really am interested.”
“I’ll show you,” said Sylvia, smiling up at him.
She seemed to be suddenly much more relaxed and at ease than at any other time during the trip.
“What’s Beth up to these days?” said Ray.
“Wouldn’t have a clue,” said Tunney and left it at that.
“Hand me those headphones, would you?” said Ray.
Tunney tossed the headphones to him and then squatted down next to Sylvia and said something quiet that made her smile.
Ray shouldered the tape recorder and put on the headphones. He tracked the microphone over his head and heard an eagle shrieking ice-like through the clouded sky.
Sylvia showed Tunney how to load a new roll of film while out in a field location. Their hands disappeared into a black fabric change bag.
“Feel that?” said Sylvia.
Tunney looked up toward the treetops in concentration. His hands fluttered inside the bag and then stopped.
“Wait, this?” said Tunney.
Ray could tell that Sylvia was touching Tunney now, redirecting his hidden fingertips.
“Here,” she said. “Do you feel that?”
“Oh, okay,” said Tunney. He smiled.
Through his headphones Ray heard locust drone and bellowing pond frogs, the high frequency whine of gnats.
Tunney stood and slipped a cigarette from the rumpled static storm of his soft pack. Three scraping clicks before the lighter flame whipped in hollow roars against the breeze. He leaned against the truck like some kind of film icon.
“Let’s start with the .22,” said Ray.
“You want me to shoot?” said Tunney.
“Why the hell not?” said Ray. He slipped the rabbit fur sheath over his microphone. He caught his reflection in the truck’s rear window. The headphones were enormous, dopey. He was weighed down with equipment, a bit player, a fool.
Tunney grabbed the rifle and a single bullet and stepped off toward the woods. Ray heard the electric crunch of his boots through the prairie grass and also, from much farther away, the reverberation of a branch snapping beneath the paw or hoof of some obscured forest creature down near where the small creek flowed.
“That’s far enough,” said Ray, when Tunney was about five yards away. “You ready with the camera?” he said over his shoulder to Sylvia.
She moved in very close, a low angle, taking in the length of the rifle Tunney held.
“That the shot you want?” said Ray. “It’s a bit stylized for the assignment don’t you think?”
“He didn’t say we had to make it boring,” said Sylvia.
“Right,” said Ray. He felt like why not just go for a long hike in the woods and give those two the privacy they so obviously wanted? Let them go ahead and fuck and get it over with. He pressed record.
“Rolling,” said Ray.
“Speed,” said Sylvia.
“Action,” said Tunney.
He opened the chamber and put in the bullet. He cocked the rifle and put the stock to his shoulder then looked down the sights.
“What am I supposed to shoot?” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Anything. It doesn’t matter,” said Ray, and then into the microphone, “This is a recording of a .22 caliber rifle from about fifteen feet away.”
“That big leaf right there,” said Tunney, gesturing with the barrel toward a large leaf hanging down from a branch on an elm tree.
“Sure, whatever,” said Ray.
Tunney took his time lining up the shot. The film whirred through Sylvia’s camera. She slowly rotated beneath him, mouth open, looking subservient, obscene. Tunney fired. The needle on Ray’s VU meter rose high. The pop of the .22 was full and crisp in his headphones, but the leaf was untouched. He heard the clack of Tunney opening the rifle’s chamber, the plip of the empty casing landing hot on the grass.
“How was that?” said Tunney.
“You missed,” said Ray.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sylvia. “It looked great. How did it sound?”
“Good,” admitted Ray.
He set the microphone down on the truck’s tailgate before taking one of the large .30-.30 cartridges from a box and sliding it into the metal loading port on the side of the lever-action rifle. He handed the rifle to Tunney, who traded it with the .22 and stepped a few feet away. Tunney pulled the lever and the round was chambered, the hammer cocked.
“Speed,” said Sylvia.
She was right up next to Tunney, her lens in intimate proximity to his face. She followed down to his chest and then onto the gun. For a moment she lingered near the barrel’s tip, pulling focus.
“I thought guns made you nervous?” said Ray.
“I’m just looking for the best shot,” she said.
“Oh good,” said Ray, “great,” and then quietly, “rolling.”
“Action,” said Tunney.
“This is a thirty-thirty,” said Ray, listlessly, into the microphone.
Tunney shook out his trigger-finger hand and then eased it back onto the gun. It seemed like it was taking him a long time to fire. He was still frozen in his shooter’s pose when a small bird with dark opalescent feathers landed on a branch of the elm tree. The bird pecked under its wing and then cocked its head as though realizing it had become the center of attention.
“Sweet corn!” said the bird.
“Wow,” said Sylvia.
Tunney fired and the bird exploded into a supernova of feathers and blood.
“Got him!” said Tunney. He turned to Sylvia and smiled. She immediately stopped filming.
A gift from heaven, thought Ray.
“What the fuck?” said Sylvia. “Did you just kill a talking bird?”
“What?” said Tunney. His smile collapsed. “No, no, no, that’s a trash bird. A nuisance bird.” His face was trying to maintain innocence, but it was obvious Tunney was aware of how badly he’d screwed up.
Glorious, thought Ray, wonderful.
“A trash bird?” said Sylvia. “It spoke to us.”
“It’s just a starling,” said Tunney. “They mimic, but they’re also a big pain in the ass for farmers. They steal seeds right out of the plowed earth. And they’re disgusting. They shit everywhere. Terrible birds.”
“I thought it was kind of beautiful,” said Ray.
“Right?” said Sylvia, looking at him now. “And then he just shoots it?”
“You can shoot a starling,” said Tunney, getting defensive. “Ask anyone about it. Besides, you guys didn’t give me a target or anything.”
“No target so he just shoots whatever living thing is handy,” said Sylvia. She shook her head. “Ridiculous.”
“Well, I’m sorry Sylvia, but you don’t know anything about it,” said Tunney. “Starling’s a nuisance bird. That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh, I know, a trash bird, right?”
“Apparently Shakespeare wrote about them,” said Ray. He had his phone out and was reading from the Internet. “Mozart kept a starling as a pet.”
“Well, Jesus Christ!” said Tunney.
He walked over to the truck and slid the .30-.30 back into its case.
“We about done here?” he said. “There’re a few things I need to do yet today.”
Sylvia was now staring at Tunney with open disgust.
“Just one more,” said Ray. He was the epitome of patience, a man of calm and ease. “The .357.”
“Let’s get it over with,” said Tunney.
Ray handed him the revolver. Tunney opened the cylinder and slipped a cartridge in. It made a wonderful brassy sound through Ray’s headphones. Tunney stepped off and got into position again.
“You ready?” he said.
“Rolling,” said Ray.
“Try not to kill anything this time,” said Sylvia.
There was a long pause.
“Aren’t you going to say action?” said Ray.
“Right,” said Tunney. “Sure.” But he didn’t say anything else.
“Recording of a .357,” said Ray.
The instant he finished speaking, Tunney fired. Ray was looking down at the display on his machine. He heard the gunshot and watched the audio levels climb to just inside the optimal zone. The report expanded, imploded, a dark roil of sound. It was full and clear and pure. It was the finest recording of the afternoon.
“Good for sound,” said Ray. “What about camera?”
“I guess,” said Sylvia. She was already making her way back to the truck.
Tunney lit a cigarette and smoked while they packed up their equipment.
“Any farmer around here would’ve been buying me a beer for a shot like that,” said Tunney. “I can one-hundred-percent guarantee it.”
“I think I’ll ride in the back of the truck,” Sylvia announced to no one in particular. “Keep an eye on the equipment.”
“Now, hold on a minute,” said Tunney. “It ain’t as bad as all that, is it?”
He smiled in confused disbelief. He looked from Sylvia to Ray. He shook his head like he was trying to clear his mind and then he shook it harder, like he was trying to get a spider off his face.
“Jesus,” said Tunney. “Okay. Well, anyway, you don’t have to ride back there, Sylvia. I’ll do it.”
Sylvia didn’t say anything. She just climbed into the bed of the pickup. Tunney stood there in stunned silence for a moment and then got into the cab with Ray.
“Well, how do you like that?” said Tunney.
“Yeah,” said Ray.
They didn’t speak during the short ride back into town. Tunney stared out the window and sometimes into the rearview mirror. When they were parked at Go Mart, Tunney got out and held the door open for Sylvia.
“It’s all safe again,” he said. “The killer has left the vehicle.”
“I’m good,” said Sylvia.
“Oh come on,” said Tunney. “Do me this one favor so I don’t feel like a complete ass.”
But Sylvia stayed seated in the bed of the truck.
“Okay,” said Tunney. “Fine. I get it. But I want you to know that I’m sorry for what happened back there in the woods. I’m serious about that, Sylvia. Now listen, why don’t you guys come over to the bar tonight? Drinks are on me.”
“We’ll see,” said Ray.
Tunney nodded and skulked off toward his truck.
Back at his parents’ place, Ray put a frozen pizza in the oven and opened a bottle of merlot that had been in the cupboard for as long as he could remember. He and Sylvia smoked a joint. They ate and drank. Ray hooked the audio device up to his parents’ stereo system and played the recording. They listened to the starling’s final words. At first Sylvia was indignant, but each repeated listen seemed to separate the sounds further from the reality of the starling’s death. The more abstracted the bird’s voice became the more absurd it sounded. Soon they were both laughing.
“Uh oh,” said Sylvia, when she tipped the wine bottle to her glass and got only dribbles.
“There’s liquor in the basement,” said Ray.
It was dim and musty down there. On the mantle above the fireplace were bottles of booze his parents—mainly beer drinkers—had received over the years as holiday gifts. Ray opened a bottle of Irish whiskey and took a slug.
“Hey!” said Sylvia.
She grabbed the bottle from him and gulped some down.
“A purely American basement,” she said while looking around. She paused to consider some ceramic figurines his mother kept lined up on a low shelf.
“What are these?” said Sylvia. “Geegaws?”
“I have no idea,” said Ray. He was bored of talking.
“Maybe they’re supposed to be knick-knacks!” said Sylvia. “Much more sophisticated.”
She picked one up, a ruddy-cheeked ceramic boy holding a ceramic fishing pole.
“Hopefully they aren’t trinkets,” she said. “That would be embarrassing.”
Later, when they were kissing on the couch, Ray tried to forget everything Sylvia had ever said. He took in only her physical presence: her smooth skin and plump wet lips. His mind felt rushed and spotty, but he did his best to focus on her slim legs, the tiny wink of her belly button, to memorize her large brown nipples and the shiver of her strained throat. She tried whispering something at one point, but he shoved his hand over her mouth. She took his fingers in, lashed them with her tongue. It was a drunk fuck, lustful, darkened by booze, destined to be nothing more than a hazy memory.
In the morning Ray woke to find Sylvia already up with the camera, filming the décor of his family’s home.
“This shit is fascinating,” said Sylvia as she moved the camera along a shelf that held his dead uncle’s pipe and the clock his grandfather had received as a retirement gift. “I mean, really?”
“We should probably head back,” said Ray.
“No coffee?”
“My parents don’t drink coffee,” he said. “We’ll have to get some at the gas station.”
Sylvia laughed at this. Later, when she realized it was the only place to get coffee in town, she had to get the camera out again and record the workings of the automatic cappuccino machine.
“Light on the foam,” she joked to the machine. She laughed and shook her head and then said, “You should really be recording sound for this.”
“Nah,” said Ray.
They went to the cashier, the same woman they’d seen the day before.
“Hi,” said Ray.
“Four dollars,” said the woman. She avoided eye contact with them, but Sylvia didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Goodbye,” said Ray to the woman as they left. He’d never seen a smile like that. It was simple, just the tiniest hint of mirth, but conveying perfectly a sentiment that said, “How about you two just go ahead and go fuck yourselves.”
Sylvia kept the camera going all the way out to the truck. When they were on the road, she picked it up again and began filming the sky through the window.
“The clouds,” she said. “The shapes.”
She sounded to him like a baby.
“It’s all very beautiful to me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, but he wasn’t really thinking about Sylvia anymore.
