Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [38]
They scheduled lesson two for the following Wednesday afternoon at three. Hill offered to give her some of his paper targets, complete with his special stamp in the lower right corner, but Rocky declined; she had bought her own at the Sports Equipment Store. Hill taught English at Brunswick High School and Wednesday was the only day he didn’t stay late. Rocky tried to picture an English teacher grading papers after a day of shooting deer.
Chapter 10
Lesson two was harder.
“The first thing we have to do is test for eye dominance. That will tell us which hand will hold the bow and which will pull the bowstring,” said Hill.
“I’m right-handed,” said Rocky.
“That may be, but we don’t know if you’re right-eyed or left-eyed. Hold both hands out at arm’s length, put your hands loosely together like this so there’s a hole to look through. Keep both eyes open and look at the center of the target. Keep it in focus and slowly move your hands toward your face. Keep going, slow and steady.”
This was already more personal than she imagined, she just wanted to shoot the arrow. Aim and shoot. This felt like going to the doctor. She pulled her hands toward her slowly.
“Your hands are pulling over to the left eye. Center the hole over your left eye and focus on the target. Now do the same thing over the right eye. Which one is it?”
Hill stood with his legs spread wide, his arms rested lightly at his sides. He waited for Rocky to figure out what he already saw.
“It’s my left eye. How can that be?”
Hill shrugged. “Happens all the time. People think that their eyes work the same way on each side. We are not symmetrical. Let’s see how strong your left arm is. That’s where the trouble lies; we have to balance out strength with accuracy.”
He put a bow in Rocky’s hands. “This is the long bow, the only kind of traditional bow that I use. It’s not fancy like the recurve bow, but I prefer it. Take a wide stance, right side to the target. Hold the bow with your right hand and pull the bowstring with your left. Point your elbow higher, pull your hand right up near your jawline. We’ll work on finesse later.”
Rocky struggled to pull back the bowstring. Her arm shook with the effort. Soon the entire bow was wobbling as she grimaced and finally pulled back the string. Then she did the same on the opposite side; left side facing the target, left hand holding the bow, right arm pulling the bowstring. Her arm pulled the string back in a nearly steady effort. Rocky felt her face pull into a smile.
“There’s our answer. Your right-handed dominance is going to be more important than your left-eyed dominance. You pulled the bowstring back in a smooth line with your right hand. That’s the good news. The bad news for you is, that’s a child’s bow. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Rocky’s shoulders slumped. “That’s a kid’s bow? What the hell does a real one feel like?”
“You’re about to find out.” Hill flipped a tarp off the wood picnic table and an array of bows appeared.
When it seemed to Rocky that Hill had found her lacking in the archery department, the competitive spirit in her flamed to life. When had she last really wanted something, wanted to get better at something? She was horrified when Hill gave her a child’s bow after her quivering inability to pull back a bowstring with even a thirty-pound draw weight. And then the final insult still left her reeling.
“You don’t have enough mass, and what you have is not muscle mass. Let me say this in another way; you don’t have enough weight in the right places in the right density. Your ability to knock me over had to do with a combination of my bad knee and lucky physics, and I think you were also pissed off at something, but that’s your business. I’m trying to say this with some degree of sensitivity because I’ve heard of men being murdered for even mentioning weight in reference to a woman. But plainly speaking, you just don’t have enough mass.”
Rocky pondered this on the drive back to the ferry. She put her hand to her