The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [11]
Kenny walked Buster through the steps one more time, and, though it was complicated and would result in serious injury if not performed correctly, Buster felt as though he understood each maneuver intuitively. He loaded the cannon and then turned on the air compressor until it reached the correct PSI. “Okay,” said Joseph, “we’re not going to pretend that this is better than sex or anything, but you’re going to be very happy after you do this.”
Buster wanted to be very happy; in his desperate moments of self-absorption, he felt that the earth was powered by the intensity of his emotions. When he mentioned this to a psychiatrist, the doctor said, “Well, if that’s the case, don’t you think you should be out doing something a bit more, I don’t know, worthwhile?”
He depressed the chamber-release trigger and there was a resonant thoomp followed by a soft, sustained shushing sound like air escaping from an expertly slashed tire. Someone handed him a pair of binoculars, and Buster watched the trajectory of the bottle until it landed almost three hundred yards away. He was surprised to find that, long after he had fired the cannon, the happiness he derived from it had not abated. “Does this ever get old?” Buster asked, and all four of the men answered, without hesitation, “No.”
Two sacks of potatoes emptied, the men stood in a circle and occasionally mentioned that someone should go buy some more beer without anyone volunteering to do so.
Through his alcoholic impairment, Buster began to formulate the basic premise of his article, ex-soldiers building fake weapons to alternately forget and remember their wartime experiences. All he needed were facts to support this idea. “How often do you do this?” Buster asked. The men looked at him like it should have been obvious. “Every goddamned night,” Kenny said, “unless there’s something good on TV, which is pretty much never.”
“We don’t have jobs, Buster,” said Joseph. “We’re living with our parents and we don’t have girlfriends. We just drink and blow shit up.”
“You’re making it sound like it’s a bad thing,” Arden said to Joseph.
“Well I don’t mean to,” said Joseph, and looked at Buster. “It only sounds that way when I say it out loud.”
“So,” Buster began, unsure of the correct way to phrase his question, “does all of this, shooting off potato guns, ever remind you of your time over in Iraq?” As soon as he finished his question, everyone around him seemed, momentarily, incredibly sober. “Are you asking if we have flashbacks or something?” asked David. “Well,” Buster continued, beginning to realize that he had been better off shooting potatoes into the atmosphere, “I just wonder if shooting these spud guns makes you think about your time in the army.” Joseph laughed softly. “Everything makes me think about the army. I wake up and I go to the bathroom and I think about how, in Iraq, there were just pools of piss and shit in the streets. And then I get dressed and I think about how, when I would put on my uniform, I was already sweating before I buttoned my shirt. And then I eat breakfast and think about how every single goddamn thing I ate over there had sand in it. It’s hard not to think about it.”
“I thought maybe these spud guns were a way to get back some of the excitement of being over there,” Buster weakly offered, feeling the article slip away from him.
“In Iraq, I filled out reports regarding the air quality in Baghdad,” Arden replied.
“It was boring as hell,” said Kenny, “until it wasn’t, and then it was fucking terrifying.”
“But you had guns, right?” Buster asked.
“Well, we all had weapons. I had a 9 mm Beretta and an M4 carbine,” Joseph continued, “but other than training, target practice, I never fired my weapon while I was over there.”
“You didn’t shoot anyone in Iraq?”
“No,” Joseph answered, “thank God.” Buster looked around at the other men, who all smiled and shook their heads. “What did you guys do?” he asked.