Free The Island by Peter Benchley Page B

There’s no obligation.” Baxter winked again. “Course, when you squeeze off a few with a PPK, it’s like eating potato chips. It takes will power not to keep on squeezing. This gun talks to you.” Baxter pulled the slide back, checked the chamber, released the clip, and replaced it. “What did you say your name was, youngster?”
    “Justin.”
    “Well, Justin, why don’t you carry this for me?” Baxter passed the pistol, butt-first, to Justin.
    Justin grinned uncontrollably. He looked up at his father.
    Maynard smiled reluctantly and nodded his head. He had been sandbagged.
    Baxter took a box of bullets from a drawer and led Maynard and Justin to the shooting range behind the store.
    Baxter was an expert instructor—deliberate, explicit, and patient. He watched Justin shoot five shots at a target fifty feet away. Four missed the target altogether, the fifth was low and away from the scoring ring. Then he showed Justin how to correct his grip, how to aim, when to hold his breath and when to release it. Of the second group of five shots, three were on the target.
    By his sixth group of five shots, Justin was putting all five in the scoring ring, and three in the two-inch black circle at the center.
    Maynard shot ten rounds slow-fire—all ten on the target, four in the black—and ten rapid-fire—six on the target, two in the black.
    “Not bad,” Baxter said.
    “Rusty.” Maynard was pleased with himself, despite himself, and proud of Justin, and surprised at how easily he had been seduced by the sensations of shooting: the smell of potassium nitrate and silicone preservatives, the feel of the textured grips on his palm, the sight of the holes appearing, magically, in the target at the exact instant he pulled the trigger.
    Walking back into the store, Baxter took Maynard’s arm. Maynard recoiled, but Baxter pressed closer. “That boy is a natural.”
    Maynard nodded. “He did well.”
    “Well? That PPK was made for him!”
    Maynard said nothing. He was amused to feel himself consumed by an adolescent itch to own the pistol. Gramps had raised him with guns, had taught him to use them and respect them. Of all the fatherly things Gramps had said to him over the years, Maynard was proudest of a note that had accompanied a target pistol Gramps had given him for his eighteenth birthday: “I’d trust you with a loaded pistol any day before I’d trust half your friends with an automobile.”
    Maynard knew that what he was feeling was a combination of nostalgia and atavism—here was his son learning the rituals of firearms, preparing himself for manhood. If there was something primitive, tribal, about the sensation, it was nonetheless genuine. Maynard knew all the arguments for gun control and agreed with most of them, though he was convinced that, on a national level, gun control was a hopeless crusade. But he had never agreed with those who claimed that guns were good only for killing. Maynard had killed nothing in his life except rats and diseased rabbits. A gun was one of the few pieces of machinery that could impart to its operator challenge, satisfaction, pride, and dismay. There were not many experiences more frustrating than to sight in on a beer can nestled in the sand a hundred yards away, to squeeze the trigger, to see the can still sitting there. And there were few things more fun than seeing that same can rise from the sand and spin through the air with a ping and a whir.
    Justin came alongside Maynard and took his hand. “Man, it sure would be neat to own that pistol!”
    Since Maynard was sure there was no way he could meet any of the legal requirements for purchasing a handgun, he thought it safe to agree. “It sure would.”
    “Well!” Baxter beamed and patted Justin’s shoulder. “It appears that Master Justin has got himself a gun.”
    “I do?”
    “Not a chance,” Maynard said.
    “No?” Baxter stopped. “Why not?”
    “We don’t live in Florida.”
    “That is a problem.”
    “I