Free Perfectly Good White Boy by Carrie Mesrobian Page A

second, though,” he said. Which was true. We just stared at each other. Eddie looked back and forth at us.
    â€œGrandpa’s on the south end,” he said. “Once he crosses the road, you’re cleared.”
    I nodded. Then I nudged Eddie and we headed toward the deer stand.
    â€œWe have to set up a deer stand?”
    â€œNo, there’s one up there,” I said. “The guy who owns this land? He leaves them up for people.”
    â€œJesus,” he said, struggling to catch up with me. “Your brother’s all professional.”
    â€œHe’s a dickhead,” I said. “He takes all the fun out of it.”
    â€œWhat’s it mean, to be cleared?”
    â€œYou can’t discharge a firearm across a road; that’s illegal. Technically, that little road there?” I pointed. “Where probably just the farmer and his family go across once in a while? That counts as a road. But, still, it’s kind of a big deal, and the guy whose farm this is? You have to respect their safety and whatnot. Which isn’t, you know, hard to understand. So Brad means, once we see my grandpa, we know he’s flushed anything ahead and we can come down.”
    â€œOh. Do you always do this, in the middle of a farm?”
    I stood at the bottom of the deer stand, motioned to Eddie to go first.
    â€œSometimes. It’s a fuckload easier than tracking through woods,” I said. “Plus, there’s corn and crap for the deer to eat. Makes sense. And it’s less noisy, too, for us. Less stuff to give us away. Plus you can see better from up high, too.”
    Eddie could barely make it up the deer stand. It was kind of hilarious, when I thought of of Hallie doing it in no time flat. Eddie and all his swimming and lifeguarding and caring about his clothes and how tan he was, losing his mind when he broke a pair of his expensive sunglasses. He’d wanted to go hunting with my grandpa and me forever.
    Once we got up top, Eddie was still winded. And he looked freaked. Normally, deer hunting was no big thing; we went, tried to fill our tags—sometimes succeeding, sometimes not—and my grandpa did all the field dressing and then we’d haul it out and go have a big breakfast somewhere and then he made it all into venison and that was awesome. We’d eat venison all winter long. But I hadn’t really ever given much thought to the details until Eddie asked me all these questions today. But now he wasn’t talking. Just breathing his frosty-ass breath out, looking around the fields. Like it wasn’t deer coming but some kind of enemy.
    I ran my hand down the stock of the shotgun my grandfather had given me for today. It was a nice gun, a 12-gauge, better than the .410 he’d given Eddie. But I had the M16, the Marine-issue rifle, on the brain. I’d watched a show about the history of Marine snipers, and it was pretty cool, what they could do, the scout snipers. The M16 was a pretty sweet-looking gun, too. I liked the scope especially. It was sort of a little-boy idea, but I wished I had it now, since shotguns, having no range, don’t have scopes. At least I didn’t have the goddamn .410. Eddie seemed unlikely to fire it, though. He held it too tight, for one thing. Like it made him nervous. At least the safety was on. I told him I’d tell him when to take it off. I really didn’t want him shooting at shit up here, when I thought about it.
    Guns didn’t make me nervous, for some reason. I got how they worked. Pretty simple, really. Not a lot of time for dicking around when it came to guns. You cleaned them, you loaded them, they worked.
    â€œI don’t see your grandpa,” Eddie said, looking through the binoculars.
    â€œGive it a while,” I said.
    â€œWhat do we do? What if you see one?”
    â€œYou don’t have to take any shots,” I said. “It’s fine. It’ll be over pretty quick, anyway. If it