Free The Shooting by James Boice Page A

his father says.
    Lee fires again, hitting the same spot, the exact same spot.
    â€”Outstanding! his father says, slapping him on the back. —That’s it! You and that gun were made for each other. His father suddenly looks at him, alarmed. —Oh no, Lee.
    â€”What is it?
    â€”Oh God. Don’t move.
    â€”Why?
    â€”There’s something on your face.
    Lee’s worried. —What is it?
    â€”Good Lord, it’s all over it, don’t move. He wipes his hand over Lee’s face and flings something away.
    â€”Did you get it? Lee cries. —What was it?
    â€”Nothing, just a smile. Been so long since I saw it, I didn’t recognize it. Puts his arm around his son’s shoulders and says, —Listen, something I wanted to talk to you about. That gun? It’s yours now.
    â€”Really?
    â€”It’s always been yours, I’ve just been holding it for you. Take care of it. Protect it. And remember: you’re just keeping it for your son. It’s already his, just like it was already yours.

(Sheeple I)
    Â 
    Jenny. I wake up, check my phone, and there is her face. This one’s in Manhattan. Black boy, white man. Jenny is on the scene and raising hell; she has to act fast or she will lose the story to the civil rights activists. This is not a black-and-white story but a gun story, the story quotes her saying. And gun stories are all-of-us stories.
    She likes to appear unbreakable. Like Joan of Arc. That’s how she seemed the first time I saw her. It was in my hospital room where I lay sedated and suicidal in the aftermath of my own shooting. Her skin was dark, her bones big and heavy, and her high heels on the hospital floor sounded so powerful. She told me she had come a long way to see me. Said she knew exactly what I was going through. She told me about her Michelle, who died at her desk in a first grade classroom. She took out her purse, showed me a picture. A nineteen-year-old young man with his daddy’s gun decided Michelle and all her classmates and her teacher were going to die and so that’s what happened. Jenny shrugged, put the picture away. After these things happen, everybody always says, What do we do? How do we stop this? Why doesn’t somebody do something? Well, here I am. Now where are you?
    Our hero, I thought. I joined her. She moved into a nearby Embassy Suites but I don’t think she ever once slept there; she was too obsessed, she was always strategizing, e-mailing, cultivating local ground operatives or playing politicians off one another. Shewent with me to Kaylee’s memorial service, appeared by my side on the Today show couch. Our family home became a makeshift local branch of her organization, Repeal the Second Amendment. Under the guidance of Jenny Sanders we moved out all the furniture and replaced it with computer workstations and phone banks. She installed a small video production studio where the kitchen had been, equipped it with satellite linkup capabilities to enable her appearances on cable news shows. With her came a cabal of young women of color, inexhaustible little Jennys each with a specific role performed with unflagging optimism. Jenny Sanders was a charismatic prophet and innate executive genius. In another time and place she would have founded a major religion of the world. Every day Jenny and I met with major political donors and super PACs, and again and again, over pasta salad and little green bottles of water, I relived my shooting.
    The movie was the premiere of the new installment of the action franchise I had grown up with and adored. My girlfriend, Kaylee, had no interest in seeing the movie but I convinced her. She and I camped outside the theater all night to get a seat. The previews ended and the lights went down. A door to the side of the screen opened and in from the parking lot stepped a figure. Kaylee whispered, Who’s that? And then she was gone. I can only imagine people were