Free And Now We Shall Do Manly Things by Craig Heimbuch Page A

someone off when they have it coming? When I have no idea how it feels to be in the wilderness possessing the power of life and death?
    I chided myself for not understanding what the other men were talking about when discussing their guns. I berated myself for not disagreeing with Uncle Mark when he said something about President Obama and “those damned Democrats who won’t leave Bush alone.” I wanted to tell him that the Republicans were still blaming Clinton seven years after he left office and that the fact that we’re still paying for two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—not to mention tax cuts—just three years after President Bush left office is worthy of disdain. But I demurred. I chickened out. I tried to tell myself that it’s about respecting my elders, about blending in, and that discretion is the better part of valor, but I am not brave enough for valor, so I say nothing.
    I mentioned to my cousin Tommy that I was thinking about coming out for a pheasant hunt in the fall. We were sitting in the basement at Mark and Linette’s house. I was staying in the spare bedroom down there, and neither Tommy nor I could sleep all that well. I think after a couple of days of potlucks and receiving lines, we were both a little tired of nodding reverently and accepting or giving condolences. So we played video games.
    Strange that in my midthirties, Tommy, then sixteen, is the one I feel the most comfortable hanging out with. I guess in some ways you just never leave the kids’ table.
    â€œI’m thinking about coming out in the fall to go pheasant hunting,” I told him during a particularly quiet game of video football. He didn’t exactly drop his controller in amazement, but he didn’t say anything either.
    â€œCool,” he said after a pregnant pause.
    â€œDo you think you could help me figure out what I need and schedule the thing?”
    â€œHell yeah,” he said. And I tried to imagine what my reaction would have been had one of my older cousins asked me to help him or her, had they taken an interest like that. I would have been flabbergasted. I look at old photos of family gatherings and can never remember what circumstances led up to them being taken. Even now, all grown up with a family of my own, I think about how separated I feel from my generation on my dad’s side. My mom’s side? Well, I don’t even know all their names, let alone have a private memory of a time spent together with them.
    But Tommy and his brother, Will, are different. Will is thirteen years younger than I am, Tommy another three years younger than that. But they’ve always felt more like siblings separated by distance than cousins. Maybe it’s because Uncle Mark has always felt like more than an uncle and Aunt Linette more than an aunt. Maybe it’s because they are the people in the family my parents are closest with, but I’ve always loved being with them.
    Once, when Jack was small, Rebecca and I went to visit Mark’s brood in Iowa for a long weekend. We spent long days just chatting, letting Will and Tommy play with Jack in the massive yard and listening to Mark tell stories about a family that was mine and yet something so unfamiliar. That tends to happen in big families. There tends to be one or two siblings who move away and their children are raised apart from the rest. We were those children, my sisters and I, and my dad was one of those siblings who left. Mark never left. He remained, an epicenter in a family bound for a quake. He and Linette built a house on the property where my grandmother had spent nearly her entire life. They did it to help her, to be there, and to give their boys an upbringing they could never get living in town or in another state. I listened for hours as Linette told me about my grandmother’s favorite recipes, how she liked to can blackberries from her garden near the back of the seven-acre property, right next to the