Savages

…
    It’s a truth-worn joke that women at firing ranges aim not for the head but the groin, that they’re shooting not for the bull’s eye but for the snake’s eye until the instructors just give up and teach them to aim at the knees because that pistol is going to throw high so they’ll catch boyfriend/hubby/daddy/ex-boyfriend/ex-hubby square in the junk.
    Take O, for instance.
    Chon took her to the range one day for giggles and shits.
    The girl could shoot.
    A natural.
    (We mentioned that O likes power tools, right?)
    She squeezed off six shots—two at a time, like Chon told her—and smacked each of them into fatal spots on the target. Lowered the pistol and said, “I think I came a little.”
    Now Chon hands Ben a pistol.
    “Just point and shoot,” Chon tells him. “Don’t overthink it.”
    Because Ben overanalyzes everything. Chon is surprised the boy can piss without succumbing to mental paralysis. (Would it be better to take my dick out with my right hand or my left hand? Would the choice of left hand have a subconscious connection to concepts of “sinister,” as opposed to my right hand feeling “dexterous,” and why is urine running down my leg?)
    And truly, Ben is looking at the target silhouette and wondering if there are African-American shooting ranges where the target is a white figure on a field of black, a menacing KKKer coming out of the Mississippi night. Probably not. Not in the OC (which zealously guards its Second Amendment rights), anyway, where they should just put a sombrero on the targets and get it over with.
    Take that, Pancho. And that, and that.
    Ben hates this, how totally out of place he feels in this very weird, neofascist sandbox, looking at the black, albeit deracialized, silhouette figure staring menacingly at him as Chon is saying something about—
    “Point and shoot twice.”
    “Twice.”
    Chon nods. “Your hand-eye coordination automatically corrects for the second shot.”
    “What should I aim at?” he asks Chon.
    “Just hit the damn thing,” Chon answers. At the range they’re probably thinking about, it won’t matter, and anyway, hydrostatic shock is going to do the job. The bullet hits, creating a wall of blood that hits the heart like a tsunami wave—side out.
    Ben points and shoots.
    Twice.
    Bam bam.
    Misses the whole silhouette.
    Twice.
    So much for self-correction.
    “You’re going to have to get better at this,” Chon says.
    Recalling what his SEAL instructors said:
    The more sweat on the training ground …
    . . . the less blood on the battleground.

134
     
    Well, O thinks
    I got my own reality show, anyway
    She looks up at the mounted video camera, high on the wall, that monitors her twenty-four seven.
    The episode descriptions on the MTV website:
    O gets DPed
    O gets kidnapped
    O is threatened with decapitation (or maybe O meets Jason)
    O in captivity
    Hostage O
    Pretty much the first season.
    Then set up the season-ending cliffhanger—
    Will O survive or will O
    Be eliminated?

135
     
    Esteban is intrigued by the girl.
    Of course he is, are you kidding?
    Anglo chick,
guera, guapa
, and those tattoos running down her arm? A mermaid and shit? And those blue eyes?
    She’s a
bruja
, a witch, an enchantress.
    No, don’t get it wrong, Esteban isn’t in love with her. Would his dick like to get up that? Sure—dicks have minds of their own. But he’s in love with Lourdes, faithful to her and her swollen belly.
    But he can’t see her.
    He can call her, but now Lado has him down here, taking care of the
guera
hostage. Bringing her meals, guarding her, making sure she don’t get away. Lado, he was going to
cut this girl’s head off;
Esteban is sure glad
that
didn’t happen.
    Doesn’t know how he’d deal with that, he’s still trying to get that other thing out of his head, the thing with that lawyer, squirming on the floor, begging, crying. Esteban can still see his own hand pulling the trigger, that lawyer’s brains and hair blowing out the backside—he still wants to cry every time he thinks about that, which is a lot.
    So he sure hopes Lado don’t want him to do something to this girl.
    She seems nice.
    Loca
, but nice.

136
     
    Elena is somewhat intrigued by O herself.
    Sometimes she sits at the computer and tunes in to the camera and watches her.
    The girl has such a distinct, if odd, sense of style. Very personal, much too brave, the tattoo is bizarre but you have to admire the courage, the independence.
    Elena truly hopes