Sprout

couldn’t’ve done that in a million years, with or without the complicating factor of a liter of rum-and-Pepsi in my system. I thought about asking him what he was doing, but I also thought about sleeping, since the alcohol had made me drowsy. I decided to compromise, found a branch that was seat height and sat on it. The gun was still in my hands. I found that if you turned it upside down it made a sort of V shape, and I rested my chin on the trigger guard.
    “Don’t shoot your face off,” Ty called, his voice so unexpected that I, well, nearly shot my face off. I decided the best place for the gun, at least for right now, was on the ground.
    By that point I’d figured out what Ty was doing: he was using the horizontal branch as a shelf for the phones, which he stood up one by one down its length. No doubt you have at some point tried to stand a cell phone up like a salt shaker or a beer bottle and found it hard to do so, most phones being rather narrow at the base, and curved, and generally not given to standing upright. It is therefore understandable if you wonder how Ty was able to do just that with no fewer than sixteen cell phones, and on a rounded branch to boot. I myself took it as a sign that there really was a God, and he was looking down on us with approval. On the other hand, the moment Ty stepped on the cottonwood tree to cross back to my side of the river, nine of the phones immediately splatted to the muddy riverbank, so who knows.
    “Screw it,” Ty said, and made his way back over the water. “Now then,” he said when he reached me. “First of all”—he grabbed me and kissed me—“and secondly”—he bent over and picked up the gun, proffered it to me handle first. In a professorial voice, he said, “It is time that Daniel Bradford learned how to shoot.” Well, maybe it wasn’t professorial. Let’s say teacherly. Student teacherly even.
    I looked at the gun. “Daniel Bradford thinks he would like to practice kissing a little more, please.”
    “All in good time, Peng-you, all in good time.” He placed the gun in my hand, then stepped behind me. I turned to follow him but he shook his head and pointed me back towards my target. “Aim, please.”
    I lifted the pistol with both hands. Before I could aim, however, Ty said,
    “First of all, you are not Charlie’s Angels . You are a man. You shoot a pistol with one hand.”
    “You’ve seen Charlie’s Angels ?”
    “Just the posters. Now. Listen. Are you looking at the gun?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why would you do a stupid thing like that? It’s already in your hand. Look at your target , Bradford. And don’t say, ‘Oh. Duh.’ ”
    I shut my mouth, refocused on the cell phones. It occurred to me that I couldn’t actually point the gun at “the cell phones.” I had to, you know, pick one. They all seemed so lonely and vulnerable all the way over on the other side of the river, but I finally settled on a pink one towards the center of the branch.
    “Okay,” Ty said. “So if you think about the gun as a gun, you’re never gonna hit anything. But if you think about it as a substitute for your index finger, you’ll hit your target every time.” He paused. “You picked the pink one, didn’t you?”
    “I did.”
    “You are such a homosexual.”
    He stepped close to me. Pressed his stomach against my back the way I’d done to him a moment ago. But instead of circling his arms around my waist or my chest he squeezed both of his hands in a tight circle around my right arm and ran it all the way down to my wrist. A wave of tense energy ran ahead of his fingers, bursting so palpably from my hand that I was surprised the gun didn’t go off.
    “Relax,” Ty said quietly into my ear. “You’re firing the bullet, not throwing it.”
    He was stiff against my body, and I hope you don’t think I mean his arms and legs.
    His hands were on my wrist now, lightly, steadying my aim. “Mrs. Miller took ’em all from kids in her class, yeah?”
    “That’s what she said,” I said just as quietly, more of my attention focused on what was behind me than what was in front.
    “She just teaches the advanced classes, right? Stuck up pricks.” Ty’s voice was just a whisper now. “Steady, Daniel. Get ’em in your sights.”
    I tried to still my arm, but even with Ty’s hands supporting me I couldn’t hold it level. My whole body was shaking. I tried to tell myself it was the alcohol, but it wasn’t the alcohol.
    “Who do you