The day of Ray's party, the great rains came. Blue and gray plastic tarps were strewn from tree to pole all across his large yard, and barbecues were stationed all around. From the kitchen speakers, Pink Floyd sang through the late afternoon, and it felt as though the party-goers had boarded one big wet boat harbored in Raymond's backyard. Christmas lights were strung from tarp to tarp, and they blinked as it began to get dark.

     I sat on a bench talking to my friend Clay, an experienced shooter from a Southern family. Was he packing right then, I asked. To show me, he brushed aside his oversized shirt. There was his pistol, tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Although he often spoke about handguns, I was taken aback. In a moment, what had been just words before became real. Then, I wondered who else at the party was carrying a gun.

     I told Clay about a scare I'd had in the fall. My husband Paul and I had hiked up a Vermont mountain, not passing another soul on the way up. On top, relaxing in the sun, as we ate our apples and chocolate, a lone man strode up the trail. Tall, thin, and in camouflage gear, he wore a pistol in a holster. He did not look particularly weird, but when we said hi, he said nothing. Instead, he sat on a log fifteen feet away, directly faced us, silently and slowly unlacing his high black boots. If he had wanted to shoot us, there was not a thing in the world we could have done. Had I been armed, would it have been unwise or even crazy to have produced a gun? Probably so. Finally we got up and left.

     I then told Clay about another hike, this one in Alaska, which had caused another scare. A few miles into the deep woods, Paul and I saw grizzly bear footprints and fresh scat on a muddy trail. What if we had surprised the bear and what if he had a taste for humans? We would have been at his mercy. As Clay and I talked about self-defense, he offered to take me to the Smith & Wesson shooting range to learn how to shoot. With undue speed, I said no, I didn't have time, I had to work. Learning to shoot seemed out of the question. I am a poet who grew up in the well-heeled, sophisticated Westchester County suburbs of New York City, and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. Shooting is far from these worlds. But I do live in the Berkshire Mountains, and I do have friends and neighbors who farm, hunt, and fish. I have fished the English Channel over torpedoed wrecks. I have even fished at the foot of a live volcano in Alaska and, seasick, hauled in the biggest halibut on the boat.

     I did not sleep much that night, as I mulled over Clay's offer. Because I was in the midst of a writing project that touched on men and guns, and because of my few recent hiking scares, I was intrigued. What would it be like to shoot a weapon? I dared myself to say yes to Clay. By the morning, I was swayed. I called him.

     Clay Max Hall had starred on Broadway as a child and served in army intelligence during the Vietnam War. When he returned from Asia, after a difficult period of readjustment, he enrolled at Harvard, and became the head of the Harvard Pistol Club. A man with a long pony tail and an abundantly roving mind, he is one great, complex character.

     Before going to the shooting range, Clay wanted to show me how these machines work. He came over, and unpacked his nylon bag of guns onto my kitchen table. He told me his grandfather had lots of guns, unlike his intellectual father. Clay showed me the pistol he carries, a semi-automatic Smith & Wesson .45. He bragged that he can unzip his fly completely without losing the gun. He emptied the shells from the magazine, and let me hold the pistol.

     Clay, a natural teacher, wanted to impress upon me the striking differences in the way various guns looked, felt, and mechanically operated. His care and thoroughness made me feel safe. He took out a revolver, then a target practice pistol, then a tiny Paolo Beretta pistol. What a sexy gun, I thought, small, light and beautifully designed, a pleasure to hold. What a jarring thought. At close range, I could kill someone. There, on the cherry table, was an array of dangerous weapons. There, on the counter, was an array of root vegetables for a soup I was going to put up. The clash thrilled me, as I broke into a sweat.

     I held each handgun. Clay showed me how you don't put your finger on the trigger, except to shoot; how you hold both arms up and straight out; how you line up the sights. I was thankful Clay had brought the guns to my calm kitchen, a cozy place to begin to handle these tools that humans have used for centuries, tools I might learn to use. Clay packed the weapons into his bag.

     I told him about Operation Berkshire, a sting operation of a few decades ago, which was the subject of my writing project. In this part of New England, a group of hunters had been poaching black bears and selling their gall bladders to middlemen, who in turn sold them in Asia for use as aphrodisiacs and intestinal medicine. For two years, two environmental cops posed as rogue hunters and became part of the gang. Then one winter day, twenty-five hunters were simultaneously arrested in four states at six o'clock in the morning.

     During my research for this project, I talked to these men on the wrong side of the law, and had come to feel uncomfortably far from understanding what drove them. Learning to shoot at a shooting range was a way I could come closer to their world in a secure way. Learning about guns might help me better grasp the whole story of Operation Berkshire.

     Why was I drawn to this story in the first place? As a little girl, I loved fairy tales—the scarier, the better. Wild beasts roamed the mountains and forests on the pages of my Grimms' and Andersen volumes. The settings were peopled with villains and heros. Operation Berkshire contained many of these elements.

     Clay and I made a plan to go over to the shooting range. Smith & Wesson offered a “Massachusetts Carry Permit Course” covering the safety and legalities of firearms' use, and a few basics of shooting. Upon completion, I would get a certificate, enabling me to march down to my local police station and apply for a Class A unrestricted gun license. Although Clay liked being my guide, a class might be good so I wouldn't take too much of his time.

     The next day at Barnes and Noble, I browsed through the periodicals. I picked up Concealed Carry Handguns, then put it down as if it were a hot coal. I wanted to buy it, but was mortified. I skulked around and then picked up the magazine again. Two teenaged boys with doo rags, metal, and tattoos were laughing and looking at magazines nearby. An overweight, gray pony-tailed gal was spread out on a bench reading a local women's newspaper. I put the magazine down and left the store.

     The next day I set out to make the purchase. But I hadn't checked my purse to see if I had enough cash and I did not want to use my credit card, because there would be a record of the sale with my name on it. For someone relatively free of paranoia, this was new. I walked into the store, headed straight to the magazines, plastered Concealed Carry Handguns against my jacket and approached the cashier. When she asked if I had a Barnes and Noble discount card, I was so jittery, I lied and said yes, but didn't have it with me. “No problem,” she said, and looked up my name on the computer. Of course she discovered I didn't have a card, and now I really felt like a suspicious character. Is this what folks on the wrong side of the law go through? I didn't have the ten dollars for the magazine, so I put it on my credit card, thinking that if I hesitated, I would seem even more suspicious. Back in my car, I concealed the magazine under the day's mail, and drove off. The words concealed handguns seemed nearly as powerful as the actual thing.

     The following day, Clay and I set out for Smith & Wesson. We stopped at a diner where a man wore a tee shirt that said:

FREDS An American Tradition Shooting The Only Sport Endorsed By The Founding Fathers

     When we arrived at the shooting range, I felt awkward and sober. We suited up for shooting, in what seemed to be slow motion. First Clay handed me a little black container with two oversized bright yellow earplugs that were moldable like erasers. I mushed them around in my fingers, then made one end pointy so it could squish right into my ear. He put his in, I put mine in. Then I took my eyeglasses and put clear plastic shields on the frame piece that goes over the ears. Finally, we put on baseball caps, and big, blue padded headphones.

     We walked down the hall to the shooting range. I held the pistol. I loaded it. I shot the gun. Clay advised me not to think about the target. Just get comfortable holding the gun. Always point it down-range. Never have your finger on the trigger until you are going to shoot. The intense effort to focus on nothing but shooting was singularly pleasurable. I signed up for the class on our way out.

     Cooking, gardening, making love—I love these elemental activities which know neither class nor culture. When I shoot, a similar pleasure comes. Shooting is physically and sensually satisfying: the gun's kick, the gun's bang, the intoxicating odor as the bullets go off, the exotic scene of the shooting range. The urge to shoot is primitive, arising out of nearly universal fierce and fear-filled feelings, conscious or not. How curious, then, that shooting is scorned in many cultural circles. I wonder and will weigh what would be wrong to master shooting, to be extraordinarily cautious and responsible with a gun.

     Two weeks passed and it was the day to drive over to my eight hour class. To quell my rising anxiety, I chose an old Edith Piaf CD for the trip over. Je ne regrette rien. Maybe that raspy voice I listened to in my youth gave me courage. I could hear her sound then, the camouflage of foreign tongues blurring the fact of what I was embarked on. As I drove on the Mass Pike east to Springfield, the morning air was a thick gray pail of mist.

I go in, register, then make my way down the hall to the long, low-ceilinged classroom. Its pinky beige walls are overly lit with fluorescent light. Sixteen students file in and sit at fake wood tables, two to a table. I sit in the front row next to an overweight, well-groomed black woman in her mid-thirties, with a tote bag advertising a bank. She has lots of braids with yellow beads and a great wide smile. Our crew-cutted and moustachioed teacher, Jim, carries a load of keys on his belt. He wears a beige tee shirt with a Smith & Wesson logo, khakis, and suede sneakers. Although he is a policeman in a rough, industrial city, today his job is to teach us about guns, administer a test, then send us on our way with a certificate so we can apply for a gun permit to carry a concealed weapon.

     Above the blackboard in front of the room hangs a poster, giving the four cardinal safety rules for firearms:

          1. Treat all firearms as if they are loaded.

          2. Never permit your muzzle to cover anything which you are unwilling to shoot.

          3. Keep your finger outside the trigger guard and on the receiver until beginning the              shot.

         4. Be sure of your target and its background.

Jim says that the class will be interactive, that he will invent scenarios and we will figure out how to respond. He walks over to my table, points to me and says “Here's this petite young lady with no protection,” and pointing to the woman next to me, “and here's this woman with a black belt in karate, but you [meaning you, the students] are standing there and don't know any of this. You don't know that one is protectionless and the other can take care of herself in this situation.”     Jim then pulls a knife out of his pocket, flips it open, walks down the center of the classroom, acting the part of an attacker, gleaming knife in hand. His voice rises. “I'm going to kill you! I'm going to f—ing rip you apart from f—ing limb to limb!” The man is a gifted actor. He paces up and down the center aisle so that each of us experiences him as a threat. He looks each student in the eye, then fires questions that come, sorry to say, quick as shots.

     “What are you gonna do? What's the word? No! Wrong word! Don't say Kill. Say Stop him. If you have an avenue of escape, you must use it. I'm thirty feet from you, threatening you with this knife, but you are next to the back door there. You can leave. But what if I'm moving toward you [which he does, wielding the knife] and there is no door? What about chairs, what about these tables? Use a table as shield. The knife can't go through the table. And verbalize. Even if you don't see anyone, someone might be watching. This is the Third Eye Concept. Always verbalize. Drop the f—ing knife! That's what you have to say!”     Some of us rise to the challenge of Jim's teaching mode, jumping in fast with answers. Others retreat. His wild style makes me shy, and I find it difficult to think quickly and clearly in the midst of his dramas. I do not have the luxury of time to absorb what is happening. What a quandary for cops who must make split-second decisions during real dramas.

     Jim uses all of us as characters in every story he enacts. This is good entertainment, but of course, entertainment is the least of it. After a few hours, I don't know how I can continue being so focused. It's hard to be part of his dramas for eight hours straight. At one point Jim points to me, and says “She's been raped and murdered . . . ” I don't know what he says after that, because I am wondering why on earth I am even there in this moment. The moment passes.

     To illustrate a new point, he looks at me and says, “You're out with your girlfriends at the bar. I'm sitting at the bar and I walk over to you. I come on to you. You blow me off. I sit down, have another glass of courage and come on to you again. You tell your girlfriends you want to leave. They're having a good time, laughing, relaxing. They persuade you to stay. You're uncomfortable but you stay. I leave the bar, go to the parking lot. The bar closes. They're cleaning up in there. You walk to your car alone. I'm waiting for you. You're alone, because you came here in your own car. No one's around. I am in my pickup and drive over to you standing there. I get out, come on to you again. What are you gonna do?”     I gulp, and say, “Draw my gun.”     “Why?” he says.

     “Well, there's no one around and I am feeling really threatened.”     “What are you scared of?”     “I don't know,” I say, “but the situation is threatening.”     He is creating a scene which has me completely shaky. “Say the word! Everyone's afraid to say the word! What are you afraid of?”     “Rape!”     “Right. That's the word. That's right. You are right to produce a gun in this situation, because of J.A.M. Jeopardy. Ability to cause serious bodily harm/death. Means—the means to do it. Thus, you can use deadly force to stop that from happening.” Then Jim says to a guy who looks sleepy, “Hey come on. Wake up!”     “Just finished a twelve hour shift,” he answers.

     “Why are you all here,” he asks. “Self-defense? Self-protection?”     Just about everyone raises his or her hand. I do too, but I do not say it's protection from grizzlies, or anything about Operation Berkshire. It is sobering to lay eyes on this room full of people, most of whom want to become armed citizens, to protect themselves, their families and their homes.

     I have had a long-time fascination with querencia. Querencia is the invisible place in a bull-ring where the bull goes during a bullfight, his place of safety where he gathers strength and becomes fearless. I have always had an overdeveloped need for querencia, for sanctuary. The need to protect one's territory is common in humans and other animals.

     One man does not raise his hand, the guy who just finished his twelve-hour shift. His chalky face is asymmetrical. “So why are you here?” Jim asks.

     “I'm here to renew. Criminal record.”     “Okay. Come see me at lunch break.”     What is his story? Maybe he was imprisoned wrongly for years. Maybe his face is slanted because he was slapped around by other inmates.

     Now Jim begins to tell us what it is really like if you shoot someone. “We live our lives based on TV. It gets people paranoid. It paints an untrue picture. Let's say you are an NRA member in good standing. You legally shoot someone while protecting yourself and others. You are not going to feel celebratory. You will be in a post-shooting trauma. People will say accusatory things to you like `Well, maybe you coulda' done something different and not killed the guy.' Or, `Good going! Yeah! Right on! You got that sonofabitch!' No. You are going to be vomiting. They don't show you this on TV. You will not be joyful. Get yourself to a hospital and tell them to treat you for stress. You can't know what it's like to have a shooting confrontation. The psychological effects are overwhelming. You are going to keep seeing that guy's face, his lungs filling with blood. You won't be able to get his face out of your mind.”     Jim turns solemn. “Use your right to remain silent. Get a good criminal attorney. Don't make statements if you're emotionally upset and you will be emotionally upset. It's an irreversible action.” He continues, “There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the truth.” This man is no fool. He pauses. He lets this sink in. Then he announces it is time for our lunch break. “Be back in half an hour.”     A bearded Englishman walks over to me and says, “You look very familiar.” He owns an antique store in a nearby town. “Why are you taking the class,” I ask.

     “I guess I'm paranoid. I bought a house in West Virginia and, oddly enough, the previous owner left a cache of guns, which gave me the notion to learn to use them.”     This British fellow and I drive to McDonald's where we are joined by one of our classmates. He says that he is a Wal-Mart store manager. “It is store policy for each manager to have a gun permit,” he explains. Because he seems so awkward and odd, I later call Wal-Mart Headquarters to check this out, and learn that it is not true. Why has he made this up? Who are the other student shooters?     When we return to the classroom, I notice how all of the people move, what they are wearing, and, most of all, I wonder why they are here. One man in his early forties with a nice goofy smile wants to get a permit for target shooting. Another man, a real estate lawyer, deals with abandoned properties in local neighborhoods and wants to be armed as he prowls around these areas. When he mentions that he has a daughter in college, Jim moves to his next subject. “So . . . your daughter is shopping at the mall, big sales at Old Navy. She walks out to the parking lot in the dark. Make sure she has one of these. Okay?”     He holds up a small canister. “Chemical aerosol for self-defense is great stuff. The best. Mace, pepper spray, tear gas. Make sure your daughter has it, make sure your girlfriend has it and your wife. It doesn't work on ten to twelve percent of the population. You have to be careful that the person you are spraying doesn't grab it and use it on you. There are three types: cone mist, which is affected by how the wind is blowing, which is not good; foam; and stream aerosol.”     Jim's favorite is stream aerosol because you can spray it from a distance. He suggests testing a chemical weapon on yourself, because it may end up used back on you. Jim talks about the rise in sexual crimes at the University of Massachusetts and the fact that the University does not allow chemical weapons. He says that if he had a daughter, he would give her some anyway. “It is crazy not to allow people to defend themselves in light of what's happening there.” He stresses that each person has to weigh each situation and in that one, he would break the law.

     After the chemical weapons lesson, we all troop down the hall to the teaching range, where paper targets hang on wooden stilts; the shape suggests a person pointing a gun at you, the student shooter. Jim tells us each to choose a partner. I team up with a young black man with snazzy white sneaker-type shoes. Jim gives strict instructions on how to handle the gun, load it, and shoot it. “Low ready,” he says. That's the position you take with the muzzle of the gun pointing downrange and low to the table. “Load. One Shot. Two Shots. Five Shots. Ten shots. Step back.” My partner and I take turns shooting the target. As the sensation of power rises to consciousness, I feel surprisingly comfortable and good. Each of us tries to outdo the other as we shoot, and we joke about whose bullet hits the bull's-eye more often. With potential for becoming a good shot, I want to shoot more.

     Later, we return to the classroom and Jim talks about home invasions. “What if someone threatens you with deadly force in your house? Your house is your castle. You do not have to flee your house. But you should have a safe spot in your house and everyone living there should know where it is. You need a phone, a flashlight, a lock on the door, and a gun—maybe a twenty-gauge pump shotgun. If you hear someone break in, what do you do? Verbalize. Yell, `Please leave my home. I've called the police. I've got a gun.' Your gun should be two walking steps from your bed, not in the nightstand next to your bed.” Jim reads us newspaper accounts of mix-ups when people were half-asleep. One man reached for his asthma inhaler and shot himself in the mouth.

     Jim continues. “Or, you pull into your driveway. You see a guy leaving from a side door, carrying who knows what. He's leaving. He is no threat to you or your family. You cannot pull a gun on him, no matter what he has taken.”     It is now test time. I am exhausted. Jim passes out the test. By now he has told us all the questions and answers. Some of us have taken notes which we can keep out during the test. Under these conditions, anyone can pass it. Jim leaves the room. When he returns, he corrects the papers. Everyone has passed. In a few minutes, we will all have our certificates. The day is over, we say goodbye, and I drive home to the Berkshires.

After that long Smith & Wesson day, the shooting students knew a lot about the legalities and safety of handgun use: locked containers, trigger locks, guns well-hidden, firearms and alcohol do not mix. But except for a few basics, none of us learned how to shoot. Years ago I had spent many afternoons preparing for my driving test, and this was much easier. Before I got my certificate to apply for a permit, I was appalled at how easy it was to get a gun legally, and I still am.

     The following week, I set out for the police station to apply for a gun permit. There was a chill in the air, snow predicted for the next day. I walked up through the basketball courts, past the red plastic jungle gym, and noticed a toy sign Ambulance affixed to it. How odd to have a sign implying calamity in a children's playground. I rehearsed what I would say to the Chief of Police when he interviewed me. Jim had said that when we applied for a Class A Unrestricted Permit, we would have to make a strong case for why we needed a handgun for self-protection more than the average citizen. Because I took the course to qualify, I wanted to apply.

     “Why do you need this type of permit?” he would ask.

     “I'm an avid hiker,” I would reply. Then I would tell him my scary bear story. No I would not say avid. I have never used the word avid. I would say, “I like to hike and this past summer in Alaska I became really afraid of bears. I need a handgun for self-defense in the woods.” I would act as if I'm a major hiker, which I am not. I would not talk about Operation Berkshire, my writing project.

     In a bit of a fog, I wandered into Town Hall, then realized it was the wrong place. So down the hill I went, to the Police Station. Gun permit forms were piled up in a big bin in the lobby. I picked one up and a kindly woman led me through the process of filling out the application. Then she helped me look up addresses for my two references. Jim had said the police just stash your references in your file. They dig them out only if you get yourself into trouble.

     The application asked for hair color, eye color, height, weight and build. Build? I left it blank. Then I was fingerprinted for the first time since I was born. The police would check to see if I had a criminal record, if I had ever been admitted to a mental hospital, and if there were any disqualifiers on my record. For example, if I had ever been treated for alcohol or drug abuse, I could not get a gun permit. Note—if I ever had been treated.

     I was becoming apprehensive, waiting for my interview. When I handed in the application, the woman took a photograph of me, to be laminated onto the permit. She said, ”You'll be hearing in about two weeks.”     “Don't I have to be interviewed by Chief Moss?”     “Oh no, there are way too many people applying for permits now. We don't have time for interviews.”     No interview? Getting a permit was even easier than I had believed. I could get a gun license—Class A Unrestricted—allowing me to carry concealed weapons, with ease. To obtain a certificate for this permit, I had spent less than an hour with my classmates in the shooting range. I had taken a written test that everyone passed. And now there would be no interview. What extremely bad news for the United States of America.

     I thanked the woman and trudged home. When evening came, I put on a B. B. King CD and fixed dinner. As my husband Paul and I sat down to our fish chowder, he half-joked, “What could be nicer. You're protecting our home.” Less than two weeks passed when my gun permit arrived in the mail.

     Clay and I made a plan to go shooting every week. Looking for a closer shooting range, we went to check out a local Sportsmen's Club. When we stopped at the State Police Barracks to get directions, a cop asked why we were going there. “We are pistol shooters and have been driving the hour over to Smith & Wesson and want to check out a local range,” answered Clay.

     The cop, drawing a map for us, said, “Good. Good. We need people like you, especially, you know, with all the New Yorkers coming around. I saw this great bumper sticker down at the Cape. If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?”     We left and drove past the hardware store, the supermarket, the auto mechanic shop, and up a long curving hill. At the end of a dirt road was the Sportsmen's Club, with a bunch of pickups in the parking lot. Inside was a long low-ceilinged room with archery targets at one end and a bar at the other, where a few men sat, some clean-cut, some not. A friendly fellow led us down to the basement. The shooting range was dirty, low lit, and makeshift. There were a few fans for ventilation and a padlock on the door. A hole was cut into the wall to slip your $2.00 shooting fee. No one oversees the raunchy range. In other words, you come here, go downstairs, unlock the padlock, turn on the lights, turn on the fans, slide your money into the hole, press the button that sends your target to the distance you want it, and start shooting. As we walked back upstairs, the fellow remarked, “All the housewives come down and take the course for their permit and then you never see them again.” As we left, Clay and I planned never to go back.

     Yesterday, driving over to Smith & Wesson with Clay, I called him my shooting buddy, then changed it to shooting teacher. “I'm your shooting sensei,” he said with his Southern drawl. He sees shooting as a martial art with all the discipline, focus, and meditative activity such undertakings require. Later I looked up sensei.

          Sensei: sen means “before,” sei means “life, birth, living or lived.” Thus a sensei is          someone who has experienced something before you. He has walked the path you are          planning to follow, he can tell you what to do.

Clay loved the role of guide. He felt a responsibility to pass his knowledge along to someone else. He was my Virgil in this inferno-tainted endeavor. We arrive at the range, register, show our gun permits, and buy ammunition. We heap all our stuff—his gun box, my backpack, his attaché case, our big down jackets—on a plastic chair outside the Shop which sells Smith & Wesson logoed mugs, key rings, clothes, and of course, guns. We suit up for shooting and go down to the nearly empty range. Clay is saying, “You've gotta relax. It's not very hard to do well at this. Focus on each little step of getting the gun ready, gripping it, standing, and then when you've done it all, just stand there and shoot. Don't try too hard.” The gun I'm shooting is Clay's Ruger .22 caliber target pistol, with a bull barrel and grips like a .45. Clay calls it a paper punch, because it's a target shooting gun with which you make holes in paper. But it is a deadly weapon.

     Clay asks me to repeat the steps over and over. Push the lower button in to release the magazine. When the magazine slides out, hold it in your left hand and insert the ammo. One at a time, pop five shells into the magazine with your right hand. Each shell is called a round. Clay loads only five rounds at a time, although the magazine holds ten, to keep track of what he has already shot. Each time you raise your gun, you shoot a string of five rounds.

     The ammo comes in a small orange plastic box with five shells per row. You slide the box's cover back, pop the row of shells onto the ledge of your cubby, load them into the magazine. Find a good stance. Then, holding the gun with your right hand, insert the magazine into the grip. Slide the upper button down to release the slide, and put your right hand around the grip, never putting your index finger on the trigger, that's basic. Put your left hand around your right hand, covering it. Both thumbs should hang there together, parallel, not doing anything. You have this good firm grip, gripping harder with your left hand. Loosen up your body, wiggle it, shake out the tension. It is important for all these steps to feel natural. Meanwhile, you're excited and nervous. You're about to shoot.

     Let's see. I have found my nice stance, slightly wide, facing the range, with a slight tilt towards the right. My right foot goes slightly back. With a little bend in my elbows, I raise the gun with both hands, and line up the sights, front and rear. Clay reminds me not to worry about hitting the target. “It's irrelevant.” But I want to hit the target. I aim the gun and slowly shoot five rounds, my string. This is slow fire shooting, not bangbangbangbangbang—that's rapid fire—but bang, pause, bang, pause, bang, pause, bang, pause, bang.

     While I am shooting, empty shells fly all over the place, hitting the shield over my glasses, bouncing off the tip of my cap, hitting me on the head. The nitroglycerin smell released into the air goes to my head. The shooting is not exactly hypnotic, but it is very satisfying.

     Clay says I should have my own target pistol, in order to get to know the particular gun's grip, trigger, sights. I need to know my gun as I know my camera, an intimate possession that feels like an extension of my arm. As long as I borrow or rent a gun, that kind of relationship won't evolve. Paul has been asking whether I am going to get a gun. “Don't worry, I'm so far away from that,” I say. But at this moment, tearful to have traveled so far, I realize I have come closer to crossing into this fresh territory.

     Now that I have my gun license, now that I have spent my long day at Smith & Wesson, now that I have been able to talk about my shooting to men on the right and wrong sides of the law, now that I've told friends and family about all this and heard their various reactions, now that I have had the sensation of shooting a pistol, now that I have joked about using my government issued gun permit at the airport—what now? Am I really going to learn how to shoot? Would I pack a pistol and go hiking in the woods? Am I going to own a gun?