The Wilding by Benjamin Percy Page B

catch the light like glass from an old bottle. He smiles genuinely and rises to greet them. On Justin’s shoulder he lays his hand, warm and enormous. “Ready to face the day, troops?”
    “Sure thing,” Justin says.
    “And what about you?” He squats in front of Graham and his height is such that even when balanced on his haunches they are eye-to-eye.
    Graham nods his yes. He has a blush oval of a face, almost eggish, topped by straight blond hair that he keeps parted severely to one side. His arms and legs are thin, the knobby joints like knots in a pale rope. Delicate is a good word for him. Around his neck hangs a lariat attached to a digital camera, his most prized possession. He wears safari pants and a fishing vest with many zippered compartments. A narrow-mouth Nalgene water bottle dangles from one side of his belt, and from the other, a Leatherman tool. Aside from the camera, he is fully outfitted with things Justin bought for him last week at Gander Mountain. Graham has seemed anxious about the trip—his first hunting trip, his first time away from his mother for more than a night—but once outfitted he must have felt armored because the furrow between his eyebrows vanished and he stopped chewing incessantly at his fingernails.
    “You’re always so quiet,” Justin’s father says to him. “Why are you always so quiet?”
    Graham shrugs and gives him a shy smile and Justin’s father locks his hands behind Graham’s neck and draws him close until their foreheads touch roughly. “Come on. I want to teach you something.” His knees pop when he straightens himself out and again when he returns to the beach towel. He pats the floor next to him and Graham joins him there.
    “Don’t suppose your old man ever showed you how to clean a gun? No? I didn’t think so. Time to listen up, okay?” He explains how all firearms—“I’m talking about rifles, handguns, shotguns, even bazookas”—are exposed to mechanical wear as well as the abrasive effects of weather and unexpected handling problems, such as being dropped in a river. “Which your old man once did, you know. He ever tell you that story?” Again, the flash of his eyes.
    You would think, after so many years, Justin would feel a certain numbness to his father’s jabs, like a nerve deadened by repeated hits. But no. Even if he keeps his arms crossed and his expression composed, a part of him flinches. His father is always going for the seams, hoping to tear Justin open and let his stuffing fall out. Sometimes Justin fights back, but mostly he tightens his lips into a thin line, holding it all in, hoping to avoid the several exhausting weeks it takes to repair a breach between them.
    His father shows Graham how to make certain the weapon is unloaded, how to check for possible obstructions, holding the muzzle toward a light source and looking from chamber to muzzle. He takes a brass bristle brush and runs it down the bore to remove any grit or burs. Then he soaks a patch in solvent and attaches it to the end of the cleaning rod and runs this down the bore as well, followed by a dry follow-up patch meant to detect traces of rust, followed by a patch with a light coat of gun oil on it. Then they clean all the exposed parts of the action, the inside of the receiver, the face of the breechblock, with a stiff toothbrush. “Mirror-clean,” he calls it.
    It is a lecture Justin heard many times growing up. Seeing it directed at his son, who watched his grandfather with wide damp eyes, makes Justin feel nostalgic and worried at once. He remembers the words Karen spoke to him that morning. “Don’t let him bully Graham the way he bullies you.”
    “I’ll do my best,” he said and she said, “Try. Please.”
    At the time she was standing in front of the sink, drying her hands on a flour-sack dish towel. The light was coming in through the window, surrounding her in a kind of spotlight, and he remembers looking at her, really looking at her. She had a