Started drinking. Just beer. Don't like wine. Whiskey will kill a man. Seen it happen. Just beer. Not the expensive kind. Should have drunk the expensive stuff, maybe. Wouldn't have gotten used to the expensive stuff. Maybe.

Started watching TV. Doesn't do no good- but what was I doing? Radio busted, couldn't fix it on account of my finger. So TV. Game Shows. News magazines. Even watched a soap opera. Guiding Children, or something. Take ten broken fingers over being a fool in one of them anyday.

That finger used to keep me nice. Won more blue ribbons in the greater North Dakota Pistol and Rifle Tournament than anyone else, ever. Went on gun tours. Shooting exhibitions kept the farm going during those years when we thought the winter was here for good. Worked at the range, gave some shooting lessons. I always told them the same thing. It's all in the trigger finger.

Some fools use all manner of assistance to shoot. Scopes, braces, arm rests, elbow clamps, shoulder pads, counterbalances. But it's all crap, because shooting is in the trigger finger. Any dummy can point a barrel at a target, but only an expert can keep the barrel there while his finger is jerking the trigger. And forget all that "squeeze, don't pull," nonsense. When your finger gets so it can convince the trigger to be someplace else, all by itself, then you'll never miss.

That's why I won the Pistol Marathon every year by twenty minutes or more. 2000 bullseyes with a semi-auto, ten-round clips. Bill Mochen, who got second last year, had a swollen wrist and a sprained elbow. David Runningbear had to pack his shoulder in ice. But I don't shoot with my wrist or my elbow or my shoulder. I use my trigger finger. Least I used to.

Wife left me. Ugly bitch, anyway. She started sleeping around. Got indiscreet, came home with her panties half-ripped off, or with 'em missing altogether. I didn't care. She said, that's right, I did it, so what are you going to do? I opened a Coors. Cuss you, I guess. If you were a man, you'd pick up that Colt and shoot me. Shoot Glen DeFries, too. I held up my trigger finger. I didn't say nothing. She walked out. Good. She never could cook eggs, anyway.

Been looking at myself in the mirror, lately. Never did that before. Old man. Skin darker than most folks, got permanent wrinkles. That's my momma in me. She's one-quarter Lakota. My art-fart son wanted to draw my face. Said my skin was beautiful. Had to smack him for that. He can draw my ass now, for all I care. Squint alot. Never knew that, before. Been wearing the same Indian shirt for three weeks. Beer stains. Was white, now a kind of yellow. Blue stripes across the chest are sagging. Red stripes on top of 'em are starting to fade out. That's where my chin rests when I fall asleep in my chair. Used to wear a hat. A nice one, too, won it in a shooting competition down in Nebraska. Took it off a month ago. Gray hair, rides my temples tight. Used to look distinguished. Called it silver. Now it just looks dirty.

That trigger finger sent me to Vietnam and kept me alive while I was there. Made marksman. Made sharpshooter. Sniper school. Then they let me teach it. I saw five weeks of combat, up in a tree. Shot three gook officers, two old guys carrying weapons into a shed, and an old woman. I thought she was an officer, in disguise. They did that. Because of guys like me. But we weren't fooled. Somehow they couldn't get the bent back quite right. Guess I got a little carried away, huh. Just a gook, though. War's war. Then my company got busted up and spread around to other companies. I was sent back to the school, to train more snipers. All through bootcamp, through training, every month, sent my checks home to my wife. Every month, she sent me a pair of her underwear. Went I got sent back to the school, I traded most of 'em for a week with a little gook whore. Figured it was the same thing. She was real sweet. Told my wife about when I got back. She understood. Following year I won my first State Title.

Shooting was easy before 'Nam, and got a whole lot easier, after. Just point and pull. When I was a kid I'd pretend I was shooting Indians, or when me and Greg Tree played together, we would shoot at Texas Rangers. They asked me, after the Dicey County Speed Target Competition, if I pictured them little brown heads from Vietnam. 25 rounds, speed loaders allowed, have to use the same hand to shoot each clip. I told 'em nope. Just them three red and two white circles. No time to think about anybody's head. Not even yours, Tom. That made 'em laugh. I sort of laughed, too.

I used to wonder about that old woman. She was pretty old. Too old to do anybody much good. Probably glad I shot her. All bent over, figured it was an officer, really hamming it up. Carrying a pot of water to a campfire. What kind of idiot builds a campfire in the middle of a god damned war? Probably wanted to get shot.

Guess I thought about her too much. Her head started popping up on the targets. I was in a Scatter Comp up at Farleigh. 16 targets, fifteen points each, any order you want. Takes real concentration. Bullseyes are worth ten, inside ring 5, outside 1. If you're feeling ornery, you can just unload a clip and a half into each one. If you're a cocky son of a bitch, you grabbed two bulls, and shot at the targets like a typewriter. I knew better. Crisscross the targets, low left to up right, over to up left, down to low right, one bull and one inside ring each. That way you can reload every four targets or so. So I did it, fast as this: 12345678dropclipstuffclipcock12345678dropclipstuffclipcock. and then that old brown head just popped up, and damn if I didn't start grabbing bulls. Lost maybe three seconds on my time, but I still won.

Then over to Reece, skeet. Whenever they threw me a low skeet, where it was still against the ground and not above the horizon, the pigeon would turn into her fat black shape and I'd give it both barrels and make it dusty. Most fellows hate the 'low horizon shots, since it's hard to make out the clay against the dirt. But my eyes always sharpened right up.

My mom's just a quarter but you wouldn't know it looking at her. She don't talk much. Wears native clothes, usually. But there's some of my granpa's Italian in her too, and she's got that intuition. Called me up. Boy, you stink. I know, ma. I can smell you on the North wind. Go wash yourself. I can't momma. Go to the church, wash yourself, go to the East wind, wash yourself, you stink. I can't momma.

And then, working on them slats in the barn. Nailing that two-by four. Wasn't even using a nail gun, maybe I should have. Whack whack whack crunch. And it was like that old good woman got up off my chest and walked out of the barn. Hurt like hell, I was fixed to kick something good. But I just stood there, staring at the puffy thing.

Figured I hit it so hard, it would shrivel up and fall off. But it ain't, these six months later. Still hurts, now and again, whenever I look over at my gun rack and think about getting some quail or maybe chase after that coyote that's been getting into the North forty. My momma's a quarter, so that makes my daughter, what, a sixteenth? Whatever- they'd both probably be glad to know that coyote's going to live a while longer, yet.