The space heater had given out, leaving the trickle of heat from the furnace as the final thing keeping Walton “Yankee” Emmett, America’s greatest skeet shooter, from donning another jacket. He tore his attention away from his notebook to write “heater” under his monthly shopping list, taking its place below the frequent appearances of “pasta” and “Campbell’s Chunky”. He turned back to his notes, plotting out the effects of wind speed on a standard European clay pigeon. To the journal’s left lay a new issue of Guns & Ammo, with dog-eared pages of chokes designed by boutique Italian arms companies and competition-grade shells with recoil-dampening technology.
Walton planned to represent America in the Helsinki Summer Olympic Games, which was over a year away, with a set of rules and techniques that differed slightly from the American version he was used to. In his beaten old field journal, he took extensive notes on everything from the most efficient way to transfer his shotgun from his hip to his shoulder, to the different effects the increased diameter of European clays will have on their fragility. Having done a few calculations, he opened a drawer under his desk and replaced his journal with a more pristine purple book. He flipped to a new page, paused for a few minutes, and began to write:
Creeping depressive period. Catalyst unknown. Had since December 7th, comes in waves every few days or so. Has been fading, but only slightly. Intrusive thoughts.
The depressive periods had become more frequent, as they tended to do during this time. Competitions were rarely scheduled, as very few wanted to shoot knee-deep in snow. He hated feeling sad during the winter—he enjoyed watching the snow fall and venturing out in the cold, braving the elements for as long as he could before retreating into his cabin and reviving himself in front of the furnace. The winter also reminded him of good times: Christmastime with his family, hunting trips with the Old Man, gift shopping with Ma that almost always ended with hot chocolate. That wasn’t to say the winter didn’t also have its highs. Walton relished his solitude on occasion, overjoyed by the idea of foregoing awkward interactions at the supermarket or walking down the street and feeling like he was always doing something wrong. There was a reason he built this cabin in the first place. He looked at the entry in the book again. Imagining a documentary crew discovering the notebook and using it as a sappy ploy for pity, he drew a bunch of weird looking cocks on the margins of every page. After every iteration, they became more elaborately illustrated, with the final page depicting a suspension bridge made up of phalluses of various lengths and girths. Satisfied, he put the book back in the drawer beside its sibling.
He forced himself to get up and move to the makeshift kitchen. The coils of the hotplate began to glow red as Walton put a pan over it, splitting the pan into four quadrants and filling each with an egg, corned beef, refried beans, and spinach respectively. He called it “The Emmett Hash.” Laurie, his ex-wife, called it “Fucking Disgusting.” He poured the contents out onto a plate and sat in front of the withering flame of the furnace, throwing in a few logs to keep it going. After warming up, he did some stretches on his yoga mat and took his favourite break-action out of its safe for practice drills.
It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, albeit utilitarian in form. The break was smooth—it barely felt like any effort was needed to open the breech. The break, the trigger guard, and the barrels were the only stock things remaining from the original model, and even then, they were slightly modified to make a reload a few microseconds quicker. The grip was hand-carved maple, perfectly shaped to Walton’s hand, with some added grip tape in case he got sweaty. The triggers were custom too, to make the most comfortable and consistent pull possible. The choke on the end of the barrel made sure the pellets would create a perfect spread for catching the pigeon. Walton threatened to call it perfect, but it never would be. Someday, he would find some slight fault, some minor defect that would mean further modification until it became like Theseus’ ship: the original in name only.
However, one couldn’t argue with results. This gun was what he built a good chunk of his legacy from, what made him a revered figure in modern skeet, and what prepared him to compete. Holding the shotgun in his hands felt right. Not as a tool of destruction, nor as a phallic symbol of power. As Walton repeatedly mimicked the motion of firing and reloading as if in a trance, he felt comfort as he sank it into his shoulder, lifted it to his cheek, and pulled the trigger. The maple smelled like his first air rifle and setting up makeshift shooting ranges in the backyard with the Old Man. It also smelled like hunting trips, where the two men of Clan Emmett discussed all sorts of topics: school, sports, novels, movies. And as he got older: work, politics, and what Ma would’ve done to them if she knew they were sharing a joint. The Old Man was always cool like that—he even helped Wally, as the Old Man affectionately called him, build the cabin for a few months before his back gave out and he became too weak to go out hunting anymore. The last time they sat together, the Old Man asked him about his marriage with the knowing glance only a father can give.
“We’re getting through things. It’s rocky right now, but she knows how much it means to me,” Walton would say, and he was right. She knew exactly how much the cabin meant to him—more than her.
They split up two weeks before the Old Man passed. The family grew apart after that, especially after Walton refused to go to the funeral. As much as his mother said she understood why, Walton was pretty sure she didn’t. Visits to the family home became few and far between, at this point functioning as a way for the rest of the family to know he hadn’t died or gone mad. He started attending more tournaments, with his winnings able to finance an honest living and some very cheap travel to attend events across the country. He was given the nickname “Yankee,” which he immensely hated but begrudgingly accepted. Arms companies, breweries, and subscription-based meat couriers came knocking with sponsorships. He also reluctantly agreed to these offers, as they provided him with the ability to invest in better gear and more travel. Not to mention that as he gained renown, he found someone to push him even harder.
***
The rivalry between Walton and Charlie “Tex” Martinelli was often overstated for the sake of storytelling. There were no fistfights, verbal tirades, or passive-aggressive sniping. They were simply two talented shooters who never seemed to handily overcome the other. It’s true that they weren’t friends—Walton never attended the after-tourney festivities nor contacted any competitors during their off-time. Their only form of interaction came from brief meetings before tournaments.
Such a meeting occurred two months before at an event in Louisiana called Hot Shot. It was massive, encompassing all shooting sports into one multi-day festival. The audience was obnoxiously loud anytime just about anything happened, but the prize pool was big enough to overcome that annoyance.
Walton arrived at the venue and was ushered into a tent. This was where all firearms were inspected to make sure they were safely set up without any illegal modifications. Walton made note of his competitors—a few former national champions, some solid state-level competition, and a few lower-level local talents with decent potential. It took him a few minutes to recognize his rival four tables down wearing a faded Disney World Florida cap and chewing on tobacco. He was cleaning his barrels with a wire brush while talking to a very overeager organizer. The man’s eyes and mouth were wide, marked by the kind of enthusiasm that always came off as eerily unhuman to Walton. After a few minutes, the organizer turned and met Walton’s gaze, his eyes somehow growing wider as Walton turned away and desperately hoped he was looking at someone else. The screech of “Yankee!” only confirmed his worst fears.
“Wow! I can’t believe I finally get to meet one of the greatest shooters in the world,” the man said while staring down Walton, who was still not meeting his eyes. “Can I get a picture?”
The man flung his arm around Walton without waiting to hear an answer. Walton tried to look at the camera, but even being met with the man’s open maw through a screen proved too uncomfortable to bear. After what seemed an eternity, the man stopped touching him.
Walton stood there for a while, as if waiting to be prompted. After a while, the organizer spoke up. “You know Tex is over there, right? Have you two talked yet?”
“No, I—”
The organizer sped off to grab Tex, his lanyard flapping behind him. Walton considered hiding in one of the Porta-Potties until the competition started. Before he could, the organizer and Tex popped into existence in front of him, nearly giving him a heart attack. The two competitors did their best job at pretending to be a part of the conversation while offering each other looks of mutual embarrassment and acknowledgement until the motormouth eventually ran out of gas. He offered his luck to the two of them and sped off to another tent.
The two stood looking at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to break the conversation off. They had always been like this when they interacted—what do you say to the man you’ve been competing with for over a decade? You gain a kind of mutual understanding, a knowledge of the passion you have towards what you’re both pursuing, and a desperation to reach the top. However, Walton noticed a strange tension in his chest as he looked at Tex. There was a dissonance present, a very slight but noticeable one, like one sharp violin in an otherwise in-tune orchestra. Tex uttered a polite goodbye and turned to leave.
“Charlie,” Walton squeaked out. “Why do you shoot?”
Tex looked back at him puzzled. “What, you mean like tournaments, or in general?”
“Either.”
He looked everywhere but Tex’s eyes, realizing he sounded insane for asking one of the greatest shooters in the world why he likes to shoot.
“Well, I picked it up when I was fourteen and just stuck with it,” he said after thinking for a moment. “I suppose like most people. It’s something to take me out my own head. Get me away from life.”
More players in the orchestra joined the violinist. Walton felt a flash of anger for a moment. What life? What are you getting away from? This is life. You’re one of the best in the fucking world, and you’re competing as a hobby? He composed himself, hoping the rage didn’t show on his face. If it did, he didn’t notice—Tex always had a slight look of caution around him.
“That’s all? Don’t you care about getting better?”
“I mean, I suppose,” Tex said, resting his hand on the table. “But it’ll happen if it happens. I try not to worry about it.”
If there even was an orchestra at this point, they started playing industrial music. Walton’s eyes wandered around the tent until he looked down at the hand on the table. It looked old, despite Tex only being in his mid-30s. There were calluses, scars, burn marks, and bruises all over the leathery fingers, like he got bored and stuck them in a panini press. Walton had calluses too, but he rarely got injured. He worried about getting taken out of competition and having to wait around for his wounds to heal—his movement and ability to get focused could get rusty.
“Are you ready?” A worried organizer tapped him on the shoulder. Tex had left to go back to his table. He must have zoned out for a while.
Hot Shot ended up being a disaster. Tex soundly won the tournament in ordinary fashion, while Walton struggled to even place in the top five, starting decent but losing his footing in the later rounds. It was the lowest he had placed in thirteen years. After the tournament, he quickly packed his things and got a cab to the airport. He didn’t pick up his phone for over a month.
***
The fresh snow on the gravel path crunched under Walton’s hunting boots while he trudged toward his 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche, encumbered by the unwieldy length of his gun bag. He gently placed his gear in the trunk, double-checked to make sure the locks were secure, and climbed into the front seat, wiggling while he waited for the heater to start up. The truck hiccupped into life and cheerily puttered down the path, while Walton instinctively pressed the seat warmer button which had stopped working three months ago. Carefully inching onto the unpaved back road, he followed it into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village, which in turn led to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rod and gun club. It looked run-down, like a bunch of rotting wooden posts connected to an abandoned elementary school portable. The door to the front was held together with a rusted eye latch. It took Walton a minute to undo because of the cold, but once he pushed in the plywood frame he was met with a familiar musty smell and the owner smoking a cigarette and reading a Brad Thor novel. The owner barely spoke, which was perfectly fine to Walton, as he was happy to purchase his pigeons and practice, unbothered by conversation. The man’s only acknowledgement of Walton’s existence was a brief nod after he placed the money for the pigeons on the table, though it was so slight as to conceivably be a twitch in his neck.
Walking into the open stretch of field and placing his things on the range’s table, Walton unlocked and unpacked his gun case, then he took his field journal out from his hunting jacket’s breast pocket. He opened it up and glanced at a few figures before leaving the book open by placing the ammo box on top of the pages. It was a purely symbolic action at this point—he knew every page inside out, every movement he needed to make, and every possible adjustment one could make to any change in climate. But the notes made him feel secure, as if he could catalogue enough esoteric information, enough calculations, to eliminate any contingency. Then came the rituals— he waddled his legs until they were shoulder-width apart, squared up his body to the range, practiced transferring his shotgun from his hip to his shoulder as smoothly as possible. Once he felt confident, he hit the button for the pigeon throwing machine, and lifted his gun.
Unlike hitting shots on a static target, shooting clays required not only a steady hand but a laser focus. The clay is never where your attention should be—to look for it is to fire a shot long after your target has passed your barrel. Rather, you join a dance with it, keeping it just on the periphery of your focus but never fully acknowledging it. The violent whipping motion of the tossed pigeon entangles with the soft movement of the shooter’s barrel, leading the clay disc to its future position until it’s met with another violent clash. The first shot of any session is always jarring, with even the most seasoned pro having to readjust to the thump of the butt-stock on their shoulder, the brutal boom that erupts from the barrel followed by the radiating crackle that permeates the air, and the sour smell of sulphur that pierces your nose. It’s terrifying at first, to feel this fantastic power in your hands, but it soon becomes intoxicating once you land a perfect shot, causing the disc to explode into a cloud of orange dust.
What is less intoxicating, though, is the sound of a disc thudding into the fresh snow on the ground, untouched by your pellets. Walton briefly shot a puzzled glance at the pigeon before readying himself again. Did he pre-empt the disc? Was his focus too set, or was it too loose? Another pigeon rocketed out at a low angle and eventually skittered to a stop as a puff of snow blasted up a few yards away. This time the disk felt like it appeared in the middle of his vision, making him whip his barrel way out to catch up. He was late, much too late.
With every missed shot, Walton made more aggressive sweeps of his shotgun, his placement getting wilder and wilder. He broke it open and ripped the two empty shells out of the breech before shoving two more in. His movements became frantic, even firing off two shells at once, hoping to hit one lucky shot and establish some momentum. He may have been firing shells down range, but his mind was anywhere else. He was flooded with memories—walks with the Old Man, fights with his ex-wife, the cold looks his mother gave him when he came home to visit. Eventually, the inevitable happened. He pressed down on the barrel to eject the shells, but this time it offered more rigidity than usual. His hand slipped down onto the corner of the break and sliced open his thumb. He was running off so much adrenaline that he felt no pain when it happened. He just stared at the red liquid trickling down his hand, creeping toward his forearm. For a moment, he smiled at the wound.
He returned home with his thumb wrapped in gauze, and sat in front of his fireplace, watching the white bandages slowly fade to a light pink. He took out his hot plate again, this time warming up a can of Campbell’s Chunky. After picking through about half of the bowl, he sat at his writing desk and stared at the unfinished floorboards. His mind floated around until it eventually landed on a memory of one of the first hunting trips he went on with the Old Man. They were sitting in a tree stand when the Old Man spotted a doe gracefully walking through a clearing. Urging Walton to take his binoculars, he lifted his bolt action onto his shoulder, resting it on a railing. The silence in between his father readying the rifle and pulling the trigger seemed both the longest and most serene moment on earth. Both Walton and the doe jumped when the shot echoed through the forest, though the deer only continued moving for about fifteen more seconds before collapsing into a bush. Walton shouted and jumped out of his seat to climb down the ladder, with the Old Man a few steps behind. When they reached the deer’s carcass, Walton looked up gleefully at his father, who met his eyes with a much stonier expression. The Old Man took out a knife and sliced the deer’s throat. The gangling legs twisted and writhed, then grew unsettlingly rigid. They dressed the animal, removing the internal organs and windpipe, and wrapped it in a tarp to take home. They didn’t say a word to each other for the next few hours. Days later, Walton asked his father why he was so sad after killing the thing. The Old Man didn’t look at him, instead watching the gentle late November snow fall onto the windowsill.
“When you kill a deer, you end a whole story that nature was planning on playing out. There will be grass that won’t be eaten, tracks that won’t be made, and a corpse that won’t fuel the forest. It’s nothing to be proud of.”
The boy sat awkwardly on his family’s leather sofa, feeling the tiny pits and crevices. After another moment, he asked his father that if we weren’t supposed to be proud, what the point was to begin with. The Old Man looked his son in the eyes for a moment with an expression that was unreadable to Walton, then quickly looked back towards the snow. “I suppose there isn’t much else we can do. So we just gotta.”
Walton “Yankee” Emmett grabbed the empty can and put it in the recycling bin, then washed his cutlery and put it back into the drawer. He piled some more logs into the furnace, and climbed into his bed, clutching a pillow tight to his chest. His thumb radiated in waves of pain the whole night, sometimes waking him up as he was on the cusp of passing out. Eventually, he managed to fall asleep.1
Spencer Diver is currently falling down an infinite staircase. He thinks he’s a writer from Brantford, Ontario, but to be quite honest, he’s taken a quite a few blows to the head on his way down so he could be mistaken.
- Originally published January 2025 in Soliloquies Anthology. ↩︎
