Suncatcher by Romesh Gunesekera

Author:Romesh Gunesekera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

In the still air, the shrill alarm of a cricket spooked my horse and I made my way towards the pond on foot. At the bund, the laughter of light on the water, half in love with muddy chaparajos and sudden puffs of gun smoke, made me drop my guard. The first phut of the air rifle skimmed flat and indecisive; a few seconds later another shot plucked a leaf off a pond-sniffing guava an arm’s length away. I couldn’t work out the gunman’s position. If only we had tracer bullets like in a war comic: long white arcs trailing across the sky, thickening into clouds to feed the dreams of carefree days and make a new world out of an afternoon’s make-believe.

Then, ten yards ahead, by the water’s edge, a dry coconut frond sailed through the air. Gerry’s war whoop followed. No glint of sunlight on gunmetal that shone in the pages of my favourite Westerns; nothing gleamed under the coconuts. No white Stetson, nor bent eagle feather.

I raised the BB gun. Jay was right: the gun made the game real. No need to imagine a bullet reaching out to the target; no one would have to pretend to be hit, or argue against it. If the aim was good and I shot straight, Jay would be hit. There will be no need to negotiate. The green splat would be proof. He’d be dead. That was all I had to do: make him dead. The point was to shoot straight, not pretend, and be somewhere almost real. The idea was liberating.

Jay’s rifle had telescopic sights, cross-hairs; mine had a simpler V and ball, but that was enough. I was learning to believe in natural gifts: how to still the mind, let every sound, smell, waft of wind, press the outer layers of the senses and reveal the state of things. To live, as Jay urged, in one universal breath from now to infinity. Slowly, his beaming face came into focus: the high cheekbones catching the sun, glistening, his fringe mussy and wavering below the hat, his tongue peeping as he searched for us. I closed my eyes in a marksman’s prayer, tasting metal, a hint of the corrosion that lay ahead in the journey out of a shell into a world that would mingle light with darkness, doing with undoing.

Then my hat was hit – smack in the middle of the crown.

‘Got you, asshole,’ Jay’s exaggerated Wild West shout echoed. ‘Out for three minutes.’ His motor spluttered into life and he set off.

Downed, I counted the seconds, furious not to have fired a single shot.

Gerry let out another whoop and hurled a branch, leaping out onto the open ground where we had abandoned the raft: in plain view, his half-length sarong flapping. I could have splattered that easily, probably even hit the headband, if Gerry froze for a second, but the three minutes were not up. With another whoop, Gerry plunged into a grove of cardamom plants and orange trees.

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