She shot a gun once. She was twelve years old and on vacation somewhere in the Southwest with her uncle and her three older cousins. They taught her how to hold the rifle and how to aim. She hit five brightly painted clay pigeons and missed twenty more. On the ride back to the ranch she dropped the neon-yellow earplugs on the trail like little foam-rubber breadcrumbs. Her uncle pointed out breeds of cactus and her cousins complained about the shocks on the Jeep.

For weeks after the trip, her upper arm was colored with a yellow-purple bruise shaped something like spilled milk. She showed it to everyone back home. First it was impressive, and then it was ugly, the color of some disease only people in history books got. The color of limbs that had to be hacked free.

If movies are right, then it's not that hard to shoot a gun. You can be a cop and you can throw one to almost anyone onscreen, and he'll fumble for a second but mostly get the idea in about the time it takes for the attacker to approach. She was partial to movies with FBI agents who pulled guns from straps on their legs, aimed and shot without pausing. It's just a trigger you pull, then satisfying shots and sparks when you hit your target. Knives required more concentration, bombs required destruction. It's been years since she's even been near a gun, but lately she can't stop trying to remember. Now, driving to work, she thinks of the rifle and the range, but she can't conjure up anything about that day, not anything past the way the earplugs flecked against the grey sand.

What's good about a gun is how it sounds when you have earplugs in and you're twelve years old, just trying to impress your cousins. Maybe yourself, too, like maybe you'll turn out to be an incredible shot. Maybe you'll be asked to be famous, to shoot things on television. Like Annie Oakley, or was she famous for roping things, or shooting arrows? Or for just being a woman who could hold a weapon? Was she really famous for fighting, or were all of her targets dead already?

She can almost remember the clay pigeons, as orange as the earplugs were yellow, crumbling in mid-air as though crushed in some invisible fist. But she can't remember how to hold the gun, how much pressure she had to apply to the trigger. She can't remember where she looked over to sight things, or what the gun parts were called, or what the man in charge yelled when the pigeons went up. She can't remember the weight or the sound, or the feel of the metal and the heat of the shot. She can't remember the color of the day or the way her cousins watched. She can only remember the bruise on her upper arm, and the way the recoil felt in her stomach. She can only remember how it marked its territory on her skin, broken blood vessels outlining the terms of defeat and opposition.