After lunch, he was issued fatigues, and the two fellows drove him over hills and through glades until at last he was at a place where he knew he'd be home: the sign simply read COL. MERLE EDSON RIFLE RANGE, USMC. He knew who Colonel Edson was too, though had never met him: he was called "Red Mike," was a Nicaragua marine like Earl, and had led Edson's Raiders during the war. He was under a marker somewhere on Hawaii with most of the friends Earl ever made.
But what awaited him was only a gunny and a couple of lance corporals at one shooting pit. Far off, three hundred yards distant in the butts, a single target had been raised like a postage stamp on a pool table.
"Mr. Jones, the sergeant here will take care of you. We'll be back in two hours."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Benning," he said.
"Dan, please call me Dan, Mr. Jones."
"Dan, then. Thanks, you've been very helpful."
"We try to do our part."
With that the officer smiled mysteriously, climbed back into the Navy Ford, and drove off.
Earl turned to face the gunny.
"Well, Earl, I won't ask how come that boy is calling you 'Mr. Jones.'"
"Hello, Ray. I thought that was you. Damn, it's good to see you."
They shook hands with the warmth of men who'd shed and lost blood together in hard places.
"You too, Earl."
"Last time I saw you was in the triage station on Saipan, right?"
"That's the one. I heard about you on Iwo. I was still in sick bay."
"You were lucky to miss Iwo, Ray. Wasn't no place for human beings, I'll tell you. So what have you got for me?"
"Well, we were told to get a good rifle ready for a man from Washington."
"Hell, I'm from Arkansas."
"Earl, I just know I got orders and so I follow 'em. This has 'very important' ticketed all over it. They wanted us to mount up a sniper rifle and to take it out of inventory as if it never existed. That ain't no easy thing in the Marine Corps, where we got to watch every last damn penny."
"Sorry for the trouble, Ray. These boys do business their own way. Can't say I like it much, but I signed on to something and I have to ride it out."
"Well, I'm glad it's you getting this here rifle, Earl."
"Ray, I'll get it back to you if I ain't damned dead."
"Believe you, Earl."
By this time they'd reached the cover just ahead of the shooting pits, where hundreds of marines gathered each day to zero or practice with their M1s. All training canceled today, of course.
Earl saw a rifle lying on one of the tables, almost like a religious icon presented during high mass.
"It's a Model 70, Earl, a Winchester."
"Yes, I have one back in the rack at home," he said. "The barrel on mine is narrower."
"The Marine Corps rifle team bought a mess of heavy-barreled target models back in the thirties for team high-power. Did right well with them, too. Major Schultz won the Wimbledon Cup in 1938, some big shooting match, very important. Our armorers bedded and adjusted the rifles and put a Unertl 8x scope on. Somehow we ended up with six of them for our rifle team down here. This here's the most accurate."
Earl looked at the sleek tool, blued steel, wood brightly burnished, the whole dark thing much loved and tended after. It specialized in hitting black paper circles at a thousand yards.
"Well, let's see if it still remembers where the black is," said Ray.
"Hell," said Earl, "let's see if I still remember where the black is."
He got into a good prone, and the two lance corporals, evidently armorers, bent to fit the rifle to him. The sling had to be let out some so that he could get it cinched up tight. They coached him, for the intricacies of shooting cinched were something that, once drilled in him, hadn't stuck around. He'd never shot with a sling in combat, but then all his killing had been done up close.
Then there was the issue of getting the scope properly focused so that the crossed wires of the reticule stood out black and precise, yet what lay beyond them was still clear as well. This took some diddling, and the bad news was that Earl's vision had deteriorated some, so that he had to place his eye in a certain way for maximum efficiency of the system.
"You hunt any, Earl?" Ray asked, as Earl cracked a box of 173-grain brown-box ammo from the Frankford Arsenal and threaded the shells in behind the bolt, down into the magazine well.
"I do, and dearly love it. Took my son after his first whitetail this spring, but he decided not to take it."
"I know he'll be a sure shot like his daddy."
"I hope he don't never have to fire a rifle at a man," said Earl.
He shoved the bolt forward and down where it locked like a vault door closing, then squirmed into position to find the rifle after a time-after his muscles quit ticking and stretching-pointing naturally so that the crosshairs bisected the black dot of the target three hundred yards out.
"Any time, Earl."
Earl settled in, until it was only himself and the rifle, and then the himself part went away and only the rifle existed. He forced all his concentration on the intersection of the two dark lines in the dark of the spot that was the target, waiting for it all to settle. It never would, he knew, but he knew also that you had to read and feel your own breathing, so when the crosshairs fell through absolute center, you were already into your trigger press.
The gun snapped, jerked, rose an inch or two and settled back down. He watched as the target disappeared into the butts and anonymous men put a spindle through the hole. When it popped back into view he saw a white marker, lower left hand quadrant of the circle.
"Good shot. Fire again please, sir," said the lance corporal hunched on the spotting scope.
Earl sent four more downrange, clustering his hits in that lower left area. Then he relaxed as the rifle was taken from him and the other lance corporal clicked the scope the prescribed amount of windage to the right.
Earl received the corrected rifle back and fired another cluster of five, this over to the right, but still under the bull. The lance corporal worked over the rifle again, and when it was returned with the new corrections, it put the cluster into three inches at the center of the bull.
"That's a good three hundred-yard combat zero. You still shoot a bushel, Earl."
"I ain't forgot as much as I'd thought."
For the next hour or so, they diddled. The young men coached Earl through his positions, and he forced reluctant muscles into positions they hadn't assumed in years. He practiced sitting, kneeling and offhand, the latter at a shorter range for snap shots.
"Trigger feel fine, sir?" asked one of the boys.
"Could let off a little more lightly," Earl said, "but not too lightly."
"Yes, sir."
The rifle was taken from him, broken down from its stock, and the tiny twin screws in the mechanism manipulated. Reassembled, a few ounces had vanished from the press. He requested more and it was done and measured to be a two-pound trigger, and was then slopped with shellac to keep the tiny screws from slipping under the pounding of recoil.
"We've made you a sniper, Earl."
"Next thing you know, you'll be painting my old face green like a bush. Wouldn't that be a thing."
"Earl, green. What a sight that would be."
And then at four the Navy Ford returned with its two crisp officers in their tropic khakis, neatly pressed and ironed, a far cry from the sweaty marines who'd been working hard in the sun all afternoon.
The two didn't approach the marines directly. They parked and waited.
Earl waited as the two lance corporals quickly and effectively cleaned and greased the rifle, restoring it to a condition of maximum accuracy. Then after their nod, he placed the rifle and two boxes of the Frankford 173-grain brown-box ammo into a civilian gun case that had been thoughtfully provided, took it, shook hands and turned to go meet his sponsors.