The Family Fang: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

contraband, the small detail being that he had nothing illegal on his person. Kenny rolled down the window and the officer ducked his head inside the car. “Parked on the side of the road, boys,” he said, “not a smart idea.”
    “Okay, sir,” Kenny said, “we’re just about to get moving.”
    The officer stared at Buster in the backseat, his eyes flickering with the disorientation of not knowing someone in his town.
    “Friend of yours?” he asked, pointing at Buster.
    “Yeah,” said Joseph.
    “Army?” asked the cop.
    “Special Forces,” said Arden, placing a hushing finger to his lips.
    “Huh,” said the cop, “real Black Ops shit?”
    Despite a lifetime spent lying without effort, Buster could only manage a weak nod in agreement.
    “Okay, move it out, then,” the cop said, flicking his wrist and pointing toward the horizon.
    “Special Forces,” Buster whispered to himself, everyone giddy with anticipation.
    At the liquor store, Buster, emboldened by the feeling that he had made friends for the first time in years, used almost the absolute last of the cash in his wallet to buy all the alcohol the soldiers wanted. He felt warm and authentic inside his new clothes and thought, handing over all he owned to the liquor-store clerk, that he could live here forever.
    N ow it was Buster’s turn. He leaned over a massive air cannon mounted on a tripod, which the soldiers referred to as Air Force One . Instead of potatoes, the gun used two-liter soda bottles as ammunition. “See, we don’t like to call them spud guns,” said David, who seemed, as the night progressed, to become more tightly wound. “Some shoot ping-pong balls and some shoot soda bottles and some shoot tennis balls that you fill with pennies. The best term would be pneumatic or combustion artillery.” Joseph shook his head. “I call them spud guns,” he said. Arden said, “I only ever have called them spud guns.” “Yeah, whatever,” replied David, “but I’m just trying to say that, for the article, the best term is still pneumatic or combustion artillery.”
    Kenny walked Buster through the steps one more time, and, though it was complicated and would result in serious injury if not performed correctly, Buster felt as though he understood each maneuver intuitively. He loaded the cannon and then turned on the air compressor until it reached the correct PSI. “Okay,” said Joseph, “we’re not going to pretend that this is better than sex or anything, but you’re going to be very happy after you do this.”
    Buster wanted to be very happy; in his desperate moments of self-absorption, he felt that the earth was powered by the intensity of his emotions. When he mentioned this to a psychiatrist, the doctor said, “Well, if that’s the case, don’t you think you should be out doing something a bit more, I don’t know, worthwhile?”
    He depressed the chamber-release trigger and there was a resonant thoomp followed by a soft, sustained shushing sound like air escaping from an expertly slashed tire. Someone handed him a pair of binoculars, and Buster watched the trajectory of the bottle until it landed almost three hundred yards away. He was surprised to find that, long after he had fired the cannon, the happiness he derived from it had not abated. “Does this ever get old?” Buster asked, and all four of the men answered, without hesitation, “No.”
    Two sacks of potatoes emptied, the men stood in a circle and occasionally mentioned that someone should go buy some more beer without anyone volunteering to do so.
    Through his alcoholic impairment, Buster began to formulate the basic premise of his article, ex-soldiers building fake weapons to alternately forget and remember their wartime experiences. All he needed were facts to support this idea. “How often do you do this?” Buster asked. The men looked at him like it should have been obvious. “Every goddamned night,” Kenny said, “unless there’s something good on TV,