A profusion of matt brown colours tinged with orange hues and swathes of deep green swam across his vision as Jamie stared down the sights of the big rifle.  A light breeze eddied gently under the brim of his hat drifting the smell of warm gun oil into his nostrils.  Off to his left some-thing rustled lightly but he couldn’t place the type of sound or its exact direction.  A drop of  sweat ran over the bridge of his nose trickling into the corner of his left eye making him blink
rapidly. 

   ‘Keep them open, keep them open,’ he muttered, remembering vividly Sam’s instruction about keeping both eyes open when shooting in hot weather.  Sam had been a soldier and a sniper. When Jamie was five years old they’d spent half an hour with an old broom handle while Sam explained the rudiments of good shooting.  It was such a long time ago that he was surprised that he recalled the incident at all.

   ‘Try to fit the rifle, stop trying to make the rifle fit you, it’s not your mothers handbag,’ he’d said.  Sam’s right hand middle finger was missing, he’d said it had been amputated to give his index finger a lighter feel on the trigger though he was laughing when he said it.

   His mother wouldn’t have been too happy if she could see him now, she didn’t like guns of any kind.  He remembered the time she took his plastic rifle, which only squirted water, and flung it on the fire, it had been a swap for some comics with a friend at school.

   He looked down the sights again, adjusting the gunstock until it fitted snugly against his cheek.  A shiver of apprehension ran up his spine.  He took his sweating right hand off the gun to dry it against the front of his jacket, knowing that if he missed his target the game was up. 

   He could hear a faint, rapid, chugging sound, something like a distant roll of thunder or a train on uneven rails.  A small cloud passed overhead and he felt a cool, heavily scented swirl run up the front of his body, partly lifting the bottom of his lightweight jacket.  He leaned into the rifle and began concentrating again just as the sun came out and lit up his target.  Losing his sighting for a moment he squinted and breathed in, expelling half of the air from his lungs prior to firing – as Sam had told him to do.

  ‘For Christ’s sake fire the damn thing,’ said an exasperated voice somewhere off to his right. Jamie fired and his target fell over.

 ‘How old are you son?’ the voice asked.

   ‘I’m nine in March, mister,’ said Jamie, laying the air rifle down.

   ‘You need another two ducks down, before you win the fluffy dog,’ said the stallholder on the fairground.                                                       

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~