Page 32 of Heaven Help Me

“One, two, three.”

We both fire again, a head shot this time, and Deuce crows when my shot is a bit high and to the left. He keeps counting it out and we keep shooting. By the time we’re done, he slaps his gun down and turns to me, that smirk thicker than I’ve ever seen it.

“I gotcha on the head shots, V.”

I put my gun down and lift my nose in the air. Yes, my head shots were not dead center. “Do you though?” I point to my target.

He looks at me in confusion and then looks at my target again. “Motherfucker,” he spits quietly.

My laugh rings out, scaring a bird out of the tree off to our left.

“I gotta piss,” he mumbles, turning toward the two porta-potties you couldn’t pay me to step foot into. “Winner has to clean up.”

I’m still laughing. “Poor loser!”

My target has one burnt hole in the center of the body and six holes in the head. Two eyes and one smiling mouth. I made a smiley face with my head shots.

I get busy cleaning up our weapons and putting them back in their cases. I’m just about to put them in the car when I hear a hiss that lifts the hair on the back of my neck. I turn slowly, scanning the scene for the threat.

There.

A snake on top of one of the porta-potties. Without needing to look, I pull out one of the handguns and reload it. The snake is frozen hanging down from the roof of the porta-potty like it’s been lying there in the pile of leaves for awhile. It’s got the classic dark brown hourglass-shaped crossbands. Fuckity fuck. It’s a copperhead.

Think, Valentina! Is that the porta-potty Deuce went into?

Copperheads won’t mess with you if you leave them alone. But if Deuce swings that door open now, he’ll whack the snake in the head and it’ll surely strike back.

“Deuce?” I call out, gun down but at the ready. I inch forward, brain whirling with what I should do. I’m not great reading wildlife. People? Sure. But snakes out in the country?

“What?” he calls back.

“There’s a copperhead on top of the porta-potty!” I say it urgently but quietly, not wanting to startle the slithering fella.

“Relax, V. There’s no cops out here. Besides, shooting on this land is fine. It’s owned by Silas’s dad,” he hollers back.

“No. A copperhead,” I say with better enunciation.

“What? I can’t hear you,” he calls back.

I look to the heavens for some goddamn patience while not taking my eye off that snake. I don’t want to shoot the poor thing, but if Deuce comes out, it’ll attack him.

I decide to shoot in the air and see if it’ll just slither away, crisis averted. I keep the gun away from my ear and angle it upward. I squeeze the trigger, the sound louder in the peaceful summer morning than I anticipated.

Deuce lets out a yell that sounds like a little girl, the porta-potty jiggling back and forth.

“What the fuck, Valentina?” he shouts, clearly flailing in the small space.

Sadly, the snake isn’t as bothered by the shot as Deuce is. He just slithers further down in front of the door.

“Fuck,” I hiss. I have no choice. I have to shoot it.

I can’t shoot right at the dang thing or it’ll hit Deuce too. I walk slowly to the side while Deuce continues to holler at me. I probably have mere seconds before Deuce flies out that door and gets hit by a copperhead in the face. I lift the gun and squeeze off three rounds, not hitting the snake, but getting close enough he drops to the ground and slithers off into the brush in the opposite direction.

The porta-potty door flies open and Deuce comes out in a dramatic tuck and roll, his poor suit taking the brunt of the exit. He flips on the ground, getting as low as possible, his hands over his head. Honestly, that shit looked professional. He could be FBI with that tuck and roll.

“What the fuck?” he screams.

I throw back my head and laugh so hard I swear to God I pull a rib muscle. Deuce whips his head left and right, then army crawls across the dirt to my side where he grabs the gun out of my hand and throws it away from us.