Art of the Shotgun

A shotgun a day keeps the doctor away. We were 17, working among college students in an Alaskan salmon cannery, living away from our parents for the first time and enjoying all things anarchy. Compared to our high-school classmates, who’d taken summer jobs at cheesy fast-food joints, complete with polyester pants and goofy-ass hats, we felt like gods. It was good work for anyone, let alone a couple high-school kids. Nine-bucks an hour and a lot of time-and-a-half overtime, plus a summer’s end bonus for sticking it out. After two months of hard work in Alaska we’d head south with six or seven-thousand dollars in our pockets. Each night after work, at 11 or midnight or sometimes later, we’d join the college kids for a couple hours, either to break them down on the basketball court or to learn all the things we weren’t supposed to know for a couple years. Those guys and gals were in their twenties. Their bosses were in their thirties. All of them seemed ancient compared to Torrey and I, like their next stop might be the bingo parlor or the funeral home. Torrey and I thought our lives would go on forever. One night we were in a room, one of a dozen in a company bunkhouse, which housed the stinky, gut-encrusted slime-line workers. The whole place reeked of a neglected cooler. A guy whom we called Bam said, “Have you guys ever tried a shotgun?” Torrey, shook his head. “Well,” our host, a bedraggled college dropout with a taste for hashish and a rule that nothing but The Doors could be played on his boombox, said, “It’s about time you two learned how to drink.” Our guide, whom we called a “lifer” (meaning he’d never quit the cannery, never advance beyond the dreaded slime line) whipped out a pocketknife and proceeded to puncture two beer cans. Foam shot momentarily from the base of the can to the ceiling. I’d just counted 29 cigarette butts in an ashtray next to Bam’s bed. Bam once told me he’d taken acid 30 times and that didn’t surprise me. Another cannery worker told me if you take acid more than once or twice it makes you legally insane. Bam worked the knife, left then right, opening holes in the cans. From somewhere down the hall I heard Madonna–the hot new act–sing, “Celebrate!” The following night it would be Cindy Lauper, Girls Just Want to Have Fun. It was a bad time for music. Bam stuck his head out the door and yelled, “Turn that shit down,” and promptly turned up Jim Morrison. Bam handed the punctured beers to Torrey and I and said, “Break on through, boys.” I placed my mouth over that hole. Torrey did the same. Bam counted one … two … three … go! Torrey and I popped the pull tops on our cans, threw our heads back like two barking coyotes, and allowed the beer to charge down our throats. It felt like I’d placed my mouth around the end of a fire hose and someone had turned the damn thing to blast mode. Some beer ran out my nose. Literally, a second or two later Torrey and I chucked empty cans against a wall. I held my gut. Torrey said, “Oh man.” One night, probably after two or three shotguns, Torrey and I started talking about getting old. Forty? If you made forty you were lucky to be alive, probably suffering the first signs of dementia and chronic constipation. We wondered how we might behave at that age. Would we still listen to AC/DC, taking stage dives into the crowd? Torrey grabbed my notebook, something I packed around Alaska so I wouldn’t forget all the details from the most reckless and formative years of my life. In it he scratched, “I, Torrey Cenis, will shotgun a beer on my 40th birthday,” and then signed it. That seemed like a big promise, like, if he shotgunned a beer on his 40th birthday he would be the most bad-ass old man on the planet, behind Hugh Heffner, of course. I kept that notebook. Still have it. Often, I read that passage and laugh. Through the years, Torrey and I have remained fast friends, fishing partners, too. He has a wonderful wife and two girls. Ditto for me. He called one morning in March and said, “Dude, it’s my fortieth today.” Hearing Torrey’s words I thought, Forty doesn’t seem that old. And I meant it. “Well,” I insisted, “Are you going to do it?” “Come on,” he answered. “Already did it.” As juvenile as it seems, I don’t think a year has passed since our seventeenth birthdays when Torrey and I haven’t shotgunned a beer. Some years have been better than others. Once, while camped near Lake Lenice in eastern Washington, after catching some mongo rainbows on tiny chironomids, we gunned down two brews in front of my dad. He was appalled, but amazed, too. “You guys just drank those beers in two seconds.” “No shit, Fred,” Torrey said, “That’s the point.” These days, every time Torrey and I meet on the water, usually for a spring float on the Bitterroot, we partake. Torrey always has a sharp pocketknife and performs the ritualistic carving. Whoever is with us comes along for the ride whether they want to or not. Peer pressure until we break the rat. It’s always been that way. Once, in Alaska, when Torrey and I were two years beyond our first shotguns, we tried to guilt a non-drinker into performing a shotgun. He didn’t bite and he felt inferior for it. We knew, because he tried to make up for his intelligence by saying, “Hey, maybe I should shotgun this Coke while you guys shotgun those beers.” “You know,” Torrey said, with the most evil of smiles, “That’s a hellofa a good idea. Cut here … twist the knife like so …” I don’t know what the carbonation difference is between a Coke and a beer, but it must be grand because Coca-Cola shot out this guy’s nose like it was fired through a cannon. The group of people who’d gathered around to witness the kill (hey, check it out, this dude is going to shotgun a Coke!) nearly dropped to their knees, hands on their bellies trying to stave off the pain of extreme laughter. The Coca-Cola kid staggered out of the hall, down the stairs to the parking lot and proceeded to shower the gravel with whatever they’d served in the cookhouse that evening. Salmon again, it looked like. Sometimes when I’m walking through a mall or I catch a Mariners game in Seattle I wonder what would happen if I bumped into the Coca-Cola kid, all grown up now, still harboring a grudge. Basically, I don’t want to see him. I turned forty not long ago. I’m what you would call semi health-conscious now, trying my best to survive. But time is rolling by like a train. I have days where aging bothers me, more the idea of it than the physical pain. I want to see my daughters grow up, see what they become. There are some realities I’ve yet to accept and I may carry that defiance to my deathbed. I imagine Torrey feels the same way. I guess I’m not condoning the shotgun anymore, but I’m not giving up on it either. Rather than a common event, it’s become a statement, something to partake on special occasions. So on those days when it feels right, usually with Torrey at the helm and myself casting skwalas from the front of his raft, I’ll motion to the side of the Bitterroot with a nod. He’ll carve the holes and we’ll tilt our heads to the sky, let the beer race down our throats and the foam careen down our chins, a couple humorous moments on the water, a vestige of youth we’re not yet willing to throw away, just yet. GT

Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome