James Sherrett

Born on the wrong side of the tracks to right-handed parents, James developed dead-eye skills with a BB gun by his tenth birthday. He remembers graduating from tin cans to GI Joe soldiers, knocking the arm off Snake Eyes, and knowing he was ready to hunt.

Along those train tracks stood an abandoned grain elevator full of pigeons, for a time. And later full of stray cats.

James chased a grey tom up a short poplar tree on the same day he discovered a musty yet uninterrupted stash of Penthouse (April 1980 to March 1982), from a time before trimming became fashionable. The hissing cat fell twelve feet after the BB hit it between the eyes, missed landing on it feet, rolled once on the marshy ground, and high-tailed it for the bush.

If James ever gets that faraway look he may be conjuring the memory of the BB bouncing off that cat's skull. Or he may be thinking of the bush.