A yarn en route to the anchovies

Iwas looking for anchovies. I found Rick. Hello, I said. Hello, he said. ‘‘Where are you working these days?’’ I said. In the game of squash, the most important shot is the return of serve. It dictates the rally to come. Similarly, in a supermarket conversation, it’s the line after the helloing that dictates what follows.

Some lines kill things dead. You’re looking well, we must have a beer some time, and send my love to Lucy, are all karate chops to the conversational carotid artery. Within seconds both parties are away and shopping and careful thereafter not to inadvertently share an aisle.

But ‘‘where are you working these days?’’ is not a karate chop. I said it because I like Rick, he often has stories, he likes to laugh and – though I know this is suspicious conversational behaviour – I actually wanted to know.

‘‘I’m on ACC,’’ he said, and he pointed at his jandalled foot where a not-especially impressive wound appeared to be healing. ‘‘I was shot.’’

Well now. I took the shopping list I hadn’t got and shoved it deep into the trouser pocket of oblivion. Then I took the hands that I had got and rubbed them together. For though I deplore violence and condemn firearms, when someone I know has been shot I am thrilled to the core.

‘‘By whom?’’ I wanted to ask, but I bit the words back. This was the real world. ‘‘Who by?’’ I said. ‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Rick.

‘‘You don’t know?’’

‘‘You catch on fast.’’

I scratched my skull and felt its contents thrumming. ‘‘Was it a drive-by shooting?’’ ‘‘The evidence suggests not.’’

‘‘Because there was no-one driving by?’’ ‘‘You’re wasted as a columnist,’’ said Rick. ‘‘So what exactly,’’ I said, left hand clasping the bowl of my meerschaum, head deerstalkered, eyes focused on a point halfway to the horizon, ‘‘happened?’’

It transpired that Rick was standing outside his house on Lyttelton’s desirable rural fringe. The weather was fine, the bees were humming and peace came dropping slow. Then suddenly he had a hole in his foot from which the following day a surgeon at Christchurch general hospital extracted a .22 bullet.

‘‘And there was no-one else about?’’

Rick nodded.

‘‘It’s almost as though,’’ I said, speaking slowly as the thought bloomed, ‘‘you were shot by God.’’

‘‘The same thought came to me,’’ said Rick, who has been known to wear a T-shirt that advocates Satanic worship, ‘‘but the police reached a different conclusion.’’

‘‘Which was?’’

‘‘You know how Middle-Eastern militias on the back of Toyota Hiluxes celebrate victories by shooting into the air. Have you ever wondered . . .’’

‘‘Where the bullets come to earth and whether anyone’s ever hit by one?’’ I said. ‘‘Yes, I have. Often.’’

‘‘Worldwide,’’ said Rick, ‘‘35 people a year are killed by falling bullets. I looked it up.’’

‘‘But we don’t have a lot of Middle-Eastern militias in Lyttelton.’’

‘‘No, but we do have a lot of possum hunters. A .22 bullet fired straight up would reach 700 metres before falling to ground 40 seconds later with a terminal velocity of . . .’’

‘‘I prefer the metaphor of God the Sniper,’’ I said. ‘‘Picking us off one by one, arbitrarily, for his own amusement. None of us knowing who’s next.’’

‘‘Me too,’’ said Rick. ‘‘Let’s have a beer some time.’’

It didn’t take me long to find a jar of little anchovies, every one of which had failed to see the net coming.