I’m not proud to admit, deep into this holy and festive season, that my better angels were nowhere to be found.  I had a clear choice, and I chose the path of deviltry.  My wife Karen, too, had a choice.  She could have embraced forgiveness.  Instead, she pursued swift and overwhelming retribution.  And our 7 year-old son gazed at us in confusion, uncertain what to do or say.

It is a bright December Sunday.  There is snow in Campbellville.  Our rural town lies tucked comfortably into the Niagara Escarpment, a few hundred feet above the adjacent plains.  It’s an easy place to live.  There are farms all about, and some quarries too, and no shortage of trees and trails and water.  The highway, the malls, the airport and the city are a short drive away.  But they’re still “away”, which is nice.  I think it makes for just a fraction more peace, perhaps a tad less speed, a pinch more time to think.  A little more perspective and wisdom, people here might tell you, if you caught them in a moment of particular honesty or conceit.

But wisdom was not the order of the day, today, no matter the innocence of how it all started.  Maclain and his sister Aila, who is 3, were turbulent this morning.  Any parent knows that the cure for turbulent is outside.  So, on with the snowsuits and boots.  Out with the children and with the dogs.  Quiet is restored, save the clinks and tings of breakfast dishes and cutlery brought to the sink by husband and wife.

I can’t claim provocation.  Nor can I truly explain my thought process, as I stopped at the threshold to the kitchen, the large pistol feeling heavy in my hand.  Karen stood before the sink, her back to me.  I simply raised my arm and pulled the trigger.  The next moments spooled out in silence.

Maclain opened the front door and stepped in, wondering what was taking me so long to fill up his squirt gun.  He looked at me and Karen in the kitchen.  Karen turned slowly. Her backside, which had presented such an irresistible target, was soaking wet.  A riot of emotions played across her lovely face.  She beheld me, and the dripping gun.

Then, realization.  She was holding a drinking glass filled with soapy water.  She fired from the hip, range point blank.  The arc of liquid caught the winter sun slanting in through the windows.  Hit in center mass, I stepped back, a dark, lemony-scented stain spreading across my chest, down into my jeans, collecting in my riding boots.

A sound from our son.  Karen and I swiveled to meet his wide eyes.  “What’s going on here?”  No answer from his parents, though he would later claim he heard muted snorting and giggling.  “Are you having a water fight?  In the house?”

As is just and proper, I am not allowed to play with Maclain’s water pistol for two weeks.

Cam Battley lives quietly in rural Ontario, Canada.