Desultory

Aimless; haphazard; digressing at random

Benny's parents were independently wealthy, which is why when he wanted to be an Olympic archer in the second grade they were able to buy him everything they could to support his dream: professional bow, laser sites, targets, aluminum shafted arrows with nylon feathers. They landscaped a field in the back of their sprawling upstate New York tract into a shooting range with bales of hay and a supply shed.
Benny would go out to the field with his father or with his personal archery trainer and shoot aluminum arrow after aluminum arrow until his shot became confident and repeatable.
Over the years archery was the thing that he did. If he was confused, bored, or anxious in anyway he went out and shot arrows at the targets, piercing the colorful concentric circles.
Benny coasted through middle school and the beginning of high school. His parents and teachers and guidance counselors pushed him along with the rest of his classmates at a prestigious boarding school nearby. He studied the way they studied. He socialized the way they socialized. He watched the Simpsons and Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live reruns and laughed and raided the many liquor cabinets of their similarly wealthy caretakers. All the while, Benny held onto his archery, shooting with a blind accuracy formed by the force of habit.
But during his last year and a half of high school, Benny began wandering home at odd times throughout the week. Sometimes he would skip classes and come how to shoot at the targets. Other times his parents would find him sleeping on the living room couch, hugging his bow like a tall metal teddy bear.
Early one Saturday morning in April, just as the trees were starting burst out in green again and the air was getting restless and warm, Benny's father heard the front door open and close. He walked out in slippers and robe to the range in the back of his house and saw Benny shooting. He heard the arrows cutting through the air almost desperately, sticking into the hay bales and paper with the rhythm of a second hand.
Benny stood there loading, shooting, reloading, and shooting again. There was a single candle near his sheath of arrows where his hand reached instinctively to draw his next shot. Benny's father squinted, the early morning light had not risen over the hills. He couldn't see any of the targets. He looked at his son as he released each arrow into the darknes. He smelled lightly of gin and sweat.
"Benny?" he asked.
"What dad," his son responded, sniffling.
"What are you shooting at?"
"I don't know," Benny said.