les vacances

Here's a piece of something I'm working on, during my vacation from the novel:

At the last minute before leaving, we decided to shoot the pistol. We had been taking pictures of each other lying in the hammock, or standing in the field talking to the farmer, or pretending to weed the garden, that we would later show to Grandma and Grandpa, so that they could see how their first married granddaughter was doing, where she was living, what the house and the fields and the barn looked like in the full golden summer light. There was one picture of Robert jumping from the porch banister, staged to capture him in full flight with all the rest of us looking on. We hoped that one came out.

It was a .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk, western style. John had brought it because he never had a chance to shoot it in the city. In the city, it stayed in its bag in the basement, oiled, cleaned, and unloaded. He had a friend who belonged to a gun club and who sometimes invited him to come and target shoot, but this didn't happen very often. But out in the country seemed a good place to bring a gun, here, in the hill country, here, on the farm.

Now that I read it over it sounds very Richard Ford-ish, which I'm not sure is what I was going for.