The hair buzzed so close to the boy’s skull made his thin neck and the jut of his ears appear especially vulnerable. He closed one eye and pretended to look down the sight of the heavy rifle while his father hissed instructions.
“Back your shoulder up to that tree there so it don’t kick you back!”
The boy stepped backwards awkwardly. His new hunting boots were a gift from his father and they were far too large. He kept his eye trained on the sight even though he saw nothing.
“Git ‘er now, boy! Gotdammit!”
The boy pulled his finger on the trigger but it did not budge. This confused him and he lifted his head for a second, pulling harder. The rifle exploded in his hands with a deafening crack that shoved his shoulder into the fat trunk of the tree and knocked the air from his lungs. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. The burnt smell of sulfur reached his nostrils. He couldn’t see the deer.
“Score!” His father grabbed the boy by the collar and tore out of the brush, galloping toward the field.
It wasn’t a shock to see such an animal felled, lying stark against the snow. He witnessed his father and his hunting buddies hacking away at the carcass of many a deer in their backyard, dressing them for the freezer. He even played with the bloody stump of a lower leg once, moving the joint back and forth while staring down into the marrow. The heat rose in him as he approached his kill. Fear of his father, the swelling of pride, and shame for the praise that he secretly ached for combined to flush his face red.
His father knelt at the body of the young doe and dug his finger into the hole in her neck, buried to the knuckle. “Sure shot, son!”
The boy never expected her eyes to be so beautiful behind their lashes. She lifted her head and let out a hoarse honk that sprayed red snot across his boots, and then she laid her head back down on a raspberry snowcone of blood. Her pink tongue lay exposed against her muzzle.
The very moment his father reached up with a steaming red finger and smeared her essence across his cheek, the boy’s heart went hollow. This moment would replay in his mind all of his life. Every time he felt like less than a man, his heart would go hollow.
Rhon I almost could not go on but I had to. Powerful writing. What makes a man?
Wow Rhon… that got to me. Very moving piece. I can’t bear the thought of our sweet, kind boy being the boy in this story.