Pop’s breath hung between us as we stood in the skinny aspen trees with their big black spots on bright white bark. Feeble light filtered into the thicket. Ice puddles pocked the forest floor and where the light hit them, they looked like the polka dots on my sister’s dress.
He stopped and lifted his head, and motioned for me to come up beside him. I made sure my feet didn’t scrape a “hell of a racket,” as he called it, in the dead aspen leaves. He lifted his face and for a moment I wondered if he was praying to Jesus to send us some deer.
Rays of light hit his face and he suddenly opened his mouth and took in a deep breath and then he stuck his tongue out. I thought it was too cold to do something stupid like that. He flared his nostrils. I could see hair growing in his nose and I turned my eyes down and looked at the dry leaves, old deer crap, quartz stones, dead moss.
He sniffed the air which reminded me of one of Uncle Elmo’s Hereford bulls when he’s trying to find out which of the cows is in heat. Pop licked his lips and opened his eyes and grinned at me.
He whispered, “I can smell him.”
“Smell what?”
He shook his head and looked further into the woods. “A buck.”
He said, “Listen.”
The wind stirred in the tops of the aspens and the big ones groaned. More of that frozen breath hung in front of Pop’s face.
I thought about a buck and then I thought about the movie “Bambi” and the little fawn, its big sad eyes, its white spots all over its fragile body.
“There.”
I froze and whispered, “Where? What?” My feet were numb and my fingers felt like icicles even though I wore the brand new gloves Mama bought me.
Pop lifted his thirty-ought-six and pointed the barrel in the direction of a bunch of aspen saplings.
I couldn’t see anything besides the white skins of the saplings and the leaves that drifted down and the…the…something moved and then I saw some horns and a head and a nose and two legs. My heart went bang, bang, bang.
He grabbed my shoulder and leaned into my ear. “Here, you kill it.” He handed me the rifle. I looked at the deer and I looked at him and I looked at the deer. My hands shook and I wished my heart would stop pounding because I was afraid he’d see it leaping out of my chest; bang, bang, bang.
I shook my head and he grabbed me and shoved the gun against my chest.
I pushed the gun away. “No. You shoot it. You made me leave my gun in the pickup. You shoot it.”
He sneered at me. A smirk, Mama calls it. He hissed, “It’s only a forky-horn. If I shoot it, I can’t shoot another one. The big one. With the big rack.”
I looked down at the leaves beneath my feet. He shook me and snot oozed out of my nose and ran down onto my lips and I couldn’t hold back my tears. I shut my eyes.
“Goddamnit,” he said.
I heard him move and metal click and I opened my eyes. He sighted in on that little buck. I stuffed my fingers in my ears and put my head down. The bang rattled the inside of my head.
The deer dropped into the aspen leaves. Pop jerked my arm, “Here, at least act like you shot it.” He handed me the rifle as he grabbed my collar and yanked me towards the kill. The rifle was heavy and I could taste the bitter scent of gunpowder.
I thought, this isn’t how it seems when Elmer Fudd hunts that “wabbit.”
I whined, “Why do I have to act like I shot it?”
“Because we’re going to put your tag on it.”
We stopped about two steps from the deer. He said, “Touch its eye with the end of the gun barrel.”
I looked at the left eye. It reminded me of a big, dark brown marble glimmering in the light. And then it reminded me of something different, something soft and…and…almost smart.
“Goddamnit, stop fooling around and touch the eye.”
“Why?”
He sighed and said, “Because, if it ain’t dead, it may jump up when we try to gut it, and you see those horns?”
I reached out with the gun and moved the end of the barrel towards that lit-up eye. At the same time I moved my frozen feet farther away, just in case. And what if it wasn’t dead, what would we do if it moved? Jumped up? Was I supposed to shoot it?
He said, “Got your finger on the trigger?”
I blinked my eyes, once, twice, because spots speckled everything: the trees, the ground, the deer.
“Got your finger on the Goddamned trigger?”
I touched the trigger with my index finger. Even though I wore my new gloves, the trigger was so very cold.
Ken Rodgers is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Boise, Idaho. Ken’s short stories, poems and essays have appeared in a number of literary magazines. Along with his wife Betty, Ken wrote, produced and directed the documentary film Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor about Ken’s company of Marines during the seventy-seven day siege of Khe Sanh.
