The Hunters

I jumped out of bed and threw my clothes on before my father had a chance to call my name a second time.

"Whoa, boy," he said from my bedroom doorway. "You better slow down, or you're going to end up hurting yourself before we get out the front door. The squirrels will wait for us. You might as well learn right now that there are only two ways to nab a squirrel; you either sneak up on him quiet-like or wait him out. Either way takes a lot of patience."

It was an effort for me to slow down. I slid my feet into my old sneakers.

"Not them things, boy. The dew will get them wet and give you blisters. Wear those boots I bought you."

"Yessir," I said and dug the work boots my father had given me for Christmas two years before out of the closet and laced them. They still smelled new.

My mother stood over the sink when I walked into the kitchen. The smell of coffee and fresh biscuits was strong. She poured me a glass of milk, added a little sugar and some of her strong coffee to it. Then she pulled a biscuit from the pan on the stove, dropped it onto a plate, and drizzled a little dark sugarcane syrup over it.

"Here," she said, as she slid the plate onto the table. "Sit down and eat some breakfast. No telling when you're going to eat again."

I grabbed the glass of coffee milk and sat. I started to wolf down the biscuit, but my mother waved a finger.

"You stop that right there and eat your food the proper way I taught you."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, and took a bite out of the biscuit.

My father appeared from the bedroom, walked to the stove, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"It's pretty damp out there with the fog and all. He's going to need a jacket."

"It's in the closet with the winter stuff. I'll get it." My mother disappeared into the bedroom. My father sat across from me at the table and silently sipped his coffee, his uncombed hair wild on his head, his skin dark and leathery from years of working in the sun. My mother draped my old jean jacket over the back of a chair and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she pulled a chair and joined us at the table.

"How long ya'll gonna be?"

My father shrugged.

"Probably be back early afternoon—whenever we get tired, I guess."

"Be careful, yeah."

My father nodded, stood, and walked out the front door. After a while, I heard the door to the outside john slam shut.

"I want you to listen to your daddy. He has some very serious things to show you and tell you. This is a very important event for him."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Just you listen to him. Okay?" She stood and rushed out of the kitchen.

My father came back in and sat before his cup of coffee again.

"Where's your momma."

"She went to the bedroom." I paused a second. "Daddy, is everything all right?"

"Of course it is. Why you asking?"

"I think Momma was crying."

"She's just worried about you. That's all. Finish your breakfast. I'll be right back." He walked into the bedroom. A few minutes later, he returned.

"Go get the gun and the shells so we can go."

I dragged a chair to my father's bedroom doorway. The 16-gauge single-shot Remington shotgun sat in its gun rack over the doorway; the shells were in the closet. I broke the gun opened and sighted through the empty barrel toward the kitchen light before handing it to my father. Then I pulled the chair to the closet and pulled down the box of shells.

My mother, eyes red, appeared in the kitchen again. I gave her a peck on the cheek. She grabbed me and hugged me. I wormed my way out of her grasp and joined my father.

"Let's go fetch Brownie," he said.

We walked out into the early morning air, thick with fog. I could barely make out the Ellisonville blacktop just twenty feet away. My father whistled softly and Brownie, his squirrel dog, crawled out from under the front porch and shook herself awake. He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and we followed the dog.

Brownie scurried from one side of the blacktop to the other, disappearing in out of the fog like a ghost. Occasionally, she would stop and peer behind her to see if my father and I followed. Satisfied, she would return to her foraging. Brownie was a short hair mutt with floppy ears, a broad head like a golden retriever, and a short muscular body perfect for running through the briar bushes and shrubbery of the woods around Serpentville.

When we reached Monsieur Claney's fallow rice field, about two miles from my house, my father stopped and rolled a cigarette. He whistled, and Brownie appeared at his side. We crossed the ditch, and he held the barbed wire apart, so I could squeeze through. I did the same for him. The fog had receded somewhat, and the morning was now a dull gray. My father straightened and stretched.

I examined his face. It was the same dull gray of the morning light. His eyes were sunken with dark patches beneath them. He put a match to his cigarette and waved his arm signaling Brownie into the field. She broke into a run, scaring up a snipe, which let out a scaipe scaipe and zigzagged into the fog. My father picked a levee that snaked toward the woods across the field and we walked along it. A few lazy Black Angus eyed Brownie nervously.

My father handed me the shotgun and motioned me to follow him.

"Hunting is not a sport like your softball and such," he said after a while. It's serious business. You know why?"

"I think so," I answered, but I don't think he heard me. He kept talking.

"Because you'll be taking a life. Even the life of a squirrel is important, you know. He was put on this earth for a reason—maybe to feed us men, or maybe to feed the other animals or maybe to be a part of all this." He waved his arm in a huge sweep that took in our surroundings. Brownie stopped and eyed him carefully. When she realized that he didn't want her, she resumed her bird chasing. "But make no mistake about it; the squirrel is on this earth for a reason. To kill and waste is a sin. It took me most of my fifty-two years to find that out. I remember when your momma's daddy, your granddaddy, died." My father stopped and stared off into the distance the dark edge of Monsieur Claney's woods where we would hunt the squirrels. I waited for my father to start again. "He died well before you were born. It was the only time anybody ever saw him cry. The only time. Ever. I thought that it was weakness in him that made him cry, but it wasn't. He was scared to die. He was scared that his life was a waste, but it wasn't. Look at your momma. Look at you." My father started walking again. "Never waste a life, son. Whether it's your own or that of a squirrel, you should never waste a life."

"Nosir," I said. I wasn't sure what my father was trying to say, but I knew it must be important because of the way he talked to me, like I was a grown up.

"Come on then," he said. "Let's go."

We watched as Brownie scared up one snipe after another. She would chase it until it flew too far or too high for her to have any chance. Then she would run around in circles again until she scared up another. Once we neared the edge of the dark woods, my father whistled. Brownie stopped in mid stride and looked over her shoulder at us. My father waved, and she fell in behind us. When we were close enough to the big moss-covered oaks and other hard woods, my father stopped.

"I'm going to let Brownie go into the woods before us," he said. He waved his arm and Brownie moved forward slowly placing one paw in front the other. "When she spots one, she'll stiffen up and look up at the spot where she saw it. That's when you know she got one. She's just as important as your gun because she'll make that squirrel show himself to you. But you have to know how to make her move the right way."

Even as he talked, Brownie stiffened.

"There, she got herself one. Watch how she works."

Brownie stood frozen under a chestnut tree. She looked up at the tree. I followed her gaze but I saw nothing. My father motioned me to follow him and we walked forward until we were nearly under the tree and almost directly behind the dog.

"Load the gun," my father whispered to me.

I broke the barrel and slid in a shell.

"You see where she's staring at?"

"Yes sir," I said, but I still could not see the squirrel.

"Aim your gun at that spot, but watch what I do."

"I still can't see the squirrel," I whispered.

"Don't worry about that. You will. Just watch what I do."

My father waved his arm to the left and Brownie took a step in that direction, never taking her eyes off the tree. I looked up and a bushy, gray tail appeared from behind some hanging moss. I heard the squirrel bark wildly at the dog. I pulled back the hammer.

"Not yet," my father whispered. "Wait until you see all of him."

He waved his arm again, and Brownie took another step in that direction. I could see the squirrel now. It watched the dog intently and waved its tail up and down vigorously.

"Now?"

"Now."

I slowly squeezed the trigger. I staggered under the recoil. I didn't see the pellets hit the squirrel, but I heard it fall. Brownie ran up to it, gently fitted its lifeless body into her mouth, and carried it to my father, dropping it gently at his feet. He patted the dog and lifted the squirrel to me.

"That's a fine-looking little gray. That was some fine shooting, too." He placed his free hand on my shoulder.

I didn't feel well. The thrill I expected at shooting my first squirrel never came. Instead, I felt sorry for the limp little animal before me. My father placed the him in the cloth sack hooked onto his belt.

"Daddy," I said, once I found my voice. "Daddy, I don't feel so good."

A slight grin flitted across his lips.

"Yeah, I know. Why don't we sit here for a spell and rest?" He pointed to a log a few steps away. We sat next to each other. "Being sick is nothing to be ashamed of. It'll always make you a little sick to kill something if your heart is in the right place. All I want you to know is that there is going to be some times when you have to kill. When you grow up and go to war, maybe you might have to kill another man, or you might have to kill another animal when you're hungry and need to eat. If you have a good reason to kill, the sickness goes away. If not, it stays with you for the rest of your life."

My father smoked silently for a while.

"God is a hunter, too. He has his reasons for taking a life, and I imagine he doesn't feel any better than you do about having to take one." My father's voice sounded strange. I examined his face carefully. He didn't look at me; he stared deep into the woods. After a while, he stood up, brushed his clothes, and motioned me to follow. We headed deeper into the woods. As we walked, the sun gradually diminished until it was only a patchwork quilt of light and dark on the decaying forest floor. After we had gone a good distance, he motioned me to sit on a log. Brownie stayed within sight of my father, quietly surveying her surroundings. We didn't see any squirrels although we had seen signs of them.

My father picked nervously at a thread on his shirtsleeve.

"I have to tell you something, and I'm not so sure how to go about it." He paused and rolled a cigarette. "Do you know what cancer is?"

"Yessir, a disease that eats at your insides, kinda like rust or rot. Madame Jogneaux was sick with it until she died last year."

"That's right. I don't know too much about it, but I think Emma had a skin cancer. It spread to the rest of her body, I guess." My father paused and put a match to his cigarette. His words tumbled out with the smoke.

"Remember last week me and your momma went to New Orleans?"

"Yessir, I do." He, Monsieur Theo, and my mother had driven all the way to New Orleans in Monsieur Theo's battered old Chevrolet. They stayed gone for two days and when they returned, their faces were ashen and gray. My mother's eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. She had been crying, but she would not answer any of my questions. "Your father will explain it later," she told me and disappeared into her bedroom.

"It was Dr. Frugé who thought I should go to New Orleans for some tests. He thought I might be sick. I was having trouble breathing, and I passed out once at the cotton gin." My father paused and watched in silence as Brownie dug furiously under a dead oak tree. He turned to me. "Les docteurs from New Orleans made their tests, and they found out I had cancer, lung cancer."

His words shot through me and I recoiled with the impact of them.

"Daddy?" I whispered. I could think of nothing else to say. Tears of fear stung my eyes.

"I have to go to New Orleans again next week so the docteurs can operate on my lungs. Your momma and I thought we needed to explain things to you." He stared off into the distance, past Brownie, into the dark woods. "Je suis peur. I'm real scared. When they told me, it was like they put a shotgun to my head. I was mad, too, but I was mostly scared."

"The operation, Daddy. It's going to fix it, won't it? You're going to be okay?" I was afraid to look at him. I was afraid of what I would see in his face.

"That's what I want to tell you. I asked les docteurs the same thing, but they didn't seem to think too much about my chances." My father paused. When he resumed, there was a slight tremor in his voice. "My chances are not too good. Not too good at all."

I stared at the ground and tried to imagine a world without my father. I watched a lone ant try to move a dead beetle. The ant struggled, but the beetle would not budge. Finally, a few other ants arrived and together they pulled and tugged the dead beetle toward the log we sat on. I looked up at my father's face.

"Everything is going to be okay, Daddy." My voice sounded strange to me, almost like it was coming from somebody else. "I'll help you, Daddy."

My father turned watery eyes on me. He placed a thin, calloused hand on my shoulder.

"I know you will. I never doubted it one minute. I just wanted you to know how it is. That's all."

We sat in silence for a while. I didn't want to hunt anymore.

"I'm ready to go home, Daddy."

"Me too, son. All of a sudden, I'm real tired. Why don't you call the Brownie?"

I spotted Brownie about ten feet away standing stiffly staring up into a gnarled oak. I looked up to where she stared and spotted a gray tail waving vigorously just visible behind a clump of moss. I whistled softly like I'd seen my father do, and Brownie broke her stance and ran to me. She stood beside me and waited for my next command. I picked up the shotgun where it leaned against a tree next to my father and pulled out the shell before shouldering it. I offered my father a hand and he took it. I motioned Brownie to follow, and the three of us walked out of the dark woods into a blinding sunlight.

I published "The Hunters" in Papyrus, Fall 1998.