Feral Fork

"What is this place?"

"People come here to find unusual foods, amazing tales, and a man called D."

"D?"

"Some say doesn't exist. Some say he's the ghost of an old elk camp cook who was killed trying to defend his stash of jerky from a grizzly."

"What do you think, Pa? You think he's real?"

"I'll tell you a secret. I saw him once. It was a hazy night and the picture isn't real clear in my head, but his floppy hair drooped over one eye, his beard looked like it was built by a dove, and his words sounded like music."

"What did he say?"

"Go ahead and poke around a bit. His words are here. You just have to listen."

http://www.feralfork.com/

Painting: Grizzly Encounter by John Banovich http://www.johnbanovich.com/

CHOICES

The boy sprinted to the fallen goose - the one he had fired at. The one he knew he hit - no matter the other shots fired beside him. This was his goose. This was his moment. Something primal and free and proud quickened his pace.

He slowed at ten yards and stopped when the bird's wings shuddered. It looked at him, a raspy hiss rising from somewhere in its slender neck.

"It's almost over now."

The boy felt his father's hand on his shoulder - firm, not tight like the time he shattered the bathroom window with a baseball.

"You don't have to watch if you don't want to."

But the boy had no choice. A single, dark eye seemed to peer into the boy's heart. When his father knelt to finish it, that eye bored into the boy. The wings slapped against the prairie twice, maybe three times, then they scratched slowly across the dust.

"It is done," his father said without turning away from the goose.

The eye no longer stared at the boy. It just stared.

"You want to carry it back?"

Unable to pull his gaze from the limp body, the boy nodded.

He placed the bird below his feet in the blind. Flocks, massive flocks, hundreds, maybe thousands of Canada geese chattered on the reserve across the river. They would rise soon like the caddis hatch the boy saw on the Eagle one autumn. And some of those geese might give their spread a closer look.

"Hey, Dad?" The boy could smell the goose's flesh beneath its feathers. "Is it always like that?"

"No," his father said. "Not always."

FIRST TIME

The boy looked up only for a moment, then hurried his gaze back down to the prize - as if it might disappear. In that one glance up, the boy's eyes glistened at the edges and his mouth opened slightly as if he might speak. But he had no words, nor did he need them. His father knew.

The boy inhaled deeply, savoring the oily aroma of his new .410 side-by-side. He held it like a hard-won trophy. In many ways it was. He had followed his father and brothers to the river, stepped in their long strides, sat in the cold, rust-scented goose blind for two years without protest - at least little complaint for a ten-year-old. He sat listening while his father and two brothers whispered of approaching flocks he could not see. He marvelled as the three of them opened up with a primal song, natural and undeniable. The honks and clucks and purrs and drawn out, almost desperate, come-back blasts would remain a part of the boy's dreams forever.

With the steel and walnut balanced in his too-tight grip and his jacket pockets, filled with shells, slapping against his hip, he paused. He had been there before. Much of it familiar - the clean breath of morning, the quiet secrets of the river, the unseen chirps of nearby songbirds. He had been there before, but this time was different. This time he held the gun. This time he was part of it. And once he pulled the trigger, he could never turn back.