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."