CHRISTMAS GOOSE

The two boys drifted toward each other as they hauled their geese to the truck. Their father had said that if they were old enough to shoot them, they were old enough to carry them. They barely noticed that he had all three cased shotguns in one hand and the bag of decoys over his opposite shoulder.

The boy noticed how his younger brother, Jon Jon, held his goose close to his chest. The boy held his by the neck, the way he’d seen his father and uncle do dozens of times before. This was not his first goose.

Their father hefted the decoys into the bed and slid the shotguns onto the floor behind the front seat. The boy was about to drop his goose beside the decoys when his father stopped him.

“You need to take those into the trees and pluck them.”

“Pluck em? Both of them? That’ll take forever.” The boy had helped his father and uncle pluck a goose the each of the previous two years—the Christmas goose—and even the men complained about it.

“You best get busy then.”

“Couldn’t we just skin them?” The boy almost never argued with his father and Jon Jon watched the exchange the same way he watched a spider wrap a new victim.

His father turned and stared, his eyes a mix of incredulity and irritation.

The boy lowered his chin, his defiance drained from that single look. “Yes, sir.”

Jon Jon warmed his fingers under his goose’s feathers as he watched his older brother yank and tear, mumbling about unfairness and making little progress despite the growing air of fine feathers. The goose convulsed with each violent rip and made a strange popping sound. The act of ripping feathers from his goose seemed less pure than the act of shooting the bird—at least the way his brother pulled at them like a starved coyote.

Jon Jon finally went to one knee and began to pull at the feathers. A moment later, his father knelt beside him to help. By the time they finished, the boy had calmed and even felt a sense of accomplishment for having plucked his bird without assistance.

On the way home, their father, turned down Bobby Unger’s driveway. A year ago, the boy’s father and Bobby’s father had argued almost to the point of litigation over fence that went over somebody’s property line. Six months ago, the Army deployed Bobby’s father overseas. While he was away fighting for his country, their stock contracted Johne’s disease. The boy’s dad said it was like chronic wasting. The boy only knew that was bad and that when folks started talking about “missing payments” and “significant losses” it often preceded lost farms and ranches.

“What are we doing here?” Jon Jon asked.

“He wants us to give up our geese,” the boy said.

“You boys worked hard to get them geese. You hunted like I told you. You shot like I taught you. And you froze your fingers getting all those feathers clear. I also believe I taught you boys about what it means to be neighbors.”

“This is my first goose ever,” Jon Jon said. “My only goose.” The last part came out in a whisper.

“I ain’t telling you. This is your choice. But just remember Bobby’s dad ain’t here to take him hunting or help with the cattle. He’s off doing the things nobody wants to talk about but that must be done. He’s fighting for us. What’re we going to do for him and his family? You decide.”

Their father’s implied disappointment left little choice, but they hesitated long enough for his father’s shoulders to slump. Both boys would always remember that.

Later, lying in bed, the boys stared at the darkness and tried to remember that moment between the blast and the folding wings. Jon Jon could still smell the goose’s cold flesh on his fingers. “Hey, Steve?” he said. “What are we going to have for Christmas dinner?”

The image of Bobby’s mother, reaching for the geese, her eyes clouded, held his response. Finally, he said, “We’ll have Dad.”

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Snow gathered at the corners of the windows like piles of swarming ants. The boy leaned close to the fire and stared until his eyes burned. His father said the storm would bring wind in the morning—perfect for the goose hunt.

The boy remembered his first goose. He remembered the crusty snow crunching under his boots, the cold fire in his toes as they sat waiting for the birds to take flight across the river, the dead goose, its vacant eyes staring at—nothing. He remembered his fingers warming under its feathers as he held it in his hands. He remembered the pride and the sadness and the finality of it all.

He had wanted his friend, Adunya, to sit beside him and hear the chatter from the evening roost rise to a fervor that you feel in your gut. He had wanted Adunya’s hands to tremble from the waiting, from the coming explosion of feathers and honks and a sky that seems to beat like a heart -- a mass of black and white and gray moving with focused purpose. He had wanted the boy from Ethiopia, the boy who knew lions and elephants and buffalo, to know geese as well. To fight the urge to jump from the pit as the flock seems poised to land, wondering if the “take em” call would ever come. To shove the lids and hear the pop, pop, pop, of the shotguns. To witness the wings fold, to sprint forward—to feel the warmth beneath the feathers.

The boy had killed other game since that frigid morning, but that first goose promised a memory to last. He could even still smell the grass at the peep holes if he closed his eyes. He had wanted Adunya to share that with him, but Uncle Albin took him back to Ethiopia. Even if they had geese in Africa and even if Adunya hunted them there, the boy knew it would not be the same.

The boy turned away from the fire and glanced at his younger brother, Jon Jon. Their father had promised that they both could shoot this year. Jon Jon sat by the window drawing shapes with his finger on the foggy glass—a couple of them looked like birds—like geese.

For a moment, the boy believed he could see his brother's thoughts. And in the morning, they would make thier tracks in the fresh snow and sit together trembling as the chatter across the river became a roar. Maybe some of the geese would veer to the spread. And if everything went just right, they might cup their wings. Whatever happened after that almost didn't matter.

RUNNING

The boy stumbled, his foot slipping on the gravel road, his palm stinging with small rocks. He continued on, unwilling to quit, unwilling to believe he could not make it. It was only two miles to his Uncle Albin’s cabin. He and Jon Jon walked that far almost every day, hunting, fishing, exploring. But running made his lungs burn, it made his legs feel like jelly, it made him want to walk. His legs and arms began to flail as fatigue and resolve grappled with one another.

He couldn’t let his friend leave. He couldn’t let him leave without saying goodbye, without telling him… Telling him what? The boy slowed for a moment, his forehead itching with sweat. What would he say? Don’t get eaten by lions? He wouldn't say what he felt. Not a chance. But he had realized, after his father had driven down the road, that he had to say something. Adunya might never come back.

The boy’s feet slipped trying to gain traction on the gravel road as he began a sprint. He could see Uncle Albin’s roof now and he thought he heard an engine.

He wiped his eyes one more time before turning at the gate. His father and Uncle Albin stood shaking hands beside Uncle Albin’s truck. Adunya and Jon Jon crouched beside a hole under the shed that cats liked to crawl into.

Walking now, the boy’s eyes shifted from Adunya to his father. He stopped when he noticed the old man and Uncle Albin looking his way. The boy expected a scolding look or an “I told you so” stare. Instead, his father tilted his head toward Adunya and Jon Jon—that was it.

When Adunya saw the boy, he stood and smiled, the machete hanging over his shoulder like an extension of his hand. That curved blade had made him nervous when he’d first met the boy from Ethiopia. He came to see it as no different from the pocket knife he carried and even envied it, especially when Adunya took the lead as they explored the brush, swinging it back and forth cutting and slicing a path. He always made it look so easy, but whenever the boy tried, he fumbled with it and had to chop over and over at the thinnest of branches. Adunya’s smooth, precise swipes always slashed right through.

Jon Jon ran to greet the boy. “Steve, look what Adunya made me. Look.” He held the smoothed and sharpened spear in the palms of his hands.

The boy recognized it. The same spear Adunya had thrust into the jack rabbit the boy had chased across the prarie until it made the mistake of darting left to where Adunya hid in the brush. The same spear Adunya had used to carry a line of catfish they had caught at the pond. It was a good spear. The best the boy had ever seen.

Adunya approached the boy. He held out his fist and then opened his hand. “This foot from rabbit. It has great power?”

The boy nodded.

“I become envy of my tribe with this magic foot from American beast.”

The boy wanted to tell him to be the envy of his tribe here, where he had people who cared about him, where he could sleep in a real house, where a neighbor wouldn’t murder Uncle Albin over nothing. To tell him that the thunderstorms would quiet during the winter, that he didn't have to run from them. Instead, he nodded and said, “Do you think you’ll come back?”

Adunya lowered his gaze and rubbed the rabbit’s foot with his thumb.

“Maybe someday, I can come to Africa.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jon Jon almost bounced on his toes before charging toward his father. “Dad, can we go to Africa some day? Can we?”

Adunya lifted his shoulders and raised his head. With all the pride of Ethiopia, he handed the boy his machete.

The boy had secretly yearned for that tool so many times over the last few months. Now he felt unworthy to hold it. But he knew if he refused it would be an insult.

Before Adunya closed the door to Uncle Albin’s truck, before he began his return trip to Ethiopia, the boy said, “Watch out for lions.” He had no idea what else to say.

Adunya smiled. “Step carefully if grass begin to rattle.”

The boy’s father gripped his son’s shoulder as dust from behind Uncle Albin’s truck rose to the east. And though the boy said nothing, his father's heavy hand helped.