FEAR

“Look, Steve,” Jon Jon whispered through his teeth. He did not move his head--just his eyes.

The boy inched his gaze to the right. His heart quickened and his breath burned. The outline of something close—something that had not been there when he began blowing on the predator call they had found in their father’s old trunk.

What could have come in so quickly? Its blurred outline in the boy’s peripheral looked big. Too big to be a coyote. Too big for the .22 in his hand. Uncle Albin used to tell stories about bears and wolves that lived in the breaks, though nobody had seen one for years.

The boy turned his head a little further. His right leg trembled and his knee started to click on a rock. It was so big. What was it?

It stomped and grunted.

The boy fell back and brought the rifle to his shoulder, sure he was about to be pounced on.

Then the doe mule deer’s body went rigid for an instant before she bounded into the valley, her twins right behind her. They raced up the next slope and, just before disappearing over the horizon, looked back, their big ears high, their bigger eyes filled with something that looked like half-fear.

Only after they were gone did the boy push himself off his elbows.

“That was awesome,” Jon Jon said. “Why didn’t you shoot?”

It was not deer season. You don’t shoot deer with a .22. You don’t kill a doe with fawns. The boy eventually gave his younger brother all those answers and more. But he never told him the entire truth.



Painting: Passing Along The Lessons She Learned by John Banovich
http://www.johnbanovich.com/