MOVING UP

The boy reached toward his new shotgun, a 20-gauge, the first scattergun he would call his own.

“It’s okay,” his father said. “It’s yours. You already know how to use it. It will stay in the cabinet with the rest of the guns. Just like the BB gun. Don’t you think it’s time we give that to Jon Jon?”

The boy stopped his reach, even pulled back slightly. His BB gun had been a gift from his grandfather, who said he had originally purchased it for the boy’s father. The boy had nailed bull’s-eyes with it. He had shattered glass bottles. He had knocked an apple out of a tree. He had killed his first rabbit with it. That BB gun had rust on the trigger guard. He could not count the times he had run his hand over the stock, its finish worn dull with scratches as deep as worm grooves.

“You mostly use the .22 now.”

But the .22 was not his. The .22 was his father’s. His late grandfather had not given him the .22. How could he pass the BB gun down to Jon Jon? His younger brother allowed his pet turtle to die. He broke his new skateboard after only a week. How would Jon Jon take care of something as important as Grandpa’s BB gun?

“You think he’s ready?” The boy had not touched the shotgun and struggled to turn his eyes from it.

“You think you’re ready?”

The boy turned to stare at his father as if the old man had threatened to give all his possessions to his younger brother. “What if I want to use it for shooting cans? He’ll never let me.”

“I’m sure if you give him a chance to use the .22, he’ll give you the BB gun.”

The boy refocused on the 20-gauge. It sat on the old dining table. The gun’s smooth finish, a little checkering on the pump stock, the barrel shining like a black mirror, and the scent of gun oil tempted his hand again. When he finally touched it, he forgot about the BB gun.

He no longer had to borrow Uncle Albin’s shotgun. He could shoulder his own weapon and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his father and uncle. Now, he could be one of them.

He picked it up. “Can I shoot it?”

His father placed a box of shells on the table and his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

THE OTHER SIDE

“Dad? What’s Ethiopia like?”

“I know what I think it’s like.”

“You’ve never been there? But Uncle Albin’s a hunter there and you’re brothers.”

The boy’s father placed the book he’d been reading on the end table. “I’d like to go someday. You’re uncle and I used to hunt together all the time. My path just hasn’t taken me to Ethiopia yet. I’ve seen Uncle Albin’s pictures. I know what I think it is and I know that’s not even close.”

“What do you think it’s like?”

“What do you think it’s like?” The boy’s father asked.

“I think it’s like lions and elephants and zebras and hunting every day and living in huts and adventure.”

“That sounds pretty good doesn’t it?”

The boy started to nod, but saw that slight smirk on his father’s face. The one that told the boy to be careful of his next move. “Maybe.”

“Knowing what we know. Living like we live. That kind of existence would be fine to experience. Even to embrace and learn from. But we could not go back to that. You and Jon Jon and I, our lives are easier and in most ways better. Do you understand?”

“Uncle Albin went back.”

“Did he?”

“He lives half the year over there.”

“And he has great stories to tell, doesn’t he.”

“I love the one about the cowboy who wanted to rope a buffalo.” The boy started to laugh.

“Albin doesn’t talk much about the weeks he spends building camp, about the clients who expect the impossible, about how he loses trackers to jail, omens, and death. He don’t tell us about all them kids who catch malaria and die before they get a chance to dream about the other side of the world.”

The boy sat there for a moment and watched a tumbleweed roll across the prairie into a fence lined with tumbleweeds that had come before it. “How come you want to go to Ethiopia some day?” He asked.

“Because of the lions and the elephants and the hunting and the people who live in huts.”

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/

HOME

The boy stumbled through a dip in the yard as he sprinted from the mailbox back to the house. He dropped all but one of the envelopes onto his father’s desk. His father peered from beneath bushy eyebrows.

“It’s from Adunya,” the boy said. “See, look here. It says Ethiopia. Do you think he’s coming back? Do you think he’s hunted lions with Uncle Albin?”

His father shrugged. “Open it and see.”

The boy began to rip at the edge, but slowed and pulled at the flap as if the envelope held a baby rattlesnake. Finally, he slipped the yellowed paper into the open and unfolded it. A black feather fluttered to the floor. The boy picked it up and held it behind the letter. The writing appeared as the scribbles of a toddler at first glance, but as the boy studied them, they began to form in to letters and words and even sentences:

Uncle teach me to write at heat of day when hunters sleep. I stay with brother of my father for only week before Uncle bring me back to camp. Here I feel I am home.

The boy stopped reading for a moment and turned toward the window. Out there, beyond the house, he could see forever across a prairie mostly grazed to the ground. But the seemingly endless expanse of grass and rock held secrets only its inhabitants understood. Out there, dens and buck brush and hills and canyons and cliffs held badgers and snakes and deer and coyotes. Out there, hawks fed on rabbits. Grouse scurried from stalking foxes. Out there, life was free. The boy understood what his friend, so many mountains and rivers and oceans away, meant. And he wondered if it was possible to have more than one home.

Uncle say he teach me to shoot. He say I one day I be better hunter than him. He say one day you come to Ethiopia and we hunt buffalo and leopard together like Uncle and your father do. I look with happiness to that day. Please give feather to Jon Jon. Tell him it come from bird like his raven. I will wait for letter from you. It will make me envy of all camp. Your friend, Adunya.

The boy refolded the letter and stared out to the prairie. “Do you think he’ll come back?” he said softly.

His father moved to the window and without looking back said, “I hope so.”

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.