On Friday night Justin’s father arrived home unexpectedly. Justin’s mom, always mysteriously thrilled to see him, rushed to prepare an alternative to the cuisine she’d planned; the McDonalds Filet-O-Fish and fries replaced with iceberg lettuce and carrots drenched in Green Goddess, and a main course of stringy pasta with venison meatballs, served all fancy with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck and a bag of Famous Amos for dessert. She even brought out the shiny white china she’d collected one piece at a time with every twenty-five-dollar purchase at Safeway, using a metal mixing bowl for the sauce, since she hadn’t spent enough to collect the serving dishes. Justin seriously doubted she’d ever own the entire set, unless Mickey D’s and Jack in the Box participated in the promotion.

Justin’s father Don was a long-haul trucker, disappearing for weeks’ on-end, crisscrossing the country chasing loads. He specialized in hauling heavy machinery; tractors and backhoes, sometimes even military equipment that tore through transmissions and caved pavement on steamy days.

“Tell you what boy,” he’d say to Justin, poking the air with a bottle of Bud to punctuate every word, “there’s no stopping my rig.  If you’re in my way, prepare to be road kill. A pussy-ass Toyota is a Jap speed bump to my Mack.”  Don loved all things large.  His semi’s mud flaps featured chrome outlines of women with colossal breasts.  His Ford pickup was jacked on special hydraulics to accommodate monster tires. Even the coffee mug that perched on his dashboard could hold forty-eight ounces. His hairy, once-athletic body, nourished by a steady stream of foamy hops and chemically-enhanced baked goods, had ballooned to wooly mammoth proportions. His long black hair pulled back in an oily ponytail, Don’s style sense favored offensive tee-shirts and leather vests; a massive wallet tethered to his belt loop with a chunk of chain. Justin thought his dad looked like an evil biker dude from a 1980’s Steven Seagal movie.

He was also a man of unusual opinions, hatched late at night on desolate highways while listening to twangy ultra-right-wingers and radio infomercials. Ringo, his favorite Beatle. Hilary Clinton a Soviet spy. The government placed drugs in the meat supply in some kind of mass mind control experiment. Obama and Jay Z had built a secret “colored army” to invade conservative states. He refused to own anything with an Apple logo, it being well-known Steve Jobs was an alien.

Don also claimed he’d trained to be a Navy Seal, though he’d never been in the military. He told Justin he’d worked as a bounty hunter while still in his teens, though Justin’s grandmother clarified he’d spent his summers detailing autos at Hankey Brother’s Used Cars.  Once when Don was drinking beer on the deck with his pretend friends, Justin overheard him tell a story about the time he’d had sex with the skinny star of the old TV show Cheers in the sleeper compartment in his truck.  In Don’s world, Shelly Long had a kinky thing for hairy truck drivers, and would cruise truck stops on the I-405 looking for hook-ups. He considered himself quite the lady’s man, often implying, even around his wife, that the average woman found his overt masculinity overwhelming.

After years of fast backhands and beatings from his father, Justin had learned to duck and keep his mouth shut, and stay clear when he was in one of those moods, had imbibed more than three beers, or was flying on the amphetamines he gobbled to stay awake while driving; Don’s cruelty as unpredictable as a summer storm.  A few weeks earlier when Justin had come home flaunting a near-perfect report card, and dreaming of some kind of “attaboy” from his parents, Don had instead chided him for being a “goddamn nerd,” then closed the conversation with a sharp smack to the back of Justin’s skull.  “Smart only gets you so far,” he yelled at his son. “Don’t you go thinkin’ your shit don’t stink just because you got a few stupid As. You want to be a success in life you’re better off having balls over brains.”

Justin feared the only one in the family more mentally deficient than his father was dear old mom, her face molded in a strange vacant smile when she watched her husband toss him around. Shy and birdlike, she was ill-equipped for parenting, with all her love and affection reserved for her husband, even though Don wasn’t the least bit hesitant to slam her against a wall when feeling irritable.  At night when she returned from her cashier’s job at Pep Boys she seemed surprised to see her son, as if she’d forgotten she had a child.

Justin wondered how he fared so badly in the parental lottery. He loved reading and math, and breezed through his school work.  He listened to Public Radio, read newspapers and magazines—and not the ones his mother favored that always featured Jennifer Anniston on the cover. Yellow-haired and slight in stature, he bore no resemblance to either of his folks.  Sometimes he fantasized he’d been kidnapped as an infant, and his real parents, successful and educated, doctors or professors, would return to rescue him.  But lately, his senior year just months away, he worried that they wouldn’t find him soon enough. He yearned to escape and disappear inside a college library, but Don made it clear that higher education was not in his future. “College is bullshit” he’d announced. “The government just wants to saddle you with a bunch of debt you can’t get rid of, so you’re beholdin’ to them for the rest of your life. Plus, they pump your head full of all kinds of socialist ideas in those places.  Better off being your own boss like me.” Justin shuddered at the thought of being anything like his father.

The night Don arrived home unexpectedly he made an announcement at dinner. “Boy, I came home early because I have a surprise for you.” The hair around Don’s mouth was caked with salad dressing, and it occurred to Justin his father had the dining etiquette of a wood chipper. “Tomorrow we’re going hunting.  Head to the Checkerboard with Ted.  He’s got an elk camp, and we’re gonna spend the weekend getting you your first kill.”

Don was an avid hunter, spending every autumn weekend tramping the woods.  Justin didn’t understand the appeal, and hoped it was something his father would choose not to share. “That’s great Dad, but I wouldn’t want to slow you guys down.  I know how much you like elk hunting.  If just you and Ted want to go I understand.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Don said.  “Most boys would do anything to go hunting with their old man. You sit around here with your nose in a book, never doing anything a normal kid does.  Time to man-up and get some fresh air.  We’ll be on the road at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow.”

The next day, pre-dawn, they loaded up mildewed camping equipment and several rifles into his dad’s F150. Ted was standing outside his rusty double-wide when they pulled up, drinking steaming liquid out of a dented Reddi Electric mug, and wearing a child’s stocking cap. Ratty and black with a Hello Kitty logo on the front, it looked like something he’d found in an alley outside a grade school. Ted had long ago abandoned his front lawn as a place for vegetation, and it was now a graveyard for rusting cars and appliances, an ancient washing machine propped sideways at the end of the driveway like a Maytag lawn ornament.

Justin had been surprised his father could attract a friend, until he met Ted, a man that made Don look like a Nobel Laureate, Ted content to assume the Ed Norton role in their Honeymooner relationship.  He threw his gear into the back of the truck and climbed into the passenger seat, pushing Justin to the center.  Luckily Ted was as small as his father was big—Justin always assuming the result of a meth-enriched diet—so it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

Despite the fact that it was 6:30 in the morning, Don and Ted began slamming beers as soon as they hit the interstate, even forcing Justin to take a sip.  “When I was your age I’d drink a six-pack by myself, then I’d find some good lookin’ 15-year-old nooky,” Don announced as Ted cackled.  “Fact is, I wouldn’t mind a little 15-year-old nooky this weekend,” which made Ted roar as he and Don high-fived.

There was a foot of snow on the ground as they exited the highway at Big Timber and headed into the hills.  Ted’s uncle owned several hundred acres of timberland, and Ted had come up a week earlier to build a campsite.  By the time they started unloading the truck, fresh snow was falling, and Justin could feel the temperature plummet.

“This is going to be a special weekend for you,” Don announced, pulling a long rifle from a tattered canvas case.  “Take a look.  This gun has been in our family for four generations. Originally made to shoot buffalo. Old, probably built in the 1880s.  A forty-five-seventy.  Worth a ton of dough.”  He handed it to Justin. The thick barrel was octagon-shaped, a foot longer than a normal rifle, its maple stock worn white on the inside edge.  A single shot, the wide iron hammer had to be clicked into position to fire.  “It’s a family tradition that a boy’s first kill is with the buffalo gun,” Don continued. “Your granddad and I both did it. Now it’s your turn.  This weekend you become a man. Kicks like a motherfucker. But that’s part of the fun.  And I tell you what, anything you hit with this will be dead. If it can take down a buffalo it can take down anything.”

Justin had no desire to shoot a gun, much less one that kicks like a motherfucker, but he knew better than to show fear in front of his father.  His dad set a beer bottle on a stump fifty yards away, then picked up the rifle. He pulled a circular lever behind the trigger which split the rifle at the tail of the barrel, and inserted a heavy shell into the chamber. He had Justin brace one arm on the corner of the truck’s tailgate to steady the firearm.

“Put that bottle in the sights, right in the V at the end of the barrel, get that stock lodged into your shoulder tight, take a breath, let it out slowly, and squeeze the trigger.  And kablooey—you’ll blow the fucker apart.”

Justin shuddered in anticipation of the rifle’s kick. “Quit shaking like a little girl, and shoot the goddamn bottle,” his father said with annoyance. He tried to relax, slowly exhaled as if blowing out a candle, and pulled the trigger.

There was crack that sounded like lightening hitting a tree, and Justin was propelled backwards into the snow, as the stock kicked up a couple inches, hitting him in the chin.  It felt like he’d been slammed in the shoulder with a sledge hammer, and he could taste blood in his mouth.

“Ka-blooey.” Ted was hopping around laughing.

Justin was on his back, and Don, laughing too, reached down to take the rifle.  “Kablooey is right, but you ain’t much of a shot.  Missed that bottle by six inches.  Still, had it been an elk you still would have blown him apart. Good job boy.”

Justin was on his feet, rubbing his shoulder and face, feeling something warm and unfamiliar. His father had a strange look on his face, and it occurred to him this was what pride looked like. They walked to the bottle.  He’d hit low and to the left, ripping four inches of wood off the stump. His dad put an arm around him.  “Don’t worry. You’ll get to shoot it again. Next time at something moving.”  That’s what Justin was afraid of.

Two hours later they were jammed into the truck, creeping five miles an hour along a line of cottonwoods that trailed a creek.  “Well lookee’ there,” Don said smiling.  Four whitetail deer were grazing near a bend in the stream.  Exiting the truck quietly, Don and Ted pulled rifles from the gun rack.  Don wrapped the leather sling of his Winchester around his left hand and pulled the gun to his shoulder, dropping down to prop one elbow on the hood of the truck, head settling into his scope.  “Get ready for venison steaks,” he whispered.  Justin stared at the little family, praying his father wouldn’t shoot straight.  The crack ricocheted off canyon walls, and for a second it appeared he’d missed, as the animals jumped in alarm and bounded into the trees. But the fattest of the group, a female, took three steps and slumped to the ground.  Justin had an urge to vomit as Ted cheered and slapped palms with his dad.  “Nice shot Annie Oakley.”

The two men giggled happily as they walked towards the downed deer.  The animal’s eyes were wide open, still struggling, blood staining out a neck wound.  Don nonchalantly chambered another shell, and fired a shot into the deer’s skull from his hip.  Justin stumbled back as the men continued towards the dead animal. He fought the urge to cry, realizing it would just redirect the savageness to him.

Don unsheathed a wide Bowie knife from his belt.  He knelt by the animal, rolled it to its back, and plunged the knife just below the rib cage.  There was a whoosh of air escaping, the smell metallic and pungent. “Boy, this being your manhood weekend, you get another treat.  It’s a family tradition that on your first hunt you get to take a bite out of the heart of the first kill.  Something the Indians used to do to their young braves to toughen them up.  Transfer all the energy of the animal to you.”  He carved into the body cavity as blood bubbled and soaked into the snow.

Justin stepped back as his stomach bottomed-out. “You want me to eat the deer’s heart?”

Don looked up and smiled.  “Not the whole thing.  Just a good-sized bite.  It’s good for you.  Natural. Full of iron.  A hell of a lot better than those burgers I know you and your mom eat when I’m out of town.”  He reached elbow-deep into the deer. There was the sucking sound of water draining from a sink, and he pulled out the heart.

“No.” Justin stumbled backwards, but Ted grabbed him and pushed him towards the deer.

“C’mon Justin.  This is your initiation to manhood.” Don grabbed his son with one hand and shoved the bloody heart into his face with the other.  “Take a bite.  See what it tastes like to be a man. He continued to smash it against his face, trying to work it into his mouth, finally giving up, and pushing Justin back into the snow.  When he opened his eyes Don and Ted were standing over him. “You look like a real redskin now,” the two convulsing.  “Here, clean yourself up.”  Don threw him a filthy towel from the back of the truck.  While they dressed the deer, Justin scrubbed his face and hands with snow until his skin was sandpapered clean, trying to exorcise the taste of blood, and the animal’s pleading eyes from his brain.

Driving back to camp Don and Ted were in high spirits.  His father grilled steaks, served with Wonder Bread, beer, and Jack Daniels.  Justin ate silently in a corner of the tent, hoping to be ignored, but with half the Jack downed the two finally turned their attention to him.  “So Justin,” Ted said, “you’re about the age a kid gets his cherry popped. You done the big deed yet?”

Justin thought Ted oozed perviness, constantly finding a way to insert a sexual comment into almost every conversation; the kind of man that society should probably incarcerate just for the disturbing thoughts that rolled around his head, much less what he would do given the opportunity.  “No, I don’t have a girlfriend,” Justin answered quietly.

“No girlfriend?” Ted’s voice rose sarcastically.  “That’s no excuse.  You don’t need a girlfriend to get laid. I don’t suppose the real reason is you prefer boys?  Don,” Ted turned his head, “your boy ain’t some kind of rump ranger, is he?”

Justin watched his father flash red, and he wasn’t sure whether Don’s anger would be directed towards Ted or him. “Hell, I don’t know what he is,” he finally said angrily.  “I started fucking when I was twelve, so he don’t act like my blood. Sometimes I wonder if some limp-wristed UPS man banged my wife, and this one popped out,” he said, pointing at his son.

Luckily the conversation turned to a more upbeat discussion of Don’s sexual exploits, and Justin retreated to his sleeping bag where he tried to disappear, hoping he would wake up somewhere else.  Anywhere else.

The next morning Don and Ted were hung-over, but strangely energetic. Justin assumed there was something about killing that made men more alive. When they opened the tent flap a heavy mound of snow caved-in.  It had continued to come down all night as the temperature fell.  “Holy shit, it’s a cold one,” his father said as he came back from taking a leak.

Thirty minutes later they were back in the truck, crawling through the snow in low-gear.  They inched several miles into a smaller canyon, and Justin began to worry they’d get stuck.

“Boy, you get a special treat today.  We’re going to drop you at the bottom of this canyon, and Ted and I will drive back up and hike through it.  I’m positive there will be elk or a good sized deer in there, and you’ll be in the cat bird seat when we drive them out.  You’ll be in the perfect position to get your first kill.” They stopped at the bottom of the ravine, and Don pulled the buffalo gun out of its case, walking Justin to the base of a big tree.  There was a downed log six feet six feet away.  He loaded the rifle, and handed it to his son. […]

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