Read More: A brief Q&A with David Colosi
Don’t flinch. Step into it.
My father cocked his rifle, lifted it to his shoulder and closed an eye. My brother had taken the first shot and missed. Now it was my father’s turn. This is how it’s done. My brother stood about fifty yards away. He couldn’t place his hands. Stop fidgeting. Stand still. Pretend like you hear something. Stop, wait, listen. My brother had been in the drama club and found humor in the situation. He froze in place and cupped one hand behind his ear like a bad Shakespearean.
Dad pulled the trigger.
The paper called it the worst hunting season on record; and the year before, the best. Fish and Game had lifted the limits because the deer population was so high, and hunters came out on demand and met the supply. Restaurants served venison every night. This year was the opposite. You couldn’t find venison sausage under $25/lb. The woods had been shot clear. This year hunters spent more time in bars than in the woods, and the traffic fatalities reflected the switch. Instead of a deer jumping in front of a truck, it was trees, guardrails, joggers and street signs. The roads didn’t get wider. Drivers, with alcohol behind the wheel, took more space.
My father, unlike most drunks, didn’t complain but saw opportunity in the lull. My brother was seven at the time. I was ten, so I already had experience in the field. I was made for this kind of thing: the first born of two boys, I did everything my father wanted me to and, at that age, I wanted nothing more than to be just like him. My brother, on the other hand, liked to read. Now he has all the time he needs for that. But then, I’m getting ahead of myself.
My father didn’t see how entering a book compared to entering the woods. So he insisted that my brother learn to hunt. He didn’t resist so much: it was a family thing, his interests were ours, so he went along. That’s what we did in our town. Hunting was neighbor-friendly.
He tried sports, but he preferred acting. My father didn’t, so he insisted that now was the time to teach him to hunt. In the absence of deer, he could use this season to learn the skills so he’d be ready for the next one.
They started shooting bottles. I joined in because I loved this stuff. We had a big backyard that bordered the woods. So if we shot in one direction we were sure not to hit anyone. We were always told to aim North. Which is part of the reason why when my father told my brother to walk out further he questioned him, “North?”
“Yes,” he said, “Damnit. North.”
Father knew best, and, well, my brother didn’t know much better. And I hadn’t quite caught onto his plan.
After bottles for a few weeks, we went into the woods with our orange gear, sat in our stand and waited for deer that didn’t exist. My brother prepared the lunches, because he liked to cook, and that was the best thing about those trips. He described how he used rosemary to bring out the flavors in the lamb meatloaf, getting our mouths to water, and we ate it not knowing what fennel was. At first he’d prop up in his position like we did, using his ears as a detection device. “Eyes,” my father said, “are the last organ that’s useful. First you smell it. The weather changes. Mammal sweat. Then you listen … for a crack, a sniffle, a silence you can’t explain. Then you feel it, like someone just got in the back seat of your car and you don’t know who it is. Then you look around and follow the sound with your eyes. You put all of those senses together and force them through the scope of your gun, and your eyes take over from there. Once you lock your eyes and pull the trigger, it’s done.”
“It’s not done yet,” my brother would always add, and my father would let him tell the joke again like it was a script they knew the lines to.
“It ain’t done until you taste it.” My brother would pinch his fingers together and kiss them into an explosion that meant, “Delicious!” Dad would grab him by his neck and give him a shake saying, “That’s right, son, that’s right,” and I would roll my eyes knowing it wasn’t the first time I’d hear this exchange, nor would it be the last.
“Step out a little further.” He was out of earshot, so my father pushed the air with the back of his hand. My brother returned the sign language with his hand in a gesture of a question, “North?” Dad pushed more air.
After uneventful times in the tree stand, my brother started to bring books. That’s when my father had to change the game plan. After bottles and cans, we started making deer cut-outs. My brother was good at drawing, and my father could work a saw. So he made the outlines and dad cut. They laughed like it was the first time every time my brother drew Xs in the eyes. You might start to think I was left out, but that’s not the case. I was a good shot, and that’s what I saved my strength for. Dad knew it and always let me demonstrate. “Now watch your brother. Notice his stance, his elbows, his neck and eyes. You see those fingers? They don’t shake or sweat.” I’d be in my solid stance and my brother would try to break the ice by tickling me, cracking a joke or farting. At first my father told him it wasn’t safe, but once he saw that it made me steadier, he let my brother try all he could to break me by breaking wind. I was pretty resilient until the accident.
It wasn’t all that bad. It was stupid, really. I was up in the tree stand with my eyes on a target and over-extended to a branch I thought was secure. When I hit the ground fifteen feet down I broke my leg and tweaked my spine, but I didn’t fire the gun. Never take an unnecessary shot, my father taught me, and I never did. It put me out of commission for a bit, but I’d survive. Between this and the deficiency of deer, this season was the perfect one for my dad to focus on my brother. I wasn’t missing out anyway because there weren’t any deer.
That’s when it started. They blasted all the bottles they could, dented all the cans, punctured all the deer cutouts and even shot up the old seats from dad’s pickup. My father was running out of lessons and needed a live target. We didn’t have many rabbits or pheasants, and squirrels and chipmunks would blow to smithereens if you hit them, and they were pretty small and fast anyway. That’s when my father hit upon the idea to walk out about fifty yards North. “You shoot first.”
My brother was like, “Wait, you want me to shoot you?”
“Yeah, take a shot at me. You don’t have to hit me. Just aim in my direction. It will give you a sense of guessing what an animal’s going to do. If you can calculate your shot based on the direction you think the deer is going to move in, then you can just as easily predict the direction it’s not going to go in and shoot there. Give it a shot. Pull the trigger.”
My brother was still like, “Whaaaat?” I was watching this from the window and couldn’t hear the exchange, but I knew my dad, and I knew my brother. He cupped his hand over his eyes to see if I was watching from the window. Then he made this gesture like, “Dad’s crazy.” After more frantic gesturing with my father, my brother finally raised the gun to his shoulder and shot him.
My father, unharmed, gave an excited yell. He was jazzed. I don’t know where the bullet went, and when I asked him later he said he didn’t hear it whistle. They packed it in for the day. My brother was obviously shaken, and dad needed time to understand his new method.
We sat down to eat, and my mother didn’t understand the silence. We kind of had an understanding that we wouldn’t mention this to her when she got home. She was working as a full-time nurse and took extra shifts to make up for the loss of the second household income. My brother did the cooking. Dad had been laid off. The insurance company he worked for lost in the economic crash, and because he had seniority and a higher salary, they let him go first. That sounded backwards to me, but what did I know about business? This gave dad lots of time to teach my brother how to hunt and left my mother in the dark about his methods. In the dark, until, that is, I finished updating her about how my leg and back felt, and my brother interrupted me, “I shot dad today.”
He put a forkful of potato gratin in his mouth and raised his eyes to mom, gesturing with his fork: “Good, right?”
Either she didn’t hear, or she was exhausted, or just couldn’t take him seriously. The moment passed without my father having to explain himself. “Your father’s a safe hunter. He’s knows not to be stupid.” She looked at him trusting that he knew to be careful. She gave the thumbs up that the gratin was good. Dinner ended without it going further, and we all packed things away and let my mother rest.
Dad kissed us Goodnight, and told my brother, “Get some rest. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“Dad?” my brother, under his covers, said in a voice that sounded both hesitant and frightened. Dad stopped at the door, turned and gave him what he thought he wanted to hear: he pinched his fingers and kissed them into an explosion, “Great gratin,” and flicked off the light.
The first shot woke me the next day. I was already at my perch at the window; my mother deposited me there before she left for work. I had fallen back to sleep, but I woke at the shot and saw my brother walking back and forth briskly like a duck changing direction. My father tried again. “Alright, now your turn.” Dad gave him the gun.
“North,” my brother shooed him, “more Northly.” […]
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David Colosi’s short fiction has appeared in The Wisconsin Review, The Offbeat (Short Fiction Contest finalist 2018), Permafrost,Intercourse, and Konch. His poetry is included in the anthologies, The Power of the Feminine I and From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002; the journals Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora (Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize finalist 2017) and The Los Angeles Times; and a collection of poems, Laughing Blood is published by Left Hand Books. His Three-Dimensional Literature projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally. He hosts The Napping Wizard Sessions podcast. He has an MFA from CalArts and an MA from NYU, both in art practice and theory. (http://www.davidcolosi.com/)
Read More: A brief Q&A with David Colosi