“You think Dad will let me go hunting with him tomorrow?” Joey asked.
“Probably not. There’s too much work to do around here.”
Billy tossed the last of the hay into the pile and then set the cart down for a break. Joey hopped up into the back of the empty cart, and Billy handed him some of the water he had.
“I could do it,” Joey said.
“Do what?”
“I could kill them.”
“What?”
“Those people at the cabin. If I needed to, I could do it. To keep us safe.”
Billy grabbed the water from Joey’s hand. He placed the other on his younger brother’s shoulder. He knew his brother always wanted to please their father and that the two of them shared a similar frame of mind, but he refused to believe that his brother was the same man as their father.
“Joey, you don’t mean that.”
“I do. I could do it. It’s like Dad said—you can’t be weak. And I’m not weak.”
“There’s a difference between being weak and doing the right thing.”
Joey shoved Billy’s hands off him and jumped off the edge of the cart.
“Dad’s right. You are weak. You’re not strong enough to do what needs to be done.”
Joey started walking back to the barn. Billy tried calling out to him, but Joey ignored him.
Maybe Joey and his father were right. Maybe he didn’t have what it took to keep his family safe. But what did that mean? Did that mean he would have to change who he was? What he believed in?
Whatever Billy did now he would have to live with for the rest of his life, and he wasn’t sure if living in what the world was now was even worth it.
Ken spread the parts of the rifle along his workbench. He ran the cleaning rags along the creases of the inner workings of the gun.
It was completely torn apart. Ken oiled the firing pin around the edges of the barrel and placed little drops along any surface where metal grinded together.
He’d had that rifle for more than ten years. It brought down more deer, boar, and turkeys than any other gun he’d ever owned. That rifle was his prized possession.
It wasn’t because the rifle was expensive. He purchased it for five hundred dollars. He made a few modifications on it, upgrading to a better scope, switching out the stock for one that fit against his shoulder better, but the dollar amount wasn’t what made the gun so special to him.
When Ken was out hunting, tracking game, he felt alive. Out of all the things he’d ever done in his life, hunting was what he loved. There wasn’t anything else like it.
He never understood how people could just sit behind a desk or push paper for a living. He couldn’t grasp the concept of working at a bank or a store. He had to be outside. He had to be in the woods. He had to hunt.
The first time he went was when he was nine. He remembered his father getting him his first rifle. It was just a little .22-caliber, but when his hands felt the wood and steel and the power it gave him, he was never the same.
The moment he had his hands on the gun he was out the door and running for the woods. He had to try it out, see how it felt to finally go shooting.
Ken had been hunting with his father before but was never allowed to actually shoot anything. His father told him he had to earn that right. Once he did, he would be given his own gun.
He learned everything he could in those lessons with his father. He watched how he walked through the forest, the way he carried his gun, his alertness, and the way he noticed even the smallest detail.
As much as Ken hated his father, he did give the old man one piece of credit. He wouldn’t have become the hunter he was without him.
His dad taught him how to track anything and everything. He always told Ken that any fool could aim a gun and shoot an animal, but it took a hunter to find them.
Hunting wasn’t luck. It was a skill, one which Ken had been mastering for the last forty years.
That first day when he was in the woods by himself, he ran across a pair of deer tracks. As soon as he saw them, his face lit up. He kept himself upwind, maneuvering through the forest, tracking the animal.
It was almost an hour before he finally came across them. A mother and her baby were grazing between the trees. The fawn must have only been a few weeks old. Its legs wobbled underneath it.
He knew the .22 wouldn’t be able to bring the mother down, but he knew he’d be able to take the fawn.
Then he remembered what his father told him about the hunting laws, how you could only shoot a deer that was a certain size. He was conflicted. He knew what he wanted to do, but he also knew what he wanted was wrong.
The fawn pranced around its mother aimlessly. Ken could feel the itch of the trigger, just waiting to be pulled. He wanted to do it. He wanted to show his father that he was just as good as he was. He wanted to prove that he could do it, that he was worthy.
When he finally squeezed the trigger, the mother ran and the fawn collapsed to the ground.
It took him nearly twice as long to get back to the farm, dragging the deer carcass with him. He left the deer outside by the gutting station and rushed inside to find his father.
When Ken brought his dad outside, the look on his father’s face was one he never forgot. His father was disgusted. He snatched the rifle from Ken’s hands and told him that he wouldn’t get it back until he learned that hunting was a privilege, not a right, and that he had to learn and understand the laws and abide by them.
The surge of pride he felt from killing the deer deflated out of him and was replaced with anger.
His father taught him something very valuable that day. No matter what you do or how you do it, there is someone out there who can always take away the thing you want the most. And at that moment, he vowed to never let anyone take away the things he wanted ever again.
With all of the chores done for the day, Billy came back into the house. His mother was in the kitchen, getting dinner ready.
“Mom, have you seen Joe?” Billy asked.
“I think he’s with your father.”
Billy lingered in the kitchen. He wanted to speak with his mother, try and get some perspective on everything that was happening, but he knew she would always side with his father.
“Mom,” Billy said.
The knife sliced through the carrots, each time a thud hitting the cutting board in a melodic rhythm.
“What?” Beth asked.
“I think Dad’s wrong.”
The chopping ceased. Beth wiped the blade clean on her apron and set it on the counter.
“They haven’t done anything to us. Hurting them could hurt us in the long run,” Billy said.
“Billy, your father made his decision. Now, drop it.”
She went back to preparing dinner and dumped the carrots into a boiling pot of water.
“And you agree with him?” Billy asked.
Beth was a small woman, but when she was mad about something she looked larger than her size suggested
“Listen to me. The decisions your father makes are to keep us alive. That’s what he does. You may not like it or agree with it, but it’s something that has to be done. All you have to do is have the backbone to go through with it, because if you don’t, then it could be your brother who dies. Is that what you want? To place other people above your own family?”
“No… I… that’s not what I want, but there has to be a better way.”
“What makes you think they won’t try and steal from us? You think they’re better than us? Is that it?”
“Mom, no, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“That’s because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Listen to me, Son, if you don’t wipe that idealistic bullshit from your mind, then the only thing that you’ll get in return is a bullet from somebody who knows how the world works. How it really works.”