We walked for a long time, not seeing anything, Father ahead of me turning around every now and then to hurry me up and me trying to do my best to keep up with him.
Suddenly, Father turned toward me and pointed off. “There!” he said. “Over there! Go on, boy. Shoot him!”
Just a few steps from him a big brown jack was bouncing up and down across the brush. He must have sensed something because he was going very fast.
“Let him have it!” Father cried. “Shoot him on the run!”
I looked at the rabbit and then at Father and then to where the rabbit had been, but he was gone.
Father came over and grabbed my arm right below the shoulder. He shook me hard. “You stupid little fool,” he said. “When you see something, think and act quickly. Shoot! Don’t go looking for any by-your-leave.” He shook me again. “Why didn’t you shoot?”
I couldn’t talk. I turned my head from him.
“Why didn’t you shoot? Why?”
“I forgot, I guess,” I said. I wasn’t telling the truth, but I knew what would happen if I told him the truth. It would have sounded wrong to him to say I knew I could have got that jack but he looked so pretty bounding there among the sage, so I said I forgot.
He let my arm go with a push. “Next time I won’t ask for explanations. I’m going to spank you, like a little boy. Understand? If you don’t shoot first and think after, I’ll thrash you.”
He went away from me and motioned for me to come after him. I walked quickly, the gun in my hand at the side. Father turned to see how I was going. He came up to me again, swiftly, and pushed the gun to the ground. “Not like that, you fool!” he exclaimed. “You want it to go off and kill me?”
I bent down to pick up the gun. He put his foot over the barrel. “I said, do you want it to go off and kill me?” I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say and I was afraid to say anything at all for he’d be able to tell I was trying to keep from crying. I bent down again, but Father seized my shirt and straightened me once more. “Do you?” he shouted. “Do you?”
I started to cry. “I want to go home, Father,” I said, but I was crying so hard I think he didn’t understand me.
“You stop that cry-baby stuff,” he said. “Stop it, I tell you!”
He waited till I did what I was told. I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes and my face and I could taste the salt on my mouth.
“All right now, pick up that gun and watch it, you fool. You handle it carelessly, you’ll blast your leg off.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Father looked at me. “Very well. We’ll go on and forget the whole thing.”
But I could see it wasn’t the same. Father didn’t turn to look at me the way he had before. I had displeased him again, the way I always did whenever we went out together and I wished I could tell him I was trying. But he was too far away and too angry at me, so I walked as fast as I could to keep up with him. Then I saw him, dead ahead, and he was resting on one knee and gesturing to me to come up to him fast. When I broke into a run, he put his finger to his mouth and made a face to tell me to be quiet. I walked softly to him and there, not far from us and straight ahead, was a coyote, the wind coming from behind us so he didn’t even know we were watching him, and he was eating something he was holding like a dog between his two paws.
“All right,” Father whispered. “Now. Quickly.”
I looked at Father, but he only tightened his mouth and repeated, “Now.”
I brought my gun to my shoulder. I looked at Father again, and I could see him grow more furious at me. Then I looked at the coyote as best I could, my eyes suddenly hazy, and I squeezed the trigger and there was a blast and I wasn’t holding the gun properly, I guess, for it seemed to have an awful kick, hurting my shoulder. I could see the coyote fall over.
Father got up. “You didn’t take proper aim,” he said. He started to walk to the coyote who got hit in his side and who was trying to get up and run but couldn’t. “You’ve only injured him, you damned fool. Now you’ve got to do it properly.”
The way Father looked at me frightened me, so I started to run. Father caught me by the crook of the elbow and dragged me with him. “I don’t want to!” I cried. “Papa! Papa!”
He squeezed my arm and pulled me with him. “That’s what comes of being sentimental. Now he’s bleeding to death out there and you’re going to put him out of his pain.” He let go of me. “Come on, we’ll go on over to him and you can bash him over the head with your gunstock and end his misery. He isn’t worth another shell.”
“No, Father,” I shouted.
He struck me across the face. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said. He took hold of my shirt behind my neck and started to walk. We circled around the coyote who was still trying to get to his feet. His eyes were redshot and his tongue was hanging out, gray foam flecking his mouth.
I turned to Father. “Let’s take him home, Father. Let’s make him well again.”
“Kill him, you fool,” Father said, hardly opening his mouth. “Kill him now.”
We were standing over the coyote now, his eyes upturned to me.
“Put him out of his pain,” Father said.
I lifted my gun in the air, looked at Father, and then let the stock crash into the coyote’s head. I could feel the bones crush like dry adobe and the coyote let out a long little sigh that sounded like, “Oh,” and his legs stiffened and he was dead.
Father had walked away from me. I stood over the dead coyote. “There,” Father said, turning to me. “You’ve killed. You’ve learned to kill. The next time it won’t be so hard. Put a shell in your barrel and come on.”
I broke my gun and the spent shell popped out. I put a new one in.
I looked at Father. He was trying to smile. “See, now you’ve learned, it isn’t so bad, is it?”
I was walking toward him when his eyes grew big and afraid. “I told you not to carry the gun that way, you fool.” Then he tried to move away from me. “Don’t carry it like that!” he shouted. “Don’t! Don’t!” he said. “For God’s sake, don’t!”
Wife Beater
by Roy Carroll
The cops could hear her screams from the street, so they went up and got the guy who was beating her. But that was only the beginning...
Her name was Cherry Szykora. Regularly, every week, her husband would beat her black and blue. Across the street, Harry, the bartender, would slide a beer over the bar to a customer. They’d listen for a moment and chuckle. “Well,” Harry’d say, “Cherry’s gettin’ it again.”
The call came in at eleven sixteen P.M.
“Car six. Check on disturbance at two-ten Prescott. Man beating his wife...”
Jake threw his cigarette out the window. “Hell,” he said. Then he thought for a second. “Prescott. That’s down in Hunkytown, isn’t it?”
Tom Rivas nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
Jake, who was driving that night, jammed the prowl car into gear and headed toward the part of town where drab frame houses and dirty alleys huddled like a parasitic growth around the iron smelters. Hunkytown.
“Those people,” Jake grunted. “Always kicking their wives around.” He chuckled then. “Oh, well, maybe if my wife ran around like some of them babes do...”
Tom Rivas’ face was pale in the glow of the dash. He was quietly grinding his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Don’t joke about it. It’s nothing to joke about.”