Father’s Gun

Father’s Gun

By Carly Weinberger

The air was still. A silver valley, padded with snow. Light glistening where the morning sun melted the surface ice. Prints, fresh and wet from body heat.

He had not seen the deer’s fall, but he had heard it. A thud after the bang, echos shot upward against the rocks. From the top of the cliff, he could see the whole untamed valley; where meadow turned to forest, where forest turned to barren rock.

It had been an impossible shot. A mile away, he had glimpsed her between two snow-burdened maples. He had hoisted the gun, stolen from beneath the floorboards of his father’s cabin, and held the eyepiece to his left. She stared back at him through the magnification. He had held his breath, attempting to ground his body’s sickly waver, and shot. The black smoke had left him choking.

We need to eat, boy. Get it done. His father had called on him to make the choice many times before. Shoot or starve. But to take a life… Killing is the most natural instinct there is. But in the end, he had always survived off of his father’s kill. He just couldn’t pull the trigger. It would never be fair for him to stand here, a predator safe on top of the cliff, and take aim.

But tonight he had. He hiked the sharp path down into the valley. It wasn’t nearly cold enough for winter. His fingers sweat beneath his cloth gloves. The gun pulled his shoulders back, and he leaned uncomfortably forward to balance its weight with his body. He was too skinny, too bare.

The deer hadn’t died where she was shot. Blood carved red rivulets into the snow bank, the very picture of impurity, and suddenly he needed to run. But his hunger was stronger than the instinct. He forced himself to follow the trail of unspooled ribbons that the deer had left behind.

If his father had still been alive, he would have yelled at him to get a move on, don’t lose it! In the days after something cold had taken root in his father’s lungs, the boy had been utterly alone. He hadn’t known hunger until those long nights spent shivering in his father’s bed. He had eventually grabbed the gun.

He almost hoped she had survived. If she had gotten away, he could starve here in the snow without such blood on his hands; without having chosen his life over another.

But she was dead. The boy stumbled into the wide, blanketed clearing and found her body at his feet. He looked at her then, sensing the pain he had inflicted. It’s an animal, for God's sake. She hadn’t deserved death any more than his father had.

He fell into the snow at her side, heard the shhhh of it. Warm blood gushed from a bullethole straight between her eyes. He had thought that he wouldn’t have been able to stare at death like this, but suddenly he couldn’t look away. It’s a human instinct. The smell was intoxicating.

He held his hands to her face, letting the blood run down his arms. It’s in your nature. He pulled out his pocket knife, a final gift from his father in the days leading up to his death, and cut carefully into the cooling flesh of her flank.

He stripped away a slice of her sleek muscle and slid it hesitantly between his teeth. She was earthy and achingly rich. He began to chew with carnal instinct, carving into her again. His weak heart pounded.

As her body unraveled, the boy thought he understood. Maybe the intimacy of this, of a body saving his life when it no longer served hers, was wholly natural. Maybe his father had been right.