BIG GAME HUNTING IN
ROCKVALE
Rockvale, TN Feb 1, 2013 –
“POW!” sounded like
nothing so much as a transformer blowing.
“What's that?” Patty
asks.
“POW!” once again.
“I don't know. I'll go
look,” I say, opening the sticking kitchen door.
“Put on your jacket.”
“No time, I'm out the
door already.”
I step off the deck in my
T-shirt and slant across the yard, by the pickup and around it and
look across the field. There is a kid (okay, in his twenties, but
when you're as old as me...) standing under the large carport at the
neighboring church. He is holding what appears to be a small-bore
rifle, but judging by the report it's a shotgun.
“What are you shootin'
at?” I ask.
“That skunk there,”
the kid replies, indicating the roadside in front of the church and
my house. There is a small black critter convulsing feebly beside
the road. Two shots, I think to myself, and this little guy is still
alive.
“Why?” I ask.
“Uh...because he was
sprayin' the church.”
Looks to me more like the
skunk was walking down the road and this kid drives by in his pickup
with his shotgun, sees it and decides, I got a gun; shit, I'm gonna
murder somethin'. Then swings his pickup into the church parking lot
and slams it into park, jumps out and aims (poorly) at the harmless
member of the mephitidae persuasion, blasts away with his thunder
stick. I see this situation, make these deductions, but remember
that this little asshole is armed and don't divulge what I've figured
out.
“Well, you might want to
go over there close enough to hit him this time and put him out of
his misery,” I say.
“Well, you're welcome to
get closer to him if you want, but I don't want the stink on me,”
Billy the Kid replies. And it's true: I can smell, wafting across
the frozen field, the
unmistakable odor of
fresh skunk.
“I think he's squirted
his last,” I say, and walk over to where the critter has now
somewhat regained his feet and is crawling across the road. But he's
crawling in circles.
I put my foot down and
turn him toward the other side of the road. Each time he makes a
right, I nudge him with my foot back to the left and toward the other
side.
The kid is watching me,
but has nothing to say.
I shepherd the little guy
to the side of the road across from the church and onto the shoulder.
He rolls down the shoulder, gets up again and starts crawling along
the ditch.
He's a goner, fersure.
I say nothing that comes
to my head regarding the kid's humanity, or his marksmanship, and I
turn back across the road and go into my house. I wish I had a
pistol to put the skunk out of it, but I don't. I have killed
bigger, smarter, more dangerous creatures and have put that stuff
behind me. I know that death will soon come to the little guy and he
will welcome it.
**********
When we get ready to go
shopping this morning I go to get the mail from the mailbox across
the road. I look to my left, where I had last seen the skunk.
There, about thirty yards down, I see that he has dropped
his body, for it lies, unmoving, in the fresh snow.
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