He slept and woke in a room with unpainted walls,
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chinks invited light in the morning,
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wind in the winter, and insects at night.
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He was seven and his brown eyes reflected
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the gold flecks in his father’s eyes.
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His father, a man skilled with stone,
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built mausoleums, was often away.
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The boy inherited his father’s best qualities.
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His obedience promised to blossom into determination.
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His curiosity would bloom as intelligence.
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Each day he removed the household trash,
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made his bed, and did chores appropriate for a seven year old child.
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Before lunch his mother schooled him
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in reading and mathematics.
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On hot afternoons, he could be found at the pond.
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Baiting croppie with twisted bits of grass.
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Chasing frogs or skipping rocks.
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When the leaves fell, he picked apples and pears.
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When the snow fell, he built and armed snow forts.
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Almost every Saturday that Autumn,
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before the dawn light began to sift through the chinks,
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the boy would watch his father walk from the house toward the wood
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wearing an orange vest, pockets stuffed with bullets, Buck knife at his belt.
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Browning in hand,
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the man would tramp into the dark woods.
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The boy was forbidden to follow.
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It was the only thing his father had ever denied him.
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He began to feel something, an apprehension,
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a longing, he wanted to know what his father knew.
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Occasionally, a report would be heard.
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The boy’s head might be bent
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over a beetle he was worrying with a straw
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or he might be engaged in crafting yet another unsuccessful kite
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from his mother’s stash of grocery sacks.
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Perhaps he would simply be running the fallow field
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for the joy of hearing his dog bark.
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Hearing the shot he would become instantly still,
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and facing the palpable sound,
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he would envision it leaving the rifle
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and speeding through the forest
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caught in the mitts of his ears,
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catalogued by his memory.
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He would listen to his heart mimicking the sound over and over and over.
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Most times his father emerged from the forest
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there would be rabbit, or squirrel, or venison.
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The boy cried one night in his room
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when he recognized the tom turkey
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on his father’s back as one he had chased in the meadow all summer.
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Always, there was a gift for him. Often it was only a buckeye.
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Two times the boy received an owl pellet which, when broken open
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would reveal the tiny bones of mice and rabbits.
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There would also be empty cartridges
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and once there were antlers with bits of hair and skin
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and blood.
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These fetishes were added to the shelf above the boy’s bed.
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Three more years passed.
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Summers were flush with berries, tomatoes, corn,
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fish and frogs.
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Winter dinners were nourishing,
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soups of venison, fried rabbit, and squirrel.
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He watched his mother cut and season the meat.
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He watched her watch pots.
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He went to his bed satisfied
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and wondered what it was like to kill.
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October of the boy’s eleventh year came.
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His father rose early for the first day of the deer season.
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The boy’s mother rose early to peel apples for a long day of canning.
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Awakened by the murmuring, the sleepy, night-shirted boy
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peeked around the kitchen door.
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There were five items on the kitchen table,
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the familiar Browning rifle, a box of bullets, a buck knife.
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A box of shells and a four-ten gauge shotgun.
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Seeing the boy, the man rose, picked up the Browning
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and nodded at the shotgun.
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The father said, “Wear something warm. It’s cold.”
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The boy stepped into the doorway.
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The mother noticed that the light behind him
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cast his shadow long across the floor to the man’s feet..
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Shivering,
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he said, “I will.”
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