First Day
The boy whose father died of a headache is being taken hunting for the first time by an uncle he doesn’t know well. It was the boy’s mother’s idea. She asked her brother to take him. Now he walks behind his nephew, who carries the gun awkwardly out in front of him the way someone carries a pot of hot water. He remembers stands he sat in when he was the boy’s age, legendary deer that were rumored to have racks big as chandeliers. They never saw them, much less shot them, which kept it all possible. The boy is clumsy. He keeps tripping over roots, brambles, branches. The gun, of course, isn’t loaded. Out from them spreads a deerless space, like the ripples that spread out from a thrown stone. He hadn’t expected this when his sister asked him to take the boy hunting. He can’t remember the last time he felt such peace.