Just Flesh

The yearn for liquor had done my father in before his time. It had eaten away half of his life, and I, following eagerly in pursuit of his demeanor, now find that my body is all the more brittle and weak. The first time I ever drank was the night after my hunt, a sort of initiation all too common in the dotting wetlands that surrounded my home growing up. The society in the area valued these ideals. Making your first kill at a young age was a rite of passage, and to hold court with the men in town in any way, you had to be what they dubbed a real man.

My father had grown worried about the town’s perception of me, particularly worried that I would be ousted and ridiculed since I had failed two previous hunting excursions, and a third would be fatal to my social standing amongst the men in our town. My dad was a good man, that I am sure of; he was stalky and intimidating but nevertheless gentle regarding my sister and, to a lesser extent, myself. The townspeople never questioned my father, never dared to. He had easily managed his first hunt despite the drunken cruelness his father had pushed onto him.

He would tell me about his first hunt before we left each time without fail; his dulled eyes were always distant when he did. He would look right past my scrawny form as if speaking aloud for the sole purpose of convincing himself of something. It was as though he was trying to frame it as a misinterpreted bonding experience between his father and him, but he couldn’t see past the blurry visions of shouting and still felt the sting of that night’s frigid air. He had missed the first shot and was beaten badly for it, short of breaking his nose. He mentioned that his old man had howled, rank whiskey lining his breath, after him as he stumbled into the creek bottoms.

“Bring back their hide, or I’ll take yours!”

He shuddered when he spoke of it, and to some extent, I think the words were so deeply ingrained in his memory that he heard them in the echo of the creek bottoms. That’s what the whiskey is for, right? It makes those harrowing memories nothing but white noise, and they become rarely worth a worry. We would never meet our grandfather. My dad made sure of that.

The sky was overcast, and the air was light and cold, our breath leaving foggy spirits in the stillness surrounding us. My father had parked the beat-up truck in an area just around the field of grassy knolls, where the soil abandoned any resemblance of a flattened plane. I sprung out of the car, running with that immense excitement and uncontrollable bliss that only someone at the zenith of their boyhood can achieve. My father had let out a wheezy chuckle, following close behind and carrying most of our battered supplies.

“Calm down, boy,” he hollered after me. “You’re running like a fox after a wounded hare; we still have time before the sun goes down!” His boisterous laugh followed the advice as my legs seized, running right up to an abrupt stop. I wobbled, almost doubling over. The brilliant blurs of red and orange focused back into the definitive shapes of the autumn trees. Within a second, he was at my side, checking my condition as I panted wildly to catch my breath. My flushed face still brandished a dumb grin. After he had made sure I was back on top of my nerves, he tossed me a mustard yellow beanie, woven and worn, with holes letting my scruffy tufts of hair peek through. It warmed my ears, and I pulled it snugly around my face, finally saving it from the cold sting of the early morning.

I still have that beanie. I am ashamed to admit that I sought it out before I began this very paper and even now fidget with it as it lies on my desk surrounded by papers and dry-stained shot glasses. I had half a mind to give it to my own son when we had ventured on his hunt, but instead, I elected to hoard it for myself, like a dog and its favorite ratty bone.

What veridian hues still soaked the late-fall vegetation had fallen from the cypress groves’ height into their pools of algae; those were the creek bottoms. The water was surrounded by a small mountain range that formed a sort of bowl around the murky terrain as if the liquid would slosh down into the town without its presence as a barrier. The water was veiled by a thick canopy and its water erected roots from its surface that tangled with one another just above the tinted sheen. Beneath it rippled the branches distorted until they appeared like enlarged serpents.

I remember the sickening stench that filled the area so vividly. The air reeked of vinegar or rotted egg whites, some fetid smell that left nostrils stained by its presence. Cypress water often reeked but the downpour had flushed a new breed of stench out into the air.

My father and I had tied the trail markers, pushing forward after what game we had scared up from beneath the cypress roots.

“Dammit!” he had muttered under his breath, rubbing his upper lip as he often did when the whiskey had left his body dry. “I just saw the tricky thing. Did you see where it went?” I hadn’t, but my father had asked the question, not expecting my answer. He rubbed his hands together for warmth, breathing hot, liquor-layered breaths into his palms. I looked down at the heavy rifle in my gloved hands; a sense of failure had already settled in my gut, and I was ready to turn in. The sun had begun to set, and the town’s party would have their turn at dawn.

“Can we just go home?” I offered. I remember my voice cracking with the sobby gasps of someone holding back a cry. He had turned to me, passing his cap back and forth in his muddy paws, his brow furrowed into a concerned grimace. I could feel his worry at that moment, not for himself, but for my future in our society. When my father set his cap back on his head and grabbed the rifle from me, I could see that there was no chance for failure anymore. We were leaving with me doing my manly duty, or we weren’t going to leave.

“Not this time, bud,” he replied, still managing a softness in his voice, but one that was fake, shielding his worry. He wouldn’t look at me. “I had bagged my first when I was half your age. The boys will never let you hear the end of it if we come back empty-handed for a third time.” I knew he was right, and even in my tired body, I exhausted my limbs, climbing after my father into the dark areas of the creek bottoms.

We had to finish the real man’s work.

The air was denser, more oppressive to my lungs, and induced a heavy pressure on my throat. I could feel the steady, soothing thump of my heart inside my chest, and the quiet rang in my ears in short, faint, ringing dins. My father’s larger form in the darkened woods was a saving support, holding me to my feet and allowing some sturdiness to my steps. My lungs retrained my breaths, struggling to remain as quiet and still as possible as my father hushed me. I held my breath, confused, until he slid the rifle slowly and carefully into my palms. That’s when I heard it: another raspy and choked breath carried through the roots of the trees. It felt as though the cypress trees had eyes and were moving around us.

I felt my body tense as he pointed. She had slunk amongst the rocky knolls, standing still as if seeing us. I struggled to keep my hands still. The joy of finding her again was intense but overridden by the feeling of boyhood nervousness that crept along my joints, pooling in my fingers and making them shake as I slid them up the gun’s nozzle. My body was keen on the weight that rode on my shoulders at that moment and the stress that had weighed on my father for the last few weeks. My dad’s nervous energy was just as palpable as he nodded slightly in the dark. Despite his anxiety, I could feel an eagerness for my success, longing for me to get the work done and to quell his fears.

“Take your time, bud; get a damn good shot,” my father whispered. I steadied the crosshairs in my shaky hands, aligning the figure perfectly. My vision was sharpened through the scope, and my breath ceased into silent, long inhales and exhales. Quietly, my father pointed over my shoulder to the safety, and I carefully slid my hand down, snapping it off.

CLICK! It rang a loud din against the silent atmosphere enveloping us. The black blurred form shot up ramrod straight in the roots of the rocky knolls. Her body twitched slightly before standing dead still, the figure facing our perch in the shadowy canopy of trees. Did she see us?

“H-help me, please, Em—” she started. Yes, she saw us.

I squeezed the trigger.

BANG! It was a clean shot; right through her neck. Our ears were greeted by the loudness of the gun firing and the feeling of the gunpowder falling and coating my gloves with its ashy mess. My father erupted in booming cheers behind me, patting my shoulders firmly.

I watched as the woman slumped into herself, falling limply into the pools of rotten water that pooled around the cypress roots. It entangled her dead limbs amongst the trees. Her eyes shot straight at us, through tangled thin hairs slung in front of her face. I know her eyes had been blue. They sat frozen on her round face pinned into a pleading, begging, gaze. I hadn’t imagined how it would feel to be something’s undoing. I had wanted one for my father and I had finally gotten one. I know her eyes were blue.

“That was a damn good shot, Son!” he cried, warm tears of relief streaking down his cold reddened cheeks, which he quickly wiped away. “Here, boy, take a swig. A tradition is a tradition,” he explained, handing me his flask. I shakily lifted the steel container to my lips, letting the liquid slide down my throat and warm my body in the icy winds of the November evening. It was rough and tasted of copper, with a single drop of sweet apple cider. I hadn’t expected a sugary malt, but its metal taste felt almost like a kick to the teeth. Still, it was smooth going down my throat, once it passed my tongue. I would get used to it.

We had done a real man’s work that day, and I was glad.