Lessons from My Father
by Gabrielle Gagnon
My father woke me with a tap on the shoulder. I looked up to see him glaring down at me in his worn-out camouflage jacket, clenching his blaze orange hat in his fist.
I bought him that hat for Christmas last year, using the five dollars my grandmother had put in my annual birthday card. I started getting the bills by mail ever since she moved to Florida. She said she couldn’t send more than five dollars; she didn’t want to get in trouble with the post. I think she’s cheap.
I had been looking forward to the day my father would see my maturity. The hairs on my upper lip were getting darker with every inch I grew. My mother said they made me look unclean, but I thought they made me look like my father. He never looked long enough to notice. But I refused to shave them anyway.
It was early in the morning. I could hear the low rumble of my father’s idling truck under my window. He was waiting for me. I put on my camouflage pants and the matching jacket that he had gotten me for Christmas. Like father, like son, except I looked nothing like my father. I was short and scrawny and the too-large clothes hung off my barely pubescent body, swallowing me. He told me I would grow into them, but I was fourteen and the hair under my arms was almost as thin as I was. My mother said I was handsome. I might believe her eventually.
My father was a simple man. He enjoyed tradition and hated change. Some might call him a bigot, but he was only proud of who he was. He understood that a loving wife, faith, hunting, and a cold beer were all a man needed. It was the wisdom he had learned from his father. The same wisdom I was learning from mine.
Now, I was fourteen, and I had faith, and on special occasions, I had had a cold beer. I hated the bitter taste, but I did enjoy the warm feeling it gave running down my throat. My father said I would grow to love that taste so much that something as simple as the sound of a cracking can would ease my pain. I believed him. Every sip of that first one let him sink deeper into his chair, no longer complaining about whatever idiot pissed him off that day. A single beer never hurt, but a single beer always ended with another. Several beers made him violent. My mother knew.
In my heavy clothes, I made my way downstairs and joined my father in his truck. A black ‘99 Ford Ranger with a sticker of a small red and blue elephant on the bumper. My mother complained about the truck, saying we couldn't afford it, but my father refused to listen. I liked the truck.
He didn’t say a word, only lowered his foot onto the gas and began to drive away. There was a small cooler sitting by his feet. It was a long drive. The forest was on the outskirts of town and my father liked to be far away from the other hunters. I pondered turning on the radio, but my father hated the radio; he only listened to the same Bruce Springsteen CD he kept in his glove box. I didn’t want to upset him. We sat in silence.
At the end of the small dirt road, the truck stopped. My father stepped out and waited by the cab. I pressed my hands into my pants to wipe the sweat off my palms. My father once told me that being nervous is a sign of weakness. I was nervous.
I stepped out of the truck and walked a few steps, trying not to seem too eager. My father lifted his arm and gestured for me to open the tailgate. I grasped the handle and opened the latch. It fell towards me quickly, making me take a swift step back. It made the loud banging sound I was used to hearing every time my father was upset. He didn’t react, not even a small flinch in his eyes. He was used to that sound.
Inside were two large, black rifle cases. I felt the sweat come back to my palms, but this time I was excited. I glanced back at him to see the corner of his mouth slightly raised in a small half-smile. He never smiled.
“Like father, like son,” he said.
I stared down at the case for a moment. I wanted to remember this. I would remember this.
I clicked open the child safety lock and carefully lifted the top. Inside lay a Marlin 336C; it was a light mahogany colour with black detailing, the same one my father had. The lower right corner of the stock was engraved “To my son: his first gun”. I ran my finger along the engraving. It felt good. It was the gift every son wanted to get from his father. The one we wrote on our Christmas list every December. I turned back and smiled at him. He nodded.
I grabbed my father's gun from its case and handed it to him. The corner of his mouth lowered back to its usual surly pout. I placed a small box of ammunition in my overly large pocket, then slung on my rifle, the leather strap resting on my back.
My father had already begun to walk into the woods. I followed him. The sounds of his footsteps broke the complete silence of the early morning. I tried to copy them, the way they began on the ball of his foot then smoothly lowered to his heel. Careful yet confident.
The rifle was heavy on my back. It only weighed a couple pounds, but it somehow felt unbearable. It made my steps heavier, forcing my feet to drag on the ground. I told myself it was the fault of the early morning.
After about a half a mile of walking, my father stopped and crouched down behind a fallen tree. It was rotten and wet and smelled of mildew. He was staring straight ahead. I tried to find his point of interest, but my heart was beating too fast for me to focus. I hoped he couldn’t tell.
“She’s all yours,” he said.
I quickly lifted the weight off my back and held my rifle in one hand. Reaching into my pocket with the other, I pulled a few bullets from the box of ammunition and carefully placed them into the casing. Then I unlocked the safety, just like he had taught me when I was twelve. I lifted my shoulders and positioned my gun on the log. With the rifle pointed in the direction of my father’s gaze, I placed my eye on the peephole. It was a doe.
She was standing with her neck bent over, eating the low branches of a cedar. She looked so graceful. She didn’t sense a nervous fourteen-year-old boy trying to impress his father. She didn’t know that once we killed her, she would be thrown onto the bed of a dirty old truck so we could drive back to town in time for church. Mother would be upset if we missed church.
I shut my eyes and shot. The noise pierced my ears and left a ringing sound in the front of my head. My eyes opened to see that my father had already begun to walk towards the doe. I felt dizzy.
“Straight in the head!” he yelled.
I stood up. My vision was blurred, yet I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. I turned on the safety on my rifle and replaced it on my back. It no longer felt heavy. I joined my father crouched down next to the doe, digging his finger into the wound. He pushed it in deeper forcing blood to trickle down her cheek. He pulled out the bullet, wiping the blood on his pants. With his calloused hand, he grabbed my wrist and placed the bullet in my palm.
“Keep it,” he told me.
I squeezed the bullet in my fist and glanced down at the doe. She looked beautiful. Her lifeless eyes were staring up at me. Adrenaline prevented me from holding my hands still. It sat in my stomach, tying it up in knots. I liked it.
I reached down and grabbed her front leg while my father grabbed the other. We dragged her limp body back to the truck. She was heavy. Luckily, it wasn’t a long walk back. I tried to hide how excited I was when we got back to the truck. We threw her into the truckbed, not caring about the loud sound it created. Why should we?
I dusted the dirt off my rifle and placed it back in its case. I sat down in the passenger seat and laid it across my legs. My lips turn up into a small half-smile. Without saying a word, my father started the car and began to drive back the way we came.
I watched the trees pass by. My mother was probably at home making breakfast. On Sundays, she made pancakes. I hoped she would make me some with chocolate chips. She knew those were my favourite. Hunting gave me an appetite.
I rolled down my window and let the forest smell fill up the truck. I loved that fresh smell. My father reached down and grabbed a beer from the small cooler by his feet. He placed it between his thighs and cracked it open with one hand, leaving the other on the wheel. He grabbed another and did the same.
“You deserve this,” he said, handing me one of the beers.
He picked up the other and took a sip. He looked over, waiting for me to follow his lead. I did. The beer was cold, but made me feel warm. It was the prize for my prey.
I slouched over, turned on the radio and flipped through the stations. In between the sounds of static, I found the perfect song, “Blues Power” by Eric Clapton.
“Oh, I got the boogie-woogie right down in my very soul,” Clapton sang.
My father began to hum along softly, taking sips of his beer between the phrases. He was nodding his head with the song.
“Ain't gonna stop until the twenty-fifth hour,” the radio spurted.
I smiled at him and took another sip of my beer. The taste wasn’t my favourite, but I could grow to like it.
Clapton wailed, “ ’Cause now I’m livin’ on blues power…”.