When I was nine years old, you caught me reading a book with a flashlight under the covers. “Our youngest is a night owl,” you’d said to Mother later that evening. On the fourth trip up to New York to visit Mom-mom, you noticed that I always fell asleep in the car. “Like me, when I was his age. Whenever I was fussy my parents would put me in the car seat and drive around the block. I was out like a light before they turned the first corner.”

You never go to sleep before midnight, these days, and I wonder if you would have someone drive you around in the back seat, if you could.

It doesn’t surprise me that the clock reads 2:04 when I hear the creak of your bed through the wall. I wait another hour, to be certain, before I slip out of my room. The night is a cold one, and my feet freeze to the hardwood floor with every step I take. I imagine that if I stop moving, my toes will get stuck to the floor and snap off.
  
The moon is almost full tonight. You commented on it yesterday, and then paused as though you expected me to say something. You know there’s a specific word for it, but you’ve never bothered to look it up. Most of the dictionaries are in my room anyway. The moonlight’s reflecting off the snow coating the ground, streaming in through the windows. That light traveled 95 million miles to stretch across our living room. 

Mother would always close the curtains in winter. You never bothered, but you’re a big man and the cold doesn’t sweep through you like it does for me.

Armistice is sleeping next to the door to the basement, right on top of a heating vent. As I open the door, he wakes up and yawns widely. Bending down, I scratch behind his big, floppy ears. “Good boy, Misti,” I murmur. His tail wags limply, and as he gets up to follow me downstairs I can hear his joints popping.

I learned the combination to the gun safe from watching you, when you come downstairs to clean the rifles after a day out hunting or target shooting. You never ask if I want to come with you, but I never ask if you want me to come.

The first time you took me out hunting, I carried my .22 rifle as though it were a sword and imagined that the squirrel we were out to end was really a monster from under my bed in disguise. I was just as slight and thin, back then, and I always stared at how you carried my rifle one-handed when my arms got sore. Once, I bragged to my friends that you never got tired.

You’re a night owl, too.

The movement behind the fallen tree had startled me, that first hunt, but you didn’t turn away then. You’d handed me my little-big rifle, and pointed. “Take aim,” you’d said, voice hushed.

I’d thought it was a squirrel, in that flash of motion and your voice in my ear yelling, “Now! Now!” I caught a bare glimpse of a head, but then it was gone. When we peered over the log, a dead chipmunk was lying there. Its hind leg was twitching.

I hadn’t picked up a firearm since then, except to help you sort through the gun safe, or to make appreciative noises over some new acquisition.

I know now you saw right through me, then.

There was one rifle you rarely took out to fire, and which you spent hours poring over every month, cleaning and adjusting and holding it with white knuckles. I once startled you when you were working on it, and you’d flowed out of your seat and raised it as though it were nothing but air.

The old rifle is heavy in my hands, as I turn it over and trace my fingers along the blued metal and dark wooden stock. The wood is stained lighter, by the grip and the forestock. There’s a crude inscription carved along one side. It reads, “Try-Again Tom.”

I struggle to keep the rifle steady as I press the stock against my shoulder, looking down the iron sights and imagining it weighs nothing, that the kick of recoil against me is nothing, and that my shoulder wouldn’t ache after pulling the trigger. The front sight sags as my arms tire, then shakes as my muscles strain, and finally I lower the rifle. It isn’t even loaded.

Try-Again Tom.

Misti hears you moving before I do. He grunts and raises his head from his paws, head cocked to one side. The floorboard beside your bed creaks, and then the hinge of your bedroom door groans. Your feet thump down the stairs to the basement just as I’m setting the old rifle back in the safe. The old dog stands shakily and greets you with a wagging tail as you pause at the bottom step.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you say, and scratch him behind the ears. It’s a question and an explanation.

“No,” I say. “I kept thinking about what you said about Mother and me. And….”

You nod slowly and then reach past me, picking up the old rifle. It rests easily in your big hands. The patches of lighter stained wood match your grip on it perfectly as you raise it to your shoulder, eyes locked on some distant target. The front sight sits unwavering for almost a minute before you look at me, rifle still at your shoulder, holding some clear enemy at bay.

“Today was Sunday. Don’t you have school tomorrow, Junior?” you ask. It’s really an order.

“They’ll probably cancel. There’s still snow on the ground,” I say, turning toward the stairs. “Good night, Dad.”

You hum in response, and set the rifle back in the safe. It’s 4:23 when I hear you walk up the stairs to bed, and I close my copy of [u]The Hobbit[/u].

[hr]

Monday morning comes early, as Mother knocks on my door. The radio said school was canceled. My hands brush against the top bunk as I stretch. The curtains are glowing, and the world outside is bright as Heaven. My heavy eyelids are a brilliant orange when I blink.

When I trudge downstairs, you’re standing at the window in the kitchen. Your eyes are focused up the mountain, squinting.

“Is that a deer?” you ask, and point. I lean next to you, sighting down your arm. At the tip of your finger, a dark blotch moves against the canvas of trees and snow.

I nod quietly, and you grunt in reply, letting the silence stretch.

“Looks like a doe,” I say.

I’m still staring at the deer when you step back and go downstairs. You return with a rifle in your hands, and ask if it's still there.

I almost say no, but I nod instead.

The door slams a moment later, and you’re gone.



After breakfast, I yell upstairs to Mother that I’m going out for a short hike. She tells me not to leave the house without a hunting vest. I don’t reply, but I grab a blaze-orange vest and a matching hat on my way out.

A shot echoes through the woods when I close the door behind me.

I find you halfway up the mountain, in a small clearing where sometimes we find shed antlers in the fall. The doe is lying on her side at your feet. Pink froth dusts her muzzle, and there’s a neat and bloody hole in her chest. I stand still as you look up at me, the sun caught in your eyes like headlights. The light dies when you gesture for me to carry your rifle. 

As you bend down to heave her carcass over your shoulder, I wonder if the she heard the bang, and saw the flash.

Later that night I find myself reading the last page of my book, over and over. I close it without a bookmark and turn off the light. 

[hr]

On Tuesday, school is canceled again even though all the snow will melt before noon. I wake up early, get dressed in warm hand-me-down clothing, and knock on the door to your room.

Mother answers.

I take a deep breath. “Ask Dad if he wants to go out target shooting.”

A few minutes later, still dressed in your striped pajamas, you walk past me without a word. I follow you downstairs, to the basement. You gesture at a couple of camo green ammunition boxes, holding your mug like a pistol. “See if the smaller one’s empty. I’ll grab us a rifle,” you say.

Shrugging out of my coat and draping it over a chair to keep it from getting dirty, I pick up the box. It’s light, and clearly empty. You tell me to fill it with .22 rounds from the ammunition shelf. The old rifle doesn’t take such a small caliber, but I don’t mention it.

The lid is stuck, and I struggle with it. A sharp edge of metal catches my finger, and I bite back a whimper as blood seeps out. You ignore me as I dash upstairs for a Band-Aid and antibacterial cream. When I get back, you’re running a cloth along the barrel of the small rifle I used to kill that chipmunk all those years ago. There’s another just like it resting on the workbench. 

A hot feeling flickers in my chest. 

My first try must have loosened the lid, because I manage to get the box open this time. I grimace as I start to fill the box with .22 ammunition. The box smells of dead things. You lean over it and take a sniff, and grunt. “The rubber seal is decaying,” you say, and indicate the rubber lining the top.

There’s a small cut on the back of your hand.

“Actually, it’s really cold out. Let’s go out tomorrow,” I say, and you look at me.

“Fine.”

You put away the rifle, and I replace the ammunition. I spend the rest of the day reading a book about a knight and a princess, but I can hear the sharp reports of the old rifle echoing through the valley.

[hr]

It’s a Wednesday in spring when I finally get up the courage to ask you to take me shooting again. The sky is overcast and fog is winding its way through the trees as we set up a table for the rifles and ammo boxes. You pick up a couple of paper targets and nail them to a splintery post fifty yards away.

You don’t say much, other than to ask if I remember how to use a firearm, and correct me when I make a mistake. The rifle is lighter than I remember it, but the grip is familiar. I slide a loaded magazine into the receiver, pull back the bolt, and the targets become the deep black eyes of beasts.

I miss every shot in that first magazine, and half in the next. A few rounds later, though, I score a bullseye, and several shots are within the ten point circle.

You smile as you look at the target.

“You’re pulling too hard on the trigger. See how all these shots drift to the right?” You point at the sluggish trail of holes across the target’s middle and edge. “Problem runs in the family….”

You trail off, then show me how to do it right.

The next hour is spent on my technique and just as we’re packing up to go inside, as the sun is going down, you tell me a short story about your childhood and the forests of Alaska. Misti comes trotting out to greet us and wheezes when he reaches us, tail flopping back and forth. He was there with you, fighting wolves and bears.

I settle down to bed without a book that night.

[hr]

In the summer, a windstorm fells a large number of trees in our county. It’s a Thursday and my arms are burning as I bring the splitting axe down on another hunk of log. It splits cleanly in two, both halves toppling off the large stump. The chainsaw revs loudly as you cut another section off the fallen tree blocking our driveway.

“I need a break,” I say as I lean the axe up against the stump. My hands have enough splinters that I’m certain a stray spark would set my hands ablaze.

You sigh and set down the chainsaw as you wait for me to recuperate.

Eventually, you turn it off and pick up the splitting axe yourself.

Once, I’d bragged to my friends that you never got tired.

Misti spends all day inside, curled up at Mother’s feet as she works the pedals of her sewing machine, hemming old shirts and pants so they’ll fit my slim frame.

[hr]

It’s fall, and we’re working over in the woodshop. That Friday afternoon, I’d expressed an interest in making a decorative box out of walnut and mahogany. You’re drawing out figures and measurements on a piece of scrap paper with a pencil that’s barely as long as your little finger, and explaining as you go. No one in the world can crack the code that is your chicken scratch, Mother always said, and you agreed. Putting the finishing touches on the picture, you look up and find that I’m idly doodling a castle in the light coating of sawdust on the workbench. A king, a queen, and two knights watch from the battlements.

“Tom!”

I startle when you say my name. With that, you let out a deep breath, then walk back to the house. The diagram is abandoned on the workbench.

I wipe away the sawdust with my sleeve.

You were up in your room for several hours after that, until I slipped the diagram for the box under your door and knocked until you got out of bed to look at it. I’d corrected the numbers and the measurements, and re-written it all in my “perfect” handwriting.

Mother’s word, not mine.

I’m waiting in the living room when you come downstairs. Misti’s resting his head in my lap, and I’m combing through his fur looking for ticks bloated and fat with his blood. A few minutes pass, until I look up and you start talking about the tools we’ll need to set up, and the varnish that you think would be best for this project.

Nodding, I follow you to the woodshop, and we spend all night working.

[hr]

We get up early one Saturday morning in October, and pack up a couple of carry boxes with ammunition. I want to bring the old rifle, but you pick up a couple of newer bolt-action 5.56’s that you bought a few weeks ago. You put in a couple boxes of .30-06 rounds, but I didn’t think to ask why.

The next two hours turn into a blur of spent brass and the meaty thump of recoiling rifles against our shoulders. You laugh when we realize that we were both shooting the same target for the first ten minutes and wave the tattered target like a flag. When I have to take a break to rest my aching shoulder, you tell me stories about your time living in Alaska and the wall of trophies your father had in the living room. I find myself smiling as you talk about the moose and the bears and the frozen expanses of wilderness with trees that stood like titans.



“Safeties on,” I say, and start reloading our magazines with fresh rounds. You grunt approvingly as you pick up a pair of fresh paper targets and make your way downrange to replace the old ones. The last magazine is filled just as you get back and set the used targets down on the table.

“You have your mother’s aim,” you say, and pat me on the shoulder as you pass by. I call after you, but you just tell me to keep shooting as you continue toward the house. With a shrug, I take aim at the distant targets, and shout “Fire on the line!”

It’s only a few magazines later that I think to look at the target sheets you’d brought back. Mine rests on the table, a neat cluster of holes centered on the bullseye. I look yours over. The holes are spread wide and uneven,

You come back half an hour later, carrying the old rifle.

[hr]

The following day, the three of us head down the road to the apple orchard like we did when I was younger. You wink at me when I comment on the familiar .22 rifle you have slung over your shoulder. “To keep the birds from coming ‘round again,” you explain, though you don’t fire a single shot all day. We spend the afternoon running around shouting at the birds and eating Mother’s homemade sandwiches. Armistice takes a break under one of the apple trees and doesn’t wake up.



That evening, we take in some firewood we’d split a few months before, and start a crackling fire. There’s an old picture resting on the mantelpiece showing the four of us. I can’t remember the last time I saw Mother smiling like that, or the brilliant pride flickering in your eyes like the fire below. I’ve tried to follow in his footsteps, but his legs were longer than mine. The little notches on the doorframe to my bedroom end just an inch below you.

I tried his old boots on, when I moved into the bedroom. They were too big for me, but I like to think I’ll grow into them someday. Until then, they’re resting at the bottom of my shelf of science fiction books, next to a mahogany box full of bullseye’d paper targets.

The fire pops and a spark lands on the worn carpet. It dies out slowly.

Mother goes to bed early. You fall asleep on the couch with a hunting magazine sprawled open in your lap. I doze off with a book on dragons in mine.

I can’t remember what time it was when my eyes closed, but I like to think it was before midnight.