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It was in December. The day was warm for the last
month of the year, one of those near perfect days with hordes of white cumulus
clouds hung in a field of blue that covered the golden earth like a
mantle. It was the kind of day where you enjoyed all of God’s
creatures, even the solitary mosquito that continuously buzzed around the back
of your neck.
An overlay of brown and coarse broom straw swayed slowly
in the slight breeze; the same breeze that brushed across your brow beneath the
cap’s brim and reminded you of a Mother’s touch. Beyond the field of
broomstraw, the earth fell away into the blackwater swamp that held the upright
graying Water Oaks and Cyprus trees against the blue and white sky. Here
and there a splash of red marked the tall and stately Popular trees whose tops
were tainted with the vestiges of Fall. The solitude was broken by the
occasional bark of a grey squirrel, a passing crow now and then, and the
steadily drumming of a breakfast seeking woodpecker. Faintly, just
faintly, every once in a while, the boy heard the far-off baying of the dog
pack.
The boy listened, his head cocked in the direction of the
incoming sound. Faintly, still faintly, but maybe, just maybe, the running
pack of hounds had turned more toward him. He looked down at the
rifle and touched the bolt, eased it open and back just enough to expose the
bright gleaming brass base of the cartridge that nestled in the chamber of the
gun. Satisfied, he pushed the bolt handle forward and down and locked
the bolt. The rifle was ready. After all, he had built it, or rather
altered it from the original 1942 German Mauser that his uncle had claimed as a
war souvenir following the defeat of the Axis Powers in Europe and the end of
World War II. The rifle’s wooden stock gleamed darkly with the finish that
he had applied by hand. The hot bluing of the rifle’s barrel and frame was
near perfect, and the jeweled and polished bolt and receiver reflected the
hours of work that he had done on the gun. It wouldn’t fail,
couldn’t. Too reliable. He had told his Father so. But Dad’s
response was still negative. “Better take the shotgun!" was all he
said. His father liked Browning auto-5 shotguns, pure and
simple. They were heavy but they did the trick and always worked. His
father’s favorite shotgun bore the notches, over a hundred, of the whitetail
deer that had proven the Browning’s reliability.
But the boy knew better. Their time had
passed. Today was the day of the rifle. It could reach farther and
weighed less. After all, today they were hunting bear. And if they found
one, if the dogs were pressing the animal hard, if the animal was aggressive,
well, after all, they were dangerous, these Carolina bear. Right, and more
firepower, more energy than the Browning could provide, was needed. The
boy knew. He had reasoned it out. His thoughts were
interrupted by the closer baying of the running hounds.
“Yep," He mused to himself. “They’ve
turned. Ol bear’s running the lay of the branch. He’ll cross
one side of the creek or the other, and head this way." The boy stepped
behind a small brushy Cedar sapling and leaned against a stout oak tree.
Again, he checked the safety on the rifle.
A whirling sound jerked the boy’s head left toward the
broomstraw field as a covey of quail erupted from the brown
cover. Had the quail not broken cover, he would not have seen the
bear, it was that far ahead of the hounds.
The rifle came to his
shoulder in one practiced movement. He sighted down the barrel, flipped
the safety lever with his thumb, and put the front sight bead on the bear’s
shoulder, slowly tightening the trigger, holding steady, feeling the trigger’s
break under pressure, relaxed, sure, steady on the running bear, everything
perfect. The gun misfired. He heard the click of the released
firing pin, but there was no discharge. With a fast right hand motion
upward and without dismounting the rifle, he extracted the unfired cartridge,
rammed home a new round, drew his sight on the closing bear, and fired again. Again,
the fatal click and no discharge. He bolted and chambered another
round, rattled now, losing faith in the rifle, and still the bear came on.
Closer now, less than fifty yards, the bear was covering
ground quickly. The animal paused, looked back over his shoulder for a
hair’s breadth of a second, listening for the baying hounds, then turned and
came on, straight for the boy.
The boy tried again, throwing up the rifle, this time
moving the safety in a different direction, taking up the slack in the trigger,
and fired. Nothing happened. Except this time the bear saw the boy
and turned even more toward the hunter. The roles had
changed. The boy’s rifle had failed, four shots, all four
cartridges failing to fire. The bear crossed the road and neared the
boy.
“That’s a big
bear!" The boy spoke unexpectedly.
The bear faltered in its stride, as if startled by the
lad’s exclamation: then continued on by the awed boy as if to say, “Kid, do you
know what you’re doing?’ The boy reached out with his hand and touched the
bear’s flank as it passed by, it was that close. Then he looked down at
the rifle that he had worked on for so many hours, shouldered it, and walked
over to the one-lane bridge that crossed the creek. He removed the carry
sling from the rifle, looked at the firearm again and caressed the gleaming
stock, and threw the firearm into the black water beneath the bridge.
“Dad was right,
as usual. Should’a taken the shotgun." |
