Stories of the Hunt - Short Story

Literary Review, Summer, 1999 by Alex Mindt

A gray pall had covered the early afternoon sky. Snow was no longer falling, but it was everywhere, packed onto the parking lot of the Elks Club, causing the men to slip and stagger as they untied the deer and carried him to an old rusted scale. I sat in the truck and watched as my dad approached the guy who was running the competition. Several men watched as they put the buck on the scale.

I climbed out of the truck. "Two hundred and twenty-three pounds!" a guy yelled out. Everyone started talking about it. My dad was signing papers and bragging about the buck. I moved slowly across the snow-packed parking lot, through the hoards of men who were murmuring about the biggest buck of the competition now slumped on the scale by my father.

"Sir?" I said. "Sir?"

The old man behind the table looked up from the papers my father was signing. I knew that what I had to say was going to hurt my father in a way I couldn't fully understand. I was about to betray the man who now was turning, pen in hand, and looking down at me, the man I had once held a kind of reverence for, whose acceptance I had yearned for throughout my childhood.

"Yes?" the old man said. "What is it?"

My father was looking at me as if I was going to add detail to his fallacious story. It was obvious that he had no idea what was going to pass through my lips. My fists were clenched and my breathing had quickened to a near pant. Other men were looking at me now as my breath scooted into little gusty clouds.

"What is it you wanted to say, son?" my father said.

The man behind the table ran his hand over his beard.

I looked up at my father, at his now squinting eyes. "Walt," he said, his voice a kind of dog growl, "what do you have to say?"

I turned to the old man, and just as he was about to go back to the forms on the desk and forget about me, I said, "Sir, he didn't shoot that deer."

"What?" my dad said. "What did you say?"

"You didn't shoot that deer."

It was suddenly silent.

"What did you say, boy?" the old man said.

The faces of the men were turning in my direction, their breath visible in the cold air, their cheeks flushed. "I said, he didn't shoot that deer."

The old man turned to my father. "Is that true?" he said.

My father peered up at all the faces looking at him, and then he turned and faced me. He let out a sigh and shook his head, a smile forming on his face. "It's true," he said. "It's true." All the men started to talk. I suddenly felt sorry for him. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Wasn't it enough that I knew, that the truth was just between us?

My father took his eyes off of me and looked around and said, "What can I say? It wouldn't be fair to the boy for me to take credit for something he did."

It took a moment for everyone to comprehend the full meaning of what he'd said. But then everything happened so quickly, like a swift current, taking me by the ankles and yanking me under. The men were suddenly shouting, all around me, loud voices, hands clapping. "How old are you boy?" someone yelled. They circled around me and pushed me up to the table.