Lying in Wait

The Place Where Promises Aren’t Kept [Chapter 25]

When you look out at the forest for a long time, looking for nothing, it is actually really boring. I had imagined seeing a zoo of animals, taking turns passing through the area. Those imaginary animals were probably finding food or water, or others of their species, moving through to go back to their homes and dens. There was nothing. Only the occasional falling leaves.

If I were playing Rune Quest, I could have probably gotten a whole level from hunting by then. From those virtual animals, you got leather for simple armor and meat for cooking and eating. Hunting in real life only got you colder and hungrier.

My dad was fiddling with the rifle in his lap. I figured my dad knew how to use it. I had never heard of him going hunting, at least since I had been born. But I guessed he and my uncle had gone before, way back in the day.

I was about ready to cry out from boredom. Then Seth perked up. He didn’t say anything, but he raised his finger through the hole to the far end of that little clearing there. There it was; a beast on four legs, with great big antlers rising up from either side of its head. It nibbled carefully at what was probably old, not yet dried-out grass.

“What a beauty,” my dad whispered.

“That’s there’s an elk, Mike,” Todd said in my ear.

“And those antlers,” my uncle added, his voice just as quiet. “Those would look great hung up on the wall. this may the be one chance we get today, folks.”

My dad took a deep breath. “I should let you get this one, Dave. I don’t know how tight my shot is these days.”

“It would be my honor,” my uncle nodded. Seth and Todd sat up on their knees, trying their best not to make a peep. I held my breath and watched the elk. It was like it had its own camouflage there in the woods. My uncle pressed the far end of the rifle against his shoulder and held the other end with his free hand.

“Hands over your ears, boys,” my dad warned. “It’ll be loud.”

My uncle barely breathed there, looking down the sight. I was afraid of finding out what would happen when the shot was taken when the elk was shot. What sort of sound it would make. How it would fall over. If it would explode into a million pieces.

I couldn’t look. I watched the trigger being tickled by my uncle’s pointer finger. He was still aiming, I guessed. It had to be perfect, or the elk would not get hit and just run away. His finger moved in. I was holding my breath, but I couldn’t hold it any longer.

Just as if felt like it was going to go off, I screamed the loudest scream of my life. All of that breath from my lungs was released in an instant. My uncle jumped back. My dad and cousins did too. I heard the echo of my scream, but nothing else. The Elk pulled its head up, then dashed off.

“What in the world?” My uncle said, back at his normal volume. “I thought we were being attacked here ourselves.”

Seth punched at my shoulder. Not enough to really hurt, but enough to remind me that I had messed up. “What the heck, Mike?”

“I… got bit by an ant,” I said. It was a lie, of course. I shook my hand to make it more convincing. Nobody was convinced.

My uncle slumped down. He flipped the safety back on the gun and set it across his lap. “Well, I reckon we scared off every elk, boar and squirrel within ten miles of here with that.”

My dad and cousins laughed. “Well, let’s have an early lunch while we wait for them to come back,” my dad said.

Back The Way We Came

My mom had packed sandwiches for lunch. They turned out to be leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner the night before. Thanksgiving dinners always have the most leftovers. Even if you have relatives come over and eat with you.

The sandwiches had turkey (of course) and little bits of other stuff from dinner the night before. The turkey was dry and the bread was soggy. It was a combination that made no sense. I ate it anyways because I was hungry and there was little else.

Well, there was jerky. My uncle had made it himself. I was afraid to ask if it had come from something he had hunted. It was drier than the turkey in the sandwich but in a good way.

My uncle took a couple more pictures of us there under the camouflage fort. We stood around outside and stretched our legs for a bit. I even dared to relieve myself there out in nature. We returned to the fort and chatted quietly while taking turns watching for any animals coming by.

I guess my scream had disrupted the entire ecosystem there, right down to the earthworms underground. We saw no more animals, save for one squirrel scrambling through a high tree. Seth told me that people did hunt them, but it was illegal during that time of year. I didn’t ask to find out if people actually ate them.

It became the afternoon. There were a few sighs between my dad and my uncle and cousins. I tried to act a little disappointed too when we crawled out and started packing up the fort. After the long march back to the road, we packed everything back up into my Uncle’s truck. Before I knew it, we were pulling back into my driveway (I had fallen asleep on the ride back).

My mom and aunt and sister had been out shopping all morning. There are lots of sales on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s called Black Friday, in case you didn’t know. Well, the lot of us were just as excited as me about heating up and eating leftovers, so we decided to go out to a restaurant instead.

“I’m guessing no luck with the hunt?” My mom asked.

“Nah,” Seth said first with a laugh, “Mike was afraid we were going to kill a nice, friendly Elk so he screamed and sent it off running just as dad was ready to pull the trigger!”

My family laughed at the situation. I guess you could say they weren’t laughing with me.

My mom was sitting by me. She patted me on the shoulder. “An elk, huh? Well, if you had brought it down, we would have had to see its big, bloody carcass on the back of your truck, Dave.”

“And we’d be having elk steak for dinner tonight, too,” my uncle responded with a chuckle that my dad joined in on. “But this is the next best thing.”

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