Drive - A Memoir 50th Installment
twine
tied to our gun and spot light, we scaled the stack. We pulled the
battery, the gun and the spot light to the top. In the moonless
pitch–dark night we lay on our backs looking up through the crisp
clear air at the stars and waited. The stars were glorious, billions
of them, bright against the black sky. The cold seemed to make them
brighter and thicker.
Russ
whispered, “Look at the Milky Way; it’s so bright that it nearly
looks solid because there are so many stars. It seems so close I
think I can reach up and touch it from here.”
“The
Milky Way?” I replied, “That reminds me I wish we’d brought up
our milk and cookies!”
After
a while we crept over the hay stack’s edge and clicked on the spot
light. There were jackrabbits everywhere, and for a moment I didn’t
know which one to pick, shining the light from one to another.
“Pick
one and hold still. The rest aren’t going anywhere; they don’t
know where we’re at. We’re ghosts to them up here.” Russ
hurriedly said as he was ratcheting the gun’s chamber to load the
first shell. I picked one. Pop, it was down and kicking. I picked
another. Pop, a head shot, and it just fell into a pile of death. I
picked another. Thud, a gut shot, the jackrabbit went down, then
tried to escape by pawing along with its front legs and dragging its
body. Russ had to shoot it again to put it out of its misery.
“That
ends your attempt for the perfect 50/50 tonight,” I moaned. I was
competitive and wanted to be the first shooter to do the 50
jackrabbits out of the 50 shells in a box, but I also
wanted it to happen; for either of us. What a great thing to brag
about regardless of whose name is on the story. We stayed out a long
time, taking turns, waiting, then shooting. We’d nearly filled our
barrel when we headed home. The milk was frozen and so were the
cookies. We warmed the cookies in our mouths until we could bite a
piece off and ate them anyway.
After
we got home, spread out the jackrabbits so they wouldn’t all freeze
together in a bloody lump, put away our stuff, ate real food not just
cookies and repaired to bed; I brought up the Richard ride, “I was
thinking that our barrel holds around 100 jackrabbits, and that made
me think about the frontage road ride home with Richard. Do you
remember?”
“What
did you say?”
“Richard!”
I bellowed, “Pay attention.”
“Oh,
Edith’s brother. Oh Yeeeaaahh.” Russ drawled.
Russell’s
brain really was attached to his mouth. I thought. Russ continued
with a silly question, “That was seven or eight years ago, you were
only seven. You can’t remember last week, but you say you can
remember seven years ago?” I had
500 more words tomorrow
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