THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

The Shotgun - 1941

4 1941 The Shotgun It is the first memory I have. I hear the old shotgun go off and I fall over backwards and roll down the side of a steep ridge through layers of leaves autumn-dropped from the hardwood trees. The gun makes a noise beyond all imagination, beyond all reason. When the gun goes off, time stops, the breeze does not blow, birds freeze in mid-flight. Bits of leaves are in my eyes and mouth and my ears ring from the terrible thunder of the 12-gauge. I try to cover my ears with my hands as I slide to a stop somewhere down the hill, my shirt full of dirt and twigs, my mind spinning. As the booming fades into the woods and across the far ridges, I can hear only the small crashing of something plowing through the leaves. Me. I am five years old. I have been following my father through the dense West Virginia forest, early sunlight dripping through the gnarled trees in broken blobs of gold The Pale Light of Sunset 5 and yellow. Trees, the smell of leaves on the forest floor, warm sunlight, the huge gun, hunting with my father. It is terribly hard to move quietly when you are five years old, and my father constantly glances over his shoulder at me, both, I know, to make sure I am there and as admonishment to hunt as he has told me—quietly, trying to move only when he moves, trying to stay behind him and not too close, scanning the ground and the trees in front of us. Looking, always looking. I try to keep looking but, usually, my eyes are glued to my father, especially to his right arm, where I can see the worn and shiny stock of the gun pressed lightly between his elbow and his body. I walk in fear of the gun going off, of the noise it will make. Surely, I think, I will see his arm move and have plenty of time to put my hands over my ears. We are squirrel hunting, and it is the first time he has allowed me to go with him. We do not hunt for sport. If he kills a squirrel, we will take it home to the tiny cabin on the side of the hill, and we will eat it. There is a flicker of motion high on a tree limb, a gray instant of fur. And then, for the first time, I am with him when he fires the gun. His arms come up in a liquid, flowing movement and the barrel of the gun washes a thin blue arc against the gray of the tree trunks, a blur, a painted still life of frozen motion before my eyes. Before the blur can fade there is an explosion that shakes the limbs of the trees and makes the ground shudder and sends me over backwards and down the hill. The shotgun is a pump-action with an outside hammer. Strangely, as I am falling over backwards, I hear him work the slide and I know there is another shell in the chamber of the gun, even before I, or the squirrel, hit the ground. In all the times I hunt with him, I am never able to anticipate the shooting of the gun, the blur across my eyes always there before I am ready. As a child, I think it is because I am a child, and children are slow. Lee Maynard 6 Later, I know it is because my father is fast, faster with his hands, and with a shotgun, than any man I will ever know. And, finally, I know it is because the old shotgun fits my father as the hands of two good friends fit together in warm greeting. ...