Daria's Knives

Daria came into the kitchen through the Dutch door and stood all 100 pounds of her in full camouflage. Her hunting knife hung in her hand at her waist. I couldn't remember the last time she blinked.

"What are you doing?" she said, the bulk of her oversized jacket up to her ears.

"I'm going into town to meet a friend," I lied. I turned away from her to keep working and draped plastic wrap over the defrosting turkey on the counter. "So, tell Dad when he gets home to cook up some wings or egg rolls or something. This is for Thursday." I patted the butt of the turkey.

Daria nodded, but said nothing. She had hunted with our father through childhood. He had lacked sons and she had lacked the sentimental response to the deer that I had. When my first doe struggled on the ground kicking up earth and bleating, I knew I couldn't shoot another.

Now, she being 25, and me, 27, she laid two dead squirrels in the sink and wiped her knife on her pant leg. The wood paneling of the kitchen outlined her lightness.

"You going to clean them?" I said.

"No, I hate cleaning them. You mind?"

"I mind. What the hell do I do with squirrel meat?"

"Stew? Mom always made a pot pie."

Daria acted big, dressed in hunting gear to look large, but was slight and blond, with the nose and eyes of someone who might wilt. She sat down at the kitchen table a few steps away and took out her stone. She began sharpening the hunting knife—the small skinner—with a slow purposeful scrape.

I turned back to the squirrels and poked them with a fork. They were solid frozen.

"Cold out there today?"

Daria nodded. She was satisfied with the knife's tip against her thumb, so she lay it down on the table cloth and pulled out another. This blade was angled violently—a gut hook. She sharpened it on its angle. I turned, my back against the kitchen counter, and watched. She set the gut hook down on the table, then pulled out two more—a filet knife from her hip, and then a machete from her boot.

"I feel like your knife collection might be overkill," I said, and she grunted. "You really need them on you all at once?"

"That seems like a ridiculous question given the last four years or so."

She was talkative today. This was rare. I poured myself coffee from the pot and dug creamer out of the fridge. The slow sharpening continued behind me.

"Do you think you'll need them again?"

"When the Adlers come for me, yes, I imagine I will."

"What makes you think that? I imagine they're hesitant to even look at you after they already saw your knife skills." I thought this is what she'd want to hear.

"You don't understand how families like them work," she said without warmth or anger. But, I felt the effect of her tone, how I had failed her. I drank my coffee quickly, said something to the effect of, "Clean your own kill," and then left, careful not to look my sister in the eye.

________

Wynona Adler and I had set the meeting up a week before, and somehow, I had lost my nervousness. I met her at Waffle House on Route 7 and watched as she ate pecan pancakes and bent each bite around her lips. She was somewhere in her early 60s, though still good looking. Her age only showed in the sheen on her forehead and in her softly graying blond hair.

It had been four years since her son, Justin, had raped my sister. Three years since my mother had died and the Adlers came to her funeral. A month since Justin was released for good behavior and had come to find Daria again.

I could see Wynona's son in her cheekbones, the way her eyebrows lacked angle, how she nodded even when she wasn't agreeing.

"So we can...