The rolling hills of Appalachia surrounded Clear Creek ringing it with a fenced fortress of oak, beech, maple, hickory and sassafras trees. From the back porch and looking upward it was as if a mighty hand poured a rainbow of colors from a sky-sized bucket of paint. Yes, the summer green is covered now, drenching the leaves with red, yellows, purples, and colors caught somewhere in between. Autumn arrived overnight.
I returned inside to take down the old shotgun with the cracked stock from the homemade rack hanging in my father’s small bedroom. I pocketed seven or eight shells whose killing power lay encased in red plastic marked with a double X’s, and Winchester printed along the side. When I dropped the shells into the pocket of my jeans, and walked out the door there was the feeling of invincibility, and power, as if this ancient shotgun in my hands was the answer to all of man’s woes.
My father was returning from the chicken coop with a few eggs in his hands, and said,
“Don’t waste those shells.”
“ I won’t.”
“Watch that stock too. You know it’s cracked.”
“I know.”
I looked down at the shotgun, and turned it over to see the small bolt that had been drilled through the crack in the stock, and fastened with a small square bolt. This examination satisfied my father’s demand to be careful.
“What are you hunting for anyway,” He said, as I was walking away.
“Squirrels.”
“You’re not old enough to be hunting by yourself, you know. If the game warden catches you, we’ll get a fine.”
“I’m only going up behind the old mineshaft, maybe as far as Gondek’s farm. Nobody ever goes up there anyway.”
“Well, you just better watch out.”
“I will.”
I turned again, and made my way up the slope of clay and rock spotted with stunted, and twisted small pine trees planted in an effort to reclaim the damaged earth from the coal companies who left Clear Creek long ago. I paused at the top of the hill, and studied the fourteen company houses below me.
Tarpapered roofs covering four or five rooms that made up homes with crooked outhouses in every back yard. From right to left my eyes followed the junked cars, and old lawnmowers littering nearly every house. Dog pens housed sad-eyed skinny dogs on frayed ropes, and their boredom was evident by the number of holes dug in the hard earth.
Across the road from the houses closest to me, lay the rest of Clear Creek. Seven more houses of the same make up. I watched the old Polish lady staggering back to her house with a sloshing metal bucket of water pumped from her well near the old rusted, and rarely used railroad tracks. There was boredom in her gait, not much different then the tied dogs. In a sense, she was tied to Clear Creek.
I turned and fifteen minutes later, I sat on the hillside among last year’s fallen leaves, and let my twelve-year old mind daydream in the afternoon sun of autumn. I loaded a single shell in the shotgun, and draped it across my knees. The sun warmed my back through my flannel shirt, and the aroma of forest filled my nostrils with a mix of rich soil, and the woody smell of dried leaves baking in an unusually hot sun. My ears picked up the sounds of plopping hickory nuts defiant to let go of their home in the curled bark, and twisted branches of the shagbark hickory trees that birthed them.
The wildlife that hid from my noisy arrival soon grew accustomed to my presence, and began to make their appearance. A lone white-tailed deer paused below me with its black nose close to the ground. With each step of its spindly legs, it would raise it head, twitch it ears, and sniff the hot air. I sat upwind from it, and watched it disappear into a clump of white pine trees shadowing a bubbling brook. Maybe in deer season, you’ll be back, I thought.
I scanned the treetops silhouetted against the bright sky, and leaping gray squirrels provided acrobatic entertainment with great leaps from branch to branch. I knew they would soon be close enough for me to shoot. I waited, all-powerful and patient like an assassin.
Leaves rustled all about me, and gray squirrels searched for hickory nuts on the forest floor. Then I saw it. The fattest, biggest squirrel I’d ever seen zigging and zagging playfully with another smaller one. I raised the shotgun slowly, and held it against my shoulder for what seemed like hours.
The fat squirrel drew closer to me with every bouncing step. Its huge gray bushy tail raised over its arched back, and it was close enough now for me to see the hairs of its tail move in the soft wind. It had a hickory nut, and I watched it toss it in the air, and when it landed on the ground, it nudged it playfully with its nose. There was happiness to its game. The shotgun grew heavy in my arms, and the muzzle shook like a pointing, palsied, nervous finger. I drew a bead on it, and waited for it. Its partner chattered with rodential happiness. They chased each other, and passed the nut back and forth. Their joyful barks filled the forest, and by this time, the big squirrel was just feet away from the soles of my worn boots. I could see the sparkle of its brown eyes. I frowned.
What happened that day, I’ll never know. Was it my conscience growing from twelve years to eighty? I wielded the power, I had the means, I could end this joyful moment in one single blast, and relish the moment in the smell of burned gunpowder. I could turn this creature’s warm blood into cold, for at this moment I owned this plot of land with the shotgun’s power. I was king, God, judge, and jury all wrapped up in one. I could end the fun, here and now. I could stop this joy experienced by this animal with nothing more than a simple nut as a toy. I lowered the shotgun slowly, and lay back on the ground to pleasure in the blue-sky overhead, and the slow moving clouds dancing above me. Together, we lived.