Gerard Donovan - Julius Winsome

I leaned between two trunks that formed a bench like a wishbone curling out over me, and rested the Enfield against my knee, ten pounds of wood and steel and resin pointing muzzle first into the sky, the only place you can safely point to no matter what’s on your mind or finger.

I thought about the hour. Early on a fine morning. Any moment now.

I think I waited a long while, I’d say the best part of two hours, until a truck drove up, a big one with large antlers spreading from the middle of the front grille, humming slowly and quietly along the side of the forest about fifty yards off until stopping at the tree line. The man who got out looked in his early thirties, a big enough fellow wearing camouflage, his head shaven down bald on top, with long hair at the sides. That much I could tell and little more. He left the door open and changed his boots and then took a rifle from the back seat, shed the case, pointed it at the sky and then took out a bottle of beer and closed the door. Slinging the rifle on his shoulder, he walked forty paces to a tree where he climbed a ladder nailed into the trunk to reach a tree stand fifteen feet up, and there he leaned back and sipped from the bottle, his rifle—looked like a Winchester from where I sat—crooked across his lap, a fine rifle, no doubt. Now that he was a fixed distance from me, a matter of eighty yards, I could study him better. He was well-built, the type who can bring a fight to you and win easily, and his clothes appeared expensive and well-maintained. This was a careful and a patient man, confident that if patience and care went out of use, he could prevail with a more primitive manner of settling disputes. That was my reading of him, and so I elected to keep my distance.

He had probably decided to spend the morning here, waiting for the silence that brings deer in, a buck wandering at the edge of the field or bigger game down from the mountain. I brought the rifle up to my shoulder and fired from those eighty yards, one bullet that slapped into the folds of his neck. He grabbed at it as if for an insect and made a half-turn with eyes bigger than the forest, wondering what had happened. It was not a fatal shot, not yet, there was no spray of blood. I snapped the bolt back and chambered another round as he fell to the forest floor, his rifle tumbling after him to land flat on the leaves, bouncing once. That was good, the safety on his weapon was engaged. He groaned through the hole in his neck, it sounded. I moved from between the trunks and came up on him, the Enfield at a low angle and my finger off the trigger, because this man was done with shooting any thing for a long time.

He saw me coming and shook his head, kept shaking it as if saying no to a question I hadn’t asked. I looked around the woods as I pulled out a drawing I had of Hobbes and bent to him.

Did you shoot this dog, I said.

He kept shaking his head.

Did you shoot this dog.

And then I said words I hadn’t spoken for thirty years since learning them at my father’s side. You are blood-boltered, I said. You are besmoiled.

I could see that he was a big man indeed, a slab of muscle two hundred and fifty pounds, with giant hands. It was a fair while before I had managed to drag him all the way to the hollow two hundred yards off in the deeper forest, where I tipped him in, rolled him with my boot ahead of me until he was at the bottom. I lay his rifle on him and went back to the truck, driving it through the trees; it sailed easily through saplings, and when the truck and I rode into the grove of trees I wanted I jumped out. The truck continued into the dense brush and branches and on down a slope, and I followed it at a trot till it hit a tree, and I turned off the ignition and proceeded to cover it with more branches and leaves as best I could. I was on the way back to him when I remembered a magazine on the seat of the truck and went back to look: a publication called Hunt , with a huge elk on the front cover.

I went back to the man. I needed him farther down behind the boulder, so I jammed him tight into the small dry gully, just wide enough for him, well an inch too narrow, but my boot took care of that.

But you’re heavy, I said and sighed, wiping the sweat off my head despite the cold. This was a tiring business, this dragging and driving. He could have knocked every sense out of my head if he’d made contact with that fist of his in close quarter fighting, made short work of me indeed. I was lucky as to the shot, that it brought him down and that it stopped him from getting up.

I think he said something before he went.

What? I think he said, and frowned, maybe from pain or at the words I spoke. There was no country, after all, of Elizabeth, and no country for Elizabethan words. I moved the page because his head moved to one side and stayed there. It was clear then that I would not be hearing from him on the matter.

I’m sorry, I said into the gully.

I walked to the cabin with Hunt in my inside coat pocket. The sun shone on the other side of me, and when I went to drink more tea from the flask I could shake but a few warm drops into my mouth.

I stood at the place where Hobbes always slept and looked at me with the flames in his eyes. His hairs were still stuck to the cushion. I missed my friend.

WITH OLD RIFLES YOU HAVE TO CLEAN THEM OR LOSE them, and the best time to clean them is when the powder is fresh in the barrel and before the fragments of the bullet jacket turn to a crust in the firing chamber. Whatever crud is in your bore can send your bullet off by a few inches, or worse, eventually backfire into your face if you’re especially careless.

You clean it straight after.

I laid the rifle to rest on the bench in the barn and moved the rod with the brush through the bore to clear the powder from the grooves that made the bullet twist in flight, that gave it accuracy. Then I pinned a patch dipped in bore solvent to the rod polished off the residue in the barrel, then used a dry patch. That’s it, it’s that simple.

All that was left was to pour copper solvent mixed with some water into the chamber and wipe out the bullet fragments with a cloth. I wiped until the action shone, and I proceeded to walk the gun inside the cabin and hold it upside down over the stove to heat off the moisture, then brought the bore level to the window light and sighted along it for obvious obstructions: none. Rifle clean.

My father taught me to clean this rifle before I learned to shoot it. On any certain morning around the first of the month I could be sure I would hear him shout from his chair with his eyes lowered to his book, Julius, did you clean the Enfield?

I returned the rifle to the barn, as only a careless man leaves something like that, even unloaded, in a living room. And since I had placed another five rounds in the magazine I had no business storing it anywhere except in its case in the barn, having inserted the cartridges so that I would be able to fire at short notice. You don’t want to be loading that thing under fire. People won’t wait.

I COULD NOT CHOOSE A BOOK WITH THE RESTLESSNESS and wandered the shelves, in and out of the heat from the woodstove, walking along warm and cold books alike, they stood to attention with the life teeming in them. Then I remembered the list of Shakespeare words I copied out: they were on some pages shoved tight in between Othello and Richard II . I walked toward the spreading heat of the fire and pulled them, brought them to the New England chair and reviewed the list. There on the first page, in a young boy’s careful writing, I saw my three words for one day: Amort meant dead, Cullion a base fellow, Convoy an escort.