Blackbird

by Michael Fiegel

  “Shhh. Yes,” he said.

  “If we catch one can we keep it as a pet?”

  “If you’ll shut up for ten minutes.”

  He hadn’t yet told me what we were doing here; the word “hunting” had not been used. I knew it was deer season, from the hunters in orange vests. One had driven past with a big buck strapped to his hood. Edison had waved for appearances, grimacing through the entire show. But despite all that, I wasn’t yet sure we were hunting anything. We’d been out in the woods almost every weekend since that weird snow day the year before, but that had mostly ended up with us tromping around in circles, sometimes shooting at targets with a .22 rifle, him teaching me to be still and quiet, me fighting that with every ounce of my being because it was so dull. After all that, part of me wanted to see blood that wasn’t my own, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. It was probably just going to be another endurance test of some sort, or “let’s be quiet” training.

  It was harder than he made it sound, being quiet. I tried breathing like he told me. In through the nose to warm the air, out slowly through the mouth. In, out, in, out, quieter than the wind, quieter than …

  “My face itches,” I said, clawing frantically at my ski mask. After a short struggle I managed to get it off, static electricity taking my hair along for the ride. This made my head itch, too, so I dropped the mask in my lap and scratched madly with gloved hands.

  Edison said nothing. I looked over, confused, and saw him staring past my left shoulder.

  “Sorry,” I said. He hissed in response, his universal sign for “don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe if you can help it.” Curiosity got the better of me though. I slowly turned my head to peek, so as to not startle whoever or whatever might be there.

  He must’ve sensed I didn’t see anything because he lowered the 12-gauge and slowly slid the frigid barrel along my face so I could sight down the gun. Sure enough, there was a deer there. No horns, no spots. A doe. I’d seen them at the zoo and even running beside the road before, but somehow this was different. More real. My heart was racing, pulse pounding, breathing coming more quickly. I was too caught up in the moment to truly notice. I only realized looking back how quickly my body had fallen into the mindset of the predator. It felt natural.

  I nodded to let him know I saw and nudged the gun away with my cheek, but instead of pulling it away he brought it forward. The butt was placed in my armpit, my finger placed upon the trigger guard, and before I could say a word I was holding it by myself. It being a pump-action 870, arguably the most common shotgun in the world. I already knew how to load, clean, and disassemble it and had done so on the kitchen table. I knew that it was about forty-five inches long from end to end—nearly as tall as I was—and only weighed about eight pounds. At the time, however, it felt more like eighty, and the barrel dropped rapidly towards the snow. Edison had held it with me before, but this was the first time he’d left it all to me, so I expected him to catch it. He didn’t. All he said was, “Don’t drop it.”

  So I didn’t.

  • • •

  I know she can lift the shotgun; despite being so thin, she regularly carts around gallons of milk and they weigh just as much. But she needs to realize that herself, which is why I offer no help. Sure enough, she struggles for a moment, but finally manages to get things pointed in more or less the right direction, more or less silently.

  The trick here is not to remain absolutely still or silent, which is simply not possible unless you are dead or unconscious. But it is easier to say “be still, be silent” and work from there, rather than try and explain the concept of moving and breathing in time with the wind. She is still a little young to really grasp that sort of flow, but she needs to learn that, and more. In particular, she needs to accept what comes next as natural, as a part of becoming who she must become. She needs to be more than someone who can fire a gun. She needs to become someone who can fire a gun at a living thing. And preferably hit it.

  “What should I do?” she whispers. I provide no answer. This must be her moment. Her decision. Her failure. Even though she has managed to knock down a few cans with a .22, I do not expect her to actually hit anything. In fact, I honestly do not expect her to pull the trigger.

  Which is why she surprises us both when she does.

  • • •

  I’d had this whole sequence of events pounded into my head over the past few months, had done this countless times in practice behind safety goggles and earplugs. Killed a bunch of cans and bottles and trees. And now here, it was all over in a second, leaving nothing but the shocking realization that I’d done it.

  It took a few seconds before I finally felt the blow to my shoulder, heard the crack. My ears hurt but not as much as I’d thought they would; my heart pounded, much harder than I’d imagined. Someone was saying something. Edison, telling me to pump, come on, pump the gun and shoot again. But either my arms weren’t long enough or my hands were shaking too badly because I didn’t push hard enough. I only succeeded in jamming the mechanism.

  “It won’t go … it won’t go … I broke it.” Tears came, and I couldn’t even wipe them away because I was holding a gun. Barely. I could feel the barrel slipping and couldn’t stop it, didn’t even try, just turned and buried my head in Edison’s shoulder and fell apart.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry …” I don’t know if I thought I was apologizing to him or myself.

  Edison let me sniffle and sob, though he did at one point reach down to pick up the spent shell casing (which he pocketed) and clear the shotgun (which he then leaned against the tree). And then he grew tired of waiting, pushed me off his lap and stood, shouldering the gun.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We need to look for blood.”

  “I missed,” I said. “It ran away.”

  “They always run away, Xtian. Wouldn’t you?”

  He started walking down the slope without waiting to see if I would follow. I struggled to keep up, trying to place my much smaller feet inside the holes where his feet had been but mostly wallowing in thigh-high snow. Fear kept me going, though. I was afraid he’d leave me behind.

  “Tell me what you saw,” he said when we reached the bottom of the gully.

  “What?”

  “If I shot you in the leg,” he said, pointing the gun, “what would you do?”

  “Cry,” I said. “Fall down. Bleed and die.”

  “Let’s assume your legs still work. You can still run. What happens?”

  I shrugged. He shook his head, shut his eyes, trying to be patient.

  “If you hit the deer in one of its back legs,” he explained, “its back end would have fallen down before it ran away. If you hit it in the gut, it would run slowly with its back hunched up, trying to hold its insides in.”

  Being gut shot was a bad way to die, messy. And while a human might scream a lot and then trip over their own intestines, a deer could run for hours like that. Suffering, slowly dying.

  “It did neither of those,” Edison continued, “which leaves a lot of possibilities, including that you missed entirely. We need more information. Tracks, blood, hair, something.”

  By the time we reached the top of the hill, we were both out of breath and my knees were muddy. It felt slightly empowering to see him breathing heavily, too.

  “Do you remember where it was?” he asked. “Any landmarks?”

  I looked around. Everything looked the same. Snow, dirt. Pine needles. But then I saw the tree despite the forest, the one tree that looked a little out of place: a little apple tree next to a big pine. The deer had been there when I shot. I pointed, but he was already moving, had already known where to go, was just waiting for me to figure it out. Even he sounded surprised once we got there, though.

  “Well, this changes things,” he mumbled.

  There were prints in the mud and snow. Along with small bubbles of bright red. He dipped his fingers in it, brought it up to show me. I never even thought to flinch away, was just
fascinated by the sight of what I’d done.

  “Lung, maybe. Air frothing out of the wound. Bright, so maybe an artery. Not a gut shot.”

  We searched for quite a while but didn’t find anything but more blood. We followed the trail down towards a stream in the next gully. Somewhere along the way, he mumbled something about how our sitting still for a while after I shot the gun was a good thing. He never missed a chance to squeeze in a lesson or two.

  “If you chase hard, a wounded animal will run harder. And farther. If you hang back, let her think she’s gotten away, then she’ll find a place to lie down and die. If we’re lucky, she should be within, say, fifty yards or so.”

  She was.

  • • •

  I am not quite sure how Xtian will react when we actually find the body. I expect a degree of fascination, a few tears. I am not counting on vomiting.

  While she is being sick, I take a moment to tag the doe in her ear, in case we get stopped. Then I stand and wait until Xtian is done retching before handing her a thermos full of lukewarm coffee to rinse out her mouth. She needs to see this next part, for a lot of reasons.

  “If you decide to be sick again,” I say, “do it the other way. This will be messy enough.”

  With that, I proceed to gut the deer. To her credit, Xtian manages to choke down any more sick, even while the doe is losing her bits. This is partly because I am keeping her distracted, explaining exactly why it is I brought her out here.

  “Deer anatomy is different from human, but they have roughly the same basic body contents. Chest cavity with heart and lungs, abdominal with liver, stomach, intestines and bladder, throat with windpipe and esophagus,” I say as I carefully remove them each in turn with a sharp knife. It is always good to brush up on anatomy. This is school, now.

  By the time I am finished, holding the doe by its front legs to let the blood drain out, Xtian is finished, too. She sits back heavily, puts her head down, and tries to be sick again, but there is nothing left in there to come out. All things considered, she seems to have handled it about as well as I did my first real kill. Likely better. But then, I did not start with a deer.

  • • •

  I wasn’t sick because of the blood. Not really; I was never squeamish. It was because I knew why we were out there. I had killed and now it would be easier to do again. But that’s it, really. It would be wrong to say something dumb like “the little girl inside of me died that day.” That’s not how it works. I still played with dolls and I still liked vampire books. I still played games and chatted with distant, imaginary people I could never really know, people who knew my taste in music, my favorite shows, but didn’t know my name, or where I lived, or what I was about. There was no part of me that died that day.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t changed, though. For days, I couldn’t help but stare in the mirror, looking at the strange person staring back at me from the other side. There was no breadcrumb trail to follow back to a house made of candy. I was what I was, and what I was, was becoming. There was no going back.

  Fowl Mood

  06/27/2012

  At some point when I was not paying attention, Xtian grew up. She has gained several inches over the past few months, in more ways than I am comfortable with, which makes me glad her only real friends are fake online people that live states and continents away from us. They probably know more about her biology than I do, which is fine. I know more than I want to. We talked briefly about a webcam. Briefly. She got over it, just like she got over the fact that I forbade her to use the words face and book in the same sentence. I told her if she ever utters the word sexting I will tear her twelve-year-old tongue out.

  It has taken a great deal of effort to keep track of what little I know of her inner life. I should not have to sneak into her room when she is out for a run to discover her dolls thrown in the closet, her bookshelf swiftly morphing from teen romances into something more adult. I have not censored anything, though. She is on her own, unless she asks. Fashion, too: she has dyed some of her pink clothing black—occasionally, to my dismay, with my not inexpensive dye—and has started with makeup. I have no idea where she got it; I hope not on the web, unless she was careful. Preferably somewhere involving cash, somewhere IRL, to use her phrase.

  I do try to stay involved, to give in on little, inconsequential things, to keep her somewhat content. She wanted an iPhone, she got a burner flip-phone and an iPod instead, several generations old and untraceable. A concession to keep her quiet. The thing has been connected to her ever since—shooting, running, probably bathing. And lately, the noise from her earbuds sounds like a missile strike on a chainsaw testing facility. It cannot possibly be music.

  “What is that?” I ask unkindly, as I have more often lately. She pretends she did not hear me. It took decades of gunshots and bomb blasts to permanently damage my hearing, and she seems hell bent on catching up to me after just a few months of loud music. But she is not deaf yet, except when it is convenient.

  “Take those off,” I say quietly, using my now voice. She immediately complies, letting the little white dongles dangle over the backs of her ears.

  “Stop ignoring me,” I say.

  “I wasn’t. Chill.”

  She then proceeds to ignore me as she turns to find our waitress. Missing in action. Service at this tiny little Greek place is slow, though not intolerably considering its size; they do not claim to be fast food, and anyway I am not in a particular rush. For Xtian though, this is an eternity of torment; she has yet to learn patience, to save her intolerance for when it counts.

  She is a tween, I realize with horror as she bounces in the chair, ankles crossed, right sneaker doing all the work as her left leg churns limply along for the ride, blue jeans and dirty white socks, too loose. She spins around and her shoulder-length hair (black this month, matching mine) flips aside. As she casually reaches up to push it back where it belongs, I notice them. Well, it. I assume a matched pair. I say nothing immediately, because the movement is too artificial, rehearsed in the mirror. She wanted me to notice. No doubt, she noticed that I noticed.

  She called; I bluff.

  “Who are you listening to?” I ask, avoiding her desired line of inquiry.

  “Die Antwoord,” she says. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s not for old people.”

  “I might. Give me the CD when we get home.”

  She snorts.

  “The file, whatever,” I say. “Where did you get it? Amazon? Apple?”

  “Pirate Bay.”

  “I’m calling the copyright police,” I say, pretending to reach for my pocket.

  “It’s not stealing,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It’s copying. Don’t be gay.”

  “And murder is recycling. And don’t use that word.”

  “It doesn’t even mean that any more—” she starts, losing interest as the waitress bustles out of the kitchen and dumps the food on the table, plain lamb burger and fries in front of Xtian, chicken souvlaki salad wrap in front of me.

  “Thanks, Edena,” says Xtian. I have no idea why she pays so much attention to name tags. Possibly because everyone she knows online is basically just one. Nicknames, handles, aliases, and avatars.

  As the waitress leaves, I quickly shuffle the plates where they belong. Xtian is growing, and needs nutrition and vegetables. I am old and need blood.

  “Calm down, it’s not going to give you apoplectic shock.”

  “Eggs do that. Not chicken. Usually.”

  “Same thing,” she says through a mouthful of lettuce and tomato. Even through the food I can hear dim sarcasm.

  “Adults I can handle,” I say, “but the young ones give me all the trouble.” I punctuate with a bite of my lamb burger, letting the juice drip. A bit rare, even for me. She squirms, now that she has decided to be partially vegetarian. But she does not criticize my food selection like usual, just starts picking through her salad for bits of feta cheese. I can tell she wants to talk about the earrings.
She just has no idea how to start. I give in and help.

  • • •

  “Where did you get them done?” he said, jumping right in. “The mall? With the gun?”

  “I did it myself,” I said. “Yolo. It was on YouTube. And the lady upstairs gave me these.” I flicked my earlobes, wincing. They still hurt; even now I can’t wear earrings for long.

  “They’re infected,” he said. “Take them out. You could be allergic.”

  “I want a second opinion.”

  “Ask the waitress,” he said, “because I’m not about to take you to the hospital over ears.”

  “Oh? What would you take me to the hospital over?”

  “My dead body.”

  “Seriously, when’s the last time you saw a doctor?”

  “On my birthday.”

  “When was that?”

  “1962.”

  He took a bite of his baby lamb burger. I stirred my salad and sighed.

  “Fine, Ms. Vaguebook,” he said. “What’s wrong? Besides your ears falling off?”

  “Oh, let’s see,” I said. “My only friends are screen names. I don’t go to school. I have no life. I was abduc—”

  He hissed. A few seconds later, Edena arrived to refill our drinks, rolling her eyes at me as if to say she understood. I smirked, wondering how she saw us. A short, dumpy blonde and her father, tall, dark and … handsome? At least interesting. Not average, like I’d originally seen him. As much as he wanted to seem ordinary, to me he was turning out to be more than that. It was like I could see the real him, even as I was grappling with what I was. Not that he was exciting, or unpredictable. Or even colorful. He was never black or white, just an everlasting gray. And that’s what he wanted me to be, too. Gray was fine, except when it’s all you get. Ash without any fire. I was tired of being a ghost. His shadow. I wanted to exist. I wanted to matter. And I think he was finally starting to realize that. Even if I wasn’t.

  I didn’t want to be him. I wanted to be like him, in the sense that he was something. And he was sure of what he was. He had a definition for himself. At the time, I was just a synonym.