So Young

I moved with all the grace that is found in a young boy. Squatting on the old dock, mindful of the brown and protruding rusty nails holding the soaked boards together, I leaned over as far as I dared, peering into the cold, clear lake. The sun was a warm presence in the sky above, brilliant shining through a cloudless blue, and it painted my blonde hair white as soap each summer, until I grew older, and found work indoors.

My small right hand clasped the cheap net my Mother had purchased for me, and as the dock dug into my left hand locked to the edge for support, I suspended the net in the water to await the catch of my prey.

Holding it as still as a corpse, I waited with a small child's patience for the minnows to coast into my net. What lured them was a mystery, for I used no bait or entrancing, shiny metal that reflected the sky. I simply knew through practice that an open net was too much for the minnows to resist - they swam inside to discover more.

Two or three would follow the path of a leader, and I pulled up hard with a quickness that belied my thin frame. Once out of the water, I quickly reached into the net to grab the flopping, minuscule fish, reflective and oily in my hands. I dropped each one into my waiting bucket full of water, then sank back down on my knees to watch them swim in circles, again and again, perhaps looking for a way out of this new prison, perhaps only attune to being out of the criss-cross net.

Normally I caught minnows for my father, who would then take me fishing in our old, wooden boat. It was painted dark turtle green on the inside, and chalk-white on the out. Flecks of paint would fly off now and again in the summer breeze, as our boat launched itself from a wave, and crashed back down with a delightful THUD. The boat needed a re-painting, but we sold it before it ever received one.

I would sit up front in the bow, what my father called "The Captain's Chair", and dutifully report for "look-out duty". It was my job to look for misshapen logs or destructive rocks when I sat there, and I would face forward, leaning way up out and over the bow, to make sure I could see. I beamed with immense pride when I would yell to my Dad to Quick! Quick! Turn right!, for we didn't want to ram the log jutting its neck across our path. Turning to face him, I'd make sure he could hear, as the noise erupting in my small ears from our motor felt like warm thunder, making it difficult to hear. He would steer our boat quickly, thanking me for being such a fine watcher in the lookout seat. My mouth split to a smile, and I turned around to look for another.

I rocked with pride as my bucket's contents swelled to fifteen or more minnows that bright day on the dock. But then, I could always catch that many. I had endless endurance for staring into the mesmerizing water. Even when I caught no minnows, I still dreamed the day away, staring through the undulating mirror, watching the aquatic universe unfold before me, each granule of sand a tiny inhabitant.

Casting my net away upon the shoreline, I stood from my kneeling position, and stared into the bucket. The minnows darted back and forth, baking in the summer heat. As I towered above like a young giant, I reached in with my right hand, and slowly pressed it against the side, trapping the squirming occupants. I clasped my hand around one, bringing it aloft to better acquaint it with my face. Minnows have tremendous eyes for such a small fish, as if an owl itself had fathered these creatures. Yellow and round, the eye didn't move, didn't blink. Below it the mouth puckered open and shut, reactive, stretching for air. I stared closely at my quarry, feeling its slime upon my palm, knowing its anxiety through the beating in my hand. It was alive, pulsing, a vein of life thrashing against the skin.

I pulled back then, and whipped it as hard as I could against the last cement step of our stairs.

With an almost inaudible "smack", the minnow bounced once and lay still. I had crushed it on impact, one quick blow to the stair, and then nothing. The cement sparkled faintly from some scales that sat lifeless, remnants of the impact it had sustained. I reached down to the bucket for another, and tossed again.

I didn't stop then; I couldn't. Again and again, smack, SMACK!, I hurled the fish into the step to watch them die. I knew they would die. I knew that from the first throw, knew from how the little blood splattered out, knew from the quiet "pat-pat" sound as they hit the ground and bounced off. I had invented a new game, and it wouldn't be over until my bucket was simply water.

I held the last minnow tight in my fist. Below me, my little feet were littered with corpses, tiny stretches of brown and silver and red. And as I felt the fish beating in my hand, a tiny little heart, I took aim and killed it like the rest. I listened to it hit, felt it through my ears, and stood then in silence, my game over. There were no more pieces to use, no more minnows to break. Their eyes were just as before, lifeless and yellow and large.

Then time stopped. I felt it as surely as I felt the wooden board beneath my feet. A hammer was hitting me in my head, and I was being punched in my stomach. I started to cry.

I had killed these things. They were dead, all of them, and I killed them. They weren't for bait. They weren't other's food. They were the detritus of my tyranny, now useless and littering the ground. I stood there and wept, my child's mind uncomprehending the pattern before me.

I was so young on that dock, so young in my little blue shorts and white shirt. And as I stood rooted to that dock, my eyes not moving or blinking, mouth gasping for air, I pondered why, on that day, I went to the dock and killed.

Part II

The North American Gray Squirrel can mate up to twice a year, usually within January and July. Around six weeks later, a mother can give birth to two or three baby squirrels, blind, hairless, and weighing only ½ of an ounce, and measuring two inches in length.

The baby squirrels will begin to feed upon their mother's milk immediately, and within two weeks, begin to grow hair. They will grow to five inches in five weeks, with a four-inch-long tail as well. After six weeks, the baby squirrels will start venturing outside the nest to acclimate themselves to their surroundings, but still rely on the mother squirrel's milk. It is only after about eight weeks that a newborn is finally ready to go out on its own, and begin to become independent.

Before a year is up, young females can begin to have a litter of their own. In the wild, a Gray Squirrel can live up to seven years old, though this is very unusual. Most squirrels don't live past their first year of life after being born. I made sure that last statistic held true when I was in Ninth Grade, as I marched into a small patch of trees with my father, and shot and killed a North American Gray Squirrel.

As my father and I stood outside our Pontiac Phoenix parked on the edge of the gravel road, I had to squint against the sun that was poking through the sky and blinding my eyes. We stood there together in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, and prepared to fire some guns.

Ever since my father was sixteen, he was a hunter. First, with pheasants, and then he expanded to include deer, grouse, wild turkeys, partridge - just about any upland game and small, fur-bearing animal. He had shot his first pheasant in 1963 with his brother, Jim, after they had raked leaves all summer to save enough cash to each purchase a single shot 12-guage shotgun. On their very first hunt of their lives, they were each successful as they both came home from Woodstock, IL with one pheasant rooster. Since then, my father has hunted pheasants every year of his life, and which he wants to pass on this tradition to his son.

But that day, we were not hunting pheasant; that season was months away. Yet since I had passed my Hunter Safety Course, he wanted me to go out and get some practice, to have some fun. So we found a small, forgotten stand of trees off an old country road, and proceed to walk towards it in hopes of finding some quarry. Donning my light-blue jean-jacket and New Balance shoes, I followed in my father's footsteps, carrying a .22-caliber rifle safely in my hands.

The day was gray with splotches of sunlight interrupting, and was being pushed along by a breeze that carried hints of an approaching fall. Together, we snapped the dried twigs beneath us as we walked precariously into those trees, attempting impossible silence, unattainable for a clumsy, 14 year-old-boy.

We approached that cadre of trees because I couldn't hit any birds in the branches that my dad told me to shoot at from our car. They were too far away, those black peas in the trees, or at least, my aim was not so true. I wasn't sure at the time if I even wanted to shoot at the birds, but I never even questioned it; I simply took aim and fired. So we decided to approach closer on foot, in hopes of spotting a squirrel. As we neared, those little peas sailed off warily, the presence of two humans reason enough for flight. I listened with my eyes, stopping every few feet for the sight of movement, waiting for the target my father wanted me to see.

It was cool that day, enough to see your breath, even though it was only late afternoon. We were surrounded by trees barren of foliage, like burned and splintered matchsticks stuck haphazardly into the ground. I could smell a sort of dryness, and there was a sense of alertness in the air that seemed to signal impending danger, or the near break of a storm. I gazed skyward, but it was devoid of any thunderheads, consisting of only infinite chalk-blue color, and hazy clouds that stretched for miles.

When I turned back, I sensed that my father had stopped moving. Seeking confirmation of this, I found him pointing out in front. There, just ahead, was a squirrel, sitting on the ledge of a firm-looking branch. It had almost a comical stance to it, simply sitting there, looking confused or dull, but with a presence about it, like mercury in a bottle, ready to bolt free from the branch at any moment.

I could feel the rifle pressing through my brown gloves, and I slowly kneeled down behind a felled tree to take aim. There was no scope, no sighting, only the rifle and me. I held my breath, like I was instructed to do, took aim at the silhouette of the squirrel, and fired a single shot from the rifle. The squirrel simply fell off the branch to the earth below, like some final, last leaf that had refused the inevitable call to the topsoil. There was no squealing, no missed shot, no excitement or flurry of activity: just an empty spot where that breathing, twitching, fur-covered leaf had sat.

"Good shot, son!" yelled my father. I got up and ran to the spot after him, to see what I had done. I remember feeling, initially, a giddy excitement. Excitement at making my father happy, excitement at hitting the target with my very first shot - it was a moment of pride and recognition, and I didn't want it to end.

Yet there, upon the ground, resting upon a pile of orange and brown and pear-colored leaves, lay the dead squirrel. My bullet never went through him. It instead acted like a razor, opening him up from groin to neck in a clean, neat line, spilling his innards out to this world. Steam rose slowly off the fresh, hot organs of his entrails, the little heart, the little intestines clearly visible, and I remember thinking how moist and wet everything looked, like they were little plastic organs stuffed into a gray sock, sparkling as a shell might in the salty air, fresh from the ocean. There was no blood, nothing torn - just the long, open incision from my speeding bullet, and the empty stare from the black peas of his eyes, looking up towards the clear cold sky, but seeing nothing anymore.

And I simply stood there, not knowing what to say. I stood there, and looked at this dead animal. An animal that I had just shot and killed. I wasn't going to take it, or use it. I didn't need it, or even want it. It was just something I had done, and now it was over. I simply stood there, hovering above it, marveling at the fact that there was no joy in what I had done, no elation - just a sombre feeling of acceptance, and a slow trickling of regret. And I turned then, towards my father, a man I love so very much, and said, "I don't want to shoot any more squirrels, dad. Let's go home." And we did.