EllieMorse
09-15-2013, 02:36 AM
There was a summer Tuesday, the shadows not yet begun to lengthen, when Tom Dresden had gone to the woods behind his granddad's weed choked acre to fire an old carbine at imagined enemies in Dresden's Field. It was not a true field, and it had no name, unless Tom was the arbiter of the woods; there was only a wide clearing rimmed with thickets of red maple trees and patches of briar stippled red with berries. Here, Tom would bring a congerie of objects - bottles, cans, rotten melons, outdated telephone books - from the trash and around the house, disperse it around the clearing, and test his aim on his targets, typically proving it to be true. On this Tuesday, Tom brought nothing with him except for his rifle and a few extra rounds that rattled in the loose pocket of his dungarees.
The thought had come to him in the night, lying in bed, his hands behind his head. Something in the shadows that defied the moonlight coming through the attic's dormer window revealed to him that a boy with a gun could shoot a squirrel or a rat or a bird as easily as he could shoot an old shoe. The ideation began to gather momentum. Like a heavy steel flywheel, it began to spin so powerfully on its own energy that Tom felt afraid and soon he was powerless to tamp it back down into that dark loam of the devil's vale where ideas twist up from the ground like gnarled fingers. By the time the day's first light came into the room and left only the echoes of the night's shadows, Tom was already out of bed and dressed in his overlarge jeans and a red and white flannel shirt, and there was a mania in his eyes. All through the morning, while his body performed the motions of his chores, he felt feverish and his mind spun with possibilities. There was a sense of fear, but also there was a sense that he had discovered something exquisite that had been beside him all along, like a homeless man finding a gold coin in the toe of his shoe. Something substantial was in Tom's grasp and it had glimmered at him in the night.
In the afternoon, with his grandfather gone into town, Tom took his rifle and set out to kill something. It hadn't taken long. He'd knocked off a couple of rounds at a twisted maple scrub, wondering, as he pulled off the second shot, whether the act of shooting might expiate that terrible notion he had brought into the woods with him. But, the peal of the rifle and the impact of the rounds into the bark of the tree had only reminded him of what was near to him now, and the idea became more fierce in his mind.
It had taken three shots. He missed on the first two and on the third pull of the trigger he shot dead a squirrel that had stood motionless for too long on the low branch of a tree. He was not frustrated by the misses as he was curious that he should have missed, as he had made more difficult shots countless times before and was a good marksman. Soon he had an intimation of some unconscious constituent of the heart, like a dam in the heart's secret river of savagery, that does not make it easy to kill and so can make a boy who is a good shot at cans and bottles, miss twice at flesh and blood. It was a revelation he had not expected. He felt something like a portrait painter who has completed his work and steps back to discover he has inadvertently painted his own mother. Tom had looked down at the squirrel at his feet for a long time, and over that feverish moment he discovered that inaugural instant of apprehension that later in life one recognizes as having been a crossroad.
Tom cried quietly to himself in bed that night, and the next night he thought of ghosts, and the night after that he heard all the sounds of the house too well and pretended to be ill the following morning to avoid having to get out of bed. In another two days, Tom's granddad had had enough and told Tom to either swallow what was eating him or "out with it" and let God decide.
"I shot a squirrel," Tom confessed, rasping the words like he was giving away something very special.
Tom's granddad didn't speak for a long moment.
"Did it suffer?" Tom's granddad asked.
"I don't know," Tom replied.
His granddad cocked his head and arched his eyebrows suspiciously, staring very hard at Tom. "You didn't play around? You know? Play around with the thing's insides or any of that?"
Tom shook his head vaguely.
His granddad nodded thoughtfully for a long moment, his eyes moving over the piebald pattern of the Formica table in the kitchen, and said, finally, "Let it go. It's just a squirrel."
The thought had come to him in the night, lying in bed, his hands behind his head. Something in the shadows that defied the moonlight coming through the attic's dormer window revealed to him that a boy with a gun could shoot a squirrel or a rat or a bird as easily as he could shoot an old shoe. The ideation began to gather momentum. Like a heavy steel flywheel, it began to spin so powerfully on its own energy that Tom felt afraid and soon he was powerless to tamp it back down into that dark loam of the devil's vale where ideas twist up from the ground like gnarled fingers. By the time the day's first light came into the room and left only the echoes of the night's shadows, Tom was already out of bed and dressed in his overlarge jeans and a red and white flannel shirt, and there was a mania in his eyes. All through the morning, while his body performed the motions of his chores, he felt feverish and his mind spun with possibilities. There was a sense of fear, but also there was a sense that he had discovered something exquisite that had been beside him all along, like a homeless man finding a gold coin in the toe of his shoe. Something substantial was in Tom's grasp and it had glimmered at him in the night.
In the afternoon, with his grandfather gone into town, Tom took his rifle and set out to kill something. It hadn't taken long. He'd knocked off a couple of rounds at a twisted maple scrub, wondering, as he pulled off the second shot, whether the act of shooting might expiate that terrible notion he had brought into the woods with him. But, the peal of the rifle and the impact of the rounds into the bark of the tree had only reminded him of what was near to him now, and the idea became more fierce in his mind.
It had taken three shots. He missed on the first two and on the third pull of the trigger he shot dead a squirrel that had stood motionless for too long on the low branch of a tree. He was not frustrated by the misses as he was curious that he should have missed, as he had made more difficult shots countless times before and was a good marksman. Soon he had an intimation of some unconscious constituent of the heart, like a dam in the heart's secret river of savagery, that does not make it easy to kill and so can make a boy who is a good shot at cans and bottles, miss twice at flesh and blood. It was a revelation he had not expected. He felt something like a portrait painter who has completed his work and steps back to discover he has inadvertently painted his own mother. Tom had looked down at the squirrel at his feet for a long time, and over that feverish moment he discovered that inaugural instant of apprehension that later in life one recognizes as having been a crossroad.
Tom cried quietly to himself in bed that night, and the next night he thought of ghosts, and the night after that he heard all the sounds of the house too well and pretended to be ill the following morning to avoid having to get out of bed. In another two days, Tom's granddad had had enough and told Tom to either swallow what was eating him or "out with it" and let God decide.
"I shot a squirrel," Tom confessed, rasping the words like he was giving away something very special.
Tom's granddad didn't speak for a long moment.
"Did it suffer?" Tom's granddad asked.
"I don't know," Tom replied.
His granddad cocked his head and arched his eyebrows suspiciously, staring very hard at Tom. "You didn't play around? You know? Play around with the thing's insides or any of that?"
Tom shook his head vaguely.
His granddad nodded thoughtfully for a long moment, his eyes moving over the piebald pattern of the Formica table in the kitchen, and said, finally, "Let it go. It's just a squirrel."