Shotgun Fall

(Fiction)

I often wondered if it was real. I even asked my sister what she remembered. Her version was different, but the gist of it was the same. Something happened at our house at the end of October and it happened when Mama was away. I thought Mama went grocery shopping but my sister, Mandy, doesn’t remember that.

Mama wasn’t gone very long before Daddy took the shotgun out of the closet. He grabbed my brother, Peter, by the arm. Then he dragged Peter to the end of the hallway. Peter’s door slammed shut. Daddy began shouting in a way I’d never heard him shout before. It was odd for me to listen because Daddy was a quiet man. Then there was the sound of furniture banging. I believed something was getting tossed around. Peter was yelling and screaming. Mandy was hiding in the bedroom she and I shared. I was hiding in the bathroom.

Then it was quiet. I heard Peter’s bedroom door open. I was crouched in the corner next to the bathroom closet. My eyes hooked up and around and I glimpsed Daddy in the medicine cabinet mirror as he passed the bathroom door. He was holding the shotgun in front of him the way I’d seen pictures of soldiers carry their guns tight to their chests when they were marching as they prepared for war.

Daddy stomped down the hall and turned toward the kitchen. I heard the back door open and slam shut. I tip-toed down the hall and inched my head around the corner. Daddy was nowhere in sight. I scampered to the edge of the kitchen and peered through the window on the storm door.

Daddy marched through the dead oak leaves, past the chicken coop, past the dried up grapes on the vines and up the center of the hill. I thought that was odd because there was no path there. The path was far to the right.

Daddy stomped up the hill. I could see him at the top of the hill. The sky behind him was white like an exposed bone. Sometimes he would disappear behind a tree but then he would appear again as though the tree spit him out. He looked like a wild stick-figure man wielding a shotgun. He’d jack the butt of the gun into his shoulder and fire a shot. Once he just held the gun in one hand over his head. He pulled the trigger and shot at the sky. I saw his arm buck. I remember thinking he could break his arm doing that. He was yelling and screaming.

Lately we’d had reports of a lynx in our area. One night I’d heard the lynx screaming. It made the hair on the back of my neck prickle up and it didn’t go down for a long time after. The sound coming from Daddy was worse.

I turned to see my sister shivering at the edge of the kitchen. Peter came around the corner from the hall. His face was white. His eyes were bloated red and puffy. His mouth was tight like a sharp knife with the edges turned down, but he wasn’t crying anymore. Somehow he got that faucet turned off. Peter had the hiccups and was twisting a hank of hair behind his ear into a tight, short cord . When he was nervous he could snap that twist of hair with his fingernail. It was snapping a steady rhythm just a few feet from me.

I don’t remember any of us saying anything to each other. Peter went back in his room. Maybe to put whatever got tossed around back together. I didn’t go to his room to see what he was doing.

Mandy and I stood at the storm door window and watched as Daddy paced back and forth on the top of that hill, weaving in and around the trees. He was easy to see because all the leaves had fallen off the trees. Sometimes he would raise the gun over his head with both hands, the butt in one hand, the barrel in the other.

Our collie, Boy, paced back and forth in front of the back door. He moved so fast and low he was like a brown and white blur. He didn’t bark but he was agitated. He was all about guarding our family. He didn’t know what to do. He probably thought he should be biting someone.

All in all, I heard Daddy fire three shots. I wasn’t sure he was going to come down off that hill alive, but finally he did. When he got to the door I studied his clothes and hands. I was eye-level with his chest. I studied that too. There wasn’t any blood. I glanced up. There was some crusty stuff around his lips. I thought it was left-over spit from all that yelling. I could smell the smoke on him from the gun.

Daddy put the gun away in the closet where it belonged. He didn’t look at us. He didn’t say anything about what happened.

When Mama came home you would have thought we’d be all over her like ants on honey, clamoring to be the first one to tell the news of what had just occurred. We were good at that, telling on each other for every little thing. But something had entered us that zipped us shut. It was as though whatever happened had never happened.  Or it was too unspeakable to mention. Or it wanted to be too unspeakable to mention.

I was still trying to figure it all out in my head when I noticed the air in the house felt different. Thicker. There was something, a vibration, rattling, like on the end of snake. Both Mandy and I felt it. It was like an evil whisper that said, “Do not ever talk about this.”

But Mandy was a rebel and she whispered to me as Mama walked into the kitchen, “What just happened?”

My head wobbled as though it would unhinge from my neck. I didn’t know what had just happened. I still don’t.