Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [45]
“Are you married?” asked Hill from his perch on the picnic table.
She crumbled minutely in her core, let her arms drop, and she paused to figure out her answer. She was baffled. Why did people have to ask this? Wasn’t she enough as she was? But as soon as he asked, she was thrown into a whirlwind of decisions. Was she married? Surely she felt the same attachment as someone who was married; every single night she missed her husband’s body next to hers. She had not divorced, she had neither asked for or been asked by another to divorce. But no, of course this was different. Finally, she said, “Not anymore, I’m not married anymore.”
He picked up his bow again and walked toward Rocky. “Tough answer. Simple question,” he said. “I’ve thrown you off. Sorry. Let me take a couple of shots while you recuperate.”
He turned his left side to the target. “Here’s where archery is like fencing. Remember, these are weapons of battle and in battle you want to expose the least amount of body surface to the enemy. No full frontal attacks. Your side can take an arrow, and it’s better if you’re a lefty so your right side faces the enemy. Keeps your heart farthest away and protected.”
“I’m right-handed and left-eyed,” said Rocky.
“I know. You’ll have to watch your heart.”
She wondered if she heard everything as a double entendre, was everything a sign? Why would she have to watch her heart? All she had wanted this morning was to hear the validating words from Hill that she had gotten stronger, that he could tell she had been practicing. She suddenly hated that she cared what he thought.
The wind started to pick up from the east and tossed Rocky’s hair forward. She still wasn’t used to hair that needed so much training. Long hair had been easier; braid it, tie it up, clip it. But this was different. She armed herself with a pocketful of clips to pull her chin length hair out of her eyes. On the island, she took to wearing a baseball cap for just that reason.
“What did you say you did out on the island?”
“Animal Control Warden.”
He leaned his upper body slightly forward and with one motion he pulled the bowstring back with his right arm and extended the bow with his left.
“I’m sighting the target with one eye. The thing that takes awhile to get is to stop your breath. But you’ve been practicing, right? Your footsteps sounded eager when you came in, not dragging reluctantly like the kid who hasn’t done her piano lessons. Right there, that’s the stillness. Now the winds will want to carry it to the left. Account for that, use it, use all the information that you have, and release.”
His arrow went true to the center of the target. Rocky saw the flawlessness of his movements, the sparseness of motion that comes with practice, where every muscle knows its job perfectly and springs to service. She had a feeling that even if his brain was absent for the moment, his body would remember the pull and release, the pause between breaths.
“What do you hunt?”
“Do you mean what do I kill? Deer mostly. I had a friend who taught me to take down pheasants. I liked that.” He pantomimed by pivoting on his heel, pulled back the arrowless bow, aiming first at a point near the ground then moving with amazing speed to a point forty-five degrees higher, and finally let go. Rocky could almost hear the thud of a pheasant hitting the ground, wings spread wide.
“Have you ever heard of a dog being shot by an arrow?” she asked.
He turned around and faced her. “A dog? Most people don’t take dogs bow hunting because they keep the game away. But I have seen them hit, mostly by accident when a dog is in the wrong place. Why do you ask?”
She unpacked the borrowed bow and notched the arrow. “Because I found a dog a few weeks ago, four weeks now, who had been shot. That’s how I found you, indirectly, asking about traditional bows. Then