The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [12]
“I thought I wasn’t going to see you until we got to the camp?” he called out.
“I ...” I stammered. “I thought you might need some help.”
He pitched the core into the brush and said, “Sure could. Come on.” He whistled for the dog, and when I scrambled down the side of the cliff, he handed me the bridle strap of the horse. “Take the flock. Sawatch and I’ll get the rest of the strays.”
That night, after dinner, he asked me if I had understood what he was trying to do, giving me the rifle to carry on the trail. I said no, I hadn’t, and he nodded his head as if to say, I thought not.
“I wanted to see if you were predictable.”
I told him (the tone of disappointment in my voice unmistakable) that I would stand in front of a train for him.
“That’s not what I said, Jozef. I’d never question your loyalty. I said you’re predictable. I wanted to see if I was right about what you’d do, and I was. I knew that if I sent you on ahead, you’d move fast, and reach the cabin, and that you’d turn right around and come back to me. I was betting the distance of the forest trail and one apple. And there you were, just as I expected. Now, if you want to learn how to shoot, and how to be a good hunter, you’ve got to learn to predict, but, more importantly, in yourself, how to be unpredictable.”
That summer, he sent me out to hide and watch him herd. I had to make notes of how he worked, where he stood, details of the terrain around him, without him finding me. It was a game we were to play, and we played it month after month. If he saw me—a glint from a buckle, a stone I’d kicked loose—he’d drive the sheep in my direction, which meant I had to get up and move, and the more I moved, the less I could observe of him. At dusk, when we met back at the camp or built a fire and slept out, we compared notes. I could fire the Krag only when I had more information about him than he had about me.
It was August before I could scratch more than two details to my father’s five, and in that time I came to understand what he meant. Which way was the wind blowing? Where was the sun? What was my target? How big or how far away? Was it moving or stationary? Distracted or attentive? At work or rest? Could it see, hear, or smell me? Could I have slipped away from where I hid as easily as if I’d stayed, unknown, unnoticed, and unafraid?
I learned how to move when he moved, remain when he remained, anticipate a turn because I saw the lip of rock before he and the flock did, or knew exactly which gill they would follow because its course was the path of least resistance. My father was loath to waste a shot, so practice was always some form of a hunting party, which meant that we ate well in the mountains, and that fall I killed my first deer. I did everything right—found my position upwind of him, watched him emerge from the cover of wood into a wild and fragrant crab-apple grove, and made sure my shot was clear. Prone behind a fallen tree that served as a good barrel rest and gave me a slight height advantage, I snuggled my cheek into the weld of the stock, reckoned that he was little less than a hundred yards away, filled the fore sight blade with the front of his body, took a deep breath, let out half, held, aimed just behind the shoulder of the foreleg where the heart is, and pulled the trigger.
LATE IN THE AUTUMN OF THAT YEAR, A WOMAN CAME TO THE door of our house in Pastvina. She was dressed in a coat two sizes too big and wrapped in a shawl on top of that, and she was weeping, looking as though all that she’d ever had was lost but for these few articles of ill-fitting clothing. She knew my father’s name, and he embraced her in return. A boy stood behind her, his stature and expression the exact opposite of this woman who led him. He was tall, gangly almost, the coat he wore too small and thin for the first snow and wind, although his face gave away nothing of whether he felt cold or comfort. I stared at him and he stared back, his eyes a deep beryl blue, his hair (when he removed his hat) as fine and blond as mine.