The Rifle

A short story

The cold wind pierced through him like steel while the snow swept into his foxhole. The man was away from his normal shelter after days of tracking an elusive bear he had yet to fell. Foolishly, he continued on, despite knowing he could be trapped in the mountains as the winter weather began. But he needed to finish the task. He had put too much energy into the effort.

He twisted further inward into his bearskin coat and outfit, even though his back strained from digging and chopping wood. The woolen blanket shrouded his fetal position, but whipped with the howling wind. His curly, wiry fingers grasped around his rifle more firmly. It was his protection from what lurked in the dark, and he wanted to be prepared, yet it did not help his sleep. Only the warmth from the flickering fire allowed him moments of rest.

The fire reminded him of a time long since passed — of his mother sitting, knitting by the family fireplace while his father rubbed his calloused hands over the flames. Despite working with his hands, the father lacked proper circulation for they would freeze too quickly if the temperature dropped, he’d say. Meanwhile, the man — as a boy — could remember making marks in the dirt flooring, noting how the shadows seemed to spill into the tiny crevices of his mindless shapes. He could seldom remember the words passed between his parents in those twilight hours, but the shapes were clear. He would have rather remembered the former.

Only flashes of his father crept into his mind, particularly moments of hunting together, tracking through the wilderness, and the silence imbued in nature. They hardly spoke on these missions, but only a mantra the father taught his son. “Repeat this before pulling the trigger boy: Composure. Patience. Silence. It’s what my father taught me.” The boy listened, internally repeating the words until his breath settled. Peace. Then the eruption from the rifle shattered the air. The hunts thrilled the boy. After one hunt where the young boy successfully killed a bear, his old man carted the carcass through the main strip of town, proudly gesturing to a neighbor about his son’s prowess with a gun. “The boy’s got a good eye, I reckon,” he recalled the neighbor saying through his protruding lower jaw. “Two,” his father replied. The boy loved his father.

When he left to fight in a Tennessee regiment in the Confederate Army, his father gifted him the family rifle. “For protection. Do sum good lickin’ son.” The patriotic fervor blazed in the man’s eyes as he dreamt of blazing Lincoln’s troops invading his homeland. As he left the family homestead, he saw his father — tearing, rubbing his calloused hands like he would — on the threshold of the cabin, next to his mother. The man wasn’t sure why — pride in his son or fearing his son’s premature death? Regardless, that image of his father would be the last.

He received the news of his father’s passing in a letter from his mother on the eve of the Battle of Shiloh. The letter was short, minimal, for his mother was not proficient in the skills of reading and writing — yet the message was clear enough. The man believed he would join his father and forefathers over the next few days. And even longed for it. Remarkably, he was not among the nearly two thousand dead for the Confederacy, and he could not confirm whether or not he took Yankee lives. The sounds of thundering gun shots, shrouds of smoke covered the battlefield, and hysteria masked any knowledge. All he knew was when he shot his rifle, another body would fall. Another man would be crying for their mother or for relief. There was no composure, no patience, no silence. No peace.

Another restless sleep.

His mother spoke little. And in that distant memory, the fire burrowed in her wrinkles, accentuating her features. When she did speak, it often featured godly retribution or foreboding. “God will come for us all, yes he will. Best prepare for that day,” the man recalled as he further curled inward.

The fear of God lingered throughout most of his days, particularly during the war. He never longed to see his maker’s face. The closest the inevitable meeting came was in the throes of Chattanooga where a bullet ripped through his jacket, but miraculously missed him. Another few inches and the bullet would have ruptured a lung. He told him comrades “God has sumthin’ planned for me, or he thinks my face is too ugly to look at yet.” The remark made few laugh, and others quietly mourn the loss of their friends sprawled out in the solemn fields of the American South.

After the war, the man returned home only to find his mother bedridden from influenza. She never recovered. The last whispery words she uttered were a prayer, but undistinguishable to the man. He buried her next to his father in marked graves on the family farm.

The following years were both aimless and unremarkable. Adjusting to civilian life after the war was a monumental task. His country had lost, and he heard rumors of entire towns losing all their adult men. Folks in town only wanted the man to spin Homeric tales so often recounted in the newspapers — but the man had none to tell. One afternoon at the general store, the neighbor with the jutted-out jaw asked how many Yankees the man reckoned on sending to the devil with the two good eyes God graced him with. “I ain’t sure. Could be none. Could’ve been a hundred. What difference does it make?” The reply never left keen listeners satisfied as they attempted to recapture a glorious venture now reduced to rubble in Richmond, Vicksburg, and Atlanta, and mounds of land shrouded by new wildflowers.

Those howls of the wounded could never be silenced even as he tirelessly worked on the farm. Nothing drowned the sound. Nor the whispery warnings from his mother. God would have an eternity to judge him, but the man longed for an hour of peace, for the silence he once knew — those moments as though he were deep in the woods with his father.

He curled even further inward, while slightly cracking one eye open to see if he was still by the fire. The fire danced and flickered. He couldn’t see anything beyond the diminishing flame. The extraordinary sight once praised by his father now receded into the darkness.

The man decided living in Tennessee, at his childhood home, chained him to the grueling, uncomfortable memories of years past. He sold the property and took few possessions — strapping the rifle to his back — as he set out for the Black Hills in the Dakota territory. He envisioned becoming one of the mountain men, in an attempt to recapture his younger years. The lifestyle appeared romantic: man in the throes of nature, living off the land, encountering Indians, fighting off bears and limited interaction with the brutality civilization often inflicts.

He lived the lifestyle for several years. His prowess shined forth in hunting and trapping animals, and proved profitable in his fur trading with the Indians and tradesmen now occupying sporadic towns throughout the territory. Yet, it was hard work — work that aged him, so much so his hands became as calloused as his father’s and his features as deep as his mother’s. And even in the vast wilderness, the shadows never abated. Freedom was an unquenchable thirst. Only within the split second before he pulled a trigger, jettisoning the bullet striking down his prey, was peace in arms reach. The nights were particularly long and, often times, he longed for a creature to rapture his spirit. But he could not end it all by his own hand. The damnatory warnings from his mother ate at him like gnats he saw consuming the corpses of young men.

The creaks at night kept him alert. He imagined them as the ghosts of Yankee soldiers he might have fell in battle. But he knew they would stand no chance of dragging him into the forest, amongst the endless trees, for he clutched the rifle. Tonight, however, it was the wind and sheer cold that plagued him. He never felt colder in his life. He inched closer to the fire. As he cracked his eyes open once more, to make sure he would not catch fire, he noticed two eyes staring at him.

The man’s own eyes widened sharply; yet he restrained to make any sudden movements. At first, he thought his vision deceived him. A projection of his dreams cast out into the trees. Or perhaps, it might be the creature he had been tracking. Some instinct told him so. The cold, inhuman eyes were only visible when the flames whipped toward the form in front of the man.

Be still, he thought. The creature did not move, nor did it appear to be breathing. The cold air did not reveal the form’s breath, yet it was a hulking presence. The man began to inch his right arm down the muzzle, toward the lock. He was afraid of cocking it back so as to not alert the creature. The formless eyes did not blink or move from him.

Composure. Patience. Silence. If he fled, he would die from the creature or the elements. Despite longing for the end, he did not desire to enter eternity at this moment. Then the hairs on the back of his neck sprang. He could feel another presence behind him, closer than the form in front. He was surrounded. His one cracked eye could see more eyes surround the perimeter, but he could not determine how many.

The man now concluded the forms were a pack of wolves. This is it, he thought, the retribution. He could now feel the heat from their breaths closing in, though he still could not see the exhales colliding with the cold. He inched his finger around the trigger. Every outcome he foresaw was fatal. Even if he fired the rifle in the air, would that scatter the figures? Not likely. But did he survive the horrors of war simply to be ripped apart by wolves on a mountainside?

The impulse of surrendering to fate crossed his belabored mind. He thought he could hear the shadows murmuring in the dark — strategizing before a charge. The man felt transported to the fields of battle once more, crouching behind a low stone wall, his rifle aimed at the incoming Yankees risking their lives for a few acres of sullied ground. “Here they come! Give ‘em a whooper and a hollerin’ they ain’t ever heard. Give ‘em a taste of what they’ll feel in Hell,” said one commanding officer. As a dutiful soldier, he followed orders. Even though fear swept over him, if he honestly reflected on those moments, he never believed he would die. He knew he’d survive; but in what form brought new anguish.

But just as he did during the battles, the man twitched his finger over the trigger and thought, if the hollering worked then and frightened men, with all their reason, it might be effective against the creatures. Or did reason cause the men to fear? Regardless, he began to scream as if consumed by an unknown spirit, giving them a Rebel yell that reverberated off the trees down the entire mountainside. The screams were so loud, the man felt the earth quake beneath his body. He whipped out his rifle and fired at a pair of eyes in the dark. The eyes did not waver. Others began to shift. He reloaded and fired again. And again. The eruptions brought both madness and peace in the man. “I will not die from you.”

Yet, the eyes were still on him. None disappeared. “I will not die from you,” he repeated. The eyes moved in closer, the breathing increased and grew heavier. The forms were close enough now that, when the fire flickered, the teeth of the creatures were visible. The dread of those teeth gouging out his eyes and ripping through his body made the man tremble. As he began reloading his rifle — the prized heirloom from his father — he reflected on the crevices in his mother’s face, and the air of spiritual discipline she evoked. That search for peace he could never quench since the war may finally be at an end, here on the side of the dark, cold mountain, far from his homeland. How would he be remembered in the annals of history — he would have no grave to mark his burial, unlike his mother and father. Even the fallen soldiers. There would be no Homeric tales, for he shared none with his neighbors.  

Then he realized, the reason he was on the mountain — tracking a bear — had become a distant afterthought. The hunt may never be satisfied and completed. Perhaps for the better, he thought. Perhaps the animal was meant to live for a little longer and spawn more cubs. However, for all of his rationalizing, the simple truth in front of the man was that the day of retribution seemed upon him. There is no escape from the unknown, he concluded, and no peace until I enter it. He began to rub his hands, and breathe into them to keep them warm.

After he finished reloading, the man collected himself. He aimed his rifle, his sight down the barrel of the gun. The rifle had seen much. The wood had begun to splinter, and the metal started to rust. Maybe a stranger will find use out of this rifle one day. That thought, more than the others, filled him with conflicting feelings of immense sadness, yet peace.

He watched the eyes around him inch closer and closer. The mountainside, which quaked before, now felt still. Composure. Patience. Silence. As he moved to squeeze the trigger, he made a prayer: “God, if you need to see my ugly face today, make it quick.”