The Never Game

And, also odd, the Bushmaster isn’t equipped with a scope. Using iron sights to hunt? Either he’s an amateur’s amateur or one hell of a shot. Then Colter reflects: he only wounded the deer. There’s the answer.

“Sir, excuse me.” Colter’s voice—even then, a smooth baritone—startles the man.

He turns, his clean-shaven face contracting with suspicion. He scans the teenager. Colter is the same height then as now, though slimmer; he won’t put on bulking muscle until college and the wrestling team. The jeans, sweatshirt, serious boots and gloves—the September day is cool—suggest the boy is just a hiker. Despite the vest, he can’t be a hunter, as he has no weapon.

Colter is teased frequently by his sister for never smiling, yet his expression is usually affable, as it is now.

Still, the man keeps his hand on the pistol grip of the .223. His finger is extended, parallel to the barrel and not on the trigger. This tells Colter there is a bullet in the chamber and that the hunter is familiar with weapons, if not the fine art of hunting. Maybe he was a soldier at one time.

“How you doing?” Colter asks, looking the man straight in the eye.

“Okay.” A high voice. Crackly.

“This is our property, sir. There’s no hunting. It’s posted.” Always polite. Ashton has taught the children all aspects of survival, from how to tell poisoned berries from safe, to how to stymie bears, to how to defuse potential conflicts.

Never antagonize beast or man …

“Didn’t see any signs.” Cold, cold dark eyes.

Colter says, “Understood. It’s a lot of land. But it is ours and there’s no hunting.”

“Your dad around?”

“Not nearby.”

“What’s your name?”

Ashton taught the children that adults have to earn your respect. Colter says nothing.

The man tilts his head. He’s pissed off. He asks, “Well, where can I hunt?”

“You’re a mile onto our land. You would’ve parked off Wickham Road. Take it east five miles. That’s all public forest.”

“You own all this?”

“We do.”

“You’re kind of like a Deliverance family, aren’t you? You play banjo?”

Colter doesn’t understand; he would later.

“I’ll head off then.”

“Wait.”

The man stops, turning back.

Colter’s confused. “You’re going after that buck, aren’t you?”

The man gives a look of surprise. “What?”

“That buck. He’s wounded.” Even if the man is inexperienced, everyone knows this.

The hunter says, “Oh, I hit something? There was just a noise in the bushes. I thought it was a wolf.”

Colter doesn’t know how to respond to this bizarre comment.

“Wolves hunt at dusk and night,” he says.

“Yeah? I didn’t know that.”

And pulling a trigger without a sure target?

“Anyway, sir. There’s a wounded buck. You’ve got to find him. Put him down.”

He laughs. “What is this? I mean, who’re you to lecture me?”

The teenager guesses that this man, with his ignorance and the little-worn outfit, had been asked to go hunting with friends and, never having been, wanted to practice so he wouldn’t be embarrassed.

“I’ll help you,” Colter offers. “But we can’t let it go.”

“Why?”

“A wounded animal, you track it down. You don’t let it suffer.”

“Suffer,” the man whispers. “It’s a deer. Who cares?”

Never kill an animal but for three reasons: for food or hide, for defense, for mercy.

Colter’s father has given the children a lengthy list of rules, most of them commencing with the negative. Colter and his older brother, Russell, who call their father the King of Never, once asked why he didn’t express his philosophy of life with “always.” Ashton answered, “Gets your attention better.”

“Come on,” Colter says. “I’ll help. I can cut sign pretty well.”

“Don’t push me, kid.”

At that point the muzzle of the Bushmaster strays very slightly toward Colter.

The young man’s belly tightens. Colter and his siblings practice self-defense frequently: grappling, wrestling, knives, firearms. But he’s never been in a real fight. Homeschooling effectively eliminates the possibility of bullies.

He thinks, Stupid gesture by a stupid man.

And stupid, Colter knows, can be a lot more dangerous than smart.

“So what kind of father you have that lets his son mouth off like you do?”

The muzzle swings a few degrees closer. The man certainly doesn’t want to kill, but his pride has been thumped like a melon and that means he may shoot off a round in Shaw’s direction to send him rabbit-scurrying. Bullets, though, have a habit of ending up in places where you don’t intend them to go.

In one second, possibly less, Colter draws the old Colt Python revolver from a holster in his back waistband and points it downward, to the side.