I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up a few things I needed and to check on how the preparations for Mister Johnson’s birthday party were getting on. As I was driving down the road to Charlie’s, a rabbit suddenly burst from the undergrowth at roadside and right under my car. There was no time to react and I heard the dull thump under my vehicle as the rabbit hit. In my rear view mirror I saw the little gray crumpled body lying lifeless in the road. It’s the sort of thing that happens as you drive along. Some wild beast will be suddenly in front of you and there is no time to react. A live animal with bright eyes is suddenly road kill and you had no way to prevent it. I always feel bad about killing something along the road. Often it is a rabbit or possum; sometimes a dog or cat. If it is a slow moving creature such as a box terrapin, a slight turn of the wheels will avoid hitting the animal, but a rabbit or squirrel will just as likely turn in its path in the same direction you are twisting the wheel to avoid the hit. In any event, too often you glance in the rear view and there lies a little creature that is no longer alive because of a violent encounter with the car you are driving.
I pulled up beside Charlie’s and went inside. Jake was bagging groceries for Miss Lisa Hall and she asked about Mutt as I walked past. I stopped a moment and told her my found dog had suddenly gone missing just as suddenly as he appeared last fall. I had asked around but no one had seen him. He was just a good dog who had suddenly appeared in my life and made company for a couple months, then gone away. Lisa said she was sorry he was gone, but maybe he had gone back to his original owner. I hoped that was the case. He was a well brought up dog and someone had invested some time in him before he came to me.
Mister Johnson was over in his accustomed chair by the pot belly stove. He and Hermann Spencer were talking about deer hunting. Time was that Hermann was out in the woods trying to bag a deer every spare minute that came his way. He never had much luck. He saw more deer wandering through his back yard than he ever saw out in the woods. Then last year he was hurrying home with a prescription for his wife when he slammed into a big buck with his pickup truck. He was suddenly all over the road and into the ditch with a beat up fender. When he climbed out of his truck, the deer was dead on the pavement. Hermann took that deer home and had the head mounted on his wall. In a manner of speaking, he had achieved his life long goal. He had his trophy deer and the inspiration for deer hunting just passed out of his life. His wife said Hermann went into the woods a couple more times to hunt deer, but he came home early complaining of the weather or with some other excuse as for why hunting no longer held the magic for him it once did. Now Hermann spends his evenings in his work shop where he repairs things around the house that need fixing. A bonus to Hermann’s transformation from deer hunter to work shop tinkerer is the improved relationship Hermann now has with his son, Dwayne. Dwayne has never been a hunting enthusiast and some of the most contentious arguments between father and son have been over t’s hunting. Now those arguments appear a thing of the past.
Mister Johnson was carving on that old piece of pine wood he always seems to carry and he was saying the time was he liked to go out into the woods and kill the wild animals. His father had given him a bolt action .22 when he was a youngster and he would go out with his brother to hunt. He came to be a pretty fair shot with that rifle. He was out in the tall grass one fall when he saw a rabbit run past and hide in the distance. He could not see the rabbit, but the moving grass told him where the rabbit had stopped running. Mister Johnson took careful aim at that spot and squeezed the trigger. There was the bang of the rifle and the rabbit took off running. Mister Johnson said his pride in that shot knew no limits. He took off after that rabbit and found it at the edge of the woods. It was lying on its side where its strength had run out. It was trembling in a panic and its eyes were big with terror as Mister Johnson walked up. One look and all of Mister Johnson’s pride in his marksmanship vanished. He was looking down at a living creature he had brought the end of its life.
There was nothing for it but to end the beast’s misery, so Mister Johnson put the barrel of the rifle to the rabbit’s head and pulled the trigger again. In place of ending the little rabbit’s life with a shot, the rabbit took one last quivering breath, the sound of the indrawn air bubbling through the blood, the rabbit’s terrified eye bulging from its distorted head. Mister Johnson quickly shot the rabbit again to make certain it was dead and beyond pain. Mister Johnson said he used that rifle for years thereafter to practice at marksmanship on tin cans and dry twigs, but he never shot a living animal again.
Mister Johnson has seen people who appear to enjoy inflicting pain on living creatures. He has seen signs on the roadside where cats have been killed by flinging them violently against road signs. He has heard tales of animals shot to cripple them and the shooters then laugh as the wounded beasts struggle to escape the pain. Mister Johnson says he cannot understand people like that. The argument that anyone who eats meat is as guilty of killing as the man who actually slaughters the animal does not impress Mister Johnson. Killing for necessity and for food is a matter of one kind, but killing and torturing just for the fun of it is a different matter entirely. Mister Johnson has serious reservations about a man who kills and laughs about it.
On the way out of the store as I paid for the items I had picked up, I asked Jake how the birthday party plans were coming and Jake assured me it would be the biggest party this town has ever seen.
END
