Uncle Couldn’t Shoot

 Uncle Couldn’t Shoot
     by Repeater Four-Eyes Douglas Reimer

Uncle Jake harms was standing point, my dad was driving bush and there was a half hour before the two should be meeting at the mile road where the truck was parked. Being November, it was cold outside, and it happened that at six in the morning, what with the dampness of the day before, a fog had rolled in thick and grey. Jake watched intently, peering through the fog at the spot where my father was intending to appear out of the bush. He expected, that is, Jake expected, that my father was still way back in the bush and knew a deer might suddenly appear and he’d have to be ready with his rifle. Suddenly, he did see a deer, with the head distinctly bearing a rack of horns. He raised his rifle, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing. His finger wouldn’t move! He tried again. His finger remains stiff and unmoving. Once more he tried and failed to get his finger to pull the trigger. Stunned he looked up, and there, emerging from through the fog was my father carrying a deer on his shoulder, the head pointing forward with its rack of horns. Jake, uncle Jake, had come within a hair of shooting my dad. He stood there, his heart pounding, and when dad came near him, smiling, proud of the buck he had shot, Jake rejoiced with him but inside he was trembling and shaking. This story he told me once many years after my dad had died. I asked him, but he said that he had never told my father about that deadly moment.