A deadly ending to an adventure

It was Thanksgiving afternoon.
And it was cold.
Snow flurries were tossed around us, and the wind whipped out of the northwest.
Neither of us remembered a Thanksgiving so cold.
Dan was 12. I was 10.
How I had managed to get away from the family holiday celebration is something I’ve forgotten.
But there we were, crossing the highway to a path north through the old Finch farm, heading in the direction of the airport.
Today, that path — nothing more than a tractor’s trail — would take you through the campus of Jay County Hospital.
Then, it was just a cornfield, stubbled from harvest.
Dan led the way.
He’d received a new BB gun for his birthday and was eager to try it out.
Born late in his parents’ life, Dan had more playthings than anyone else in the neighborhood. He could arm a platoon with toy guns on a summer afternoon. There was always a stack of new comic books at his house. And at one point, there was a pony housed in the garage.
None of this was Dan’s fault. The stuff just fell on him, and he had to deal with the social consequences.
We made our way like hunters in the African Congo, big fans of “Ramar of the Jungle” on Saturday TV.
Dan held his BB gun the way he’d seen a dozen cowboy actors do in primetime.
It was an especially cool model, a replica of a Winchester that had “won the West.”
I had my eyes on something else at the time, a .22 rifle at Gene’s Sport Shop, the little bait-tackle-ammo-and-gun place that the late Gene Romack ran in the evenings in a garage behind his house on Pleasant Street.
I’d been hanging out at the shop more and more after Dan had gotten his extra-cool Winchester-style BB gun. It was only a matter of time before I spoke to my parents and proposed some scheme that would allow me to acquire my first gun.
Dan moved forward along the path, looking occasionally down the stubbled rows of corn stalks, hoping for some prey, some target.
He got off a few shots early, sending the BBs harmlessly into the air.
I remember being cold and wondering if we’d have snow all the way to Christmas.
Then Dan spotted a sparrow.
The gun was a toy. Its sight was faulty. Dan was shivering from the cold. The sparrow was moving.
But after he’d pumped off a few rounds, thanks to the Winchester’s action, we went looking for his target.
I’ll never know who was more surprised: The sparrow or Dan.
Shooting had been fun. The adventure of stalking through the field had been fun. The dead bird at our feet was not fun.
I’m not sure whether we abandoned the corpse on the spot or buried it or took it home to deliver last rites.
But I do know our adventure was over.
Dan and I never went hunting again. And I didn’t spend as much time at Gene’s Sport Shop after that.[[In-content Ad]]