It was a half hour past sunset, and hunting was now illegal until a half hour before sunrise the next morning. The two men who stood beside an old pickup in the growing darkness were not deterred. One of them worked the bolt on a scoped rifle, chambering a round. He then rested the rifle on the back corner of the pickup. Its black synthetic stock was already hard to see from only a foot away.
The changing leaves, their vibrant yellow-edged green or orange made obscure by the coming of night, were still thick on the trees of early October. Their abundance added to the inhibited ability of the two men to see any target clearly. The looming clouds in the west contributed to the gloom.
They waited with some impatience near the tailgate of the old Ford F-150 pickup they'd nosed into the trees.
"Where is he?" whispered one of them nervously. This one wasn't the shooter, he was just the driver. He had tilted his dirty black baseball cap back to give him more light to see, and strands of long brown hair in need of a shampoo draped over the collar of his faded red flannel shirt.
"Shut up, Eddie," the other one answered more calmly. In rural southwestern Minnesota, few people were on guard against armed men with disturbing reasons for being out in the woods at night. He’d done this before and was confident he'd get his shot. His black leather sport jacket glistened faintly in the dusky light, but rendered his figure indistinct as the darkness settled in.
A shadowy hulk of a figure emerged from a stand of trees a hundred and fifty yards down the right side of the road. The shape was just barely visible through the scope of the rifle, which now nestled with its butt firmly in place at the shooter's shoulder. Despite the scope's vaunted reputation for collecting light in the dark, the shooter had trouble following his mark.
Not at all sinister, the figure now trudging along the edge of the road was more difficult to see because he was clad from head to toe in camouflage clothing. He still wore the dark mesh head net that kept the deer from seeing the pale pinkness of his face, and the hand clutching the recurve bow was covered with a cotton camouflage glove. The other hand was in his pants pocket, perhaps warding off the slight chill of the evening or grasping the keys to his pickup.
Kenny Peterson always waited in his tree-stand until it was no longer legal or safe to shoot before climbing down and walking out. More times than he could remember, he'd seen a deer worth shooting in that last special minute or two before hunting closed. Not today, though.
Scuffling along, Kenny didn't see the little pothole in the dirt road. He wasn't exactly fat, but he couldn't see much below his tummy these days, and had forgotten about that little hole. His left foot found it. He stumbled, almost fell, but caught himself, and heard himself saying, "Whoops! Damn it!"
He chuckled. Gettin' old, he told himself. Still, I'm going to come out hunting as much as I can till they haul me off in that long black car. There's something about being out here that's, well... He found it hard to explain, even to himself. Uff da! He muttered under his breath. That reminds me of an Ole and Lena joke.
As he dredged up the way the joke went, he fumbled for the keys to his big new Dodge Ram pickup, which he'd left pulled up on the verge of the road. Ole and Lena are the main characters in whole pages of corny jokes in the upper Midwest, and it was hard to keep the stories straight sometimes. It really had nothing to do with funeral hearses.
Ole was lying on his deathbed, weak and nearly at his last breath. Kenny worked it out in his mind, enjoying the build-up as much as he had the first time he'd heard it. Suddenly he noticed the wonderful smell of the cookies Lena was baking in the kitchen. Gathering the last of his energy, he crawled slowly out of his bed and made his trembling way down the hall to the steps. He somehow found his way down the steps and into the kitchen. He reached up a weak and trembling hand for one of the fresh-baked cookies. Turning, Lena swatted his hand away impatiently. "Leave those alone!" she cried. "They're for the funeral!"
He chuckled to himself as he inserted the key into the lock. The light from the cab was reassuring as the door swung open.
The shot when it came nearly deafened the two men by the old F-150. Even though he'd been expecting it, the one named Eddie jumped in surprise, and said, "Oh, shit!" The shooter merely regretted not putting his ear-plugs in. He looked through the scope again, but couldn't see any target.
"Did you get him?" Eddie asked. The other man didn't answer, but worked the bolt on the sporterized Mauser rifle, stood erect, and stepped around the pickup.
"Come on," he said impatiently as he trotted forward.
The two men jogged down the road in the growing darkness until they reached the bigger, newer pickup. The shooter, holding the rifle ready, slowed up cautiously and eased up to where he could see the heavy-set figure on the ground by the door of his truck. He heard no breath, no other sound from the man. He prodded him with the tip of the rifle's barrel, then stepped closer and bent over. He couldn't see much, but he could see that his shot had been good. A hundred yards or more, in night-time conditions. It helped that the old fool had illuminated himself when he’d opened the door of his truck. Still, a very good shot.
"Okay, let's get out of here," he said, turning away.
"How come you needed to whack this guy?" Eddie asked. "He was just some old fart, anyway."
The shooter looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, and raised the rifle to present arms position. Eddie sucked in a breath, and the other man grinned as he flicked the rifle's safety on and lowered it again.