Persons attempting to find a "text" in this [story] will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a "subtext" in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise "understand" it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR - Wendell Berry's introduction to Jayber Crow.
This article was posted to Jayber on 19 March 2006 by to the following categories: Feature, Stories.
An audio version of this article is also available.
I went into the woods a boy, and returned a man, for I have killed a squirrel. Like all men before me, I have reached the age of accountability, claimed rite of passage, and finalized my coming of age.
In 8th grade, I bought a BB gun, in the form of an oversized pistol, with room in the chamber for a solitary BB. I used it to shoot cans, and homemade pellet traps, but soon discovered that to attain mastery, I needed a moving target.
I went with my friend Jared--who had recently acquired a blow-gun--to his grandpa's farm, to walk around and look for things to shoot. We shot some trees and saw a few birds, but they were too far off, flying too fast, or were too small.
Finally, Jared spotted a squirrel, happily running around the top of a tree. The squirrel was clearly out of range for Jared's blow gun, but definitely in-range for my BB gun. Jared and I looked at each other, and knew without a word, it was time.
I steadied my adolescent legs, took aim, and shot, hitting the squirrel squarely, knocking it off its branch, causing it to start tumbling down the tree, flipping and flopping, crashing into limbs, breaking twigs, and making an odd sound that could only be described as, "wounded squirrel." It met the ground with an earthy thud.
Immediately, the squirrel and I met eyes. There was a silence that ensued, and in my mind, I could all but hear whistling tumbleweeds rolling through. It was a shootout, at high noon, in the west, and we were waiting for the clock to strike 12.
Abruptly, the squirrel started crawling towards me vigorously with its wounded front paw, as I grabbed for my pistol. Not expecting that I would need to fire another shot so quickly, my chamber was empty. I frantically loaded another BB, pumped 10 times, and shot. The squirrel, in its immortality, continued on, un-fazed. I started backing up and tripped a little, as I loaded my pistol a third time; the squirrel was closing in.
I fired another round into the squirrel which significantly slowed it, but didn't stop it. This Terminator squirrel just wouldn't die. As I continued to load my gun a fourth time, I whined to Jared that I didn't like hunting any more, but he encouraged me that the only humane thing left to do, was to put the animal out of its misery. I reluctantly fired the final round.
Jared and I stood silently for a few moments. The death of this squirrel simultaneously signified the end of adolescence, and the beginning of adulthood. Jared quietly took a stick and pitched the lifeless body into the weeds, and we walked back to the farm-house, drove home, and didn't talk about it ever again.
I am now a man.