Waiting for Autumn by Scott Blum

smell of gunpowder mixed with the stench of rotting cheese and salmon eggs. The shelves were still packed with guns, fishing poles, ammunition, and all the paraphernalia needed to quickly and violently destroy any of our fellow nature friends.
    As the door shut behind me, I could see three generations of old-timers sitting on green vinylcovered bar stools and sipping steaming black coffee while talking to the store owner. They were all wearing matching pearl-buttoned cowboy shirts and grease-stained baseball caps with tractor company logos stitched on the fronts. Their dust-worn, gravelly voices intertwined with the uncomfortable memory of my thirteenth birthday.
    “I’m going to get my grandson this ought-six for Christmas.”
    “Today I’m going to show you the gun that will be yours if you keep your grades up.”
    “That’s quite a gun for a thirteen-year-old. It’ll knock him on his keister.”
    The store filled with laughter that nearly masked a coughing fit from the eldest.
    “This is the same gun my father gave me when I was your age, and if you weren’t so far behind in school, it would already be yours. A gun like this will make you a man.”
    “Yeah, but he’s a darn-near sharpshooter with his .22. Can shoot beer cans from 300 yards without a scope.”
    “I wish I had his peepers. I would’ve got that six-pointer a couple years back.”
    “You and that six-pointer. I don’t think I believe you even saw it anymore.”
    The other two roared with laughter, and this time the coughing fit went on for a solid thirty seconds.
    “It would be a shame if your lackadaisical attitude in school prevented you from becoming a man. Do you hear me?”
    I’m not sure where my father got the idea that I bought into his theory that you needed to kill innocent animals to become a man, but I had always been secretly proud that I helped save wildlife by letting my grades slip. To be honest, I’d been bored by the curriculum in the new school, which was almost two years behind what I had been learning before I moved. And by the time my new school had caught up, I felt I was so superior to everyone there, including most of the teachers, that I never bothered to do any homework—until I finally dropped out three years later.
    Mounted high on the wall of the shop were two deer heads frozen in time while locking their blood-covered horns. Both their long tongues were hanging out, and all four eyes had rolled to the backs of their heads in agony, as they clearly hadn’t passed on peaceful terms. The sight of the deer heads instantly transported me to the first time my father and I had gone hunting, a few months after my thirteenth birthday. Since my report card hadn’t arrived yet, he’d lent me one of his guns, which was way too big for me.
    “We’ll tell your mother you got this one yourself. I’m proud of you, son.”
    In truth I had nicked the deer’s back right leg with my shaky aim, and my father had finished it off with the second fatal shot before it had a chance to limp off into the wild. I was speechless as I stood over the deer and wondered how I could have been involved in taking such a beautiful life away from its family.
    My father thrust a large hunting knife into my small hands; and with his hand squeezing tightly around my fingers, he steadied the blade at the base of the deer’s long, smooth neck.
    “Come on, son, you have to move quickly. If you don’t bleed him in the first couple minutes, you’ll ruin the meat.”
    I tried to pull the knife away from the deer with all my strength, but my father squeezed my fingers until it felt like he was going to crush them. He then pushed the knife deliberately into the innocent’s flesh, and bright red liquid began to foam and gush. . . .
    My stomach immediately grew queasy, and I almost passed out in the sporting-goods store. I was instantly light-headed and could feel my face turn pale. I stumbled to the door and pushed it open while gasping for