The bomb
The bright flash of light!
What! What!
It’s the middle of the night dad!
“Oh no it’s just like Mr. Philips, my crazy math teacher said, the Russians have bombed us!”
Dad’s yelling in my ear,
“boy! Boy! Wake up.”
I jump to attention, still dazed with sleep, I yell back at him, “It’s to late dad! Mr. Philips said that if the bomb didn’t kill us, something called radiation would come get us”. “What the hell are you jabbering about boy?”
Come on and get up!
What?“Come on! Were going hunting.”Oh no! Not hunting! I raise my head and see my brother Vernon; he’s standing in his underwear, rubbing his eyes.
I slowly get out of bed and move closer to my brother, we both just kind of stand there, caught between sleep and incomprehension.
Dad tosses me a pair of jeans and leaves.
Vernon and I slowly start to get dressed.
Dad comes back into the room and yells, “Hurry before it gets too late.”With out thinking, I ask him, “Too late for what? Are the deer going some place?” Before I can duck, I get my first slap side the head; dad leaves for the kitchen. Vernon and I finish getting get dressed, putting on almost everything we own (this isn’t our first time huntin).We slowly head for the kitchen, dads waiting, and as we sit down to the table, he hands us both a mug of hot coffee, we smile at each other, as we sip the mostly sugar and cream beverage.
Dad tells us to grab our rifles from the coat closet. As we move toward the door, my brother makes the mistake of mentioning breakfast;
Dad starts in on how real hunters don’t eat until they make the kill.
Before my brain can tell my mouth to stop, I ask, “In that case, shouldn’t we bring a fryin pan,” ouch! Second slap of the day and its not even 4:00 in the morning. The trucks freezing! My brother and I huddle close for warmth, we know from this point on its only going to get worse. Dad drives for what seems to be only a few seconds, and parks (must of fell asleep).
We stand next to the pickup, the ground is covered with frost and we can here pops and snaps from the woods! As dad loads the guns, Vern and I stare look at each other with round eyed apprehension, then at the woods.
“Ok boys, here’s the plan.
My dad points off to the right, to an even darker spot in the darkness,
“Vernon, you follow that ridge for about half a mile and when you get to a big maple, stop and sit, just stay alert and watch for deer along the bottom, they’ll be comin boy!”
Dad then looks at me and points back down the road. “Ok, you! You go back down the road for about quarter mile, then turn into the woods and walk for about ten minutes, stop and sit down and wait, and stay awake!”Dad think that Vern and I are geniuses, me at age twelve and Vern being just ten, I don’t think he knows that we don’t know how far a mile is or any part of a mile for that matter, and as far as walking for ten minutes. I don’t own a watch, and doing the one Mississippi thing for a whole ten minutes is a lot more work than I want to do.
As I start walking back down the dirt road, I’m wondering how long its going to take dad to find us this time, last time he took us hunting, Vern and me was lost for most the day, we didn’t get out of the woods till ten that night.
Ma was really mad.
Dad was calling us dummy’s and she was calling him things I won’t mention here. As I make my way through the pricker bushes along the side of the road and start up the hill, I think about the bomb, I bet it wouldn’t hurt as much as this is probably gonna.
M.E.T.
