Wayne was a slightly older, distant cousin, and when he invited me rabbit hunting on Christmas Day one year, I jumped at the chance.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Wayne was headed in the wrong direction, and ended up there long before I became an adult. But that hunt was magical, and is burned into my memory as a great day afield.
Santa Claus had brought Wayne a 12-gauge semi-automatic, and he told me to leave my single shot at home. We’d take turns shooting his new gun.
At first, I wasn’t keen on that idea, as I envisioned big scads of rabbits sprouting out of every thicket, with Wayne hogging the gun.
My worries were laid to rest. Walking an old road bed cutting through the woods, we rounded a bend, and Wayne dropped to one knee. I did the same, and spotted a lone cottontail about 20 yards up the trail. Wayne took aim and quickly rolled the rabbit, clicked the safety on, and handed me the gun.
“There’s another one, 20 feet to the left,” he whispered to me.
Obviously, Wayne could have blasted that one too, but wanted me to have a chance.
“Take your time, get the bead on him, and just squeeze the trigger,” he said.
I did, and nothing happened.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Safety is on.”
I clicked the safety off, and tried again. This time, the rabbit rolled as my shot found its mark. And with no warning at all, another rabbit shot out of the brush, running full speed. I instinctively shot. That rabbit rolled too.
“Oops,” I thought to myself. I should have handed the gun back to Wayne so he could shoot that surprise rabbit.
But no, he didn’t mind a bit.
“Great shot, little cuz!” he said. “We’ve got to hunt together more often!”
We never did hunt together again. Shortly after that day, Wayne got lost in another world, full of trouble, that consumed him. As the years went by, I saw him sparingly at family holiday gatherings. He was usually strung out on something to the point that he didn’t seem to even know where he was.
But every now and then, when the conversation turned to hunting among the adults, Wayne would put his hand on my shoulder and have his say.
“Ain’t a one of you here can hunt like this young fella,” he’d say, then tell me to meet him the next Saturday morning at the old mill house field.
I always showed up, but he never did. I hunted those days alone, but felt his company just the same.
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