The sleeping chickens. The weasel appearing out of the darkness, slipping under the gate…
He wished he could have been inside when it happened.
Shortly after the henhouse attack, he began his game with the mice. Many farms in the area, including his, used a gully on the far side of the highway as a trash dump. It was there that he first started to hunt. Each day after school he amused himself by trapping small rodents in the rusty oil cans they made their homes. Smashing down his boot, he trapped them inside, then impaled them with a blunted stick as they tried to escape. He enjoyed their panic, and the slippery popping squeaks they made when he shoved in the stick, and the way they quivered at the end-their eyes bulging uncomprehendingly in death.
His diversion with the rodents reminded him of the fascination he felt while watching Paula through a crack in her bedroom wall. At fourteen, Paula’s body had begun to change, her breasts budding, a dark triangle adorning the secret place between her legs. One night she caught him watching, and again months later upon entering her bedroom she found him trying on some of her clothes. On each occasion she reported the incident to her mother. Both times Adelia’s punishment was swift and harsh, from which he learned a painful lesson, although not the one his mother intended.
He swore he would never be caught again.
On his thirteenth birthday, his foster father gave him a single-shot, bolt action. 22-caliber rifle. The timing of the gift proved perfect, as his excursions to the dump were becoming boring. He needed to play with something bigger.
Rifle in hand, he spent every free hour that summer in the woods. He learned to avoid killing with his initial shot, finding it more enjoyable to prolong the moment of death. Although birds died with disappointing rapidity, squirrels lasted longer, many surviving a remarkable time under the explorations of his pocket knife. Rabbits, his favorite target, didn’t cling to life as tenaciously as the squirrels but compensated for their lack of hardiness with a particularly piercing squeal under the blade. Learning from his mistakes, he took to wearing heavy gloves to avoid bites and scratches during his experiments, discovering that even smaller prey could prove dangerous when facing death.
Soon he graduated to larger game. With mystifying regularity, neighborhood dogs and cats started disappearing from bordering farms and woodlands. Always, he buried his victims deep in the woods.
In bed he often fantasized about his kills, savoring his secrets like treasures. One night, after a particularly satisfying encounter with a mongrel dog that had eluded him for weeks, he discovered there were things he could do with the roll of flesh between his legs besides urinate. In the months that followed he spent many quiet hours masturbating in the darkness, reliving his adventures and wondering what it would feel like to kill something larger.
It didn’t take long to find out.
During the summer of his fifteenth year, he had an experience by which he came to define himself. It began innocently enough, but it opened his eyes to a world of possibilities he had barely suspected. While stalking a stray cat one drizzly, overcast afternoon, he saw his sister returning from a weekend visit with a girlfriend in Utica. Paula had exited the bus at the crossroads and was making her way home, taking a shortcut through the woods. Adelia and Nicholas had driven the family truck to town that morning to do the weekly shopping, and it was over a mile to the nearest farmhouse. No one could hear. Rifle resting in the crook of his arm, he watched his sister from hiding, staying well back in the trees.
At first he had only intended to scare her. His initial shot didn’t come close, thumping harmlessly into the trunk of a nearby tree. Enticed by her terror, however, he continued to bracket her with shots, staying hidden but moving to cut her off from the safety of the highway. Then it happened. One of the bullets accidentally ricocheted through the fleshy part of her upper arm. A red stain spreading to her shoulder, Paula ran for her life. Brambles tore at her skirt, exposing her legs. He followed, heart racing with excitement. He knew what he was going to do. He couldn’t stop.
Nor did he want to.
Minutes later Paula stumbled and fell. As she lay gasping, he shot her in the other arm. Screaming, she scrabbled through the underbrush. Each time she stopped, he shot her again, taking her left knee, then her right.
Her legs useless, she sprawled facedown in the dirt. Slowly, he stepped into the clearing and turned her over with his foot. She had wet herself. She looked up, eyes brimming with confusion and terror. She reminded him of a dog he’d once taken. He put his foot on her throat and pressed gently. Gagging, she clawed at his boot, promising she wouldn’t tell.
He placed the rifle muzzle to her forehead, watching as the shock of realization seeped into her eyes. Tears mingled with the blood and dirt on her face, cutting twin tracks down her cheeks.
Why? she sobbed.
He said nothing. Instead, he waited, savoring her fear.
He smiled when he pulled the trigger.
Afterward he did other things to her, things he would carry with him for the rest of his days. Finally he covered her with branches and hurried back to the barn for a shovel. As a rainstorm that had been threatening since morning began in earnest, he dragged her deeper into the woods. Far from prying eyes, he buried her, concealing her grave with sticks and leaves. After digging a separate pit some distance away, he buried the rifle as well. He regretted relinquishing the gun and blamed his sister for the loss. After all, if she hadn’t been walking in the woods, it never would have happened.
He cleaned himself in the river before returning home.
The storm raged through the night. The next morning, when Paula still hadn’t returned home, authorities organized a search party to comb the woods near where she had been seen getting off the bus. Using tracking dogs and neighborhood volunteers, they looked without success, continuing until darkness forced them to quit. Fearing the worst, they began anew the following day, widening their search to the nearby mountains.
The afternoon of the second day, as he came in from doing his chores, he found his mother in his room. She was going through his things. Beneath the bottom drawer of his dresser she had discovered his cache of hunting mementos. Fortunately, he’d hidden a watch he had taken from Paula elsewhere. Nevertheless, unsettled by her discovery, Adelia began questioning him regarding his sister’s disappearance. Though he steadfastly maintained that he knew nothing of Paula’s whereabouts, Adelia kept hammering at him, refusing to let it drop. Finally she stomped into the kitchen and lifted the phone.
Horrified, he watched as she called the police. The search party, including the sheriff and both deputies, was combing the mountains and temporarily out of radio range, but the dispatch operator promised to keep trying. By then he knew what he had to do.
Predictably, as they waited for the police to call back, Adelia and Nicholas broke out a bottle. After their second drink he slipped outside. Behind the kitchen, at a point where the utility services joined the house, he cut the telephone wires and concealed the severed ends. Next he disabled the family truck by removing the distributor rotor. Finally he went back inside and played the innocent son, insisting on mixing his parents fresh drinks. On their fourth round he secretly added something from Adelia’s medicine cabinet. Something to help them sleep.
Later, upon discovering the phone lines were down, Adelia informed him that if phone service wasn’t restored by morning, they would be making a trip to town to confer with the police. And they would get to the bottom of things.
Hours later he slipped into his adoptive parents’ bedroom. By then the drug-and-alcohol mix had taken full effect. Both Adelia and Nicholas lay in a stupor, as still as death. With trembling fingers, he pulled back the covers from Adelia’s body. Her nipples looked black in the moonlight, her fleshy thighs alabaster white. Feeling himself growing hard, he despised himself for his weakness. Himself, and his adoptive father as well.
Afterward, after replacing the covers, he checked the windows. Closed and locked. Next he picked up his mother’s cigarette lighter from her nightstand and crept from the room. Moving quietly, he descended the cellar stairs. Against a wall by the gas furnace he dumped a pile of cleaning rags, soaked them with lubricating oil, and used his mother’s Zippo to light the pile.
He stood beside the barn as fire engulfed the ancient farmhouse, watching as flames twisted like demons in the night. Staring into the blaze, he thought he saw figures stumbling through the inferno, but he couldn’t be sure. Later, his face set in a convincing mix of terror and shock, he ran to a neighboring farm.
The following day he was sent to live with his adoptive grandparents in Rochester. Unusually heavy rains
