I guess I’ve always had a soft heart.
Captain Tobias Malloy. That’s pronounced Muh-loy. Twenty-nine years of age. Six foot one, one hundred and seventy pounds. That’s me. Even after two tours overseas playing hide-and-go-seek in the desert, I still can’t help but smile when I see children playing. Not my kids -I’ve been married twice and I’m still not ready for that mess. And yet I smile every time I see the little guys.
A soft heart. Maybe that’s why I did it.
It was just the two of us. Father and son bonding time and all that. Heartwarming stuff. It would be for most people, anyway. It turns out, Army Colonels don’t make the best fathers. Especially not Colonel Malloy. Uncle Sam doesn’t teach the best parenting methods. Maybe you can beat fear and respect into a person, but it stops there. As for the rest of life . . .
Enough. That’s not why we’re here.
It was December twenty-first, only two days after dove season opened. We each had our shotguns loaded with buckshot -he with his Benelli, me with my Mossberg. The Colonel might not have been much of a dad, but he’s always had the best toys.
He carried a sidearm -a shining silver Sig Sauer .40 automatic. I did not -I’ve always thought it was silly to bring a pistol hunting. That’s what shotguns and rifles are for. In war, you carry a pistol for when your primary weapon fails you and you’ve gotta react fast. Doves don’t shoot back very often, so having a pistol, hunting, was about as unnecessary as having a third ear -while perhaps useful in unusual circumstances, it’s pretty ridiculous.
We quietly walked the first mile from the house into the woods. My father owns a nice plot of about a hundred acres in Sevier County. Plenty of room to camp, hike, and hunt. Or bury bodies, if you have to, but mine is an Army family, not CIA. After the first mile, we slowed down. I knew the path well; although there were no markers and there was no visible trail to follow, I had hiked through those woods enough to know my way around. The Colonel stretched his shoulders, pivoted his waist, stretched his back, and held his shotgun high. It was go-time.
I checked my Mossberg. The twelve-gauge had eight shells loaded plus one in the breach. I had a dozen more shells spread out in the pockets of my camo jacket. The Colonel’s bag had plenty of extra shells, too, plus his normal hiking gear in case things didn’t go as planned. The boy scout motto: Be prepared.
We came to the first clearing and spotted a few doves at the edge, resting on some trees. A blast from each of us, and we had the poor things bagged. He saw me cringe as I picked up my kill. I placed the crumpled, white form in our sack and wiped my hand on my pants.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said.
He frowned and walked on.
At the other end of the big, grassy clearing, we found another group. They flew away as we got within firing range. The Colonel whispered curses and crouched down to survey the scene. Through God-knows-what method, he divined a direction and started walking, still in a crouch. I stayed low and followed, doing my best to quiet my footsteps. My tan boots crunched leaves with every step.
As we walked on, the wind began to howl. It had been a warm December, but as we trudged on I could feel the temperature dropping. It had been in the high fifties when we came out. It was probably down to the forties already.
Pretty soon we came to a watering hole. One, solitary dove sat on a tree facing the other direction. While pretty (and tasty), doves are particularly stupid birds. Although their senses are quite keen, they often neglect to watch their flanks. This dove, however, got spooked before we even got close. When we were about fifty paces from the pond, he took flight and disappeared above the treeline.
The Colonel growled and jumped to his feet. His boots thumping toward the pond, he fired into the air, pumped the shotgun, fired again, again. The lucky bird was nowhere to be seen. The Colonel shook his head and loaded three more shells into his shotgun. I slowly approached him, keeping my shotgun pointed at the ground. Better safe than sorry. All of a sudden, his head snapped up and he froze. I followed his gaze.
On the other side of the pond, in a narrow passage between trees, stood a doe. She was staring right back at us. Not frightened, just curious. There are no shotgun blasts in the animal kingdom. Not all deer know to be scared of them. She just looked back at us, ears cocked, and waited for us to do something. She was beautiful.
My eyes refocused. The Colonel was staring down the sights of his Benelli shotgun.
Okay, I don’t know if you guys hunt, but – Oh, I can’t address the jury?
Okay, so uh, we were using buckshot, right? When you fire buckshot, tiny lead pellets leave the shotgun in a tight spread, shredding anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be caught in their path. The thing is, to kill something, you have to be pretty close -one or two of the pellets won’t do the trick.
I knew what was going to happen. He was gonna pull the trigger, the poor creature was going to get a face-full of buckshot, and she was going to run away and bleed. She was going to live in agony until she died of infection or a wolf got her. She wouldn’t understand why she hurt so bad. She wouldn’t understand why someone had done this to her. She wouldn’t understand anything at all.
A fate I don’t wish upon anyone, especially the innocent. And yet the Colonel understood perfectly what was going to happen when he pulled that trigger.
I’ve seen men and women die. Bullets and shrapnel tearing into people. IEDs blowing them apart. Not just soldiers. Civilians, too. So many people, none of whom deserved it. There was this woman -I never knew her name -this woman who always smiled at us as we passed by . . . forgive me, I’m getting off subject again.
“Don’t do it,” I said, no longer worried about spooking a few birds.
The colonel’s arms tensed up. He held his breath -he was about to fire. No more time. I stepped forward and gave his Achilles tendon a swift kick with my right leg, at the same time knocking the shotgun up with my elbow and attempting a disarm.
The kick connected. The Colonel snarled, a horrible wolf-like sound emanating from his curled lips. I didn’t disarm him -his grip was too tight, and let’s face it, he was a career military man -but I did succeed in knocking the barrel of the gun up, up into the air.
The shotgun went off, sending leaves and branches falling to the forest floor. In my peripheral vision, I could see the doe take off. Good. She got the message.
In an instant, the shotgun was resting in his left hand and his right hand was around my throat. Even though I stood two inches taller than the Colonel, the man seemed terrifyingly large.
“Don’t you ever do that again.”
I stared into his eyes and said nothing. I didn’t raise my gun. I didn’t try to smack him away. I just stared. After a few seconds, he let go and stomped off.
We hiked through the woods for another half an hour or so, maybe forty-five minutes, before it happened. The reason we’re here, I mean.
I wanted to cry when I saw it.
There she was. A creek had once run northeast to southwest from where we stood. In the dry creekbed, the doe lay shaking in fear. Her front left leg was bent unnaturally backwards, surely broken.
I never knew her name. The woman, I mean. It was stupid what happened to her. Senseless. Such a kind person, so sweet. And yet, that didn’t save her.
The deer? Right. Sorry.
We both just stared at her for a minute. I think we both had an idea of what was about to go down. Neither of us knew how it was going to end, of course.
“Tobias.”
“No,” I said. “I swear to God, don’t do it.”
The Colonel, expressionless, shifted his shotgun to his right hand, holding it by the barrel, and set it down. He leaned it against a tree and crossed his arms.
“Tobias.”
I turned and stared at the man, my grip growing ever-tighter on my Mossberg. I did not reply.
“Tobias. Shoot the deer.”
Nothing.
“Tobias, do it. Put the thing out of its misery.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll carry it back myself. Call a vet or something.”
“Tobias, its leg is broken. It needs to die. It’s only natural. That’s how it works in nature and you know that.”
I did know that, but hell if I was going to acknowledge it. That deer was going to live to see tomorrow. End of story.
“Do it, Tobias.”
I shook my head.
“Tobias, I said do it.”
“No.”
“TOBIAS!” he screamed. “Shoot the damn deer!”
I remained unmoving. I predicted the next move to be him going for his shotgun, so I was watching for the hand, the grab for the gun. I was wrong. The Colonel raised his shiny silver pistol and pointed it at my torso.
“Shoot the deer. Right now. I want to see you do it.”
The shotgun in my hand suddenly seemed like the worst thing in the world. Only bad things could happen now, and it wasn’t helping. It was the only time I’ve ever missed Iraq. Overseas, it would be simple -draw your weapon and fire. As much of a bastard as he was, though, he was still my father. And so that ruled out the shotgun.
He jerked the gun down and pulled the trigger. The gun roared. Dirt flew into the air and I jumped back. He had shot the ground to scare me. The gun was pointed at me again, now at my head. It was one of only three times in my life that I had stared down the barrel of a loaded gun. The other two times ended in the other guy full of holes.
We were beyond conversation. I knew the arguments and he knew me. He could call me a coward, a pussy. It didn’t matter. He could point out that I was a soldier, someone who shot and killed for a living, and that I wasn’t willing to kill this stupid deer. He didn’t. We both knew the score.
Two questions remained.
Number one: Would he really do it? Would the Colonel really shoot his own son? Over a deer?
Number two: Was I fast enough to get the gun away from him?
I knew the answer to neither question. I decided to act first. While I didn’t really want another hole in my head, standing around wasn’t doing me or the deer any good. I took a step forward.
The Colonel took a step backward and adopted a close-range stance. His right arm locked straight, his left arm forming an L to account for the recoil of the forty-caliber gun.
The Benelli lay against the tree to my immediate left. I hooked my foot around it and slung my leg around, flinging the shotgun into the creekbed, just to the right of the deer. Well away from the Colonel. Although it was a strange thought, I was suddenly glad that deer didn’t have hands, lest the threatened doe pick up the gun and seek vengeance.
The shotgun was secure, so that was one less option for the Colonel. He smiled. It was just a little hint of an expression, but I could see it. I had scored a point and he knew it.
About six feet separated the barrel of his Sig Sauer from my face. There was no way I could make that before he had time to pull the trigger. Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Yet . . . he might hesitate. I was his son, after all -his own flesh and blood. Maybe that would buy me the time I needed, which was only about half a second.
I swallowed and considered crossing myself. I’ve always felt closer to God when people were trying to kill me. So it was time.
I took a cautious, single step forward. He took a cautious, single step back. We both remained silent, the only noise coming from the stirring winds and the crunching of brown and yellow leaves under our boots. Our whole bodies were tensed.
There were no more excuses. I knew his left would be his weak side, so I darted forward and to my right. I gripped the butt of my shotgun and swung it toward the Colonel’s face, smashing his nose in a flash of scarlet. The pistol, although now pointed at the ground, was still in the Colonel’s hand, so I swung again, this time with a downward slice toward his gun-hand.
But he saw that coming. He pulled his arm back, I swung and stumbled off balance, and he brought the pistol crashing down on the back of my skull. Pain erupted in my head and the world tilted sideways. I fell over, but true to my training, kept going, and rolled back onto my feet. The world was still blurry, but I was standing.
I tackled him before my vision returned to me. There was no time to wait. He lifted his knee to kick me in the groin -I blocked with my own knee. He headbutted but I moved out of the way. Blood poured down his face. He didn’t care. I had to get that gun. Finally, he swung the pistol toward me again. I gripped it with both hands, shoved my body backward into his, and flipped him forward. The man rolled over me and slammed to the ground.
I pointed the pistol with both hands. It was over. Or, it should have been, but the stubborn bastard got back up.
What? I can’t hear you. How did he get shot? I’m getting to that. I’m sorry, Your Honor, I’ll try to move it along.
So there he was, standing and panting and staring me down as he tried to straighten out his nose. It was no use. The thing was surely broken.
I was done. That was it. I would just field-strip the gun, uhh, take it apart, I mean. So no one could fire it. So I would just field-strip the gun, throw the magazine away, and that would be that. I wouldn’t let him get to the shotguns. If he still wanted to kill the damn deer, he could strangle it with his bare hands.
I ejected the magazine and threw it to the forest floor. I pulled back the slide on the Sig Sauer to eject the round and pulled the trigger to send the slide back into place.
Rule number one when you are handling guns is Always assume the gun is loaded, even when you know it isn’t.
I violated rule number one. It turns out that the round didn’t actually eject when I pulled the slide back, so when I pulled the trigger, not only did the slide go forward -the gun fired. As the gun leapt in my hand, the whole world seemed to shake. Guns are loud, especially when you aren’t expecting them. This time, the Colonel didn’t growl or curse or spit or do any of those other things. He screamed.
He held both hands to his gut and moaned loudly. Blood seeped through his fingers. I had shot him. I had shot him right in the damn stomach. Not on purpose, mind you, but I shot him alright. The gravity of it all froze me in place. I couldn’t shoot the deer . . . and I had just shot my father. Those two facts just couldn’t seem to mesh together in the same brain.
After a second, the soldier in me kicked in and I dove for his hiking bag. Every good hiker keeps basic medical supplies with him at all times -and Colonel Malloy was more than a good hiker, he was a good hiker and an Army Colonel. I tossed the extra magazines for the Sig aside, the folded emergency blanket, the canteen full of more-likely-than-not whiskey, and the rations. I grabbed the first aid kit and went to work. As soon as I stopped the bleeding, more or less I mean, I threw him over my shoulders and trotted as fast as I could back to the house.
Yes, your honor that’s it. From the house? From there, I just called an ambulance and told them what happened. I summarized a little, of course.
The deer? I stuck to my word, Your Honor. Yes I went back for her. I said I stuck to my word. Well, I called the vet of course. How much? For the bill? Eight-hundred and forty-nine dollars, plus seventy-six cents.
Why, I took her home. What else was I going to do with her?