Hard
by
Jack R. Dunn
He has finished hurting her for now. She r uns from the house as she always does after
this. In the barn she finds the small caliber rifle he bought her for shooting crows.
"Ya get a quarter a head," he’d said, picking at his dentures with a long dirty fingernail.
"Kill twenty, Jerry-Jean, an’ ya can take Saturd’y afternoon off."
Most farmers would have used noisemakers, or given her a shotgun, but he wanted them
dead and he said the rifle would make her a good shot. It did.
She is sweating as she climbs the steep slope of the levee behind the house. She slips and
branches from a stunted maple scratch her ankl e, drawing blood. She ignores the wound, leans
on her rifle to get her balance, and keeps climbing. At the top of the levee a rough Army Corps
of Engineers road winds between the trees. Cicad as buzz above her in the still green. As she
walks she kicks stones from the road. Her hands shake as she loads the rifle. It is a small gun, bu
still too large for her nine year old hands. A coupl e of rounds fall to the di rt, and as she kneels to
pick them up, she begins to sing in a low wavering voice.
"Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts."
...
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