Free You Will Never See Any God: Stories by Ervin D. Krause

one, and this is what still made him shake a little, just a little, the inspection afterwards that he did not need to do, but always forced himself to do, remembering each time he did so his not wanting to shoot things when he was very young and being ordered to by his father when he was twelve or so, the first time, and how his father had put the rifle in his hand, another rifle then, assuredly, and had chosen a random bird, just to have him shoot something, a woodpecker, a bird he’d always liked, a woodpecker! and he had shot and hit it. The bird had come down, alarming him, horrifying him, yet in the fatherly approval that he desired delighting him too. He had not looked at the bird, could not, but ever after that he had, always examined that which he had brought to death, picked up the bundle of feathers, felt for the point of being hit, and ever amazed at the awful impact of the bullet. That was it, really, the real heart and matter of it, he thought, even as he fed the slendergray little bullets into the clip, nosed them in, the brass case seated firmly, and felt the bullets, so tiny, a quarter the size of his little finger, and from that what awful impact! What terrible change from something so small, hardly to be believed, and sometimes he had mused on whether one bullet, so little, so few grams there, whether one could hurt him , whether if he shot himself somewhere, arm, foot or wherever, if it would hurt. And knew it would, smiled at the thought, shot a hog for butchering once; and was astounded at how the 260-pound lumbering beast had thundered down as if a cosmic scythe had struck with whirlwind force to reap off its legs, it had scuttled down so suddenly. With awful impact the bullet found home. The turning bullet goes home (and why “home”? he asked, why that word?), the flesh is pounded to jelly, the bones that the victim thinks will surely last a thousand years are riddled and smashed (he had felt the crunched crispness like rattled potato chips of the bones of pheasants he had shot) . But the bullet carries its own palliation, he thought grimly. It was said that the bullet deadens all pain in the locale of striking. Perhaps that was why the dying animals offered yet to flee from him instead of from that which was killing them—the bullet within.
    He crossed the fence, driving the dog back for sure this time, went down along the pasture, picked up a stray cat at forty yards, scrubbing along the fence row, tacky and mean, and shot it dead. The cat went straight into the air, wrestling with something there, and down again, thrashed along for ten feet or so. When Leonard came up, it lay on its side, hissing and stroking with one forepaw, the other side paralyzed apparently, a smoking and open wound in its belly.
    “What’s your history, cat?” he asked, touched it with the rifle muzzle to see if it would need a new bullet. It did not move at the gesture. “Only one life today?” he asked. And thought, god, god,profoundly altered, changed, eternally for it, eternally changed by that awful meeting of something brought crushing and unexpected through space to meet it here, unexpected and unpredestined except as the shooter destines, now in one casual determination. He watched, pulling at the hurting bandage on his neck. Hissing of remarkable anger, a rage, that changed to a terrible rattle in its throat and two great spasms, and freezing in that clenched posture. Forever, forever, Leonard thought; or as long as the bugs will let it alone—that’s how long this forever is.
    There was a tightness around his forehead, a coolness in his chest; it always came upon him when he watched something die, this meditative and hurting helplessness at the irreversibility of it, even if he had brought it, but the bringing had been from a distance, the dying was up close. This nearness of the smashing, the impact, irreversible, irretrievable. He felt it more powerfully now. Especially now.
    Smooth barrel, oiled stock,