Free The Healer of Harrow Point by Peter Walpole Page B

heal an old, arthritic dog. If anyone among the boys at school had the least reservation about hunting, I never heard it. And they weren't going to hear it from me.
    Indeed, my friends at school were certain that I was going to go hunting. My father had told me months before that he would take me hunting on my birthday. And for years my parents had said, in answer to my pestering and pleading, that I could have a shotgun of my own for my twelfth birthday, but not before. All this my friends knew, because I had told them.
    So in the lunchroom that day it was natural that I would, after all, be drawn into the talk of hunting season.
    “You going to the meeting tomorrow night?” Cady, one of my friends, asked me.
    “Yeah,” I said, “I have to help my dad with stuff.”
    “My dad says ‘next year, maybe next year,’” Cady said, “but it's my mom that won't let me go.”
    I just nodded. There was a meeting for hunters at the firehouse the next night, and my father would be talking about hunting safety there. I was going.
    “My dad told my mother I was going hunting whether she liked it or not,” Mike said.
    “If my dad said that to my mother, she would kick his ass,” Cady said matter-of-factly.
    We chuckled, but only a little. We all knew Cady's mom.
    “I'm gonna find me a buck and BAM,” Mike slammed his fist down on his tray with sufficient force to make his tater tots pop into the air, which pleased him enough that he slammed his fists in rapid succession. “BAM BAM BAM!”
    Cady shook his head. “You saw a buck, you'd wet your pants.”
    “You can kiss my big ol' butt,” Mike said companionably.
    “My dad says you don't even see one, half the time,” I said. “Don't even see a deer.”
    “Where are you all going to go?” Cady asked.
    I shrugged.
    “We're going out behind my grand-daddy's farm,” Mike said. “There's all kind of land back there, and can't no one hunt it but family. I'm going to find me a buck, you watch.”
    “You want to bet?” Cady asked.
    “Well,” Mike said, “my father won't let me bet, or I would.”
    “Sure you would,” Cady said, and then turned to me, and tapped his fork on the table top. “I wish I was going with you, wherever you all go.”
    “Probably won't be anything,” I said quietly.
    “Your dad will find some deer, you watch.”
    That evening my father came home early from work, which was rare. I had only been home from school for a half an hour or so, and was more or less moping around the house.
    “Not going prowling in the woods this afternoon?” my mother had asked.
    “Not today,” I said. “I've got some stuff to do.” Which was clearly not the case. Our little dog, Toby, was following me around from room to room. All at once I thought I felt the question ‘play?’ form inside me, and I swung around and looked at Toby, who was just standing there, staring at me. His tail flipped from one side to the other, and then he stood still.
    “Come here,” I said, and sat down on the floor.
    Toby bounced over and pushed his head against my side, his tail wagging, ready for a bit of play.
    “No,” I said. “Hold still.”
    He was still interested in playing, but I managed to get him still, and then I slowly ran my right hand along the ridge of his small back, my eyes closed, trying to rediscover that other, strange, wonderful sense, trying to recreate what Emma had showed me to do with Abigail . . . but there was nothing there, just Toby's back, like always. I frowned. Toby began wagging his tail again. And then I heard my father's cruiser pulling into the drive.
    I went over to the window and saw my father walking to the house with a couple of shotguns cradled in one arm and a box of shells in the other. I scrambled outside to help him.
    “Hey, sport,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “Give me a hand, here?”
    I immediately reached for the smaller of the two shotguns.
    “You remember John McCumber?” my dad asked.
    I