The birds are falling. They flutter in the sky as a shower of gun shots bursts from below. Then the beautiful dark shaped creatures fall to the earth with the ring of satisfaction from the hunters beneath. My teeth clench and I hold my breath, willing the birds to fly, fly far before the hunters- my father- can reach them.
It's not that my father needs the birds. We have plenty to make it through winter. 'Purely for sport' he'd tell me when I asked. He's a hardened and biased man that I've given up reasoning with. Do as he says, or at least make it seem that you do, or a beating is sure to come.
Like how he tells me that I must marry a hunter. I will not. I will not even marry. But, I tell him that I will, of course. And when he asks me what I think of animals, I say food. Never a living breathing thing. Food. Game. Sport. Just for the fun of it.
But now I must watch. It's not something I can lie about, because I watch with my brother, Eric. He smiles as he watches the mass of birds fall. He will be just like father, mother always says. She's probably right. Eric and I don't talk much.
I am nothing like my parents. I look and act just like them. But that's all it is- an act. I hate the 'sport' of killing. I hate the desperate but ignorant eyes of a doe before father shoots it through. I hate watching the birds fall.
But they're still falling.
Minutes later the guns stop. I cringe, knowing that the worst is yet to come. Mother start the water boiling over the hearth, and Father makes his way home, his arms full of the dead. This is where I will have to fight back my rage, and take them from him. They'll still be warm, still full of their lives that never got lived. I'll take them out back, and pluck them. Then I'll be expected to walk in with the meat, without flinching. This weekly torcher is what hurts me the most. I have to help my father's murderous hand; eat the meat of a victim.
Now my father comes out of the edge of the woods, his hunting bag full.
"Anna Beth!" he calls, making his way to the porch.
Mother shows up at the door, a smile on her pale face.
"There you are Mona," he says, placing the sack in my small arms. I bite my lip harder and head out back, to where I pluck them. A horrible sickness broiled in my stomach as I opened the bag, to find the small feathered bodies of the gees. I hold my breath and pull the first out.
Through a film of disgusted tears I pluck away one my one the rest of the birds, then but them delicately bag in the bag. I head into the cottage, and set them on the kitchen table. As I wash my hands in the water bucket, I hear Mother and Father speaking.
"What is it Nickolas?" Mother said, shocked.
"I don't know, Mary," he said, his chest swelling with pride.
"It's still alive?"
"Yes, but I'm going out there tonight to finish it," he says, "Then I'll bring it to the next meeting, and we'll have enough money for the next decade,"
I freeze. Tonight? He's killing another one tonight. And it's a special one.
I can't resist, that evening. I follow my father into the woods.