The Hunters

It was a two bedroom house with paneling on the walls in the living room and both bedrooms. They had their own generator for electricity and well water. The gasoline for the truck and the generator were picked up in visits into the nearest town by his father once every two months or so. He grew his own crops and hunted all of his own meat. Recently he had started making his own clothes and furniture. The alienation from the rest of the world which Andrew new so little about went unnoticed and essentially unmissed throughout his childhood. By age nine he asked his father if there were any other people in the world, his father replied that the world ends at the limits of your own sight and that there didn't need to be any other people. The contempt his father had for the outside world never was fully explained to Andrew, but in his future it was understood. His father had taught him to read and write as he got older; the concept of school was completely unknown to him until his late teens. His father had taught him much but at this time the most valuable of all experienced lessons was at hand; hunting.

His father had given him a rifle. Standing there holding it in his hands for the first time he wasn't entirely sure of the power that he held. But his father had taken him out behind the house to teach him what it was to be the lord of the earth. Their house was in a rural area of Virginia. It looked like wasted farm land, the house was alienated from the nearest community; the closest neighbor was at least a mile away. A dirt road ran in front of the house, Andrew had at least seen three cars pass by on it in his lifetime. The back yard appeared to him a crop field that had been burnt and re-grown for straw and weeds. The garden his father kept was on the side of the house. He kept tomatoes, lettuce and carrots for the most part. As they stood there the daylight was slipping into the shadow of dusk, ready to envelop the new night sky. His father told him to wait for a live target, shooting at cans or any other lifeless object would teach nothing.

"The world is full of life." His father told him, "And its all hanging in the balance, there is nothing that can't die but the strongest make the choice not to."

His father told him that his first shot must be one that took a life. They waited until night fall and without any foreseen sign a cat crossed their path about fourteen yards. Andrew looked at his father who nodded with approval and Andrew raised the gun. But the gun was so heavy to him; it weighed his entire body down affecting his balance. In a shot that nearly knocked him to the ground he felt adrenaline shoot through his veins and into his ego. He felt alive in the same moment that he looked up praying to see a death. He was disappointed to see that he had merely shot off the cat's tail. From that day fourth his father put him into a physical routine. Nightly push ups and pull ups, he worked his arms legs and chest. After the first week he did it without being told and it was after tree weeks that his father took him to the forest.