3 minute read
Fiction
Hunting Season Hunting Season
shuffling in place and blowing into his hands. Molloy, his fianc e Lynn’s father, turned up the street and eased his E plorer to a stop. Henry winced, thinking of the half-hour ride. Their first time alone together. It was warm in the front seat, but pipe smoke choked him, and Bob, Molloy’s black lab, slobbered the side of his face. Molloy coughed, his narrow, washed-out face, wi ened into a beak, pecking forward. He pointed across the street as they approached Longfellow S uare at a pink, plastic sheep wearing reindeer antlers in someone’s apartment window.
“We’re looking at a deal on the Bank of America building,” Molloy said, still scowling up Pine Street. “I thought we could use a construction man’s perspective.”
They both knew the only thing Henry knew about construction was how to nail-gun two-by-fours and knock shit down with a sledgehammer. Why bring it up again? Maybe Lynn had called her father. When it came to her father Deacon Molloy, fundraiser for the renovated steeple , she had no checkpoint between her thoughts and what came out of her mouth, especially with gems like this “I’m pregnant,” she had whispered to Henry while they were at Dewey’s last Saturday. The words had made no sense the first time, but the second time she said it, yes, he sat up and stared at the line of her aw.
Not long after they crossed the bridge, strings of houses gave way to open marshes and winding estuaries whose dark waters rippled with the ebbing tide. This was a spot, between Portland and Old Orchard Beach, which still remained wild in the possession of a few land- The Telling Roomholders Molloy knew well.
Molloy pulled off the road onto the shoulder near a bridge and parked the car. Outside, he Greater Portland’s handed Henry the darker shotgun. They loaded their gear into the canoe and moved into the Community Writing Centerflow taking them deeper into the marsh. Henry wanted to turn around and say that sometimes he didn’t love Lynn, but that often, more often than not, he did, and that sometimes, maybe more often than he would admit, he ust didn’t know. Instead, he rested his paddle across the •Free workshops for gunwales as they passed a narrowing slough, the reeds enclosing like hands. Molloy beached students ages 6 to 18 them and signaled for Henry to climb out on the bank, where they settled on a patch of muddy ground and crouched beneath the sky. •Upcoming classes for adults
Bob’s breath steamed, his eyes staring straight into the folds of reeds. on comic book writing,
“There’s one thing I’m not sure I understand about you, though,” Molloy said, but before secrets of the book publication he could finish, Henry stood straight up. A white flash sliced across the blue sky. Henry traced process, and travel writing the beating wings with the end of the barrel and fired. And the bird was gone. He ga ed over the reeds, which shifted with the wind combing its way inland, and rested his eyes on the flickering ripples of the estuary.
“That was a sea gull,” Molloy said, pipe clenched in his teeth. Bob vanished into the reeds and returned a moment later to drop the gull at their feet. Its one wing slapped the mud while its beak strained open.
Molloy pushed the bird underwater. The tip of the dirty wing stirred in the air as small bubbles rose and popped on the surface. Finished, he tossed the bird like a dirty rag on the opposite bank and then raised his hands, palms up. They were remarkably clean and pale.
“Do you have anything you want to say?” Molloy grumbled.
Henry shook his head. “I think I’ve said enough,” he said. ■
