Slow Dancing - Maggie Wooll

Willow Boy saw Ephraim Haines the minute he stepped out of the shadow at the edge of the aspen, not that he’d figured out who it was yet. All he saw was the blaze orange of his cap and the thick padding of camouflage and hoped there weren’t half a dozen other good old boys in the thicket to contend with. The hunter stood still, blinking in the sudden light, his head swiveling and nostrils flaring for all the world like some old bear roused from his slumber.

Willow Boy slunk down lower behind the basalt outcropping, dropping imperceptibly half-inch at a time until his belly was pressed tight on the black sun-warmed rock, never taking his eyes off the lone hunter at the edge of the trees. The basalt had been blown clear of the earth during some million years ago volcanic eruption and its jagged, cratered surface was sharp despite his fatigues. He shifted his forearm clear of one knife-edged knuckle. The hunter again turned in his direction, and his finger twitched at his side, feeling for the long sniper’s rifle he’d left standing against the tree he’d been camping under, two hundred yards away.

The figure turned to look up-slope, and this time Willow Boy caught the curving glint of the bow he carried over his shoulder, the sun winking off the telescopic sight on top. He relaxed a little. Bow hunters were loners, especially considering the bow season was already over and this joker was tracking game in the middle of the afternoon. Willow Boy started inching backwards, moving his feet carefully to avoid any small landslides of loose shale on the dry crumbly earth. His wiry length rested only on his fingers and toes until he had dropped well back on the slope, and he finally dared move into a crouch and steal, silent as the breeze, back through the trees to his camp.

He thought he heard the crack, the pure sweating adrenaline already on his forehead before he heard the whir in his ear, felt the thud of impact, and the sickening crunch of bone. His shoulder burned. He whipped around, instinctively calling out for his men, covering, dizzy as the burn went to his core.

He felt himself spinning. It was the opposite of slow dancing, the fast-fast-slow, fast-fast-slow of two-stepping around The Rose with some long-limbed, pony-tailed barrel racer while the band covered Garth Brooks for the 100th time because they didn’t have the chops for Alan Jackson now that the crowd was deep in their long necks and 7-and-7s and their own handle had run dry.

A figure emerged, a white face, strange angle. “Oh, hella jesus, oh fuck man, I thought you was a deer. Oh jesus.” And suddenly Willow Boy recognized the old classmate, not a friend, and thought Ephraim Haines you’re still a fucking moron, and then he passed out.