When I was very young, perhaps seven, I don’t remember, my father decided that it was time I learned to hunt tigers. Of course, he didn’t know when he handed me a sleek Marlin pellet gun that gleamed like oil over water, that, in fact, I was destined to kill my first tiger with it. He wouldn’t have even thought about it as a legitimate possibility, as we lived in the upper half of North America, where the only tigers pace behind bars or are trapped in television sets.
But, despite being slightly confused and paternally concerned about my delusions, he taught me how to care for the weapon as he did for his giant hunting rifles that gleamed with a warm light on polished wood, the guns I was never, ever supposed to touch or even look at. This is how to clean, how to load, how to take apart barrel and stock, how to bring it up to the hollow in a shoulder, lay cheek on the stock and pull one eye shut, aim between breaths, and gently squeeze the trigger until the impossible happens and the projectile is flung toward your target. This, too, he explained to me, how the magic that occurs in the bullet and barrel is possible. He took apart his rifle rounds and shotgun shells and showed me the sand-like gunpowder that might as well have been gold dust for the incredulous awe I gave it, the sort of respect that my ancestors reserved for magic and holy places. He helped me practice aiming and shooting standing up, sitting down, laying on my belly or peeking around a tree until I could hit a root beer can reliably from forty yards; only then was he satisfied and would ruffle my hair. ‘Good job, girl,’ he’d say. ‘Do it again.’
If I close my eyes when I’m in the woods, sometimes I can still hear his voice, a rough rumble that almost shook the ground beneath me, a voice that marked out the edges of my map of the known world: ‘Careful, kiddo, a little to the left, gently, gently, gently, deep breath, half exhale. Don’t jerk the barrel’. I can almost smell his Old Spice shampoo and the WD-40 that always coated his hands. My father was a thorough man, tall and heavy in the shoulders and gut, a man made by the woodlands, swamplands, and country roads where he’d grown up and returned to time and time again. He wore Carhartt overalls like a uniform and believed that everyone should know how to use a gun and a screwdriver. He worked in a factory, fabricating, installing, designing the conveyor belts that powered America and his children’s futures. His was a rough, unconditional love, the kind that is like a scratchy, wonderful wool blanket, the only kind that could keep me warm in January. He let us fight our own battles, where my mother would have shielded us from all the small hurts we were exposed to. But when we needed him, he was an iron fortress, a bear with a roar loud enough to drown out fear. I loved him with all my young heart, I loved that he knew everything and was big enough and strong enough to chase the monsters away if they ever came for me, I loved how scarred his hands were and the wild stories he told of a reckless childhood, I loved that, out of all my siblings, I was the only one whose hair he ruffled and called 'kiddo', I loved that he never smelled like beer or vodka, like grandpa did. He could lift giant logs and gut a deer. Who needed Superman when Daddy was better?
But this gun changed things. He thought I was getting old enough to take care of myself and that meant that I had to go kill my own monsters, had to tuck myself in at night and check under my own bed. He didn’t tell me this, of course (he was a quiet man, and was not prone to sentimental outbursts, his language was actions and half smiles), but I understood what the gun meant, in the way children do. I think he was proud when he looked into my room that night and saw the Marlin hanging by the strap off my bedpost, gleaming in the light, even though the ammunition was locked in his room, for fear that I would start shooting at ghosts. Safety was his religion when it came to his children mixing with guns.
I was convinced a tiger lived in our woods, and I was terrified to enter the trees. I think that belief spawned from too many nature documentaries that showed a dangerous feline, deadly despite absurd stripes. A tiger was a heck of a lot bigger and stronger than me, with my skinny arms and short legs, and I had felt inadequate to my prey. But now I had a gun, and that made me dangerous, too. I had my match to the strength, claws, and teeth of the big ol’ Bengal. So I went out, gun in my hands, carrying it the way Daddy showed me for safety, finger pressed against the trigger lock but never touching the trigger unless I wanted to shoot. I never found the tiger or killed anything bigger than a chipmunk or mouse. Most times I hit dirt or trees, wild haymaker shots that did nothing but assuage my fears and waste ammo.
I still have that gun, and it’s stained and tattered from hunts through tangled brush and that time my brother threw it in the river, a good deal rustier than it was eleven years ago. Sometimes I pick it up, tiny as it is to me now, and rest my cheek against the stock, take a breath and close my eyes. The years fall away like nothing and I’m back behind my parent’s house and there is the tiger, waiting for me, giant and powerful and cloaked in ancient beauty. And there I am, small and innocent and fearless, ready to meet it.
