Prey
livestock and services, living off what the land provides, and generally making do with what they’ve got. It was here that my father was raised.
It is here that my father raised his family.
Now, my father was a proud man; short, barely 5’7”, but stout. He was many things – a mountaineer, a carpenter, a survivor, a hunter…but mostly, he was proud. He instilled in me all of the virtues that I believe in today. He’s the type of man that would give you the last dollar to his name. The type that would go hungry to make sure his children were fed…and there were times that he did.
I suppose I should clarify that I grew up in poverty. I have no doubt that there were people worse off than we were, but times were hard nonetheless. My father worked intermittently – mostly in construction. There were few homes within our community that he did not at least help with. He built our house from the ground up; dug out the basement and leveled the land with little more than a shovel, wheelbarrow, and the helping hands of my uncle and two older brothers. Our house sat on a hillside, in a leveled out alcove; the yard stretched on for what seemed like an eternity, ending at a fresh mountain brook with the woodland just beyond.
He spent a lot of time in those woods – hiking trails, digging ginseng, hunting, and otherwise passing the hours by. The mountains provided our family with many necessities: our water was pumped from a mine near the mountain’s peak, our food consisted mostly of game and livestock, and our income often came in the form of valuable roots. My mother is a wonderful cook. She had a particular fondness for chicken – which we raised. My father, on the other hand, preferred game. No stranger to the culinary arts, he was adept at preparing a wide variety of dishes; all of which he tracked, killed, and prepared himself. Long before the sun would rise he would set out with little more than a flashlight. He would follow the mountain stream before turning off onto one of the many mine roads that were carved out along the terrain. One such road ran by an old graveyard long since forgotten by the rest of the world. Some of the
headstones there dated back to the onset of the 19th century.
I recall one night my father decided to go spotting. For those of you unfamiliar, spotting is a common practice amongst Appalachian hunters – perhaps amongst hunters in general, but I’m no hunter so I’m not entirely sure. The hunter sets out before the sun rises – as my father often did – with a flashlight; this flashlight is used much like a spotlight. By scanning it back and forth over the landscape, the hunter hopes to catch a glimpse of the animal’s eyes. You see, the eyes of an animal are luminous; and in complete darkness, when the light passes over them, they will shine. This is a method of establishing good hunting venues.
On this particular night, my father broke tradition and decided to bring his shotgun with him on this spotting expedition. A decision that, I would later learn, saved his life.
It was a warm spring night. I was always a night owl, so when my father stirred I was still wide awake, playing my Super Nintendo. It wasn’t a school night, so he greeted me with his ever present smile.
“Hey big man,” he chimed. “You’re up late.”
“I want to beat Mario,” I told him, my eyes leaving the screen for the briefest of moments. Long enough to see him tying his boots. He didn’t respond, he just continued to smile and rubbed my head as he passed me on his way to the gun cabinet. From it, he removed his 12 gauge shotgun, some rounds, and a miner’s light. The light, I recall, strapped to his forehead and attached to a rather large battery that he hung at his waist. He then made his way to the couch and sat next to me – casually lifting the TV remote. He waited for me to finish the level.
