A Little Bump

Marty pushed the shotgun off his chest. He slowly got to his feet, the scent of gunpowder wafting through the air and the coppery taste of adrenaline on his tongue. As he stood, covered in moss and leaves, bewilderment took over. At only five, the blast sent him reeling backwards, and this was the first time he could see the damage his shot had caused. A perfectly uniform circle of pellet holes and mangled greenish-white poplar bark was directly in the center of the tree. He walked up to it, ears ringing, eyes wide, his shoulder aching, and placed a shaking hand in the center of the carnage. The laughter of men filled the air.

On the way back to the farm, riding on what amounted to two sheets of plywood attached to a single axle and pulled behind a quad, his stepfather remained silent. Marty looked around him at the fields on his right and the forest on his left. He felt a long way away from the city he knew. After his father’s death and the abject poverty he and his mother were left in, she remarried less than a year after the funeral, and we all moved to a farm in the middle of rural northern Alberta. Suddenly, the trailer dropped from beneath him, and Marty found himself hovering in mid-air. Just as quickly, the trailer floor bounced up, turning into a springboard, smacking him hard in the ass and sending him flying. He landed on his chest, face in the dirt and a sore ass he’d remember forty years later.

“A little bump.” His stepfather mumbled, stopping the quad. He looked impatient while Marty climbed to his feet, dusting himself off.

Marty resisted the tears forming in his eyes and instead focused on finding a seating position that didn’t hurt. He couldn’t find one.