Retirement Plan Read Online Free PDF Page B

broken-down tractor, a lawnmower, and about twenty cats. Beneath the gray sky and ahead of them was a stack of hay bales.
    “This here is the rifle I used when I was about your age,” said Uncle Harry. “It’s a bit smaller.”
    “A BB gun?” she asked.
    “No, sir. This here is made for young shooters, but that don’t mean it won’t kill what it hits.”
    He showed her how to stand, then placed the rifle in her hands. “See that old tin can sitting on top of the bale? Line up the sight and squeeze the trigger.”
    She’d missed the first shot, but it taught her a lot. The flash of gunpowder surprised her, so she closed her eyes. By evening, she could hit her target about half the time.
    As they walked back to the house, Lois was tired and hungry. The sun was setting and the geese were honking as they settled on the pond. Her mother once told her that the pond had been good for swimming years ago. But when the geese found it, the water got too dirty with goose poop. They didn’t even fish there anymore.
    Lois hadn’t slept much that night. She understood intellectually the difference between these deer and Bambi. Farmers considered deer pests. The population needed to be kept down because too many deer meant that a lot would starve. She’d eaten deer meat before and found it wonderful. Grandma had explained that deer roam free. Nothing she could buy in the grocery store tasted quite as good.
    Around three in the morning she heard Uncle Harry stumble into the house with a crash, followed by Grandma’s irritated voice. Uncle Harry spoke softly, and laughed. In the end, Grandma was laughing too. Just before the sun came up, he knocked at Lois’s bedroom door. When she entered the kitchen, Grandma was there.
    “I put some cornbread and coffee with milk in the bag with your blanket for your breakfast,” she said.
    Uncle Harry kissed her forehead. “Thanks, Ma.”
    The sky was just turning gray when they walked past the outbuildings. The pheasant pens were empty now that Grandpa was gone. These days they seldom used the outhouse, which had usually been full of spiderwebs and a smell that burned Lois’s nostrils. Though they’d never replaced the pump in the kitchen, with water from the same well, they’d turned a back porch into an indoor bathroom back when Grandpa was too sick to go outside. He’d complained a lot about that. To him it seemed unsanitary to go to the bathroom in the house.
    Lois followed Uncle Harry across the stubble field and into the woods. The air was cold enough that Lois could see her breath. They hadn’t put up a deer stand yet that year, so they decided to lay a blanket on a small hill overlooking the stream where the deer liked to cross. Harry fell asleep first. Lois hadn’t even realized she’d been sleeping until a sound woke her. She opened her eyes and not ten yards away stood a big buck. He snorted and Uncle Harry’s breathing changed. He was awake too. He took her hand and placed it over the rifle. The stock was cold.
    “Slowly, now,” he whispered.
    The buck cocked its head as little by little she rolled over and brought the rifle up. She closed one eye and had it in her sights. Only when she started squeezing the trigger did the buck jerk his head up, alert. He moved at the same time the shot went off. For a long moment after the crack of the rifle she couldn’t hear a thing.
    Then Uncle Harry’s hand was on her shoulder. “Open your eyes, kid. You got him.”
    The buck was writhing. “Should I take another shot?” she asked.
    “Naw. He’ll quiver a bit, but he’s gone.”
    At Uncle Harry’s insistence Lois walked slowly toward the great animal. She’d hit him in the throat. Above the oozing, bloody gash, his head slanted awkwardly because of his great antlers. The deer’s bloody coat hadn’t bothered her as much as the large brown eye staring up at her. She saw it in her dreams for a long time. Even in Vietnam, when she’d killed Charley, she could see that