HUNTING KNIFE — LISA MICHELLE MOORE
/My father shows us how to do his knife trick. He moves the blade between each of his fingers, stabbing the table, faster and faster until he nicks the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger with the tip. It’s not a trick. He slurs and looks at us with slow eyes. It’s a game. Who can go the longest without stopping? Blood runs out of his skin, but he keeps playing. My brother puts his fingers on the sun-bleached picnic table. Now let me try. I look back at the kitchen window, but it’s empty. Nah, Dad finally says. This isn’t for kids. And then his arm slips and he spills his bottle of beer over our hands.
My brother is arms-deep in the deer’s chest. Its hindquarters are strung up from the ceiling, dangling like wind chimes. I stand on the periphery of the garage, smelling blood, gasoline, whisky. The dog smells it too, and she scratches against the door, utterly ignored. My brother lifts out the deer's heart and passes it to Dad. Dad drops the smooth dark muscle into a plastic bag. Dad’s friend yells get the hunter here a drink and my dad nods. They laugh and hand my brother a glass of Crown Royal. He cleans the bloody knife blade with a paper towel, his fingers shaking.
Later, they find my brother’s truck parked off an oil road, out where he used to hunt. His ex-wife sends us the stuff left behind in his last apartment. Arranged in a box on his bed. His old compass, Grandpa’s broken watch, Dad’s hunting knife. Dad sits alone with it in the backyard. I call my mother every Sunday now. Sometimes I watch him through the kitchen window. Just so he’s not alone out there.
Lisa Michelle Moore is a healthcare provider and writer living on the Canadian Prairies. Her poetry and prose has appeared in The Cold Mountain Review, The Quarantine Review, The Daily Drunk and the forthcoming Essential Voices anthology from University of West Virginia Press.
