Chip Kendrick

	-  There, son, see that squirrel?  Pop him!
	Eric leveled the .22 at the little brown blur of fur on the branch and pulled the 
trigger.  The butt of the rifle knocked painfully into his shoulder and the barrel went 
straight up after the shot, but it was still nearly dead-on, and he saw the bark on the tree 
disintegrate into a little cloud where the squirrel had been.  His father whistled through 
his teeth.
	-  Nice shot!  Great shot!  I think you got his backside.  Go find him.
	The boy was filled with joy at his father's approval and pride at his own shooting 
prowess, and ran through the dark green knee-high brush toward the tree where the 
squirrel had been, his green army surplus pants soaking in dew until he was wet from the 
knee down.
	He wasn't thinking of anything but his shot, and getting it even better the next 
time, so that the barrel didn't hurt his collarbone.  If he had envisioned seeing the squirrel 
at all, it would not have been in the context of death.  He would have envisioned a little 
neatly-combed, busy-looking brown animal, chewing neurotically at a peanut it had taken 
from his hand, with a tail like a big feather twitching from side to side.  He would have 
remembered the helpless, throat-constricting glee that came over him when he watched 
the squirrels at the zoo.  He would have remembered giggling and squeaking as a squirrel 
got bold enough to nuzzle a peanut from his hand and then ran off with its tail echoing 
the small jumps of its flight.  His father had always said squirrels had that tail only to be 
cute enough to feed peanuts to.  Probably he was right, because Eric had never met a 
squirrel that didn't make him wish he had peanuts if he didn't.
	When he had made it to the tree where the squirrel had been, he looked at the 
branch it had been sitting on to see a little smear of crimson.  Strangely, he realized he 
had not expected that.  Somewhere in the back of his head, the connection between 
hunting and death had not really solidly clicked and was clicking now.  Somewhere back 
there, he had expected to come past the last few bushes and find the squirrel waiting 
patiently, with tiny marsupial smile on it's harelip, wanting to be his pet.  He had equated 
the rifle with a kind of taming and ownership far less brutal than the taming it had 
accomplished.  
	After looking around a moment, with an irrational thought in his head that he had 
to help the squirrel quickly, he found the squirrel blatantly dead, with most of it's 
hindquarters destroyed but it's front almost completely intact.  It's eyes were wide open 
and unfocused, staring over his shoulder at some unimaginably horrible gargoyle.  The 
bleak stare did not accuse and did not condone, but was merely a glimpse of the squirrel's 
last moment.  What he saw before him was a sample of distilled experience, this was 
PAIN, given a material form only so that it might be visible to him.  The expression of 
the squirrel told of brutal surprise, of the feeling of the end rushing like a huge mass of 
water, and of the knowledge of the destruction of one's own body.
	Eric was not prepared, and the strength of emotion that welled in him would not 
dissolve into rational thought.  He wanted the squirrel back, wanted to have missed and 
watched the little brown blur scamper up the tree to drop him a look of vague scorn.  
Failing that, he wanted it to shut its eyes and look at rest instead of in shock, like a dead 
or dying animal was supposed to.  Failing that, he wanted it to know he was sorry and he 
knew sorry wasn't even close to enough.  He knew he had taken and could not give back.
	The father found his son kneeling of the ground in front of the squirrel with his 
rifle forgotten on the ground behind him, whimpering and rocking back and forth with 
one hand reached out to pet the squirrel.