The Hunter

*******

The next evening, Jim Roy sat on the sofa in their living room. The house was now filled with grieving kinfolk and friends who had come to offer, in equal amounts, sympathy and endless platters of food. The kitchen table was groaning with casseroles, bowls of fried chicken, jello salad: a great banquet. Regardless of their sorrow, no one would go hungry.

Once again the boy's eyes were drawn to Bonnie, now sitting in her Aunt Carol's lap. The older woman gazed lovingly at the little girl, offering words of solace and comfort.

They're all like that, the boy thought. Something about Bonnie draws them. I'm the same way. You want to reassure and protect her any way you can. You'd do just about anything for a little girl like her.

His mind wandered back to that fateful day in September. Like the sharp crack of a hunting rifle, he could recall every detail of that terrible day. A day in which a man's death warrant had been drawn up.

It had been the first cool day in months; one that signals the end of summer. The air was crisp, the sky deep blue. Jim Roy had been doing his algebra homework on the front porch, and for no particular reason decided to go into the house.

Eva and Bonnie were on the back porch, canning the last tomatoes of the season. The little girl, wearing a thin blouse and cotton shorts, had come into the house and was going to her room to put on a sweater.

Floyd had been in the living room, listening to the radio and drinking Schlitz beer, relaxing after another day at the saw mill. Jim Roy entered the front door just as his father got up to get another beer, meeting Bonnie at the doorway from the living room to the kitchen.

Floyd stopped her, a hand on the little girl's shoulder. She looked up at him, a shy grin on her face. Then her eyes grew large as he placed his other hand on her chest and moved it around.

Bonnie looked at him in shock. She began to struggle as he roughly caressed her. "Daddy, don't! I don't like that!" the little girl cried.

Floyd McCarter chuckled. "You'll be ready to bleed pretty soon, little gal," he smiled. "Yep, ready to bleed."

"Please, Daddy! No!" the child whimpered. But her father only held and fondled her. Then he saw that Bonnie was looking toward the front door. His own eyes followed. Jim Roy stood there watching them, a sickened look on his face.

Floyd roughly pushed his daughter away, then turned to Jim Roy. "What you lookin' at, buster? Ain't you got nothin' better to do! Go see if your mama has enough wood for th' cook stove. Git your ass outta here 'fore I kick it out!"

Jim Roy turned and rushed from the house. Down the porch steps and down the driveway. He did not stop until he was halfway to the road. He sat down on the mossy ground under a great sugar maple tree and looked off toward the distant ridges.

His heart was pounding; tears filled his eyes. In his mind he began to speak to his father.

I've put up with you kicking and beating me. Gone to school with a black eye you gave me, Daddy. And watched you slap my mother around. I've run up into the woods just so I wouldn't have to listen to you yell at her. So I couldn't hear the 'whack' when your hand strikes her. And her pleading cries.

I've taken all that. And somehow learned to live with it. But little Bonnie? The most innocent, trusting child in the world? She just wants her daddy to love her! But that's not what you want, is it? You're going to use her. Daddy, she's eleven years old. Still a child, and your own daughter! What kind of man would do that!

Jim Roy thought he might explode from the anger and helplessness.

But then, quite suddenly, an eerie calm swept over him. It was a cool, almost reptilian feeling. At long last came certitude. In a few seconds the decision was made, there under a maple tree on a gorgeous late summer day. Jim Roy felt something like relief.

The idea had first come to him almost a year ago. He had blushed in shame that such a hateful, despicable thought could enter his mind. For a year that idea, from time to time, had crept into his thoughts like an evil genie.

He had resisted and rationalized. Half an hour ago he was certain that his conscience would never allow him to do something so unthinkable. But that was before he saw the look of terror on little Bonnie's face; felt the same hurt and fear she must have felt.

At that moment the boy became, in some way, a man. An odd thought crossed his mind: the hardest part is now over.

Jim Roy calmly rose up and began to walk back home. Had someone stopped to talk to him, they would have noticed a quiet resolve about him. They would have seen that his brown eyes had grown dark; as dark as night.

He felt that same sense of purpose later when he reclined on his bed, looking at a recent issue of Field and Stream magazine. He turned to the back of the magazine where ads were listed, including ads for mail-order rifles. In the calm detached manner of a good hunter, the boy carefully read each ad.

*******

His Uncle Rafe McCarter, Floyd's older brother, came over and sat beside Jim Roy on the sofa. "How are you holdin' up, son?"

"I'm doin' okay."

The man had thinning dark hair; a moustache that was beginning to show gray. "It's an awful thing for a boy to lose his father. Now ole Floyd, maybe he wasn't the easiest fella to get along with, that McCarter temper and all. But I know he wuz a good provider, and wanted the best for y'all. Ain't that right?"

"Yes sir, that's right."

"Well, just remember all the good things about your daddy. Th' times you and him went huntin' 'n fishin'. He taught you how to shoot a rifle, didn't he?"

"Yes sir, he did."

"I'll bet you're a good shot. Can you hit what you aim at?"

"Yes, most of the time I can."

The conversation lagged. Jim Roy began to recall what followed that September afternoon. How the wheels were set in motion.

Two days later he had ridden his bicycle to school, and afterwards peddled all the way into Citico County and the little village of Hayesville, which had just been awarded a post office. He opened a post office box there, paying cash that he had earned working the tobacco fields that summer.

The next day, summer's heat returned one last time. He spent part of the sweltering afternoon in study hall. That previous spring, students in his English class had been taught how to write a business letter. Now Jim Roy recalled what he had learned. On his school notebook paper he carefully composed a letter:

September 19, 1949

Dear Sir or Madam: I would like to order a Browning .27 caliber hunting rifle (Item #433) that was advertised by your company, H & M Products, in Field and Stream magazine. I have enclosed with this letter a mail order check for $74.95 plus $10 for shipping. Please send the ordered item to Box Holder
P.O. Box 7
Hayesville, North Carolina

Thank you for your prompt attention to this order.

*******

On the day after Floyd McCarter was laid to rest in the Bethel Methodist Church cemetery, Sheriff Ramsey paid a visit to his family. He sat on the sofa in the McCarter living room as they eyed him with a mix of curiosity and apprehension.

"Miz McCarter," the sheriff began, "could the little girl maybe go into her room for a while? She don't need to hear this."

Eva turned to her daughter. "Honey, why don't you go in your room and read those funny books cousin Stella brought you? Be a dear."

After the child had left, the sheriff turned to Eva and Jim Roy. "Now, they'll be a hearing on your husband's death, Miz McCarter. Most likely it'll be declared an accident. There was a lot o' dern fools out in the woods hunting that day, some of 'em liquored up, bangin' away at anything that moved. It's possible your husband was hit by a stray bullet."

"But I have to be able to tell the judge that it was not anything else. That it could not have been murder, premeditated or otherwise. Now, did your husband have any old enemies? People he's quarreled or got in a fight with? Did you ever hear anyone threaten to kill him?"

"No!" Eva replied. "I mean, Floyd had a temper, everbody knows that. He'd get into fights now and then. But I never heard of anyone wantin' to kill him."

Lowering his voice, the sheriff went on. "Miz McCarter, I been told that ever once in a while you'd come to church or go shopping with a black eye. Bruises on you."

The woman eyed him for a moment. "What are you sayin'?"

"And Jim Roy," the sheriff went on, "didn't you show up for school once or twice with a black eye?"

"Yes sir."

"Now wait a minute!" Eva cried angrily. "That's none of your business! And if you think one of us would want Floyd dead, you can just get out of my house right now! You got no right to talk to us that way!"

Color came to the sheriff's face. "You listen to me, both of you!" he growled. "I been sheriffin' here in Nantahala County for nearly thirty years. I know blood kin will gun each other down, because I've seen it. Plenty of times! And I ain't leavin' here 'til I get some answers! Floyd McCarter was a wife beater, wasn't he? And he beat up on this boy here too."

Tears welled up in Eva's eyes. "Yes," she said miserably, "he'd hit us once in a while, but we put up with it! We wouldn't do him no harm for it!"

Sheriff Ramsey had been eyeing Jim Roy during the conversation. Kid's not shown an ounce of emotion, he thought. Looks at me with snake eyes. "Son, were you here at home the morning your daddy was shot?"

"Yes sir. He told me to stay here 'n chop kindling and wood for th' stoves."

"Miz McCarter, was this boy home all morning? Can you vouch for him?"

For a fraction of a second Jim Roy's eyes met his mother's. After a brief hesitation she replied. "Yes. He was here the whole time. I heard him choppin' wood."

"Hm. Son, do you own a rifle?"

"Yes sir. It's in my bedroom."

"Let's have a look at it."

A moment later Jim Roy was taking down his Savage .22 caliber rifle that was mounted on the wall above the chest of drawers in his room. He handed it to the sheriff. Ramsey looked at the rifle, and smelled the end of the barrel.

"Ain't been fired in a while."

"No sir. Maybe a couple of weeks."

"Only gun you own?" The sheriff looked at the boy. One cool customer, he thought. Snake eyes.

"Yes sir."

"Now, show me the bottom of your shoes."

Without hesitating Jim Roy raised up his foot so that the sheriff could see the soles of his Sears-Roebuck work shoes. The Wolverine boots that now lay in the bottom of the Santeetlah River had been bought a month ago in Hayesville. And worn only one time.

"You own any boots?"

"No, just my go to church shoes, and some galoshes."

A few moments later Sheriff Ramsey was back in the living room, again eyeing the boy and his mother. Drawing his hand across his chin, he said, "Son, how's about if you and me have a little talk, man to man, out in my car? Get your coat."

"He didn't do nothin'!" Eva wailed as Jim Roy put on his coat. "He's just a boy, only fourteen! He couldn't hurt a fly! You can tell that just by lookin' at him!"

"Yes Ma'm," the sheriff replied as Jim Roy put on his wool jacket. The man and the boy walked onto the porch and through sprinkling rain to the police car. As they got in, the rain began to intensify, drumming loudly on the car's roof.

Sheriff Ramsey, now in his own element, lit a Pall Mall and gazed through the windshield at the driving sheets of rain. "You know, son, when you've been a law man long as I have, you get a nose for crime. You get to where you can smell guilt on a man, just like he was a skunk."

The boy made no reply.

"Now, I don't know how you done it. But I can smell guilt on you. I think you shot down your own father on account of the way he treated you and your mama. Did you?"

Jim Roy looked into Sheriff Ramsey's eyes, never wavering, as he said, "No sir. I did not." Once again he was hearing in his mind a little girl's voice.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh what a foretaste of glory divine!

With absolute clarity he remembered Bonnie in church a few weeks ago. Wearing her straw hat with blue ribbons trailing down, she had sung that hymn, the soft morning light on her. Bonnie has such a pretty voice, he thought.

Sheriff Ramsey now spoke in his most soothing, fatherly tone. "Son, I know it's rough on a boy, havin' to take punches from his old man, and seeing his own mother slapped around. Now, you tell me what happened out in them woods, right here and now. I'll do everthing I can to see you get a fair shake. I'll put in a word for you with the judge. I just want to do what's right. Will you tell me?"

The child's lilting voice now filled Jim Roy's mind. Somehow the image of Bonnie in church was as real as sitting in a police car with the rain pelting down.

Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

For a while the law man and the young boy eyed each other in silence. The rainstorm now reached a crescendo, obliterating from sight everything beyond the car. Jim Roy turned to watch rainwater flooding down the windshield. Finally he spoke.

"Sheriff ..."

"Yes?"

"Ever night when my little sister goes to bed, she won't turn off the light 'til me and Mama have kissed her goodnight. She tells me how much she loves us. Last night Bonnie told me she was glad she had a big brother to look after her, now that Daddy's gone. Don't you think it was sweet of her to say that?"

Once again the eyes of the man and the boy locked together. A shudder ran through Sheriff Ramsey as the light of comprehension began to dawn in him. I never thought about the little girl! he said to himself. Never thought about her at all!

He noticed that Jim Roy's eyes were much darker than he realized; almost black. Now, with cool defiance, his eyes spoke: if you think I killed my father, prove it. But until then, I'm going to be Bonnie's big brother, and take care of her. Just as I always have.

Is that it? Sheriff Ramsey thought. Was that your breaking point? Something that would drive even an innocent boy to do the unthinkable?

He gazed into the boy's dark eyes, now grown cold. As he had often done on long sleepless nights, the sheriff reflected how life seldom presents choices in black and white. But rather in subtle shades of gray.

If he did it to protect that little girl, how do I serve justice here, the sheriff thought. Or has justice already been served? Right and wrong. Where is the line?

As quickly as it had begun, the rainstorm began to abate. Sheriff Ramsey took a deep breath. "Son, do you realize how your life just changed?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whatever your daddy was, he was the breadwinner. Now he's gone. And you're goin' t' have to step forward, help support your family. You'll need to get a part time job, afternoons and weekends. Full time job all summer. You willin' to do that?"

"Of course I am."

"You won't be able to do lots of things young fellas your age do. You've got to be a man now."

I am already a man, Jim Roy thought. I became a man on a perfect sunny day back in September.

Sheriff Ramsey stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, now angered by the moral dilemma facing him. Glaring at the boy, he said, "You McCarters been livin' in these hills since Andy Jackson was president. And you've all got hot tempers. When you have a grievance, you settle it your own way, no matter what the law says. Ain't that right?"

"I don't know." Jim Roy paused, then went on, ""Am I considered a suspect?"

"Son, you'll always be a suspect as far as I'm concerned. But a man is innocent until proven guilty. I can't point any suspicion toward you until I've got hard evidence. But I meant what said about helpin' your folks. You got a duty now. If you run off and leave them, I'll hunt you down and bring you back. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Now get out of my car. I'm sick of the sight of you."

Jim Roy quickly left the car and sprinted to the house without looking back. The sheriff watched him go, knowing that the investigation into the death of Floyd McCarter would be brief. With one final quiet "Dammit all," he started up the motor and drove down the driveway.

*******

The storm passed quickly through Nantahala County and was gone by evening. When Jim Roy came into Bonnie's bedroom to say goodnight, a half moon was shining through the window. The room was moonlight and shadows and pale golden light from a small lamp on the little girl's nightstand.

The boy bent down and quickly kissed his sister on the forehead. In the dim light he could see a pensive look on Bonnie's face.

"What are you thinkin' about, sweet pea?" he asked.

"Just thinkin' about Daddy," she replied quietly. "How I'll never see him again. He won't never bring me Hershey's Kisses no more, or take my hand when we walk into church, or buy me a birthday present. I've got you, but I'll never have a daddy any more."

The little girl's words cut like a knife. Now washing over Jim Roy was unbearable guilt. Dear God what have I done, he thought. I took a gun and killed a man. How can I live with that every day?

Tears welled up and filled Jim Roy's eyes. Tears for his lost innocence. Tears for wanting to make their lives better. Tears for being able to look at his father through the scope of a rifle and then squeeze the trigger.

"You'll miss him too, won't you?" Bonnie asked.

"I'll never forget him."

Jim Roy felt smothered in black despair. Unable to be in the little girl's presence, he got up and hurried to the door.

At the last possible second, Bonnie spoke. "Jim Roy, come back a minute."

He returned and sat on the bed, wiping away searing tears of guilt. The little girl took his hand.

In a low voice, she said, "Daddy wasn't a good man, was he?"

"No, not always."

"He scared me, Jim Roy, the way he would grab me when Mama wasn't around. And lookin' at me, like a snake watchin' a mouse." She paused and took a deep breath. "I think Daddy was gonna hurt me. He was gonna hurt me real bad, wasn't he?"

"Yes, Bonnie, he was."

Her voice near breaking, she said, "Jim Roy, some part of me is glad that Daddy's gone. Glad that you 'n Mama don't have to take any more beatin's from him. Somehow I'm relieved that I don't have to be scared of him no more."

The boy sighed but said nothing.

"Am I bad for thinkin' that? For feelin' grateful that he's not here and can't hurt us?"

"Of course you aren't bad, sweet pea. Now, can I ask you to do something? It really means a lot to me."

"What?"

"Me 'n Mama are goin' to work hard so's we can stay a family. But in some ways, Bonnie, you're the most important one of us. You're the one who holds us together when you laugh and play and sing. When we see you happy, we know it's worth it. So I want you to be the sweet little girl you've always been. I want you to grow up happy 'n carefree, the way girls were meant to. Can you do that for me?"

Bonnie smiled. "Yes," she murmured. "Now I can do that."

*******

Bethel Methodist Church sat on a high knoll overlooking the Santeetlah River. The church had recently built a flagstone pavilion on one side. When weather permitted, special events like wedding receptions were held there.

On a warm May afternoon in 1958, a young man, uncomfortable in his navy blue suit, stood watching the celebration on the pavilion. Jim Roy McCarter was considered handsome, his features marred only by a somber look that never left his face.

His eyes were riveted to two women enjoying the dancing. Mama's put on some weight, he thought to himself. But still good-looking. Can't say the same about the man holding her hand.

Will Hampton had been a widower, ten years older and two inches shorter than Eva. He was homely and balding. But Will was a gentle and decent man. He was a hard-working farmer, shy and soft-spoken. And his adoration of the widow Eva McCarter knew no bounds.