Target Down by Glenn Trust

Author:Glenn Trust [Trust, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Publishing
Published: 2020-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

The Hunter - No Ghosts

Nothing had changed.

In Cassit Pass, the tidal waves of change rushing around and over the world, merely swirled in eddies like the surf around boulders along the seashore. Like the boulders, the rock-solid society of Cassit Pass remained impervious, eroding around the edges a little perhaps, but mostly the same from one generation to the next.

Even so, he stood before the tiny house and marveled. It looked as if the woman and young boy who had lived there once might step out onto the porch and wave to the stranger staring at their house.

***

“Come on up,” the woman would say. “What are you waiting for? Hurry and I’ll set a place for you at supper.”

Her son would stare and wonder what to think of the man, the hunter. When he put his hand out to touch the boy’s head and ruffle his hair, he would pull away. Embarrassed at being so forward, the man would put his hand back in his pocket and offer a nervous smile.

Brow lowered, sending creases across his young forehead, the boy would stare for seconds until he asked, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“You boy. I want you … I’ve been hunting you for these past few years.”

“Why?” The boy’s face would be deadly serious now, all business, ready to meet whatever threat the man posed to him and his mother.

The hunter stared at the spot on the porch where the boy would be standing while his mother clattered the pots and pans inside, readying their supper. How could he tell the boy why he was hunting him? He couldn’t.

“You’ll grow up to be a man one day, and I will come to find you.”

“Why?”

There was the damned question again. “You’re too young now to understand.”

“Bullshit,” the boy would snap out and his mother would call from inside for him to mind his language.

Then the boy would continue, “I’m not so young. You just come on ahead and find me if you think you can.”

He would stare defiantly at the man standing at the edge of the yard, waiting, ready to take him on, to take the world on if necessary. The man would remain silent, respecting the boy’s innocent fearlessness.

Finally, the boy would speak. “You’re just talk … hot air … wind blowing in the trees. You ain’t nothing to be worried about, and I sure ain’t scared of you.” Then the boy would bark a final warning, “Get the hell out of here.”

Another rebuke for his language would be called out by his mother, and he would turn with a final sneer and go into the house, closing the door firmly behind him.

***

Standing at the edge of the yard, the man who would come to find the boy one day imagined the meeting in every detail, as he had a thousand times before. The difference was this time he stood before the little house that had not changed in all these years.

He walked across the yard and stepped up on the porch, almost expecting the boy from the past to come outside and challenge him.

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