The Shot

The rifle felt heavy, cold in the boy’s hands,
a weight he'd only known in practice.
His father said a porcupine
could wreck a dog, strip bark from trees,
a pest to be rid of, nothing more.

He saw it in the early morning mist,
a slow shape waddling under the pines—
quills like glass needles catching light,
black eyes steady, unaware.

He steadied his aim, held his breath—
a twitch of his trigger finger,
then the crack of a shot,
sharp as shattered glass.
The recoil and the scent 
of gunsmoke linger.

The porcupine shuddered,
turned its small, dark face toward him,
as if it saw the boy behind the gun
and forgave him for not yet knowing
what it meant to take a life.

It staggered then, into the brush,
a trail of blood beading on the ground
like berries crushed beneath a boot.

And when the boy found it among 
the trees and fallen leaves,
he looked at his own hands—
then turned them away,
as if they had grown thorns.

Clayton Campbell Gemmell holds a rifle and a porcupine he shot. Gemmell was born on September 24, 1897, in Blaine Township, Benzie County, Michigan.  Photo date circa 1912. Clayton lived to be 81 and died in 1979 in Columbia, TN. BAHS 2516.