Four by Four

A place to get away from it all, thought Dan as he hiked up the steep tree-studded slope towards the plateau where the old cabin sat. That’s one way of putting it. He felt the weight of the shotgun in the soft case strapped over his shoulder as it slapped his back with each step he took forward. 

Finally, with a dazzling view of the valley behind him, he stepped onto the level clearing where his great-grandfather’s cabin still stood. Set in among towering pines it was completely invisible from the valley floor and over four miles from the nearest road, a fire road padlocked against all but emergency vehicles. It would suit his purposes perfectly.

The door creaked on its rusting hinges and the floor drooped in places between the beams. The acrid smell of mildew was so pronounced that Dan could taste it on the tip of his tongue and dust peppered the air, highlighted by beams of sunlight which penetrated the windows whose shutters had fallen off. He thought that he really needed to do some repair work if the cabin were to survive much longer, but then he remembered that he wasn’t going to last much longer.

He got out the shotgun and ran his fingers over the barrel. He remembered the first time he had fired it, under his grandfather’s guidance, at a bevy of doves. The excitement at hitting his target and then the horror as he watched them flapping their wings flightlessly on the ground as their life drained out slowly from the wounds he had inflicted. Now he would use that same instrument to pay for his sins.

He sat on the springs of an armchair whose upholstery had disintegrated and buried the tip of the barrel in the soft flesh between his chin and neck. He reached down, but the trigger was just beyond his reach. No matter. He would take it out to the shed and saw off part of the barrel. As he walked out on the porch, he heard the loud grinding and screaming of an engine. Suddenly a bright red Chevy Blazer 4×4 breached the lip of the plateau and started skidding around in the dirt between the trees. He could see a bearded man behind the wheel with a look of unmitigated joy on his face. Dan raised the gun and pointed it at the windshield.

“Get the fuck off my land!” Dan bellowed.

The driver panicked, cut his wheel too sharply, and the Blazer rolled over, landing crookedly on its roof. Dan threw down his gun and ran to the vehicle. The driver was unconscious, probably concussed, and blood was seeping from a laceration on his scalp. Dan removed the man carefully from the vehicle trying to be mindful of possible back or neck injuries. As he glanced the shotgun gleaming dully on the porch, Dan decided that he was not going to let this dove die.