Robert McGee—1995

My littlest girl is something peculiar. Not peculiar in a bad way, by any means. It’s more like she’s just odd. Only I can’t manage to put my finger on exactly what it is that’s odd about her. Louise thinks K’acy’s just too clever for her own good, but I think it’s more than that. Yes, she’s outshining the other kindergarteners by a mile, but the peculiarity is more in the way her mind works than in her mere intelligence. Smart children are special for sure, but K’acy is more than that. She’s a thinker of the best sort.

I see the way she looks at people. Especially older people. It’s like she’s trying to learn about them through their movements and the lines on their skin. She studies their faces as if they’re some kind of map to the soul. I see her look at me that way sometimes, long and intense, and I don’t know if I should get her a magnifying glass or turn my face in the opposite direction. She’s only five, but there’s something inside her that makes her seem far older than her age. There’s something inside her that makes her a different kind of special. A deeper kind.

The first time I saw it was the evening she met Ronald Chapman, my boss at the quarry. I’d been taking her and Charlie hunting with me for a few weeks before that, but this was the first time we ever saw anyone else there. Ron wasn’t aiming a shotgun into the air to get his dinner like we were. Instead, he was sitting in his fancy, expensive car in the parking lot with a woman who wasn’t his wife. I didn’t know who she was, but her lips were painted red and she had her hair done like a ’50s pin-up, big waves and scalloped curls pinned across her scalp. Her hair was sprayed so stiff that no amount of wind, or mischievous behavior, would ever dishevel it. It looked like she was starring in an old movie rather than living a real life. I recognized his car the moment we pulled into the lot, and I intentionally drove real close to it so I could see if anyone was inside. I told Ron weeks ago I was hunting at the quarry in the evenings, so I knew I wouldn’t be in trouble for being there. I was just hoping there wasn’t some kind of emergency at the plant. As soon as I saw the woman in the car with him, I knew there wasn’t an emergency. I drove clear over to the other side of the lot and parked as far away as I could. What the man did on his own time was none of my business, regardless of how awful it was. I didn’t want him to have any reason to put me out of a job.

The moment I set the car in park and turned off the engine, K’acy was off and running. She whipped open the door and dashed across the lot, straight over to Ron’s vehicle, motioning for the woman in the passenger seat to roll down her window. Charlie and I were on our way across the lot when I saw K’acy put her chin right up on the passenger-side windowsill and stare at the woman like she was made of black magic and bubblegum. By the time I got there, K’acy had already introduced herself. The look on Ron’s face was not the bitterness I’d expected, but rather, sweetness and surprise. He introduced himself to K’acy and Charlie, and he introduced the woman to me. Her name was Lindsay, but he never said who she was or why they were there.

Ron got out and came ’round to the other side of the car. We chatted for a good ten minutes about work and this year’s mourning dove harvest. He even asked Charlie if she knew any of her momma’s secret recipes. While Charlie was telling him about Louise’s dove divan and baked parmesan, I was watching K’acy stare at Lindsay through the open window, her chin still resting on the windowsill. Neither of them were saying a word, but K’acy’s eyes moved across the woman’s face, soaking it all in like she was making some kind of mental sculpture of her. My little girl was reading that woman like a living book. She may not have been able to read words yet, but I started thinking maybe K’acy could read people. That was five months ago, and she’s been looking at people the same way ever since. Not all people, mind you. Just certain ones.

Ron and Lindsay drove away a few minutes later, and me and the girls went hunting. They were getting real good at retrieving the birds for me, climbing up to the top of the piles of crushed limestone to fetch them where they fell. Since the day they were old enough to understand, I’d been telling my girls it’s good to know where your dinner comes from. That way you can say “thank you” for it and really mean the words. We mostly eat what I can hunt and fish, and what Louise grows in the garden; we don’t need to spend what little money we got on steaks and chicken when a year’s worth of venison and wild fowl costs no more than the price of the ammo and a couple of hunting licenses. We got enough real expenses to cover and food doesn’t need to be one of them. Especially when our own hands are more than capable of providing for our bodies.

K’acy had always been as matter-of-fact as they come where hunting was concerned. But the day we saw Ron Chapman and his red-lipped passenger was different. K’acy cried that day when she had to break a dove’s neck to end its suffering. She’d never cried over that in all the weeks before; not even the first time she did it. But I found her tucked behind a pile of rocks, petting a tattered bird with her fingertips and telling it “I’m sorry” over and over again. I watched her settle the bird’s head between her fingers, just like I showed her, and put the thing out of its misery in an instant. When she was done, she wiped her eyes, stood up, and turned to face me. Her face was unsurprised, like she knew I was watching her the whole time.

“Is dying scary?” she asked me, the dead bird pressed against her chest.

“I don’t think so, no. I think it is what it is. Just a part of life.” I put my hand on top of her head and shook her fuzzy black curls from side to side. “What makes you ask that, peanut?”

“’Cause that lady’s dying. And she’s scared.”

My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened. I felt thankful she was looking at the bird in her arms, rather than at my face. “What lady?”

“The one with the red lips. She’s dying, and she’s more scared of it than anything else in the world.”

“She told you she’s dying?”

“No, sir. I just knowed it.” K’acy looked up at me, her clear eyes weighed down by something I couldn’t see. Before I could reply, she held the bird out for me to take and ran off toward her sister.

I remember we hit the limit that day, bagging fifteen birds before the sun set below the horizon. After that, K’acy went back to being her matter-of-fact self whenever we went to the quarry. She never cried over a bird again. In fact, she asked Charlie if she could do all the neck breaking from then on. She got real good at it, putting them out of their misery in less than a heartbeat if the size 8 birdshot didn’t do its job. She’d run toward the falling bird the moment she heard the blast of the gun, ending what needed to be ended, swift and sure.