words

You see that? That's a porcupine. I didn't know what else it could be, but something about the way my Dad said it, pointing, eyes big, made me feel as though a porcupine was not simply a porcupine, but an never-seen-twice creature from a place as far from reality as myth and alien tales. The word for the thing only sustains the feeling. That weird sensation that comes for two seconds or three, making one feel as though earth itself and all that's in it is a storybook that some young boy is reading beneath the sheets.

It waddled across the field before us, to the south, across a land in which there was nothing but my Uncle's house and cattle for miles in any direction. The low brown cloud of needles did not move quickly, though by the time my Dad and I were close behind it was clear that fast was what it was trying for.

We surrounded it. Needles raised, it stood waiting for its fate.  I fixed my lens and took three unimpressive photographs. My father looked to his side and found a large flat stone. He raised it high over his head and paused. A strong man in his sixtieth year with an ordinary stone raised like an idol above me in the pale blue sky, a pointy beast beneath, hissing. then an unimpressive sound.

In the after-dinner sun I wondered at the characters before me. A porcupine dead and a doctor, once rancher, standing. Looking, and now turning for the car.