April 2012 Archives

Congratulations to our short story winner, with the take home prize of $100, J.D. Fleming!

                                                                                                                                                                                 Photos: Featherstone Family Archive.

                                                                                                                                                                                                Louisville, Kentucky ,c. 1930.
                                            Flash Blindness

Two men stare at a dead doe. The younger man smokes a cigarette, a .300 savage pressed against his left shoulder. The other man, slightly older, pulls his neck into a fur- lined coat. For a while they say nothing, then the older man clears phlegm from his throat and turns his gaze to the white sky.

Good, he says, eyes sheltered in a squint. Hair from his lower lip flosses between his teeth.

The younger man kneels beside the kill, and removes two knives from a backpack. The first knife is sheathed in its handle, a collar lock; the second has a gut hook on the end of a stained blade. The gut hook is laid on top of the snow next to the backpack. The collar lock is drawn from the handle and locked into place. The doe's head is held back while the blade of the collar lock slides then sinks into the throat. It takes pressure to puncture hide, fat, and arteries of the neck, but the sharp blade makes it fluid; blood drains from the wound. The younger man makes another cut into the lower abdomen. After setting the collar lock back into its handle and placing it into the backpack, the younger man places the tip of the gut hook just inside of the cut inside the abdomen. In a smooth motion the blade moves towards the neck opening the chest, clicking on the collarbone. He sits on the ground, knife in both hands, and pulls hard toward himself breaking the collarbone. Most of the insides remain in the ribcage. The younger man carves out the gut, warming his hands inside the ribcage, and circles around the anus, so that whatever remains inside the snow colored tubing doesn't damage the meat. The younger man gathers everything the stomach has to offer on top of the snow. The heart and liver are kept in the upper chest cavity. Steam rises from the entrails. The younger man cuts between the Achilles tendon and the anklebone on both hind legs of the doe, creating secure handgrips.