The Hunter
Written for Waen
When you've been a hunter as long as I have, it gets into your blood. You see a man, and you size him up. You think to yourself, he'd move like a jaguar, slinking about along the branches of trees on his belly, half-hidden, blending in, prowling. You think, to hunt him, I'd have to sneak behind him without making a sound, keeping to the walls, and always remembering to stay downwind of him. This size bullet would do him in, you think, and if I wanted to catch him and put him in a cage, here's how I'd go about it.
Well, there you are--that's what you see when you look at people, after you've been a hunter as long as I have. A girl in one of those big flashy dresses looks no more than a bird with prize plumage, and some thin lad with a sleek, quick way of moving is an African deer just begging you to train your gun on him.
Of course--don't you look at me in that impertinent way, or I'll show you just how I do it, too--I've never trained my gun on some boy, but I've done it on men often enough. There are enough bad men in the world to keep an old hunter like me busy for the rest of my life, if I had a mind to go after them--but I had my chance, and I'm not pushing it. Miracles don't happen twice.
Of course, not all hunting is done with guns. Once I went hunting for a man with just a little knife. Once with only my bare hands. When a man, any man, goes hunting (and you don't have to be an old hunter--when I say any man, I mean any man, even a fellow who's never held a gun before), he feels the rush. There's a rush, let me tell you. There's an excitement. There's the feeling of his blood getting hotter and quicker in his veins, and he starts to notice himself twice as much as he ever did. He can feel himself breathing and feel the smallest breeze blowing to carry his scent and he notices every move he makes, that he's stopped blinking and he's stopped fidgeting and that his mouth's a bit dry because he's not swallowing--he's not moving at all. He's not moving a thing. He's ready.
Once, on one of my adventures, I met a boy, and I looked at him like a hunter. He was a smart boy, handsome the way Harry was. He was quick to learn--eager boy. I looked at him and knew exactly how I'd follow him and train my sights on him and get him--quick! Like that. Just like that. Snatch him out of the air with one well-aimed--anyway, I saw it the minute I looked at him. He wasn't a hunter right then--he was new to the whole idea, and I wanted to teach him.
Thing of it was, though, that the more I wanted to teach him, the more I wanted to hunt him. He would be standing right there, and I would think just how he could hold a gun, raise it up to his eyes, take his time, take his shot--and I would be right there, holding my own gun and getting ready to take my own shot.
I'm making it sound like a long time, but it was really only about three days before I got a chance to teach him. He came across me, while I was practising. While I was shooting, myself. It wasn't anything proper--I was shooting at red targets, and the man who dares to call that real hunting had better watch himself if I'm around. But it was something to do, and it meant that I had gun on hand and something to aim for, and when he came around to watch, the first thing I thought of was to teach him, so that he could learn it all properly.
He lifted his gun, and I put my arm up around him, slowly, feeling, guiding his hands right, lifting the gun with him. When you get that close to anyone, let me tell you, you notice. I noticed, all right. He was a smart boy, and handsome, and eager, and he looked at me like I could really show him something--and you'll learn to like that. It means that someone respects you. I couldn't have been more pleased. But I was starting to notice him more than a fellow ought to notice someone he's teaching--I was really noticing him like something I was hunting. Sure, I was showing him how to stand and move and sight along the barrel, but I was feeling him breathing with my arm part around him, and the way his arms were quivering just the slightest bit because my Matilda (that's this gun, see here) is a heavy old make, reliable, you see. I could feel him pushing back to lean against my arm.
Maybe I was crazy just then, but I got this idea of how the hunt was supposed to end. He was going to make the perfect shot--that would be his kill and fix up his part of the hunt--and then I was going to turn him about with that arm that was around him, feeling his movement, and I was going to kiss him hard--and there I'd be, making my kill and ending my part of the hunt. I could see it clear as anything, and I knew I was going to do it. The only trouble was he fired a second before it was time.
"Too soon!" I told him. "But that was bloody close!"
But I was bloody close, I muttered in my head.
Of course, missed chances don't come back so quickly, and before I knew it, he'd said something to get on my nerves a bit, and I ended that lesson right then and there. I was pretty sure, though, that there'd be another hunt.
When you want to get anything as badly as I did then, there's always another hunt. You don't let a prize elephant get away from you when you don't get him the first time. You don't waste your time and your ammunition for nothing. A good hunter, a true hunter, always gets what he went out for. And let me tell you, I'm nothing, nothing at all, if I'm not a good hunter.
So I tried again, the next day. This time, I got him.
A good hunter always gets what he went out for, and I put it to any man to tell me something more exciting, something that makes the blood rush in your body and your mind to feel really alive, than a hunt that ends the right way. I got my prize--he dropped the gun (mind, I did tell him off for that later, because nothing is an excuse to go around treating your--or any other fellow's--gun badly) and he kissed me right back just as hard. Made me feel like a young man again, I tell you, like when I used to go about hunting someone to walk out with and treat chivalrously when I was a lad. Well, older than a lad; but you get what I mean. It was like going back twenty years. And that was just the part of it where we were two men. When we changed, when he was the tiger I'd been hunting for the last few days, and when I was the hunter, all ready to claim my prize, it got bloody exciting. It got into my blood and my head fierce and brought back all my darkest and finest hunts in the deep parts of Africa, like mad magic. I'll say plainly that I've never had a better one, I think--except, perhaps, that one in India, where I went after panthers--but that's another story altogether.
So I'll say that I've hunted many kinds of things. I've been all over. I've hunted animals, and I've hunted men, and you can't tell me it's not in my blood and my spirit. That's what I am, you understand me? I'm a hunter, and I'm a good one. I've been a hunter all my life. I can't hardly look at a man without imagining myself going after him with my fine old Matilda, sighting down the barrel, pulling back the trigger slow and steady with my finger, taking my shot--and before that, tracing him through the streets, the long grass, staying downwind of him and stepping softer than a lion when he goes padding through the grass after some antelope drinking at a water hole. Maybe that's what being a good hunter means--you can't shake it. You can't ever shake it.
Who'd want to?
And if that's true, let me tell you--I'm the best hunter there is, in Africa if not in this whole bloody world. I'm the best hunter there is.
If you hand me my Matilda there--be careful with her, there! look sharp--maybe I'll show you.
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