Gregory Byrd                                                                                           

Deer Hunting in the Everglades

The first time I saw my father smoke cigarettes
I was fourteen.
It was twenty eight degrees and raining in the Everglades.
I stood outside the bogged panel van
while my father smoked Camels to keep the mosquitoes away.
He blew smoke into my face, my hair, onto my whole body.
He smoked with a bachelor's ease
that made me uncomfortable and sad.

This man, so long distant, so far from me,
even in the house we shared,
was a different man and I imagined him smoking
cigarettes in Reno with his first wife
whose mention makes him retreat into his heart.
I imagined him in bar fights when he was in the service.
I imagined how he moved
before he had the burden of fatherhood.

In the morning, when rain had lifted
and the mosquitoes had been blown away
--or burned away by the sun--
we carried our rifles through the swamp
like a lost patrol.
We stepped over chilled rattlers
that had to prodded to even
feign a strike.
As I walked behind my father,
I aimed my carbine at his head
and wondered if other boys
had done the same thing,
trembling and unable to squeeze the trigger.

International Quarterly 1.4 (Fall 1994), page 98