‘I should never have brought that rifle home from the war’
In this excerpt from Remembrance, the final story by the late Canadian author Alistair MacLeod, a hunting accident connected to the war continues the conflict’s pervasive impact on three generations of Cape Bretoners
In the afternoon of November 11, 1952, the two David MacDonalds were filleting mackerel out in the yard. The elder one had returned from the Remembrance Day ceremonies and they were preparing the fish so that they might have them for food during the coming winter months. Later they would pack them in buckets, alternating layers of mackerel with layers of salt.
They looked up from their work to see a magnificent buck grazing in the field beyond them. Because their thoughts were on food and because they knew the meat would not spoil in the cooler days of au- tumn, they decided to act. Silently the boy entered the house and returned with a knife, four bullets, and the sawed-off rifle that had seen action in Holland.
David MacDonald lay down on his stomach and inched forward through the dying grass, propelling himself on his elbows and loading the rifle as he moved. His hands were still bloody and greasy from handling the entrails of the mackerel, and the worn grass tickled his neck and pressed against his chest and stomach in a manner that reminded him of Ortona. The boy crouched close behind him with the knife. The buck lifted his head and sniffed the wind. The wind was from the south and his stalkers were crawling from the north. He lowered his head and continued to graze.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. David MacDonald rose up as he had been taught, firing his rifle as he came to his knees in a single, fluid military motion. The buck collapsed and then leapt to his feet. David MacDonald realized that because the barrel of the rifle had been shortened, the sights were misaligned and he hastened to reload, his fingers still slippery from the fish. He fired again. He heard the boy scream as he fell before him. In the field beyond, the buck had collapsed again and now lay still. The knife fell from the boy’s hand as he tried to staunch the blood and slivers of bone that pulsed from his shattered ankle.
After the first shot, the boy had leapt forward with his knife to bleed the animal without realizing that a second shot was coming. David MacDonald fashioned a
tourniquet out of his shirt and belt as he had been taught in the army and tightened it with the knife. Beyond them the silent body of the buck began to fill with its own gases and lay like the bloated cattle near the ruined roadways of Holland.
They were in trouble. If they went immediately to the hospital, the authorities would have to report the gunshot wound to the police. The gun was illegal. They had no permit, and they had no hunting licence, and the body of the buck lay heavy and obvious before them. Blood spurted from the boy’s ankle whenever the tourniquet was loosened.
David MacDonald was to wonder for the rest of his life whether the delay before they went to the hospital, without legal repercussions, resulted in the boy being permanently crippled, although the medical authorities said it was not so.
“Maybe,” he said to the boy later, “I ruined your life.” “Maybe,” said the boy, “you saved it.” “I should never have brought that rifle home from the war,” said David MacDonald, “but then I guess a lot happened because of the war.”