The Prettiest

ELLIE’S FATHER WAS A DRINKING MAN. EVERYBODY knew it. Couldn’t help knowing it because when Okey Farley was drunk he always jumped in his red and white Chevy truck and made the rocks fly up and down the mountains.

He had been a coal miner. Drank then, too, but just on weekends. A lot of miners drank on the weekend to scare away the coming week.

Okey had been hurt in a slate fall, so he couldn’t work anymore. Just stayed home and drank.

Ellie was his youngest daughter, the youngest of five. She didn’t look anything like Okey or her mother, both of whom had shiny black hair and dark eyes.

Ellie was fair. Her hair was nearly white and her skin pale like snow cream. Ellie was a pretty girl, but her teeth were getting rotten and she always hid them with her hand when she laughed.

Ellie loved her father, but she was afraid of him. Because when he drank he usually yelled, or cried or hit her mother. At those times Ellie stayed in her room and prayed.

One day Okey did a strange thing. He brought home a beagle. Her father couldn’t hunt because his right arm wasn’t strong enough to manage a rifle anymore. But there he was with a beagle he called Bullet.

He made Bullet a house. Spent the whole weekend making it and didn’t even stop to take a drink.

Then Bullet was tied up to his house, and he kept them all awake three nights in a row with his howling.

Okey would not explain why he’d bought a hunting dog when he couldn’t hunt. He just sat on the porch with a bottle in his hand (he’d taken it up again) and looked at Bullet.

Ellie was the only one of Okey’s children who took an interest in his pet. The older girls were not impressed by a dog.

But Ellie, fair and quiet, liked the beagle and was interested in her father’s liking for it. And when Okey was sober, she’d sit with him on the porch and they’d talk about Bullet.

Neither of them could remember later who mentioned it first, but somehow the subject of hunting came up one day, and, hardly knowing she was saying it, Ellie announced she wanted to learn how to hunt.

Okey laughed long and hard. In fact, he had a little whiskey down his throat and nearly choked to death on it. Ellie slapped his back about fifty times.

The next time they sat together, though, she said it again. And this time more firmly, for she’d given it some thought. And Okey set down his bottle and listened.

He tested her. He set up some cans, showed her how to handle his rifle, then stepped back to watch. The first day she missed them all. The second day she hit one. The fifth day she hit four out of nine.

So when she brought up hunting again, they fixed the date.

They went out on a Saturday about five-thirty in the morning, just as the blackness was turning blue. Ellie was booted and flanneled like her father, and she had her own gun.

Okey held his rifle under his left arm. They both knew he’d never be able to shoot it. But neither said anything.

It was just getting light when they made the top of the mountains, their breaths coming fast and smoky cold. They each found a tree to lean against and the wait began.

Bullet had traveled far away from them. He was after rabbit, they knew that much, and they were after squirrel. Okey told Ellie she might have half a chance of hitting a squirrel. Rabbit was out of the question.

Ellie flexed her fingers and tried not to shiver. She was partly cold and partly scared, but mostly happy. For she was on a mountain with her father and it was dawn.

Neither Okey nor Ellie expected a deer to come along. So neither was prepared when one did. But less than twenty feet away, stamping its front hoof in warning, suddenly stood a doe. Okey and Ellie looked across the trees at each other and froze themselves into the scenery.

The doe did not catch their scent. And she could not see them unless they moved. But she sensed something was odd, for she stamped again. Then moved closer.

Ellie looked at the animal. She knew that if she shot a deer, doe or buck, her father would never stop bragging about it. “First time out and she got a deer.” She knew it would be so.

The doe was nearing her tree and she knew if she were quick about it, she could get that deer. She knew it would be easier than shooting a squirrel off a tree limb. She could kill that deer.

But she did not. The doe moved nearer; it was a big one, and its large brown eyes watched for movement. They found it. Ellie raised her arm. And she waved.

The deer snorted hard and turned. It was so quickly gone that Ellie could not be sure in which direction it headed.

“Godamighty!” she heard Okey yell. She knew he might be mad enough to shoot her, if he could hold onto his rifle. She heard his crashing across the ground.

“Now wasn’t that,” Okey gasped as he reached her tree, “wasn’t that the prettiest thing you ever seen?”

Ellie hesitated, wondering, and then she grinned wide.

“The prettiest,” she answered.

And they turned together and went quickly down the mountain to find Bullet and go on home.