“Whatever He Needs To When He Has To” a(nother) short piece of fiction by Nick Gregorio

Dad splits the deer’s ribcage open. Sounds like the sticks and branches we stepped on when we were walking up here. That was back just a few hours ago, in the dark. Back when the sun wasn’t showing me what I probably look like on the inside.

“Not so bad, huh,” he says.

“Nah.”

“Are ya‘okay?”

“Yeah.”

His hands are all bloody, shiny too. Mine looked like that a few summers ago when I knocked Max’s front teeth out. I was aiming for his nose but Max is smaller than me so I just got a little bit of his nose, mostly his mouth. Both parts of his face bled on my hands and made them all slick and red like Dad’s.

I dunno if it’s because it’s deer blood and not people blood, but Dad never gets weird about that kinda stuff. He didn’t get weird with all that blood on his hands.

I freaked out when Max’s blood was on me.

I tried shaking my hands off but it didn’t work. Then I tried rubbing them together. That just spread it around, made it worse. I started crying. Max felt all bad about saying that crap about my mom and started crying too. He said, “I didn’t mean it.”

I said, “Okay.”

“Sorry I said that.”

“S’okay.”

“Really. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry I punched you in the face.”

“It’s okay. They were my baby teeth anyway. They were already loose.”

Max put his arm around my shoulder and we cried for a little. We stopped when the troop called us fags.

Dad isn’t freaking out at all. He looks like he wants to take my hand and help me out with gutting this deer. He won’t though. He’ll just wait ‘til I’m ready. He won’t say anything either. Dad’s not the holding hands kind of guy. He’s a hand on shoulder guy. Besides, there’s deer fur sticking to the blood on his hands. I don’t want to touch that stuff yet anyway.

I take the gun strap in my hand and lift the gun off my shoulder. It’s not as heavy as I remember when I was trying to line the crosshairs behind the deer’s shoulder blade. Now it just smells. Smells like—I dunno, it’s a good and bad smell. Kinda like that church stuff that Sister Dianne says smells like God; just not as sweet. How does she know what God smells like anyway? Dad laughed when I told him she said that. He said that maybe if that stuff smells like God, she thinks a gun smells like Satan. Maybe, I guess. A gun’s louder than what I thought God would sound like, too. Makes you see stars and get this buzzing between your ears. I dunno, maybe since God blew up the whole universe to make ours, a gun sounds a little like God; all explosions and bright lights and ears that can’t hear all that great. I can’t really tell. I’m not a nun.

I lean the gun against the tree next to the deer.

“Is the safety on?” Dad asks.

“I think so.”

“Remember what I said about the safety?”

“That you gotta know when it’s on and off.”

He smiles. I like when he smiles, but I kinda feel like he’s smiling because I’m still his son who still needs to learn how to do stuff. A kid who can’t do everything right the first time.

I check the safety. It’s on.

Dad got mad the one time he was showing me how to hold a gun. There weren’t any bullets in it or anything but Mom came in the room he was showing me the gun in and she walked in front of me when I was aiming at the plug socket. He grabbed the gun from me and pointed it up toward the ceiling. “Dammit, Anne,” he said. “Can’t walk in front of guns like that.”

“It’s unloaded.”

“That’s not the point. He’s gotta learn to respect a weapon. He can’t do that with you walking in front of it like that.”

“You know you don’t shoot people, right,” she said to me.

“Yeah.”

When Mom left the room Dad told me that it’s not about knowing whether or not to shoot people, it’s about taking enough care and making sure you don’t put anybody in danger. Ever. That means not even letting people walk in front of you when you’re aiming and just practicing. He tries to teach me to do stuff right.

Dad stands up and wipes his forehead off with his sleeve. “Whaddaya think, pal? Ready?”

“Yeah.” I wipe my forehead off with my sleeve.

“Okay, kneel down next to the deer.”

I put my knees in the wet leaves next to the deer and look into his chest. He’s got the same parts we do. Heart, lungs, stomach; right in the places we have them. His one lung is all messed up where the bullet got him, where I shot him. Maybe he died by choking on his own blood. One of the veins connected to the heart is half off. Maybe his heart stopped before he choked to death. I can’t tell. It was all too fast to tell. Probably was a couple things that killed him after the bullet got him.

I can’t remember what to do first.

I can’t remember anything.

I grab a stick from the ground and put one end on one side of his ribcage and the second end on the other side to spread the chest wider, to see better. I don’t want Dad to think I didn’t pay attention during the training course. I gotta sorta look busy.

Dad kneels down next to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Heart and lungs first, bud.”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to do it?”

“Nah.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

The blood on Dad’s hand doesn’t get onto my coat; I’m taking so long it dried already.

I remember a few weeks ago when Mr. McCabe kept saying, “Cut the frog down the belly. It won’t bleed.”

It didn’t, but when he took the knife from me and the rest of the class laughed at me he got brown slime on his hands. He said, “Shit.”

The class laughed again. “Look,” he said, “just clean up your station and do the lab sheet silently while the rest of class finishes up.”

No one else needed help. The girls didn’t even need help. They were the ones saying stuff like, “It’s gonna be, like, so gross. I’m so gonna puke.” They were the ones that got me all worried about it. They did it just fine. I was the only one who got all weird.

I reach both my hands in and grab the deer’s heart. It’s still hot, wet too. I’m getting that same stomach feeling I got when Mr. McCabe cut the frog open, but I don’t ask for help this time. I don’t need help. Not in front of Dad.

I pull on the heart but the lungs lift up with it. The sound makes me gag but I swallow and pull until the lungs and heart fall out of my hands onto the ground.

“Dad…”

“Yeah, pal?”

I stand up. He does too.

The trees spin but I walk away anyway. I trip and limp and stumble like the deer did after the bullet hit him. His legs got all wobbly like, like they were made out of rubber bands, like my knees are shaking now when all I’m trying to do is walk away for a minute.

I drop to my knees. I fall forward, hands in the dirt and gag.

Dad sits down next to me. “It’s okay,” he says.

I gag again.

“Don’t stop yourself, you’ll feel worse.”

I throw up the sandwiches we had for lunch.

“Sorry,” I say.

“What for?”

“Not being able to do that.”

“You don’t need to be sorry for that.”

“Okay.”

He pats me on the back and tells me to stay here. He stands and walks toward the deer. He can do anything he has to. He does whatever he needs to when he has to. He’s a man. He’s my dad.

I’m just his son. I’m just his son sitting on wet leaves next to a pile of his own puke.