The Marsh King's Daughter(58)

But shooting into the dirt was the coward’s shot, and I was no coward.

“Stay here,” my father said as the canoe nudged the shore. “Count to a thousand, and then you can take the blindfold off.”

The canoe rocked as he got out. I heard splashing as he waded toward the shore, a rustling as he made his way through the vegetation—arrowroot and cattails, most likely—and then nothing. All I could hear was the wind moving through the pines that my nose had already told me grew on this ridge and the papery sound of aspen leaves knocking against each other in the breeze. The water was quiet, and the sun was hot on my head. The light felt slightly warmer on my right side than on my left, which meant that the canoe was facing north. I wasn’t sure how this was going to help, but it was nice to know. The Remington sat heavy on my knees. Beneath the blindfold, I was beginning to sweat.

Suddenly I realized I had been so busy gathering clues about my surroundings, I had forgotten to count. I decided to begin with five hundred to make up for lost time. The question was, did my father expect me to count to the full one thousand as he had instructed, or did he expect me to take off the blindfold before I finished counting and start looking for him sooner? It was hard to know. Most of the time I did exactly what my father told me to do because there was always some kind of punishment at the end of it if I didn’t. But this was different. The whole point of tracking my father was learning to outthink him. Deviousness and trickery were part of the game.

I took off the blindfold and tied it around my forehead to keep the sweat out of my eyes and climbed out of the canoe. My father’s trail was easy to follow. I could see clearly where he had waded through a patch of sedges—not arrowroot and cattails as I had supposed—and climbed onto the bank. The disturbances in the pine needles in the clearing he crossed before disappearing into the bracken ferns on the other side were also readily visible. I assumed the fact that I could follow my father’s trail so easily meant that I had gotten very good at tracking. Looking back, I’m sure he left an easy trail that day because he wanted the game to reach its conclusion, and for that, he needed to be sure that I found him.

I almost lost the trail at the top of the ridge when the footprints ended at a smooth, bare rock. Then I saw a tiny pile of sand where it shouldn’t have been. I picked up the trail on the other side and followed it to the edge of a small cliff. Bent bracken ferns and loose rocks showed where my father had climbed down. I followed the trail through the Remington’s scope and found my father squatting on his heels on the far side of a beech tree a hundred feet away. The tree was fat but not fat enough: I could see both his shoulders sticking out.

I grinned. The gods were truly smiling on me this day. Not only had I found my father, shooting conditions were close to perfect. I had the high ground. There was no wind. The sun was at my back, and while that meant my father would be able to see me silhouetted against the sun if he happened to step out from behind the tree and turn around and look up, it also meant I would be able to see him clearly when I took my shot and would be less likely to miss.

I took cover behind a big red pine and held the Remington close while I considered my next move. The Remington was almost as tall as me. I dropped to my belly and pushed it in front of me until I was in a better position to shoot from beneath a bush. I braced the Remington against my shoulder and looked through the scope. My father hadn’t moved.

I slipped my finger through the trigger. My stomach got tight. I pictured the crack of the rifle, my father’s head snapping up in surprise. I saw him stepping out from behind the tree and walking up the hill to pat my head and congratulate me for making the shot. Or perhaps he would look down in dismay as his shoulder turned red and charge up the hill like a wounded rhino. My hands shook. I didn’t understand why I had to shoot him. Why my father had changed the rules of our game. Why he’d taken something that was fun and made it into something dangerous and scary. I wished that things could always stay the same.

And with that thought, I understood. Things had to change because I was changing. I was growing up. This was my initiation, my chance to prove that I would be a worthy member of our tribe. To a Yanomami man, courage was valued above everything. This was why they were always fighting other tribes and stealing each other’s women and why they would fight to the death even though they were shot full of arrows rather than quit and be branded a coward. According to the Geographic, almost half the Yanomami men had killed a man.

I braced the Remington more securely against my shoulder. My hands were no longer shaking. It’s impossible to describe the mix of terror and exhilaration I felt when I pulled the trigger. I imagine it’s similar to what a person feels when they jump out of an airplane or dive off a cliff, or the way a heart surgeon feels when she makes her first cut. I was no longer a little girl who loved and admired her father and hoped one day to become like him. I was his equal.

After that, I couldn’t wait till I got the chance to shoot him again.

—

THE CRACK OF THE RIFLE and the snap of the branch above my father’s head are nearly simultaneous. The branch falls into the creek directly in front of him. Exactly where I intended it to fall. The same move that ended our last hunting and tracking game.

My father freezes. He looks up to where the shot originated with his mouth hanging open like he can’t believe I beat him again, let alone in the same way. He shakes his head and holds his arms to the side in surrender. Rambo’s leash is wrapped around his left hand. The Glock dangles from his right.