Back in 1997, Travis and I took a walk through the desert. He had a .22 caliber rifle in one hand, as I carried a Pellet gun. We were going to do some practice shooting; problem was finding something to shoot. The desert should have been full of jack rabbits, lizards, and snakes, but we couldn’t seem to find any of them.
Jokingly, I told Travis he was scaring them all off because of his looks. He had slick brown hair that combed to one side and even at the age of eight, showed a defined jaw line. I on the other hand was the opposite, being six years old and much prettier.
“A jack rabbit!” Travis yelled.
I had lost my train of thought. “Where?” The word didn’t even get out of my mouth before he took off running. It was then that the jack rabbit was in sight, darting through the bushes like a bullet. There was no way we were going to keep up with it, but Travis saw had faith and continued anyways. Soon it was gone; the rabbit just vanished into the desert.
“So close.” I said, being sarcastic about it. A snake or lizard would be easy to keep up with, but unless the rabbit hid in a bush... And then it hit me. The rabbit ran fast but it couldn’t have gone that far. It had to be close; we only needed to scope it out. The butt of the pellet gun rested on my shoulder as I stared down the sight.
“What are you doing?” Travis smirked. “It’s gone.”
I didn’t want to tell him the rabbit was close. A large sagebrush bush stood fifty feet in front of us with a saguaro cactus ten feet to the left of it. I remembered something about this area but it wasn’t coming to mind exactly what it was. And then right about the time I realized, the rabbit bolted out of a bush only a few yards ahead of us.
“There he is!” I yelled, my sights aimed right at him. As I was about to pull the trigger, Travis ran ahead of me, obstructing my view. He ran after the rabbit, almost keeping up. He stopped and pointed the gun at the moving target. ‘Bang!’ The trigger had been pulled; dust flew up only inches away from the rabbit as it jumped nearly three feet into the air.
Travis ran after it again at full speed, careless about me trying to warn him. He was headed right between the sagebrush bush and cactus where the rabbit jumped as I yelled at him to stop. His ego overwhelmed him at that point and he felt the need to hunt the rabbit down. Seconds later as he put one foot in front of the other, he tripped and tumbled on the ground.
“Are you alright!” I screamed from a distance. Travis was not moving. I hadn’t been that scared in my life; I thought he was dead. As I got closer and looked down at him, he threw his arms at my legs as he projected his voice to sound like a monster. I jumped back in surprise, my eyes wide open. “Don’t do that!”
Travis smiled before slowly getting up. It was obvious he was hurting, although he wouldn’t show it. “Maybe next time.” He said. “Let’s go eat dinner.” If we stayed out too long, mother would start to worry about us. I always dreaded the mile walk back home.
“Can we take the shortcut back this time?”
Right about that time, I got ‘the look’. “Are you out of your mind!” Travis shook his head back and forth. I thought it went rather smoothly last time we took the shortcut. A four strand barbed wire fence runs along a ten acre parcel that stood between us and home. Otherwise it would be another twenty minutes to walk around it.
Twice we had gone through the shortcut in the previous months. The first time there were no complications. We slid through the second and third strand of barbed wire and as we went to the other side of the property, we both heard the chickens clucking. One thought went through our heads. Eggs!
The two of us went into the chicken coop and swept the place clean, a few eggs in each pocket and one in each hand. Old man Jenkins heard the chicken’s excitement and went out there to see what was going on. His house was at least fifty yards away from the coop, but his garden was much closer, where he currently was.
Travis and I stood still as we hid behind a plywood board. Luckily, Jenkins did not see us. After he went back to gardening, we both bolted out of there, careful not to bust the eggs in our pockets. We would use a couple to eat and the rest to throw at our target board, a large piece of wood that rested against the old trailer outside.
Being bored one day, we decided to see who could hit a glass bottle standing on a wooden post with a rock. Of course Travis was the one to hit it. That was the only target we had to work with, so we came up with another plan. Travis found a permanent marker in which he spent nearly an hour making target circles on the board.
We used that board to throw rocks at, shoot occasionally when we had bullets, and throw eggs at when we obtained them. Our second attempt at getting eggs by going through old man Jenkins place did not go as well. We had gone through the second and third strand of barbed wire like last time, but we were being watched.
After a close encounter last time, Travis scouted the area while I ran to the chicken coop and grabbed half a dozen eggs before we heard the shouting. “Get off my property!” Yelled Jenkins. He ran after us with a spatula. He must have been cooking at the time, nearing sundown. I kept the eggs in my hands and made a run for it.
The two of us waited outside the front door playing rock paper scissors to decide who will go in first. We knew Jenkins would have called mother and told her what we were up to. Now we had to see what the punishment was. I won with one hand symbolizing rock while he picked scissors. Travis went in first, followed by me.
“Grounded.” That is all mother spoke that evening, said Travis as he looked over at me. “That is why we are not going to take the shortcut again.”
“We haven’t tried out the egg launcher yet.” I reminded him.
A faint smile came across his face. He had forgotten about it in the recent weeks. “We can also see how the range is on old man Jenkins house.” He said quietly. A new plan was devised this time to assure we would get away with a number of eggs for the launcher. Travis would not be a scout this time, but rather distract Jenkins.
The plan worked perfectly. Travis ran down the fence line until Jenkins shouted towards him from the front of the house which was facing opposite of the chicken coop. I went around and grabbed as many eggs as I could handle before taking off. Travis saw me climbing through the fence and ran around the property where I waited for him.
“Mother is gone.” I announced. “We can test the egg launcher and there will be absolutely no way to get caught. It should go up to a quarter mile!” This was a bit of exaggeration, but the thought of it going that far was a thrill to think about. We arrived home where I put the eggs in a pan of water and anxiously waited.
“Go get the launcher while I peel these eggs.”
Travis went outside to grab it out of the old trailer. We knew that would be a great spot to hide it since mother never went in there. By the time he got back, three eggs had been peeled. It was ready to shoot. I grabbed the air freshener and a lighter out of the bathroom and went outside.
An egg was stuffed down the pipe before air freshener was sprayed in the other end and then lit by the lighter. I held the launcher towards old man Jenkins place when the egg shot out and flew that direction. His house was several hundred yards away next to the main road that comes to our house.
We waited until minutes later, mother pulled up in the jeep, a hard-boiled egg splattered on the windshield. The wind must have carried the egg towards the road. I knew we were both thinking the same thing and ran to our bedroom where we hid under the blankets, waiting for the inevitable.
END
