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said.
    His father’s presence loomed behind him, calm and imperturbable. That was his father. Whatever he was, no one could take that from him ever: he was a man among men. Bob Lee had begun to pick up the signs, the subtle ways others deferred to him, the coming of silence when he walked into a room. It wasn’t just that his father was a state policeman or something they called a hero in the war. There was another thing. Something, well, hard to know what to call it. Just something else.
    Now the animal moved fully into the light. It turned. It seemed to look right at Bob Lee, with dark eyes as calm and intense as anything he’d ever seen. He looked right into Bob Lee’s eyes.
    Or that’s the way it seemed. They were like that: watchful for a bit, concentrated, and then forgetful. The entire animal tensed, its ears pricked, its nose sampled the air. It was about seventy-five yards away.
    â€œAre you ready?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Soon the animal forgot that something hunting it could be out there. The thought vanished and, without a care, the deer returned to its eating, picking at the tender shoots in the shadow of a pine tree at the edge of the cornfield.
    â€œAll right, Bob Lee,” his father whispered. “Easy up, hold that breath, see that front sight, head down and steady, tip of the finger against the trigger and then the squeeze. The gun will fire when it wants to fire.”
    â€œMake your daddy proud,” came the voice of Sam Vincent, his daddy’s best and possibly only friend.
    Bob Lee took a breath.
    He was nestled against the trunk of an elm. It supported him and absorbed his trembling. He drew the rifle to his shoulder, let it point naturally to the animal, and the sight, steady as a brick, went to the beast’s tawny shoulder where the bullet would strike and take its life.
    He knew the rifle. It was cocked, but he’d thumb-lowered the hammer for safety. Now his thumb flew back to that hammer, and notched it back where with an almost inaudible click it seated itself. His thumb returned to the rifle’s grip, locked on, steadily, and his trigger finger went to that instrument, and began ever so gently to press against it.
    Steady now, just easy pressure, without disturbing the stillness of the sight, not a problem, something he had done in the fields and in his dreams for years.
    But—
    Maybe it was the sun, the way it lit the deer’s white withers. Maybe it was the spring smell of flowers alight in blossom. Maybe it was the buzz of some kind of insect life, or the chirping of some dim bird or other.
    He could not say. It wasn’t that he could not kill. The boy had killed before, understood that it was somehow man’s work, necessary, and it was what a fellow did, without complaint or doubt.
    But today, in the sunlight, in the warmth?
    â€œDaddy?”
    â€œYes, Bob Lee.”
    â€œI don’t know. I just—I don’t know.”
    â€œIt is your call. You are the hunter. You may take the shot, and we will eat good tonight. But I cannot make the decision for you, Bob Lee. It’s a serious thing to take the life of something so beautiful. So you must decide.”
    The boy decided.
    â€œMaybe not this time. Maybe in the fall again, when it’s cold. It’s spring now. It’s all green, everywhere. Maybe not when it’s green.”
    â€œIf that’s what you’ve decided.”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œThen that’s what it shall be. We’ll let Mr. Deer have his summer and his fun. Then we’ll come back for him in the fall.”
    Â 
    â€œYou know what?” Sam whispered to him, on the long trudge back, “I think you did make your daddy proud. You felt it, you did what was right. You didn’t do what someone said, and your daddy respects that.”
    â€œYes, sir,” said Bob Lee. His father was a bit ahead of them, broad across the shoulders, bristly across the head where his