Soft fluffy snow mantled the ground like a comforter ‘prized of innumerable downy feathers to a depth of two inches.  Thick, dark clouds scudded across the sky, at times obscuring the moon and dipping the woodscape into an inkwell of abysmal darkness.

 

My father had not told me where we were going but I follow this silent man expectantly with a sense of wonder.

 

We move silently.

 

Some snow, in fact most snow, makes for noisy walking.  Sometimes it crunches under foot, other times it squeaks, but it is seldom silent.  That night one of those rare silences pervaded all.

 

Later, as the temperature dropped there would form on top of the snow a thin crust of ice, then, no more stillness, each step would herald our passing.

 

All I can see is my father’s dark sillouette, black against the blacker forest around us.

 

Suddenly he stops and lifts his right hand, in that almost universal signal for, “stop!”

 

I stop.

 

He motions to me with his hand again, open hand held extended, palm down, parallel with the ground.  He raises the hand, lowers it and repeats the gesture indicating that he wants me to hunker down where I am, to become still with the night.

 

I hunker down and become still.

 

Silently he moves away.

 

I peer into the darkness and I watch through slitted eyes as he approaches a small clump of scrub oak.

 

He stops and is still. 

 

He drops to the ground on hands and knees.

 

If I didn’t know what I was seeing he could have passed for some silent predator, which for the moment he had become.

 

All was still.

 

The air was electric with shimmering tension so obvious it could almost be seen.

 

Minutes passed, minutes that seemed like hours.

 

Movement.

 

He was returning and I stared in wonderment for he carried two cock pheasants to feed his growing family.

 

As we stood there in the darkness something dripped to the snow turning the surface black.

 

Blood.

 

Never since have I witnessed a more primal hunt than such as I witnessed on that long ago winter night along the Illinois Fox River of my youth.

 

The pheasants had gone to roost, secure in the knowledge they were safe from a prowling fox but, poor pheasants, they had failed to reckon on the greater predator, my father.

 

In the somewhat myopic vision of the mind I can see him yet, silent, still, standing there in the darkness.  Yes, I see him in shadow form; that was my father.

 

 

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