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Françoise Barthes watched her sixteen year old granddaughter, Charlize, open the trunk and remove their gear. For a moment, she thought that she was watching Emmanuelle, her daughter, and remembered herself twenty-some years earlier. She smiled at her recollections and wondered how much was accurate and how much the pretty paper in which people wrap their fondest memories.
"Grammy, you brought my bow!" Charlize looked up and grimaced. "I told you and Mom that I wouldn't hunt. I just don't believe in it. You guys just never listen to me. I don't want to kill anything. I don't even eat red meat!" Her long brown hair was braided in a thick French braid and tucked up under her cap. She wore a leather vest over a long sleeved shirt and blue jeans with soft leather boots that brushed her mid calf. She looked very much like an out-of-doors woman, even if her heart wasn't in the object of the Hunt.
"Take it, dear. You may need it to protect your old Granny."
"If we weren't going in the woods today, we wouldn't need any protection."
Françoise Barthes smiled. She usually hunted with her oldest daughter. Every year, the family gathered afterwards to enjoy the bounty. Some years when she came back empty handed, Françoise always found a willing acquaintance with an extra half-haunch in her cooler. When called upon and able, Françoise repaid the favor gladly to the same acquaintance or to another.
When she was small, Charlize ran wild with her friends and hunted imaginary jacks in the park down the block. She too had savored the delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen with the rest of the family and shared in the annual feast enthusiastically. She had always had a fondness for small, helpless animals, like most little girls, but beginning in the year when she had had her first period, she had out and out refused to eat red meat. Charlize had weakened some later and was known to eat some chicken or fish, but never red meat. Now, in the blooming radicalism of youth, she was even questioning the Hunt.
Françoise, her grandmother, had grown up after the Revolution and but she could recall her mother's tales of the bad old days. Each year, she looked forward to the Hunt and was glad that she could afford a permit. She had enjoyed hunting with her friends and then with Elle, her daughter, when she was old enough. Males or jacks had slain women, children, and each other for millennia without cause. She had never thought of males as helpless, cuddly creatures. She was glad to do her part to control male numbers. This year, however, Elle just couldn't get away from work and asked Charlize to go with her Granny.
Charlize finally agreed to go along, but only for the walk in the woods. She had been an expert archer in school. However, she stated and restated her non-negotiable, unshakable, unequivocal refusal actually to kill anything. She even threatened to shout a warning should she see her own Grannyy try to kill some poor boy!
Elle, her mother, listened to her patiently and thought, more than once, about inquiring of the origin of the prized, expensive, finely worked leather vests and boots that her daughter loved to wear. Somehow, she chose not too. Wisdom would come in its own time.
Franci pursued a structural strategy with some success. At the beginning of the Hunt, there were about 16 jacks to the square mile. However, the likelihood of finding a jack in a particular place was not completely random. Jacks naturally sought the best places to hide. Jacks knew about the infra-red binoculars now and the older, smarter ones carefully chose hiding places where they could not be found by a casual surveillance. However, these hiding places often had a limited field of view, and they might be approached without detection, if one were careful enough.
Some hunters looked for high ground or climbed trees to improve their vantage point. Franci knew that the number of really good hiding places was limited and a certain percentage would certainly conceal a jack, often a fine stag. She would simply identify those places where a jack might reasonably choose to hide and be invisible to hunters scanning their surroundings, even with their infrared binoculars. Franci and her daughter would then move in stealthily and flush the supposed jack from hiding.
Franci and Charlize spent most of the day walking quietly through the woods. Although they didn't talk much, Franci sensed that Charlize enjoyed being with her as much as she enjoyed the company of her granddaughter. This day, as usual, there were more potential hiding places than jacks. They approached each place as if it concealed a jack. With each stalk, Franci felt a moment's exhilaration followed by disappointment when no jack was flushed. At first, Charlize was noticeably relieved when they failed to flush a jack. With time, though, she got into the game that she had played when she was younger, as the stalking seemed all in play. Proceeding deeper and deeper into the preserve, they could no longer see or hear other hunters. Tired and hungry, in a sort of pleasant way, they stopped for lunch and an hour's quiet chat.
Franci and Charlize resumed their stroll. The forest canopy arched grandly over their heads and gave the early afternoon landscape a twilight appearance. Only the calls of birds, raucous or melodic, broke the austere silence. To Franci's surprise, Charlize was first to point out a depression to their right. A jack might truly hide there and be invisible to anyone not looking specifically down its slope, whether or not they had infra-red glasses.
Low on her belly, Franci crept up first. Charlize held back and was amused to see her Granny move so spryly with an energy and agility that Charlize did not at-all associate at all with grandmothers. Franci peered over the brim then eased herself down. She slid back down a meter, then rolled over and waved to Charlize. She had seen a jack! She pulled two arrows from her quiver.
Franci, placed an arrow up the slope behind her and nocked a second arrow. She turned back onto her belly and shimmied back up to the crest. With difficulty, she pulled back and rose silently to her knees.
Charlize wanted to see. She really didn't want to kill anything; she just wanted to see. Her curiosity surprised even herself but the excitement was undeniably contagious and her curiosity grew irresistibly. She was both fascinated and repelled by the spectacle that promised to unfold before her. She was a little frightened too, because who might know what a desperate jack might do. She had been raised on stories of male violence. As quietly as she could, she circled around to the right, trying to get some sort of line of sight. She saw the jack at the same instant that he saw her grandmother. He leaped, as the first arrow ripped through the space that he had just occupied. He was up and running as Granny reached for her second arrow, pulled, and took a second shot as he dodged past of her. Charlize's Granny shouted a most ungrandmotherly curse that shattered the silence and made Charlize blush, a habit that she had believed that she thought that she had long outgrown.
When Charlize looked back on the day, she swore that she couldn't even remember taking the arrow from her quiver or nocking arrow on her bowstring. She couldn't specifically remember drawing back on the bow. Quite by chance the jack's headlong dash had taken him right to where Charlize was standing. Charlize didn't even remember releasing the arrow. He was running toward her and she reacted to protect herself by instinct, totally without thinking, she reasoned at the time with some conviction. He was attacking her and she was only defending herself.
How do you know for sure, her friends asked, when they congratulated her.
Afterwards, she thought about it longer and doubt crept in. She wasn't really sure herself that he had even seen her. Eventually, she admitted to herself that perhaps the poor bugger was only seeking to escape and survive this nightmare, most likely, not trying to attack her at all. But it was a great shot, an undeniably great shot anyway, she concluded with some self satisfaction. He was a jack and it was the Hunt. She had a permit and every right to take him.
The next thing that she knew, the jack was lying at her feet. She simply couldn't believe it. He looked like a discarded doll, lying in a heap, limbs all askew. She should have run but she was fascinated by this large, crumpled figure at her feet. Granny was smiling and waving as she ran toward her.
The jack was twitching. We have to finish him," Granny urged. "It's cruel to let him suffer."
“I really got him," Charlize marveled She felt grown-up and a little bit proud of herself. "Can you do it?" she pleaded. She imagined the 3/4 length leather coat hanging in her closet.