The
night before, I’d set out carton after carton of Weight Watchers frozen entrees
as bait and in the morning I walked the rim of the hollow with my rifle, ready
for anything. Then I heard Martin cry out. He was down below in a clearing,
wrestling with an angel and, just like in high school, none of the moves Martin
tried seemed to work.
He
tried the double-leg takedown. He went for the up-and-under move, the Russian
tie, the flying-arm bar, but when your opponent has wings, none of that works.
It just makes you look stupid and feel humiliated and small. After five
minutes—a lifetime—the angel had him pinned. It was even starting to get that
serene smile on its face. That’s when I shot it through the head.
It
dropped like a grouse, and this the fourth one this month. The old woods are
infested with angels. The previous Sunday, Martin bagged one that was pressing
my face into the pine straw with its perfect foot. Buff, this one, really
ripped. It must’ve been two-percent body fat.
The
week before, Valerie skewered one through the neck with her compound bow. It
had cornered Robin and was muttering something at her in Latin with her little
rosebud lips. Robin said she was glad now she failed Latin in college.
But
there are two strange things about all this. The first is that dead angels
vanish. No matter if they’re buried under the azaleas, hung up in the carport,
or locked in the deep freezer in the basement with my bass filets. In the blink
of an eye, they’re back in the woods like maverick moons. Feathers are all that
remain, which we take for pillows and wonderful comforters.
Strangest
of all is that the angels don’t bleed. Their heads are filled with dry
honeycomb and though they’re as heavy as minivans when you fight them, their
bodies are airy, hollow, like something eaten by termites.
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