on the archery expo

a bowman’s tragi-comedy in the round

Walked into an archery expo at the Commons last week.

I love a good archery expo. The focus. The precision. The quiet dignity of people pretending they’re not one bad wind gust away from accidentally killing.

A young deer ran through the event. Bambi-like.

Young deer. Common lands. Surrounded by bowmen.

Exciting?

Of course it was exciting.

It was anyone’s game.

Smart deer, though. It bounded into the only brush in the entire area—a sad little patch of shrubbery in an otherwise barren field.

The dudes with the bows sprang into action.

“Come out of the shrubbery. We have you surrounded.”

(If you know, you know.)

Now imagine: a big wind comes up. There’s a rustle in the leaves. Someone panics. Lets one fly.

Then—all at once, like twenty bodies with one brain, one breath, so in sync it’s almost beautiful—the rest of them let loose.

Arrows flying everywhere.

Dudes hitting the ground.

Total chaos.

It’s like Juno Beach during the first week of June 1944. People screaming. Body parts flying. Tom Hanks winning a statue.

And that young, innocent deer? That beautiful creature in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Had the last laugh.

Sure, he bled out really slowly.

That fucker died too.

Then came the rats. And the crows. And the maggots.

Oh, what fun!