Chapter 3: Hawkeye

I have been good at only two things in my entire life. One is being able to put a bullet where I want it and the other is training horses.

I grew up working at my father’s horse stables and watching him teach both horses and people. He said I had a ‘gift’. What he meant was that I could calm a horse down by just talking to him. Even the rankest of them seemed to listen to me.

My other ‘gift’ was shooting. Daddy started teaching me how to shoot when I was 8 years old. When I was 12, I entered a ‘turkey shoot’ held at the county fairgrounds. I won! It was the announcer who gave me the name ‘Hawkeye’ when he announced the winners. It stuck.

I joined the Marine Corps after finishing high school. They recognized my ‘gift’ and refined it. Soon I found myself hiding with a spotter and shooting people. Killing did not bother me at all. The people I shot were bad people, that’s the way I justified it.

I did my time and came home to find my father sick and dying in a Veterans Hospital. Momma had died when I was born and he never remarried. I inherited the horse staple and forty acres along with all his possessions, including his Winchester 30-06 rifle which now is at the bottom of the Wolf River.

After getting out of the Corps I met the love of my life and married a year later. Two years into my wonderful life she announced she was pregnant! Six months later she and my son were dead! Murdered by a drunk driver who never served a day in prison. I swore I would have my revenge.

I waited two long years. Every night I dreamed of the day I would kill him. I set the anniversary of my marriage as the day I would do it.

It was not very hard. I watched him for a couple of days. He was so predictable! Every morning, he left for his job at the factory at exactly 6:30. He got off at 4pm, then stopped for a couple of drinks at a bar with his buddies, then drove home. He was divorced, so he lived alone.

It would be a long shot. Around 800 yards. I sat a target up in a back pasture to sight in the rifle. I used the shells I found in my dad’s gun cabinet. That 30-06 kicked more than my .308 but it was accurate as hell.

On the date I had sworn to get my revenge I was in my ‘hide’ at 6am. At exactly 6:30 he walked out to get in his car. The round hit him just above his ear. I was back feeding the horses 20 minutes later, after field stripping and throwing dad’s rifle in the river.

Cora Munro was brushing her horse when I pulled up.

I helped her saddle her horse then I taught her how to do a flying lead change.

The next day was when she told the Sheriff and that Detective, she had seen me feeding the horses at 6:30.

The day after the Sheriff’s visit, I was feeding the horses when she drove up. She came in the barn like normal and led her horse out to brush it. I followed.

“Why?” I asked.