Strike True or Stray Cruel

An old family heirloom: an antique musket with only three shot left...

Photo credit: contemporarymakers.blogspot.com

“So, what’s in the box?” Watt asked.

Clinton wasn’t supposed to have the box. And the whole reason why he’d asked Kirk if both he and Watt could spend the night there was so he could take it out to Kirk’s deer blind.

He held the box in both hands. It had a brittle metal bar on top pinned under two hoops. It was slim and wide making it appear longer. Both the bottom and the lid were encased in old flaking leather. Stained from greasy fingers and grimy years.

A latch plate with two rectangular slots was attached to the front panel. The first slot held the latch that locked down the lid. The second waited for the key to unlock it.

The pattern imprinted across the leather bound convex lid and rounded corners was a border of fleur de lis under a field of diamond shaped crests. Leaves made up the four angles. Inside each diamond was a six petal daisy.

Watt wasn’t so sure he wanted Clinton to open the box now. It was too small to hold what he wanted most. A 1992 Chevy Silverado Z71 Off Road with a V8 engine.

And if it wasn’t something large and wonderful waiting inside then it was something small and dangerous.

Something hummed.

“Don’t open it,” Watt said.

“Why?” Clinton opened the box anyway.

Watt had seen plenty of new boxes made to look old whenever his mom dragged him through home décor stores. But this box was real old. Maybe even from before the Civil War.

The shallow bottom held a wooden tray of spheroid grooves. Made for musket balls. There were just three balls left.

Clinton pulled the tray out. Beneath was a powder horn of polished bone. Next to it was a plush bag full of wadding and a couple of flints.

A piece of old fabric was tacked up under the lid. A paisley print of blue leaves and a large red rose. Browning and frowning with age.

“Who’s box is it?” Watt asked. He knew Clinton liked to throw fits until he got what he wanted just to trade it away on something else. For Clinton it wasn’t the having. It was the getting.

“It was my dad’s. He got it from granddad,” Clinton said. “Connor took it when Dad got sick. But the last time Kirk bailed Connor out, he got the box back. So, it’s just as much mine.”

There was a buzz and another buzz.

Watt felt across the cloth. There were bumps and grooves. All in a line under the lid.

“There’s something’s under here,” Watt said.

“No there isn’t,” Clinton said but he ripped the cloth back anyway. Exposing letters. Words were engraved with loops and hoops into the wood.

“What kind of writing is that?” Clinton asked.

“I think it’s cursive,” Watt said.

Neither of them could read it.

Frappe Vraie Ou Errante Cruelle

Again, the noise. The buzz was longer. This time Clinton heard it, too.

“That’s your phone, dude,” Watt said.

Clinton took out his iPhone.

It showed several texts. All from the same person. Now a call was coming through.

Clinton put it on speaker.

“Hey,” Kirk said. In a direct and flat tone. “Where you at?”
“Out here at your blind. With Watt,” Clinton said.

“You got that box?”

“No.”

“You got it. Why’d you take it? I told you not to.”

Clinton hung his head. “I don’t know.”

“You open it up?”

Clinton paused. “No.”

“Why don’t you ever listen? Lock it up and put it back where you got it.”

“What’s the lid say? There’s words carved into it,” Clinton said.

“‘Strike true or stray cruel.’ It’s a curse. Dad and Uncle Jim had it out that day and Granddad didn’t know.”

“How do you know then?”
“Cuz Dad told me. He also told me to keep it away from Connor. And from you. What do you think happened to Uncle Jim?”

“It was a hunting accident.”

“Dad shot his own brother. Because he used one of them bullets.”

“Dad couldn’t’ve killed Uncle Jim. He was always made us stand behind him.”

“Uncle Jim was at home. They found him inside. The ball came through the window. From over five miles away. It was more than a freak accident. Granddad knew the box was cursed. This is the way Dad told me: Some French hunter lost the gun in a barter to Grandpa’s –great-great-grandpa when the family first come here after the War of 1812. The Frenchman cursed the bullets ‘fore he give it to the family.”

“Better just close it,” Watt said.

“No,” Clinton said. “I brought it so we could shoot our muzzle loaders.”

“Just shoot some squirrels with your air pumps,” Kirk said.

“I ain’t chasin’ no squirrels when I got a muzzle loader,” Clinton said.

“Clinton, listen to--”

Clinton pressed END CALL.

He put his fist to his head. And squeezed his eyes. “There ain’t no curse. Kirk just don’t want me to use it.”

“Whatcha gonna do?” Watt asked.

“I just wanna test it out. Wanna shoot something,” Clinton complained.

“What you should do is just pack up that box and let’s get on home,” Watt said.

That must made Clinton more determined to do what he come to do. He picked up the muzzle loader. Took the first of the three remaining musket balls and began to load the old musket. After he put in powder and wad, Clinton rammed it all down with the rod.

Then he crouched on the deer stand and swung the long musket about taking aim on nothing and waiting for something worthy to take aim. When Clinton found what he had sought through the gun’s sights, he slowed the arc of the barrel. He took a bead on something scampering through the leaves.

Clinton pulled the trigger. The shot kicks up the gun. A squirrel drops out of a high branch of an oak.

Nothing bad had happened. It went just as expected. The gun had done its work and the squirrel was as dead as dirt. It had been a puny squirrel. Not much meat on the bones. A waste of a shot if Clinton had asked Watt, which he hadn’t or wouldn’t dare to have.

Clinton handed the musket over to Watt balancing the trigger plate and trigger on his left hand. That was when strange things began to happen.

About a dozen crows came out of nearby brush, beating their wings for maxium speed. There was a flash from the ground. Although, Watt would later claim it to be just a mist and nothing to get excited, Clinton would swear that it had an orange glow. In the shape of a ring.

“Maybe it’s a foo light,” Clinton thought out loud.

Whatever it had been, Watt began to fuss about not wanting to make the shot. He outright refused to load the gun. Clinton had to step up and load and prime the musket with wad and the rest of the load.

Watt took aim and fired. Even the sound was queer. A high pitch wail.

A hard recoil made Watt drop the muzzle loader onto the floor of the deer stand. A ball strayed and richoted off the nearest tree and made a trajectory back at Watt’s face. It struck Watt cruel in his left ear lobe. He felt it gouge away.

Watt’s eardrums had turned over and inside out. His coclea and anvil was ringing as if a silver hammer had began to wail in side his head.

He could feel something wet running down his chest, so he clamped his hand to his ear. Rocking back and forth,Watt began to whimper and whine.

Clinton bade Watt to take let down his hand so he could investigate the extent of the wound.

Watt whimpered and there was a lot of blood.

“You shot the lower part of your ear off, Watt. Quit gripin. Coulda been worse,” Clinton summarized.

“Better pick up your stupid gun. That cursed thing almost killed me!” Watt whined.

“You didn’t load it right!” Clinton snapped.

“Me? You helped me!” Watt complained. “You didn’t load it any different than when you took your shot. What does that saying on the box mean?”

Clinton shrugged it off. Kirk had told him over the last phone call what it had meant word for word. But the blood seeping between his fingers and down the back of his hand to drip off his wrist and stained his hunter’s fatigues was getting dark.

“Just one shot left now,” Clinton said.

Watt made out like he was deaf. “Here, you load it. I’ll shoot this last bullet. Will that make you happy?”

“I don’t think that last bullet will do anyone much good. Can we go now? I feel blood going down my back and stomach,” Watt complained.

It was beginning to get messy.