Eye to Eye

Abstract

Eye to Eye Kirsten Whatley (bio) I duck into the tepee and squeeze among figures crouched together on the dirt floor. The tepee isn't finished yet. Slats of thin sunlight steal through the open bark, an odd pallor washing the young faces beside me. Most are boys in their late teens, novice hunters who've been chasing down the small animals and rodents that live in the underbrush nearby. This is day seven of Wilderness Survival Training: berry picking and nut collecting, animal tracking and slingshot making. The boys have been impatient all week, disappearing into the woods with their new arrows and traps, searching for live alternatives to our decoys and fake targets. My eyes scan the circle in the half-light for our teacher, Steve. Then they stop at the metal cage in the center. A chicken thrashes around inside it, a blur of brown and green feathers; panicked, darting eyes. Steve hasn't told us why we're in here. He's only asked for a show of hands from those who've never seen an animal killed. There is only one of us. The boy, Danny, is soft spoken. I remember he helped me when I was trying to draw fire from a stick, blowing on the wisps of smoke escaping from my furious fingers, and then a semblance of a flame emerged and I clapped and forgot to keep going, and the flame died instantly. He sits quietly now at Steve's right, his eyes riveted on the chicken. It's where all our eyes meet, where a collective silence falls, the only sound being wings and feet and beak in rough contact with the cage. Steve tells us the story of his first hunt: a frenzied rush of power, a shot, shouts in the air, and the rabbit's eyes—blue fright melting to silver vacancy, its tiny legs buckling, flesh crumbling to the ground. Silence. In that moment, Steve had raced to the bushes and, with a spinning head, threw up. He hadn't known the shock of seeing a life evaporate before him. But he's convinced he could have never pulled the trigger without [End Page 136] that surge of adrenaline, of power, an almost animalistic savagery rather than the attention of a human being. "To take life you have to honor life," he is saying now. "You have to meet it in the eye, in the heart, recognize you share the same life, the same air." Steve lifts the lock to the cage. He thrusts his arm inside and grasps the terrified bird, sweeps it out, and holds it close to his body. "You have to act with intention." He strokes the brilliant feathers, brown and green and black and, in some places, almost violet. He drops his voice, talks in measured tones. My heart hurts in my chest. Steve turns to Danny, who looks so young and vulnerable there, hunched down in the shadows. I wonder if his skin prickles with fear like mine does. Danny takes the creature with fumbling fingers and cradles it like Steve has done—Steve, who's still talking in an even monotone, almost a whisper. "Can you feel his heart?" Danny nods. "Match it to yours. Slow down the beat. Tell him you respect his life, and yours. Talk to him—doesn't have to be out loud. But don't stop talking." Danny closes his eyes. His lips are barely moving. After a few moments, the bird seems to calm in its struggle and now looks strangely like Danny's pet, like they belong to one another. "When you're ready . . ." Steve's voice seems to echo from deep inside my body while Danny's eyes open. "Like this." Steve makes a quick motion with his hands, wringing an invisible life out of the universe. I steady myself and watch Danny's chest heave with an audible breath, as if he's about to jump into a lake whose bottom he can't see. Before he can exhale, his hands flash, then tighten; they release. The bird's head falls limp, his gaze locking somewhere beyond our circle, somewhere beyond the...