All Dogs Go to Heaven. But humans?
The moon was full that Kentucky night. The air was crisp, the sky clear. Stars broke through the moonlight and the forest was quiet. Ray and his father were deer-hunters. They crept slowly through the night, rifles in hand, listening. Watching. Then they saw it.
Above them, on a rocky promontory, radiant in the ivory moonlight, stood a magnificent stag. It was as large a deer as they had ever seen. Its antlers spread like a tree. The ivory light made it seem ethereal, magic, iridescent. Ray slowly raised his rifle. His father grabbed the barrel and made Ray lower his weapon. He shook his head. They would not shoot the deer.
“I was going crazy,” Ray recounted in a barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, where we were in basic training. “I wanted to shoot that deer so bad.” He didn’t know why his father would not let him shoot the deer.
I did.
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