Hunting Season - John and Gabe Stoker

From the moment Momma put the tiny blanket-wrapped bundle of Gabe into John’s arms in the hospital, he’s had a fierce love for his baby brother.
It’s not like he and Carmen aren’t close. At two years apart, they can’t not be. They’re normal siblings, in so far as their rivalries and weird inside jokes and secrets kept from parents about who broke a dish or who was playing with the stakes. And it’s not like Carmen isn’t fond of her little brother. It’s just that from the moment John held Gabe for the first time, it’s felt RIGHT.
And it seems like Gabe returns the sentiment. As soon as he was old enough to walk, he took to following John everywhere. It’s earned him some teasing from the neighborhood boys he plays with, having a toddler in tow almost constantly, but John doesn’t care about that as much as he cares about the huge smile that lights up Gabe’s face whenever John takes his hand or swings him up onto his shoulders.
There are few places Gabe doesn’t follow his big brother. One of those is school, although Gabe keeps trying, even going so far as making his own lunchbox out of one of Dad’s Altoids tins and some string and standing by the door when John and Carmen wait for the bus.
And the other place John always tells Gabe he can’t come along to is the hayfields.
There are rattlesnakes back there, including one Momma calls El Diablo, a huge one as thick as John’s leg. The ranch hands all know to flip the bales with hooked poles before tossing them on the wagons, and John is careful to avoid the field whenever the hay is standing.
Today, he’s walking lunch back while Momma rakes hay, watching a hawk circling overhead looking for mice scared out by the machines, and swinging a thermos of sweet tea in his hand. He can hear the clack and rattle of the rake, and the chug of the tractor engine. It’s rare for Momma to be able to do the fieldwork, most of the time she’s too tired in the day, but she dislocated her shoulder a few weeks ago and she’s been staying home since then, going to bed at night like them and seeing them off to school instead of Abuela Rosa waking them and packing lunches.
He scrambles over the boards of the wooden fence that separates the field from the vegetable garden and walks off through the rows, careful of his steps. The hawks aren’t the only things hunting the fields. He doesn’t want to put his foot down on a copperhead or a rattler.
He’s about halfway to the row the tractor is working on when he hears it. The singsong sounds Gabe makes when he’s trying to catch up, that are some vague approximation of John’s name.
He freezes, even with the summer sun beating down on his shoulders. Gabe isn’t supposed to be out here. John left him on the other side of the house, playing with a toy truck in the sandbox. He didn’t think Gabe even saw where he was going.
“Gabe!” He shouts, and his little brother looks up gleefully, then trips over his own feet and sprawls face first in the middle of a turned row. The greenish-gold strands part beside him and a snake’s head rises. A huge tawny thing. John’s never seen El Diablo, but this has to be him.
“Don’t move, Gabe.” John swallows, watching the rattlesnake swaying. “Don’t move.” His own breath is caught in his throat and he forces himself to move his hand, setting down the thermos and pulling the Bowie knife Momma gave him last Christmas out of his belt sheath. Momma never goes anywhere without hers, and John wanted to be just the same.
He takes a deep breath, and then begins moving slowly forward. As long as the snake’s attention is on Gabe, John can get closer. His fingers tighten on the knife handle. He’s been throwing knives since he was old enough not to drop them on his foot. He can hit a knot in the barn wall from the other side of the corral. But somehow, when his little brother’s life is at stake, he feels like this will be the time he misses.
He can’t help but think of the story Dad read one night, about the archer who had to shoot an apple off his son’s head. John had thought it was an exciting story of a hero. But now he realizes just how scared that father must have been.
The snake hisses, the rattle sounding deafening in the suddenly silent field. The tractor sounds have stopped. Momma must have seen what happened. She’s coming, but it won’t be soon enough. John can tell El Diablo is about to strike.
He’s out of time. He plants his feet, takes a breath, and focuses on the snake’s head, fangs gleaming menacingly. And then the knife whistles through the air in a flash of steel.
The Bowie knife catches the snake’s head, pinning it to the ground, and John rushes forward to scoop Gabe up and pull him away from the writhing body. Gabe crumples into him, sobbing snottily into John’s shirt. John runs his hand up and down his little brother’s back as Momma runs up and Gabe wraps his arms around John’s neck.
“Hey, it’s okay. Let’s go home.”