My Grandfather Cochran . . . Papa . . . was the most gentle man I've ever met. I don't know what he was like when my mom and her siblings were growing up with him, but from the stories I've heard, it seems he'd always been that way.
While I still have a few memories of him before we left for Spain, the ones that are the most vivid were made after we got back from there . . .
He was a tall man . . . thin . . . skin like leather from years spent in the sun as a farmer . . . his eyes were grey . . . and kind . . . strong yet gentle hands . . . what hair he had left was white and cropped close to his head. I loved him unabashedly. He left before we were up in the morning . . . the land calling him, but he was always back for dinner (that's lunch in case you get confused about that). My grandmother scurried around the kitchen . . . made sure he ate heartily. I was always close by . . . waiting quietly for his invitation to join him in the afternoons. Some days I was left behind, but more often than not, he'd smile and say "Come on child" and my heart would burst with excitement. He rarely came home before the sun set . . . often saying he worked from "Can't to can't" (translation: before the sunrise until after dark).
One of those afternoons, I followed him out the door . . . we'd be plowing in a nearby field . . . one of my favorite things to do with him. It fascinated me to watch those metal discs turn that sun-hardened soil into art . . . rows and rows . . . a pattern ingrained in my head. And this day I got to take my BB gun along! Grandmother packed us some drinks and sandwiches since we'd be gone for a while, and she knew I'd get hungry before dinner.
I got to ride on top of the wheel well of the tractor . . . something OSHA would freak out about today . . . AND give moms a heart attack . . . after all I could have been killed, right?!?! Whatever. Anyway, Papa stopped plowing after a couple of hours so we could take a break, sit in the shade, and enjoy our afternoon snack. I finished up pretty quickly and asked Papa if it would be okay for me to shoot my gun . . . using a nearby fence post as a target. "Sure," he said, "just be careful."
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| I don't recall what "brand" tractor he used, but the one we were on that day was very similar to this one |
I managed to hit the fence post a few times . . . then I watched as a bird landed and settled on top of it. Thinking nothing of it, I took aim at the little bird . . . and hit it. I have no idea what I thought would happen, but a BB . . . shot from the distance where we sat . . . will not kill a bird . . . I watched in horror as the poor thing hit the ground and started flopping around . . . what I'd eaten threatening to come up!
Papa turned . . . pretty sure I made some sound that made him turn . . . looked at me . . . and my gun . . . stepped of the tractor and walked to where the bird was flailing. I THOUGHT he was going to pick it up so we could take it back home to nurse back to health. He did not. Using the heel of his boot, he crushed the bird into the ground . . . to finish, out of mercy, what I had done . . . and I started to cry.
When he got back to the tractor . . . with no malice in his voice . . . he simply said "We don't shoot what we're not going to eat, and we don't eat songbirds."
We spent the rest of the afternoon plowing in silence . . . my guilt overwhelming . . . a lesson learned.
He never spoke of it again . . . I never pointed that BB gun at another living thing . . . it was a long time before I pointed it at anything.
I was 11 years old.
"The value of life is revealed when it confronts death from close quarters." ~ Apoorev Dubey
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