archery

  Although he had hit the last rabbit he shot at, he felt lucky, and he approached the brushy area with an arrow already nocked on the string.
  Things never happened as he planned, however, and because he was concentrating on looking for rabbits he very nearly stepped on a foolbird. It blew up under his foot in a flash of leaves and feathers like a grenade detonating and flew off at a quartering angle away and to Brian’s left front.
  Without thinking he raised the bow, drew and released the arrow and was absolutely flabbergasted to see it fly in a clean line, intersect the flight line of the foolbird and take it neatly through the center of its body.
  It cartwheeled to the ground and Brian ran over to it. Though it looked dead, he broke its neck with a quick snap to make certain it was gone.
  Incredible, he thought. If I lived to be a hundred and tried it a thousand more times I would never be able to do it again. Just a clean reflexive shot.
  But more — he pulled the arrow out of the dead foolbird and wiped the blood off it and turned to walk back to camp with the same arrow on the string. He took five steps and a rabbit jumped out from a bush on his right and in one smooth action he dropped the dead bird, raised the bow, drew the arrow and released it and saw it take the rabbit through the chest at a flat run. It died before he could get to it and he picked it up. That night he cleaned them both and made a stew, boiling them together, and ate the meat and drank the broth until he was packed, full, his stomach rounded and bulging.
  Two, he thought — two with the same arrow and both moving and both hit almost perfectly. He took the arrow from the rest of them and propped it in the corner. That, he thought, is my lucky arrow. In the same instant the word medicine came into his thought—It is my medicine arrow. He had not planned it, not meant to think the phrase, but it came and he knew it was right. It was not a religous idea so much as a way to believe in what he had done, and how he had done it, and from that day on he did not use the arrow again but put it on a small rock ledge. When things were bad he would look to the arrow on the ledge and think of how right it had been: one arrow, two kills, and a full belly all on one day.