A Rabbit Hunting Date

I was excited! I was going rabbit hunting! I had learned how to shoot a .22 rifle, which my daddy had. But I had never gone hunting. I had a date that night, with someone I had wanted to go out with a long time. He had finally asked me out on a date. And he said we were going rabbit hunting. No one had ever taken me hunting before. This was going to be fun.

I didn’t dress up too much, just put on my jeans and plaid shirt, and saddle oxfords. I washed my hair and rolled it in pin curls, like we did in 1948. I put on a tiny bit of lipstick and that was my makeup. I was ready to go, when he drove up in his pick up, and honked his horn. Mother and Daddy didn’t care if a boy honked the horn of his truck, if they knew the boy, and they knew this boy very well. They had known him for years.

It was just getting dark, the sun having set about 20 minutes before, and you could smell the smell of the new mown hay in the field that Daddy had cut that day. After it dried completely in the sun for a few days, we were going to help him load it on the trailer and take it to the barn, pitching it into the loft, for the cattle in the winter. The night smelled like September, and I could feel a trace of fall in the night air.

My heartthrob was taking me over to a large ranch not far from his home. We drove threw a barbed wire gate, which he got out to open and then left open for when we came back through. As we bounced through the dark, up some trails in the pasture land, with his spotlight darting here and there, I was excitedly looking for rabbits, He had shown me how his gun worked pulling back the hammer and cocking it, ready to shoot. I could see cactus and scrubby mesquite trees everywhere. I was hoping there were no cattle around. He assured me there were none in this pasture. Good, I didn’t want to shoot a cow on my first hunting venture! . Every once in awhile, a rabbit ran through the brush, too fast to even point the rifle, and it was gone. But, I was anticipating.

Finally, he stopped the truck and turned off the motor, and we sat quietly, with the spot light shining here and there through the trees. I could hear the night sounds, of a hoot owl in the distance, and cicadas in the tall grass. The stars came out faster and faster and soon the night sky was covered with a blanket of bright stars. It was an amazing sight. But I wanted to learn to hunt. I wished he would start the truck up again and start driving, to look for rabbits with the spotlight. He took the rifle from me, took the hammer off, and laid it up in the back of the cab on the rack. Then he reached for my hand, as we talked. I thought, “Well, that’s okay for now. But in a minute we will start looking for rabbits again.” Finally, he moved even closer and put both arms around me. “Oh no”, I thought, “This is a smooching night. It isn’t one of those hunting for rabbits night.”

I was so disappointed. I pulled away, and said, “I want to go home. I thought we were going rabbit hunting!”. He sighed, deeply, put the truck in first and drove slowly out of the pasture, bumping over the rocks and some cactus growing low, and finally went through the gate, stopping to get out and go back to pull the barbed wire loop over the post. When he got back in, I said, “I’m sorry, I wanted to go rabbit hunting”. He just looked over at me, and shook his head.

We drove home, down the narrow paved roan to our farm, and then through the gate down the sandy lane to our house. I saw one light on in the kitchen of our old weathered house, and knew Mother was probably still up as she always was, when we were out at night.

He and I sat there talking for a while about other things, like school, the football game that Friday night, and joked about one of the teachers at school, and then he kissed me on the cheek and I got out and went in the house. I never did learn to rabbit hunt and he never asked me out again. !