'The Hawk’ was a short story about a young boy, his first gun & a bird of prey

A well-written paragraph, first read when I was a teenager

Like many young men before him and a goodly number since, my father took a two-year course in agriculture at what was then known as Michigan State College. The program was designed to instruct those students planning to operate farms—most of them having grown up on the family homestead—with the latest science-based practices in dairy and crop management.

   Regardless of your major, though, be it agriculture, engineering, or physics, Michigan State (like other schools of higher learning)—then as now—have a few classes that all incoming freshmen are required to take. The idea is to produce well-rounded citizens, in addition to conveying a measure of expertise. One of them usually has to do with English—be it grammar, studying distinguished works of literature, or learning to better express yourself through writing.

   The only keepsake I have of my father’s brief time in college is a textbook for that then mandated English class. It contains a myriad of articles, ranging from essays on education, science, and religion to book reviews to editorials and news stories to letters penned by famous persons.

   Since the subtitle of the book is “Models of Exposition,” I assume part of the course work was to emulate those different styles of composition, learning the techniques, along with gaining insight from reading the varied topics being offered.

   While my father entered Michigan State in the fall of 1946, this third edition of the text book was published in January 1942. There is mention of the war in Europe and Asia. In fact, a section entitled ‘Democratic and National Ideals’ had been added to the second edition published in 1936, including a fireside chat given by Franklin Roosevelt in May of 1941 that expounds on  his administration’s views regarding the conflict and the threat the President felt Hitler and his allies presented to the free world.

   Given the publication date, the book would have gone to press in the weeks after the Attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into battle and turned the conflict into  World War II; however by the time my father purchased it for his class, the war had ended the year before—although it certainly would have been fresh in everyone’s mind.

     One of the sections deals with paragraphs—the well-written kind. They are much longer than those that I craft for the newspaper or my commentaries. I’d describe them more as vignettes or even, in a couple of cases, as short stories. Very short.

    I was a teenager when I first came across the book. I don’t recall the details of how I took possession, but I’m guessing this occurred after my father’s passing which would have put it at when I was16. Whatever… it’s been part of my collection of books ever since—an assemblage that was once quite modest and manageable, but has become large and unruly.

    One of the paragraphs I read early on was called ‘The Hawk.’ It involved a young boy, his first gun, and a bird of prey. Being a farm boy, wanting to hunt like my elders, and having been schooled on varmints, I could relate to the content.

   However, it was not so much the subject matter that I found impactful after my first reading, a reaction that has remained whenever I have re-read it. Rather I found the story to be a well-told—succinct, dramatic, packing emotion, and having with a bit of an O. Henry ending.

   I suspect that I related as well to the young protagonist reacting contrary to the norms of behavior expected from his rural upbringing. Even then the maverick in me was alive and kicking.

   Also, as a teenager, the idea of being a writer had begun to take hold. I hoped that one day I’d be able to compose a story this well, and with its emotional punch. Well, I didn’t end up being that kind of story teller. Still, as the textbook shows, there are all manner of styles and approaches to composition. With the advantage of practice, I’ve developed a style and approach of my own. Whether any of my offerings have had a similar impact (as ‘The Hawk’ did with me) and perhaps considered well-written is a judgement of others.

   The author is listed as Student Theme, which I assume means a college kid wrote it for a class. Since it was part of the anthology, I wasn’t the only one impressed. Alas, whoever created the story did not—for whatever reason—get the deserved credit. But his story lives on.

* * *
The Hawk

   Hawks were bad: they were fierce birds that killed chickens. As a boy I knew that, for I lived in a country where all the shotguns were loaded and all the fence posts were scarecrows. Hawks were bad: I had been given a shotgun for my twelfth birthday; grandpa had promised me a dollar for every hawk I killed. I went out to kill one. All the morning I wasted on Paylor’s Cliff, where I had seen the great goshawks soaring. I waited until I was tired and ready to go home; then I saw the hawk. He was just a dot over the point of Scrub Ridge when I saw him; he wasn’t even as big as the gnats which had been buzzing around my ears. But I knew that he was a hawk, for only a fighting bird could fly so easily and gracefully. He circled once over the Ridge, then dipped and swooped into the valley. He was coming close. He must have seen the bushes move, for just over me he rose and swung screaming. I was surprised. I had never expected him to fly so near; I had hoped only for a long shot across the tree-tops. As he came toward me, I fumbled, aimed a shaking gun–and didn’t shoot. “He is gone!” I thought as the hawk slid behind the trees. “He is gone, and I didn’t shoot.” I thought how they would laugh at me when I came home. “Hunting all morning and didn’t get anything?” they would ask, and then laugh. But there over the hip of the cliff, the hawk was turning. His wings were almost vertical, his breast was flashing grey; he was coming toward me. He was a bird of prey, a bird living by strength of wing and talons. He was a hawk, not a fluttering bird in the bushes; he was a flesh-eater, a brother to the eagle. Other birds might flutter to safety, but he would soar back to fight. Again he screamed, again he swooped over my head, and this time I shot. He rose sharply, his wings crumpled, and then fell, faster and faster until he crashed through the tree-tops below me. I ran down the hill, leaping over rocks, tearing through the underbrush. I had killed a hawk. But when I got to where he lay, I didn’t see the screaming hawk that had soared above me. He was only a heap of broken feathers. His wings looked awkward and heavy. And his eyes, the glaring fierce, yellow eyes, were spots where the grey dirt stuck. His talons closed on nothing; he was dead. They teased me at home about hunting all morning and coming back empty-handed. They laughed at me, but I didn’t tell them that I killed a hawk; and I didn’t tell them that I cried because his yellow eyes were filled with grey dirt.

Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’—a weekly newspaper.