The buck came at ten minutes after seven.
On our side of the creek this time.
He came down off the hill to the crossing exactly the way Wes always said they would, if a person just had the patience to wait for them.
Ben made one clean shot. I won’t tell more about it than a person needs to hear. Except that he did it exactly the way he had been taught. And afterward he sat perfectly still for a full minute with the rifle across his knees. And then he said “Thank you” out loud.
I don’t think he was talking to me.
Cody came running up the creek bank, slipping on the frost. And the two of them dragged that deer up the two-track together. The young man who had taken the boy’s money, and the boy he had taken it from. The whole way up the hill they argued about which one of them had the heavy end.
I stood at the bottom of the bur oak and listened to them, and I laughed until I had to wipe my eyes.
Before we left the stand that morning, I reached into the pocket of Wes’s coat and took out his pocketknife. The one he’d used to cut every notch on that rail. I’d been carrying it all season without telling anybody.
I held it out to Ben.
“There’s room on the rail,” I said.
He looked at me to make sure I meant it. I nodded.
Then he bent over the rail and cut it in. Slowly. Carefully. In a boy’s uneven letters, right alongside the other ones.
BEN. AGE 16.
He folded the knife and tried to hand it back. I closed his fingers around it.
“Keep it,” I said. “He’d want it used.”
Then I unscrewed the green thermos and poured the coffee.
Four cups this time. I lined them up along the rail, right next to the place where a man once cut the words proud of you, so a twelve-year-old boy would never be able to lose them.
And the steam went up through the bare limbs of the bur oak, into the first of the morning sun.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.