Patrick Strickland
Ma phones me on my cell and says come quick, there’s something at Uncle Hurt’s. His real name isn’t Hurt, but that’s how I’ve always called him. Ma’s always calling all of a sudden, worked up about this or that. She used to be normal, unsatisfied and not interested in her children, but since my big brother Terry croaked, just about anything can get her to pick up the phone and dial me.
The whole ride to Uncle Hurt’s, I’m wondering what now. He lives on twenty acres out in Van Zandt County, and though it’s a pain to get there, an hour and a half from Dallas without traffic, I’m trying patience out for size these days. Money’s been tough on Uncle Hurt these last few years. His donkeys died last April, thanks to him not having the scratch to feed them for a few weeks, and he’s been so blue about his bank account he’s stopped hunting altogether. Uncle Hurt’s a big man, six three and about two sixty, and his hands are goddamn baseball mitts, only rougher. If he gets a hold of you, he could damn near peel away the top layer of skin.
Once, when we were just kids—this was before my cousins, Uncle Hurt’s boys, had kicked the can—we got our hands on paintball guns out of someone’s garage a few farms down. That sounds close, but a few farms down means walking two, maybe three miles. It could be less. That’s how it felt, when we were thirteen and Uncle Hurt’s boys were still with us, at least. We hid in the weeds Uncle Hurt had let grow up in the yard, crazy with bugs. Uncle Hurt came out with a tall boy in his grip. The boys shot out from their hiding spots, charged him. I could never think of the next thing. My mind was always hung up on the thing after the next thing. I pictured Uncle Hurt snatching us up in those hands, ringing our necks. Flat on my stomach in the weeds, I watched through the brush as the boys waylaid him. Briars were digging into my stomach, scratching the spot where my shirt had pulled up and left the skin open to the world.
The boys got him good, too. Before that I didn’t know paintballs could break skin. It still blows my mind, if I’m being honest.
***
I didn’t always call him Uncle Hurt. That part came when I was eleven, twelve. My old man had taken off, and Ma thought it’d do me some good to be around an adult male. My big brother wasn’t dead yet, but the heroin had taken him off somewhere we didn’t know.
Ma was calling Uncle Hurt all the time, and he finally said he’d take me dove hunting. This was September, still hot as summer, and his boys had died the winter before, a freak accident on a John Deere. They wrote about it in the papers and everyone said how sad it was. I didn’t tell anyone how proud I was to know someone—two people—who’d made the news.
Uncle Hurt went down on one knee in the middle of a clearing out in the woods. He said that doves were tricky. He pressed a thumb to a nostril, shot a snot rocket out of the other. There was something wrong with it. If you ever asked him, though, he’d just say he broke it too many times. You never could get much out of Uncle Hurt. I’d ask would he tell me about the fights that broke it, but he’d just grunt.
I’d tell the other kids at school that my Uncle Hurt had broken his nose a hundred times in the war. I never thought to say which.
If the dove soars up high, Uncle Hurt was saying, block its head in your sights. I didn’t know what that meant. If the dove’s crashing straight toward you, Uncle Hurt was saying, do the same. I still didn’t know what that meant.
Will the bullet kill him first thing, I was asking Uncle Hurt. He was telling me it wasn’t a bullet, asking who raised me. He was saying his boys knew the difference between a bullet and a slug. Anyone could see plain that Uncle Hurt was in pain, but I didn’t appreciate him snapping at me. Did your boys, I spat back, know how to drive a John Deere?
I shouldn’t have said that, I told Uncle Hurt. He wasn’t listening anymore. The shotgun kicked hard and his whole body rocked back. A dove collapsed from the sky and thudded somewhere I couldn’t see. I’m sorry, I told Uncle Hurt. The clouds were few but fat, and rain was coming.
He stood up, brushed off his pants, and propped the shotgun on his shoulder. He was wincing some, and I wondered if the shotgun kick had bruised him.
This was before the heroin got my brother by a year. My eyes followed Uncle Hurt across the clearing. He scooped up the dead bird and dropped it in a sack.
Your turn, he said, and handed me the shotgun. A dove arched through the sky as if pitched, and I blocked its head. But I was nervous now, down about the way I’d talked hurtful, and something snagged on my finger. I never even got the shot off. Blood was everywhere.
Uncle Hurt seized my hand, surveyed the wound. Damn near clear to the bone, he said. No words were exchanged for a long time, and I was fighting back tears. But you don’t know shit, Uncle Hurt finally said, about pain.
***
Ma’s no good at communicating. Uncle Hurt’s dead. We’re standing in his living room, trying to stay out of the way of the ambulance people. Uncle Hurt’s already loaded up, Ma says, but they’re doing something in his bedroom. Ma’s saying we’ll need to arrange a funeral. She’s saying there’s no one left to sort a service out for him.
I ask Ma who’s going to come if Uncle Hurt has no one left. She’s shaking her head and saying not now. Grief’s always been too much for her. When my brother died, she spent the next month knocking on the neighbors’ doors and lying to them about how much Terry had liked them. None of them turned up at the funeral. Terry had robbed half the houses on our street.
Uncle Hurt’s not loaded up. Not yet. They’re hauling him out on a gurney now. Ma’s turning her head away like it’s just too much to take. A white shroud’s draped over his body. Only one of those big hands is sticking out.
I’m saying can the ambulance people cover up Uncle Hurt’s hands.
Ma says to stop calling him that, to respect the dead.
The day when we were hunting, Uncle Hurt had cradled me in his arms and lugged me through the woods back up to his barn. The whole way back, I studied the canopy above to keep my mind off the blood. My mind was saying I was going to lose my finger, and fear lumped in my stomach like a tumor. Uncle Hurt sat me down and disappeared behind a tractor inside the barn. He came back hauling a gasoline can.
I’ve always called him Uncle Hurt, I say.
Ma’s red in the face now, asking who raised me.
The gas burned the finger wound like acid. I screamed, and Uncle Hurt jammed a palm against my mouth to shut me up. When he finally took it off, I said how much it hurt. He turned the gasoline canister ass up again, and that fire was burning my finger from the inside out.
The ambulance people say Uncle Hurt’s dead courtesy of a shotgun.
Uncle Hurt slammed his palm to my face again. Blood was coming out where my teeth broke the skin inside. It’s about time you got used to it, he was saying. This whole world’s hurt.
Ma wants to know if the shotgun was Uncle Hurt’s doing. The ambulance people nod.
The bullet entered his heart, one of the ambulance people says. He lifts an imaginary shotgun, turns it on himself. Like this, he tells Ma.
Ma’s ugly with crying now.
On his way out, I run after the ambulance man, the one with the imaginary shotgun, and tug his shirt from behind on the patio.
You have some kind of question?
A slug.
He looks at me like I’ve lost it.
It’s a slug, I say. Everyone knows that.
He says he has no clue what I’m talking about. I’m not listening anymore. A dove’s gliding over the yard, out above the weeds where the boys waylaid Uncle Hurt and I turned chickenshit. He says am I sure I’m alright, do I need some kind of help. The clouds are few but fat, and I know I ought to block its head, but my eyes are locked on its arch. It’s like someone pitched the bird hard and high.
I step forward. Rain’s coming, I say.
Son.
Just cover them, I shout.
Ma’s in the doorway saying what’s the matter with me.
Cover what, the ambulance man wants to know.
His hands, man. Cover his fucking hands.
#
Based in Greece, Patrick Strickland is a writer and journalist from Texas. His short stories have appeared at Pithead Chapel, Epiphany, Peatsmoke Journal, The Broadkill Review, Porter House Review, and Five South, among others. He’s the author of three nonfiction books, including You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave (Melville House 2025), and the forthcoming story collection A History of Heartache (Melville House 2026). He has an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and was picked by The de Groot Foundation as a 2024 Writer of Note.