TROPHY

          

        Virgil hunched himself down into his big jacket and shrugged it up around his neck, trying to keep out the damp cold. He began stomping his feet to bring them to back to life but stopped after just a few stomps. The noise reverberated through his crummy stand, through the tree trunk, and across the still meadow.

          He shot a quick, self-conscious look around and shrugged to himself.

          “Shoot,” he thought, “There aint gonna be no deer out here on this god forsaken morning.”

          He belched a sour rancid mixture of stale beers and not so stale bourbon that reminded him of last night.

          He cackled to himself and allowed that Old Jugs was about the liveliest wire he’d ever seen.

          Last night, he reflected, Old Jugs sure had them goin’ at Brad’s Bullseye Bar. He was a quick one, that Old Jugs. So quick, in fact, that he had the barmaid’s lace apron off and strung around the antlers of Brad’s old moose before she hardly missed it.

          And when she climbed up on that stool to fetch it…. Whoooooeee but man, she did have a pair of walkers under her!

          Surprising, because Lord knows she wasn’t much to look at it.

          He shivered a bit, but not from the cold. His fingers were trembling on his rifle.

          Now that was a thing he could do something about. Take a pull of old Jack in the Black … or a reasonable facsimile of Jack. Best remedy ever invented, hair of the dog and all, you know.

          With the dexterity of a virtuoso Virgil’s fingers found the pint and had the cap off in a flourish of well-honed motions that belied the fine tremors he would have displayed in other pursuits. He craned his neck back and spilled sour mash all over his stubble.

          For at that moment a brilliant light bulged through the overcast directly above Virgil’s head. A spaceship landed no more than 50 yards away.

          Since Virgil lived in a very remote – by galactic sentient standards – corner of the galaxy, (“The Sticks” one could say.) he had never seen a starship before. It was the most dazzling sight he had ever seen.

          However, in realty, by galactic standards, it was a clunk. Roughly a crude conversion of what, in Virgil’s neck of the woods, would be a camper wrought from a clapped-out school bus adorned in a forlornly conspicuous cosmic cammo paint job.

          Bottom shelf bourbon was gurgling from the bottle at Virgil’s feet as he watched, stunned, as a notch opened on the side of the ship and, out clambered the space aliens.

          Virgil didn’t notice, but they weren’t moving so well. It had been a long trip; they’d been partying for the last few hundred parsecs and one of their party had been sick all over the interior of the command pod module.

          Each alien had a hoop-like object which they positioned into Virgil’s direction. There was a sizzle and flash and half of Virgi’s deer stand vaporized beneath his feet. He plunged to the ground, windmilling his arms in a sadly comical imitation of a doomed DC-3.

          His rifle struck the ground and discharged on impact. A few seconds later, and considerable distance away, Old Jugs heard the report and cursed under his breath.

          “Old Virgil,” he muttered as her turned in that direction, “Must be gettin’ himself some action.” He shook his head.

          Virigl had suffered a severe fracture of his humerus, and clavicle as well, in his sudden stop at the bottom. He had no time to consider this because there was another of those sizzle/flashes and a cloud of frozen earth was flung into his face. Without further prompting Virgil was on his feet and moving.

          Actually he never did have a chance. Togged with enough blaze orange to swaddle a Sherman Tank, they had him in their scopes already a 100 million miles this side of Jupiter.

          He plunged through the brush. There were more of those sizzle/flashes and the plumes of vapor from his flaring nostrils had become pink. His side was wet and everything had gone heavy.

          He was on his back and his big Sorrels scraped raggedly at the frost. His eyes were wide, showing white all around and there was something very sharp at his throat.

          Those same eyes stare down now at a very different scene each night, and a noisy, rowdy lot it is.

          Last night he had the alien equivalent of a barmaid’s lace apron draped across his blaze orange cap.    

         

1/14/24 Duluth MN

Found this story the other day while going through and organizing my journals. Completely forgot about it. Probably written in the 1990’s or so.