“They hunted pronghorn antelope by attaching something shiny to a post in the ground,” my father said, “and then they would go hide behind a rock and wait with their bows.”
He sipped from his longneck of Coors, gripping the tapered mouth between thumb and forefinger. I did not know which Native American tribe ‘they’ referred to, exactly. I had stopped listening just prior to the part about these peculiar stalking methods: the goading uses of light-catching mirrors and minerals. Even gaunt, spindly quadrupeds could not escape the shimmering allure of fate, apparently. Just the words, the simulation of it, had ensnared me.
Before my father’s historical flourish—how had the conversation even regressed to this?—I’d been unable to avert my eyes from the squeaky full-court presses and lofty three-point arcs that played themselves out on the bar’s staggering flat screen. But now, I stared at my father, pulling from my own bottle. The age spots on his forehead dotted like a significant constellation and his hair appeared thinner than just yesterday.
“Pronghorns,” was all I could toss back to him.
My mind flew. I tried to imagine feathers and arrowheads, plain winds and small pebbles in the bases of grass strands. Except I only saw beaded loincloths, black braids, and clear inaccuracies. This was too hard. We all just seek horizontalness, a quiet singularity. My father and I drank from our Coors bottles, nearly in unison. Nearly.
I looked back to the massive television. Kobe missed a free throw (it hit the front of the rim and bulleted right back to him) and the crowd around us rumbled loud enough to mute the game announcer. I swiveled to the passing waitress and ordered another beer. By the time I’d pivoted back to the giant screen, there was a close-up of Kobe, gnawing on the top of his jersey, that Laker-yellow illuminating the faces in the darkened booths like a searing quasar in the cold bodies of space.
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