Dan Pinkerton is enrolled in the MFA program at Penn State University. His recent fiction has appeared in Quarterly West. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Terminus, Redivider, and Indiana Review.

The Feral Issue

ns 73-74 | Fall 2009/Spring 2010

The "Feral Issue" presents work by a range of people, from those who have been doing animal studies all along to those newly exploring the field. If it has a leaning, it is to build a cultural materialist account of animals in our world. We hope that the writing here will give our readers a sense of what animal studies is and where it's going, and also add some new voices to its course.

Read this Issue

Published Spring 2006

The Scouts

by Dan Pinkerton | ns 65-66

O the fun they will make— the woven baskets & braided belts, the nooses, bonfires, buckshot constellations on stop signs, the generalized roughing of It—

Walter in sash & knee-socks, uniform spiked by the pins & medals of meritocracy. He will master the arts of punching, clubbing, knifing, kicking, punctures & lacerations, gashes & penetrations, bruises & pinches.

He will admire before a mirror the martial flare of his outfit.

He will sniff the scoutmaster's gin-lacquered breath & think O what piney noble breath! What grownup-y glimmering woodsman breath!

The scouts will be like brothers to him, the scoutmaster like a father.

He will work his way from a badger to wolf to grizzly scout, growing more vicious with every turn. On to rabid pit bull scout! On to cornered wolverine protecting its young! On to the pinnacle: creature whose name shall not be uttered, who swoops down at any moment, lightning-quick, to strike at babies & nuns & red cross volunteers.

O the fun to be had at summer camp— morning bugle brass glinting in the sun, daddy long-legs on the tent walls, a pool full of chickenfights & cannonballs.

Pole-sitting, midget tossing, the whittling of arrows for the arsenal.

The crude emulation of native rites: erection of teepees, older fellows in loincloths, fire & tom-toms, scouts working themselves into a frenzy of bloodlust until— what's this?—

The camp director's daughter wanders onto the scene, blonde little nymph; how they fall upon her, nosing with scouts, more curious than cruel. Still the camp director thinks it best to beat them back, smother them, punch & club, gash & bruise, pinch & kick. He was a scout once himself, after all.

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