Stunning Armadillos

Trees still shade the road where Gramps and I once rode in his old green car -- I drove -- on dusky early evenings in my fifteenth year. We stopped, as he insisted, at spots where an armadillo scratched among the tender greenery in ditches. I was dispatched, with Gramps' strong wood cane, to kill a pesky armored creature by striking hard, once, upon its snout. Gramps waited in the car, called encouragement or condemnation: "That's it! Hit him hard!" or "Can't you do a damn thing right?" He knew I didn't like to kill but was determined to toughen up my softness. That hard old man was not accustomed to being crossed or contradicted. But part of him was tender, and he had a sense of what was right in the bayou country of his day. How could I tell him that I hated killing just to please him? Often, I killed, then killed again, although, at times, I'd miss the snout or be slow to follow up, and permit an armadillo to escape. Sometimes, I'd temper force with moderation -- I'd stun the creature, grab the tail, fling it far into dense bushes to revive and live another day. My grandfather eyed me darkly then, but often kept his peace. He gave me the treatment I gave those stunned armadillos. Could he have felt the same toward me as I toward them?