In my Arms

I grab the gun. I pop the scopecap off the rifle and start to scan, from left to right. Nothing. Put the scopecap back on and lean the gun in the corner of the shack. Dad left his coffee. Take the Stanley, undo the cap, and pour myself a cup. I try to find the point I was staring at before but it’s useless. I pick a different one. If I look at it long enough, I can enter a kind of trance, with the world slowly spinning around the point until I come to my senses. I kneeled over it and a crow sitting in a tree ten yards up cawed, letting his brothers know danger was at hand. I looked into the robin’s black eye. Where I hit it the feathers were ruffled. But where was I looking? I look at the dense brush down to my left. Hear the scuttling of leaves. Too light for a deer. It is without doubt a bird or a chipmunk hopping about under cold October sky. What is Mom doing right now? Still early morning. Probably asleep. The only one that might be up is my uncle Jason. Standing in the kitchen drinking the first coffee of the day under this same sunlight. Were my cousins there? Gabe? Probably. Am I the only one not there then? The only one who had no good reason not to be there? I close my eyes and put my hands in my pockets. For a second I feel sleep tug at me. Probably good that I’m not in an atmosphere of imperturbable melancholy. Take a deep breath in. Let it fill my body till I’m swollen. Let it out. One by one, I crack my knuckles. Dad would be pissed to hear the sound. It’d scare the deer away, he’d say. I look around. What deer? I’d say. I pick up the rifle and pop off the scopecap and scan the field again. Spot Dad. He’d made it to the back of the field; I see his bright orange beanie, the exact same one as he gave me.

He is smoking a cigarette.

Doesn’t that scare the deer away?

I follow him with the scope, in the middle of the crosshairs. I shouldn’t have.

He’s looking down at his feet.

I looked into the robin’s black eye

He starts to walk along the back edge of the field; if there is a deer lying down, it will be pushed toward me.

I follow Dad along the back of the field in the scope. He glances up at me and his eyes widen. Makes a line right back to the shack.

I feel his weight climb back up; it sways.

When he sits back down he glares at me.

“Did you have the gun pointed at me?” he hisses.

I resolved to bury it; the only atonement that came to mind. I climbed up the creek and went in through the backdoor to get the keys to the toolshed.

“Ye-s,” I say.

“Don’t ever point a gun at someone.”

“But we forgot the binoculars.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Use your eyes.”

I am tense; the exchange puts my body in the grip of fear; a dark hand, passing over.

“You understand, don’t you?” Dad says.

I don’t say nothing.

“You don’t ever point a gun at someone.”

“All right.”

“Say you understand. I need to hear you say it.”

“I understand,” I say. “Why don’t we care as much about the deer?”

He doesn’t answer; he smacks me upside the head.

We sit there. A tear streams down my face. I turn away and wipe it, so he doesn’t see I am being a bitch. I remember we kill deer because we need meat and if we use this meat instead of buying it we’ll have money for other things and that’s the only kind of thinking allowed in this shack. Grandma sits at the kitchen table spellbound by the television and doesn’t notice. I went out and unlocked the shed; on the walls were garden rakes, pickaxes, pointed shovels, and square tipped shovels.

There is a dense rustle in the brush in front of us.

“Rifle ready,” Dad says.

I pick up the rifle, undo the scopecap, and slowly lean it on the banister. I don’t look through the scope yet.

“There,” I whisper, pointing at the deer.

“Where?” Dad says.

I point agitatedly down and in front of us.

I grabbed a square tipped shovel.

It is a button buck; its nose to the ground, nuzzling an unknown scent in the leaves. I don’t have a clear shot; the deer is coming out of the brush and between two trees; I locate the deer in the scope and wait.

In the patch of grass I dug a hole two feet deep and two feet wide. I looked in the hole. I wanted it to be deeper so I dug down a little further. I carefully put the robin on the shovel with my foot and lowered it in the hole. The crows had stopped cawing when I left but now they’ve started again and in a moment of distraction and anxiety I looked to the tree upstream and saw three of them peering down at me. I ignored this and continued, looking at the robin in the hole. I sprinkled the dirt over the robin until the hole was filled.

There is a moment and I am called to it; necessity in cold October sunlight. I follow the deer with my rifle.

“Wait,” Dad whispers.

I do.

A minute and a half passes, the deer nuzzling the same spot on the forest floor.

Is it picking up our scent?

The deer walks into the open.

“When you’re ready,” Dad says.

I flick the safety off and put the deer in the crosshairs. To the left of the shoulder, in the middle of the body. That should be close to the heart.

I take a deep breath and let it out.

Again.

Once more.

Once more.

On the third breath, I let the air slowly leave my body.

I pull the trigger; the gun erupts, slamming into my shoulder.

“Did I hit it?” I say.

“I think so,” he says, smiling. Hurriedly, he packs his things.

Dad goes down the ladder first. When he is down, I tie the gun back to the rope. Lower it down. Clip the satchel around my waist and I go down too. The need to be quiet leaves me as if washed right out of my soul; we walk to the spot where I shot the deer, the leaves loud under our feet. From the shack, the deer was about twenty-five to thirty yards out. Dad lights a cigarette; the need for silence has lifted itself from his body as well as between us; he swings his arms freely and the seriousness of only minutes before has vanished, replaced by what I thought was a mood of giddiness.

We stand about where the deer was. Dad lowers his head, looking at the leaves, walking in small circles. I watch him.

“Don’t just stand there,” he says. “Look for blood.”

I lower my eyes to the forest floor. There is nothing that suggests the presence of deer, let alone struggle, and it is impossible to distinguish anything. Still, I look.

“Over here,” Dad says, crouching down.

He picks up a yellow oak leaf. Hands it to me.

There are two small specks of blood on it. How did he see that?

“Are there more leaves?” I ask.

“I found it right here,” he says, indicating the place with his foot.

We walk, making a perimeter around the spot. There. I crouch down. Another blood-splattered leaf.

“Here,” I say.

Dad comes over. “Nice,” he says.

We repeat the process, only it becomes easier. Dad finds the next leaf, and then another, quickly, picking up a distinct and heavy trail of blood; the blood, dark red against the light brown leaves; dark against the pale yellow; dark against the hues of red and orange; wet against my boots.

We walk about another twenty-five yards up from where the deer was shot. The button-buck had fallen behind a log.

“There he is!” Dad says. He is smiling, looking back at me, the sun to his back, his figure brought into relief by the sunlight; his face worn by work in a steel mill, but in this moment—young, full of the small pride that fills a father when a son partakes in something he’s done all his life; his eyes, the bags have receded slightly, the difficulty of early morning overcome by nothing other than life moving forward. The deer lies lifeless on the leaves.

A sadness passes, carried by October light, October wind, that was implacable, my shoulders fell.

What if my life was worth — a moment of instinct?

I bowed my head in prayer. I’m sorry, I said.

The feeling is soon overgrown by dull excitement, the excitement of taking part in tradition; the excitement of my Dad’s excitement; I had passed into something.

“Pass me the rifle,” Dad says.

I do.

He takes the gun, approaching the deer. He points the barrel at its neck and pokes it; at first slowly, and then two more times in quick succession.

“Have to make sure it’s dead,” Dad says. “Don’t want it running off on you and don’t want it to suffer unnecessarily.”

“He didn’t make it very far,” I say.

Turn around. Can still see the shack.

“No. Not far at all. It was a good shot.”

We stand for a moment, looking at the deer.

“Pass me the satchel.”

I unclip it from my waist, Dad unloads the rifle, letting the unused bullets fly out onto the ground; he leans the rifle against a tree and picks up the bullets. He takes the satchel from me and puts the bullets in a pocket. Gets his hunting knife and field dressing gloves.

“Hate this part,” Dad says, placing the satchel next to the rifle on the ground.

“Glad I don’t have to do it,” I say.

“You will one day,” he says.

I nod.

“Well,” Dad says.

He kneels, opening the plastic gloves and putting them on; they go up to his elbows. He kneels, taking the knife out of its sheath and inspecting the blade.

“I need you to hold the legs open,” he says.

I crouch down, glancing briefly at the deer’s inert black eyes. I looked into the robin’s black eye

I grab the right leg and hold it so the deer is spreading its legs, revealing the soft white belly. With the knife, Dad makes careful incisions, cutting through the hide, then a thin membrane so that the organs are exposed; I see the stomach; I see blood. I didn’t know exactly who I was praying to or what I was praying for; it was an abundance of feeling that the silence of prayer matched as if prayer were a shape in which to reign in all that is formless and the silence of the request and its mysterious answer in the guise of quiet water a soft judgement.