Late September
John Cravens
_ Smoky mist lay across the hillsides as the sun rose. While light slowly came, the slopes and valleys became dusty pale blue. Then a sweep of blushing color brought distinct lines and form to the ridges and crests. The man watching the changes from darkness felt completely forsaken now that another day was beginning. The man, Trace Waterfalling, held still knowing that he was seeing the same changes of a new day that the people of his tribe had witnessed almost two centuries before, here in these same forests and meadows of Indian Territory.
Jack Boyle, across the now cold fire of last night, rolled over in his sleeping bag and looked up at Trace Waterfalling.
"You been awake long?" Boyle asked.
Trace did not answer, reluctant to accept anyone—even his friend--intruding into the silence. Then he said, "Been holding a stand-to on my own up to dawn." He was a big man and spoke quietly in a slow manner.
Boyle considered the reference to their shared past as he regarded the form in a red sleeping bag near him rolling over, setting up, only his face showing in the drawstring-tightened opening.
"What is it?" Whit asked, looking at the other two men. He unzipped the sleeping bag from the inside and then reached his arms clear of it, out into the chill air, stretching as he crawled from the down bag. He was small and wiry, and still seemed faintly boyish even in late middle age, wearing a red stocking cap.
"How do you feel about the day, Tray?" Boyle said. His breath fogged in front of his face. Everything about him was lean and agile, strong and certain. His clear green eyes at first seemed misplaced in his line-carved face.
"It's the only day we have," Trace answered. He would be fifty-four years old in three days. But now, doing what he had done since he was a young boy, he felt without distinct age. Except this September everything was different. He, in some moments, still did not accept that having the boy in his life was now finished, and that nothing could ever be done to change the way it all had ended.
"It's the day that the Lord has made," Boyle said. He looked at Whit and let a faint smile start. "I'm not mocking you or nothing. It just come up natural in me, out here and us all thinking about Nicky." He shrugged. "It seems right and natural to say, somehow, thinking on those sort of things now, being that what we're doing is in his memory."
Trace Waterfalling's nephew, Nicholas, had hanged himself the first day of September: Twenty-two years old, back from Iraq less than three months, discharged a Corporal. Trace had talked with Nicholas earlier in the day that he had killed himself, having only his understanding from his own time in the same struggle to give the young man. But Nicholas did the only thing that he thought would stop what was happening to him. Thinking of this now, Trace took interest in his binoculars and began cleaning grains of dirt from the eye cups. Then he held the binoculars balanced on his fingertips and looked through them to a ridgeline in front of the rising sun. The brightness brought sharp pain behind his eyes and he kept looking there, finding the center of brightness, seeing his heartbeat in the pulsing throb of his view of the line between darkness and light, feeling the pain and grateful for its interference now.
When he was a small boy Trace Waterfalling had lived with his great-grandmother before she sent him to the Sequoyah Orphan Training School at Park Hill, Oklahoma. He had greatly feared going there, but he did as she asked. She was very old and he loved her very much. Her hair was long and straight, white and gathered into a coil against the back of her head. In the brittle-hard hollowness of the dormitory he often thought of her and of how happy he had been during the years when they were together in her cabin, the small room warm and close on a cold day in winter, them sitting in front of the fire, the scent of burning hickory in the air outside when he went into the sharp cold to get more firewood. He remembered the dry hickory snapping and popping in the flames, burning with excited rapidness. Then at night there was the glowing, seething mound of live coals to hold back the cold until the morning fire again.
Now Trace the man, husband, uncle and grandfather turned hunkering and carefully lifted his web belt from where it hung on a trimmed-short limb of a sprout, with the worn black leather holster and his pistol.
~ ~ ~
Where the three men had spread their sleeping bags, the tall dry grass was flattened and a solid covering of short green grass showed through it. Trace sat on the fresh grass and put his boots on. He dripped deer scent from a small bottle onto two fabric pads attached to straps, then slipped a strap over each boot, up near the boot tops. He tossed the bottle to Boyle, then stood and buckled on his web belt. It seemed heavy, with the loaded pistol and two extra magazines. The holster was military issue from more than forty years past: Black leather with a flap that closed onto a brass stud, over the butt of the forty-five automatic. The extra magazines fit snugly in a green canvas pouch on the belt behind the holster. Trace had taken the weapon from a pile of weapons and gear stacked beside a landing zone where casualties were being flown out after a nightlong battle. He did not rate a side arm, but he had kept the pistol, carrying it in his pack during the day and in a trouser pocket at night on patrols and ambushes; having it sometimes made him feel better. He did not give the weapon up when he came through Okinawa on his way back stateside. The repeated warnings of punishment for concealing contraband caused most troops to discard grenades, blocks of C-4 explosive, weapons and ammunition into the fifty-five gallon trash barrels that were there for that purpose.
"I never hunted with the boy," Whit said, "but I know he was a good shot with a bow. At least at targets he was a good shot."
Trace came back from where his thoughts had led him. "He had a sharp eye," he said, "and a good feel for where his arrow would go. He was flintknapping his own points. Made his own bow--a Cherokee bow--the one I'm hunting with next week." He thought of how he had taught the boy to chip flint and chert with hammer stones, deer antler billets and antler pressure flakers.
"He had a tender heart when it come down to taking live game," Boyle said, standing, ready to leave their camp.
Trace looked at him, trying to determine if he meant more than what he had said. Then he regretted the moment of doubt; Jack Boyle would never say anything to hurt their memory of Nickolas.
"But I know he hunted when he was younger," Boyle added. "I don't hold not hunting against nobody, unless they're trying to shame me for doing it. Hell, I almost cried when I was just a little kid and saw Bambi's mother get killed." He started to smile, but then seemed to understand that he had strayed far from the thoughts of Nickolas that were with them now.
Loud calling of distant crows came clearly into the quiet of the brightening day, and the three men looked toward the sounds.
~ ~ ~
They were walking in-file along a dry watercourse in a narrow draw between two steep grass-covered hillsides, Boyle at point and Whit bringing up the rear. Tall grasses had overgrown the rocky stream bed and then had died with summer ending. It was easy ground to cover and the men moved at a good pace, careful of their sound, still in shadow from the highest crests shielding them from the rising sun.
Boyle stopped until Trace came alongside him.
"I don't believe Nick ever killed any just ordinary indigen-eyes," he said to Trace, holding his voice low. Whit stopped, keeping their interval. "Not any innocent civilians I mean," Boyle said.
Nicky had started to see that all the killing was murder, Trace said in his mind. The boy hadn't learned to carry that yet, it hurting him bad and making him into somebody even he didn't know anymore. But you got to learn to stand it, Trace said to himself firmly, hoping that you can hack it day after day.
Trace noted the fresh tire tracks that had flattened the grass across a broad meadow and then joined a worn track near where it crossed the draw.
It'll take four wheel to make it here, he thought. He looked at the tracks and said to himself: They came through here last night before the frost.
The tracks led into a small corral of rusty barbwire strung slackly between old and weathered hand-split posts. The wire gate was open; it lay tangled on the ground where it had been thrown aside. Boyle led the way toward a small corrugated feeding shed, moving loose and natural. As they came near the shed Boyle froze. He slowly raised one arm to signal a halt as he cautiously crouched. The three men held still, looking at a young buck with a small two-point rack, standing motionless not more than twenty yards from Boyle. Trace noted that the slight breeze from behind the deer was holding their scent away, and saw that the deer appeared healthy and strong. As the three men crouched, holding very still, another buck came from around the corner of the shed--a fine eight-point--turning his head and looking at Boyle. The buck gave several short jerks with his neck that shook his rack, then turned and lifted away in high-stepping leaps--his white tail raised--and disappeared into the dark treeline. The young buck sprang lightly away into the trees too.
Whit looked at Trace and then to Boyle. "Beautiful," he said in a hushed voice. "Thank the Good Lord for letting me see that." He took off his red cap and absently passed one hand across his mostly-bald head before he replaced the cap, pulling it snuggly down.
The three men stood again, coming closer together, still watching the treeline. Boyle looked there through his binoculars.
"Maybe we're doing wrong driving these deer now," Trace said. "They might be to hell and gone by the time we come back on opening day."
Boyle nodded once but said nothing, still looking through his binoculars. Whit became intent on loosening a plastic water bottle from the side of his pack. Trace helped him. He nodded 'thanks', drinking, and wiped water from his chin. Trace got down on one knee and took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, and then looked intently at his Zippo lighter, a memento of almost forty years past. The gold and scarlet insignia of the Third Marine Division on the lighter was chipped and worn. He rubbed the gold and black caltrop points with his thumb, then watched the treeline again.
Whit regarded Trace closely. "You doing OK old boy?" he said to him. "You're not letting anything get started with you about Nick, are you? Not about him having trouble holding up--or nothing of the like--are you?"
Trace stood again. He kicked into the soft ground hard with the heel of his boot. "Hell no I'm not. I know some of what that kid was going through. He just got caught off-guard that one day, being home by himself, getting taken too far into thinking in bad ways and not knowing how to hold himself out of where he was falling. It was just the goddamned breaks; it don't say nothing about him. Hell, it could of had me too when I first got back to the world. I was just lucky enough to hang-on till I learned some of the ways of fighting it." He hit hard on his cigarette and looked around them. "Goddammit all! I should of known better than to leave that boy alone like I did, specially this time of year. Something about these late September days here brings on--what's the word?"
"Melancholy," Whit said.
"No, that's not what I mean. It brings on too much . . . pondering, thinking about life ending, with summer over and things dying." He drew deeply on the cigarette then threw it down and stomped it into the earth. Slowly he knelt and picked up the cigarette. He stood again and began field stripping the filterless cigarette. He said quietly, "When you finally get out of that hell it does nothing but hurt you more to be trying to figure it all out." He felt his throat become full and closed, and looked up at the white light of the sun showering in all directions clear of the line of a ridge.
"I think maybe I don't want to kill nothing next week when the season opens," Boyle said, not looking at either Trace or Whit.
A faint breeze came across the meadow to them. Trace looked into the distance where sunlight shone bright and clear on receding hillsides. Far away he saw a scattering of ruddy-brown blotches spotting the slopes: Trees starting to change color. He thought of how in a few weeks the colors of the change from Indian Summer would bring a different beauty to this land. He stood still and felt the breeze. The chill of the night was fading under the late September sun. To Trace, the air seemed as it had been when he was a boy, the sun pulling scents of sumac, blackjack oak and buffalo grass into the warming air. Somewhere near them crows again called to each other. Trace listened to their brittle sound crack against the silence, hoping that that might cause a break from what Boyle had said.
Earlier, when Trace had made coffee over a Sterno fire, and after Boyle and Whit had eaten four of the cinnamon rolls he had brought from his daughter's bakery, Trace had poured the coffee that was left into his thermos. Now he slipped his daypack off, hunkered beside it and took out the green enameled steel thermos. The coffee was only lukewarm, but he wanted it. He filled the plastic cap and offered it to Whit.
Whit shook his head. "But thanks," he murmured.
Boyle took the cap full and drank it down, handing it back with a single nod of thanks. Trace slung the last drops out and then refilled it. He sipped the coffee and lit another cigarette. Every day since Nick's mother had told him of her son's death he had felt slightly sick at his stomach, a weakening feeling that became stronger when he recalled moments spent with the boy or thought of how it had been at the funeral: the church full of people, as many people again outside, even with the steady rain.
"That bagpipe player wasn't worth a damn," Boyle said. He shook his head. Trace looked at him quickly, surprised that they were thinking of the same moments.
"Bagpipe music always sounds like that," Whit said. "It's supposed to sound that way. That fellow was OK."
"He was trying," Boyle agreed. "It was all done really fine." He looked at Trace. "I was proud as all hell of that boy then. I mean it Tray. The Marines would have sent a color guard if you'd wanted them to. Our boy rated it, same as you and me will. It was right to go ahead and have a good funeral, with no acting ashamed. I never feel ashamed about what happened; I feel mad as hell."
Trace looked back flatly at him. "Now what does that mean?"
"Nick died from that goddamned useless fucking war same as if he'd been killed in combat. Goddammit that's the way I see it, and you know that's so."
Whit looked away. They all saw a hawk swooping down out of a dead tree, plunging into tall grass near the feeding shed. Then the hawk rose again on beating wings with something small struggling in its talons.
"What say we get on back now?" Whit said. "Laura's gone over to Oklahoma City with her sister, shopping. You guys can hang-out at my place; we'll have it all to ourselves until late." Boyle and Trace said nothing. Whit said, "They're driving over to OKC just to go to some mall. That's sure going to put some miles on the Ford."
"Maybe they'll have a good day of it," Trace said. "Maybe Laura will find something that she likes a lot and go ahead and buy it for herself. You gotta know you're one lucky man, Whit."
"Yeah I know I am. She knows I know it too. I always tell her so." He shook his head and smiled. "I don't really care about the miles; we're doing OK."
Trace nodded.
Boyle looked through his binoculars and scanned the treeline in front of them with only faint interest. "I'm fine to secure this now," he said. "There'll be other days. We can go by Loni's Bottle Shop and pick up some of Mr. Walker's finest. As much as we want. We damn well deserve it, I say. Like a wake."
"A wake's for the day of the funeral," Whit said.
"Says who? We can do this any way we decide. There's never been this day before for all of goddamned history. I say we think about Nick--and all the other ones killed too--and get so goddamned drunk that none of us can move even one little bit of one finger. Then maybe this will start to feel some better. At least for a while maybe it will." Boyle looked to Trace, waiting for him to answer.
Trace said, "That won't do any good, Bo. But you go ahead on if you want to."
Boyle shrugged. "It was just a' idea. I don't care if you want to push on here for a while."
When Trace said nothing, Whit looked into the distance and said, "We're supposed to start getting good color pretty soon after bow season starts. They say that the rains we got at the end of August should make some fine fall colors come out."
Trace nodded. He took a lens cloth from his breast pocket, then carefully blew on his binoculars lenses and into each eye cup. He patiently cleaned the lens and eyepieces. When he replaced the cloth to his shirt pocket, he thought of the shirt he had given Nicholas when the boy graduated from high school. It was the most expensive shirt he had ever bought, combed cotton and silk. It cost the same amount as the brown suit that he bought when he came home from Viet-Nam. He had ordered the shirt from a catalog where there were photographs on every page of young people enjoying happy moments together. He had wanted that for the boy too. Nick's mother had given him back the shirt and he had worn it to Nick's funeral.
"This that we're having right here and now is too outstanding to leave," Trace said. "Let's keep on at it a while, if that's OK with you both."
~ ~ ~
Where they stopped later in the morning the earth seemed to have been gently rolled back to form a shallow bowl. The smooth ground was what remained of a cellar, filled-in long before so that now almost nothing indicated that anything had ever existed there. Nearby, a rusty hand pump stood solitary on a small square of weathered cement that was speckled with smooth, tan river pebbles. Trace pulled off his pack, then sat down and leaned back, using the pack for a backrest.
"We always called this the 'Pearson Place'," Whit said, looking around them. "I never knew the people who farmed here. There's not been anyone working it since the 'thirties, I'd say." He looked around them. "It may not have been that far back. It was when I was little--in the 'fifties--that I was thinking of this being called the 'Pearson Place'." He looked at Trace. "That seems like it was only the blink of an eye ago, doesn't it. But God Almighty how this world has changed. Just look at the difference in our country from then to now." He shook his head. Then he lay back on the ground and put his hands under his head and looked up at the soft blue sky.
The sun was high and there were no clouds in the sky. Trace watched Boyle walk to the pump and raise and lower the long, curved handle several times. Only a rasping hollow sound came. That seemed too loud in the quiet clearing and he stopped pumping. Boyle lay down on the short grass again with his face to the sun, eyes closed, the binoculars on his chest.
Trace sat up, braced his elbows on his knees and began glassing the treeline across the meadow. He did not care if he spotted any more deer. The sun was warm on the back of his neck and on his shoulders. The cool breeze touched his cheeks and slipped inside his shirt collar. Suddenly he became motionless.
Boyle saw Trace freeze and twisted around to see where he was looking. "What have you got?" he said in almost a whisper, watching the treeline across the field.
"Take it straight across at twelve o'clock," Trace said, still scanning there, "then pull back to eleven o'clock, right up against the trees in that tall grass."
Boyle used his binoculars. "I've got it Tray--the rack? Just the top of it. He's down." He cautiously stood, then looked again at the place in front of the trees. "He's down all right. What do you think--hurt or sick?"
When the three men had walked well into the field, Boyle stopped and searched again in quick short sweeps, taking the field glasses from his eyes and then using them again as the other two men went on ahead, crossing the field. As Trace and Whit closed on the position of the deer it did not stand and run. Boyle held the binoculars close to his chest and began trotting after them.
The young buck lay on his side with his forelegs out straight: The arrow in his shoulder was sunk to the shaft's fletching. Trace saw foamy blood around the deer's nostrils and mouth and knew that he was shot through his lungs. The young buck looked at Trace with fear in his eyes and Trace looked away, ashamed. He sensed the deer's intelligence in its soft sienna eyes, and saw clearly its long and beautifully formed eyelashes. But he shut that away and slowly, with as little movement as possible, pulled the holster flap free of the stud. When the buck began struggling to get back to his feet, Trace stopped clearing the pistol from its holster.
Boyle came up beside him.
"Oh goddamn it all to hell," Boyle said under his breath. "Now this makes me fucking furious!" He took a deep breath. "What a beauty too."
Trace looked once more at the deer, then stepped behind Boyle to block the deer's view of him. Whit glanced to Trace and Boyle and saw Boyle looking at the wounded animal, his lips pressed tight and his jaws clinched. Trace drew the pistol--thinking how unforgivable it was not to have already chambered a round--and slowly pulled back the pistol's slide. He saw the brass of the cartridge in the chamber before he let the slide seat loudly. Trace stepped away from Boyle, raised his arm, aimed and fired. The bullet struck the young buck in the side of his head above the spine as the animal was struggling to make his forelegs lift him again. The heavy-grain hollow point blew out the back of the deer's head and slammed him to the ground, lifeless and quivering.
"Damn," Boyle exhaled. "Goddamn that does it." He turned away.
"Feels like a murder," Whit said.
Trace let the pistol's hammer down, then clicked it back to half cock. He left the safety lock off. "That's what it is," he said. "The sonofabitch that shot this buck just murdered the young fellow, taking him more than a week before anybody had the right to."
Whit looked toward the trees, shaking his head. Then he said, "You might want to say that to the young killer coming there, 'cause I'll bet my ass he's the one who did this."
They all looked at the young man coming out of the treeline into the field, walking toward them. He was wearing a Ghillie suit. He was big and seemed strong as he stepped off at a fast pace, looking steadily at them. He carried a camouflaged compound bow in one hand and the boonie hood and face mask of his body camouflage in the other. Trace thought the Ghillie suit made him look like a marsh monster in an old horror movie. The youth's curly dark hair was cut short around his face but fell to his shoulders in a mullet. Trace disliked the young man more now--seeing him--than he had when he only knew what someone had done to the deer.
The bow hunter stopped at the deer's head and said, "There that tough little son of a buck is." He smiled slightly as he looked at the dead deer. When he looked at Trace his smile became fixed and strained. "Thanks for finishing him off for me, sir."
"I didn't do a thing for you," Trace said slowly, "he was suffering."
"Sure. I know. I thought I'd made a good shot. Sometimes only the slightest bit of a breeze . . . ."
"So you do this a lot?" Whit said. He stepped nearer to Trace and Boyle.
"What time of year is it where you're from?" Boyle said. His face was flushed with anger as he looked at the young man. He yanked his cap off and slung it to the ground behind him.
The youth glanced at Boyle and then looked back to Trace.
"I asked you a goddamned question!" Boyle said. "Cause right here where we're standing it's late September. Archery for deer don't start till October! So--goddammit--what the hell you doing taking this young fellow out of season?"
The youth looked from Boyle to Trace, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He pulled at the Ghillie suit--at the burlap bands--as if he were becoming hot.
"You're not from around here are you?" Trace said in a calm voice.
"I was raised near here. I'm living on down in Dallas now." He leaned the bow against his leg, balancing it there with one finger, careful of the laser sight, and dropped his hood and mask to the ground beside him. He smiled uneasily to Trace, and blanched under the cold stare that he got. Whit and Boyle looked at him with hard-set faces. "I know this looks somewhat amiss," the young man said.
"Amiss?" Trace repeated. "You've broken the law. And the simple fact is I'm turning you in. So that's what it is."
The young hunter shoved his chin out and looked back at Trace with sudden sincerity. "I can see how you might be pissed-off about this." He watched Trace taking a cellular phone from his jacket pocket. "Now hold on there sir, please. Please just give me one minute to explain."
"You've got something to tell me that'll take away this dead buck, more than a week before the season?" Trace flipped open the phone.
The young man said earnestly, "You see, the thing is, I won't even be here when the season opens. And I wanted to get a last good hunt in before I go away. I'll be doing my basic training; I'm going off to be a soldier and go fight those crazy jihad terrorist bastards."
They looked at each other through a long silence.
"Then this is something to get straight right now," Trace said. "You'll be finding out that the rules--and punishment--in the military are a scoche harsher than what's out here for the civilians."
"When do you report?" Whit asked the young man.
"Next week. It's still kind of up in the air. My recruiter's supposed to be calling me in a day or so to let me know."
"Who's your recruiter?"
"Hell, I've talked to so many of 'em. A staff sergeant. Nice guy too."
"Over in OKC?"
"Naw, down in Dallas. Like I said."
Boyle walked around the young man and hunkered near the head of the deer. He bent low and looked at the damage done by the slow and heavy hollow point.
"I don't want you guys to think I'm bullshittin' you here," the bow hunter said. "I don't have it all nailed down yet about joining-up. But if things come together like they're heading, I'll most likely miss-out on the season. But hell, I know I've just done a damn-stupid thing, something that I've got no good cause for doing. I'm wrong and I know it." He watched Trace pushing keys on the phone, making the call.
"Now hold on there," the youth said. "I can't be having this shit."
Trace continued entering digits. The young hunter stepped closer, raised his bow and struck Trace's hand with it sharply. The phone spun away and fell to the ground.
Trace grabbed the bow and held to it tight. "Make one more move sonny boy and you're one hurt motherfucker," he snapped.
The bow hunter swung his fist at Trace's head, but Trace crouched and drove his shoulder into the young man's chest, low and solidly, sending him staggering back with his bow raised. As the bow hunter tried to regain his balance, Trace landed a strong hard blow to the side of his head. The boy stumbled, surprise and pain bursting into his face as he sat down hard--a clump of camouflage with a head and face.
"Here now!" Whit yelled.
Trace stood in front of the young man breathing hard, clenching his fists, ready to smash the boy down again if he tried to stand. The boy slumped back, lifting one hand to Trace to stop.
"Sheriff'll hear about this," the boy snuffled. "Three you jump me like this? He'll sure hear."
"He damn sure will," Trace said.
"Let's all calm down now," Whit said. He saw that Trace was watching the boy intently, his hand on his pistol. "There's no call for this," Whit said. "We've got a dead deer is all. Nothing's out of hand here and let's keep it that way."
The boy carefully felt his jaw and the side of his head, then looked at his hand; there was no blood. Trace picked up his phone, flicked dirt and grass from it, then saw that there was no signal. He shrugged and put the phone back into his pocket.
"What do you want to do with this poor dumb sonofabitch?" Boyle said to Trace. Trace gave a weary shake of his head. The boy looked at him with furious anger. "Looks like he'd like to waste you right now Tray. This kid's set on being a killer. Wants to go kill Iraqis--kill hajis. Go kill Afghans. Hell, kill somebody!"
The boy spat. He started to stand. Whit stepped nearer and extended his hand and helped the young man to his feet.
"We're OK here, right?" Whit said to him. "You're not hurt are you?"
The boy did not answer him.
Trace took out his cigarettes, lit one and regarded the young man. He offered him the cigarettes, then his lighter. The young man hesitated before he took them. He looked at the Zippo carefully, mouthing the words under the insignia: 'Third Marine Division Vietnam'. He lit a cigarette.
After a silence Trace said, "Have you signed your name yet on your enlistment?" He watched the young man's eyes until the youth dropped his gaze. The boy handed back the lighter and cigarettes and shook his head.
"The truth is," he said quietly, "I've been talking to a recruiter some, but I haven't signed anything. I'm sure thinking long and hard about it, only my parents don't want me to go just yet."
Trace regarded the lifeless body of the deer. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he felt a coldness growing in him.
"You're right to be seeing that what you're thinking about doing is a dead serious move," he said. The way his voice sounded caused both Boyle and Whit to look at him.
The young man nodded.
"It can cost you your life," Trace said. "Or it can change you forever in ways you can't even begin to imagine."
The youth looked at Trace. "You did it though."
Trace nodded. "Yes I did, when I was young and had no idea what I was taking on." He looked to Boyle. "That tall fellow there and I both went, together on the 'buddy system'." Then he gestured toward Whit. "And that tough little guy there went when he got drafted." He took a deep breath and looked solidly at the young man through a long silence. Then he said, "I've just lost my nephew to this war in Iraq."
The young man looked at Trace Waterfalling closely. "Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that."
Boyle said, "Aw hell Tray, let this kid have his goddamn dreams. Don't go thinking you owe him nothing--no warning from experience. You know you can't tell him nothing." Boyle looked at the boy then shook his head. "I'm already seeing how this'll go, and you ain't even shipped out yet--deployed as they say nowadays. I can already see a picture of you in the paper--in the obits--you looking serious, in your uniform. There'll be some good words about you--about how much you liked to bow hunt. But hell, I've already seen this one, over and over for-fucking-ever."
A strained smile formed on the youth's face.
"No need for that, Bo," Trace said. He looked at the boy. "This today went wrong is about all I can say. Now let's go on our separate ways and try an' do better."
The young man nodded.
"What about him?" Whit said. Trace looked at Whit, uncertain of what he meant.
"The trophy buck?" Boyle said sarcastically.
"Leave him for nature to take care of," Trace said. "Wolves'll clean this up."
Boyle said hollowly, "The goddamn bugs'll finish it."
The youth looked at the buck. "I'm sorry," he said to Trace. "I mean it. Not only about this thing that I've done, but about your nephew too." He looked at Trace. "How'd it happen, if that's not wrong of me to ask? Was it one of those Improvised Explosive Devices that got him? A' IED?"
Trace looked at the sun. It was being shielded now by high clouds. "It's plenty wrong for you to be asking," he said quietly.
The youth nodded in a slow, small repeating gesture and mouthed a single word: 'Sorry.'
The breezed rustled the tall grass around them.
"My nephew was in the same division that Boyle and I were in back in Viet-Nam," Trace said, his voice going thin.
The youth looked back blankly, waiting, but Trace did not say anything more.
"Let's get on out of here, Tray," Boyle said. He looked around them, and then scanned across the empty field. "We keep standing here the game warden'll be noticing us."
Trace said to the boy, "You should pull your arrow out of him. They might check it for prints, and they'll print you if you enlist." He jolted with a single silent laugh and then looked at Boyle, shaking his head as he shrugged his shoulders.
The bow hunter grasped his arrow and put one foot on the dead deer's chest. He worked the arrow around until it finally came free. He looked at the bloody shaft a moment. Finally, he turned and picked up his bow and camouflage, and walked away toward the treeline without looking back.
The three men watched the shaggy camouflaged form leaving.
"Let's didi," Boyle said to Trace. He took a deep breath. "I want to forget about the season for this year. We can do something else to be remembering Nicholas by."
"Forgetting sounds good to me too," Trace said.
"That it does," Whit said. "And Loni's is sure sounding good to me along about now. What do you say?"
"Maybe that'll work out alright after all," Trace answered.
As they started back across the meadow Boyle turned and looked back; he could no longer see the bow hunter.
"Let's don't talk about this to anyone," Whit said. "We maybe should have done something--turned that kid in like Tray started to do."
"Tray's heart wouldn't let him," Boyle said, and shoved Trace's shoulder in an affectionate way.
"Let's not talk about it anymore, even among ourselves," Trace said in a stark tone. "It's done. Finished. We wanted to do something for Nicky is all . . . ."
"Maybe you did, Tray," Whit said, stopping. They all stopped. "I believe what just happened is for a reason. We were meant to be here just now, for that kid . . . to bring him the message about Nick so he'd maybe understand something that's awful important for him right now."
Boyle looked at Whit and shook his head. He smiled slightly. "I can still remember when I used to believe like that too, Whit. But I look at all of this now as being one long crapshoot--just chance colliding with chance--one thing leading to the next, on and on and on."
Trace walked on out in front of them.
"I don't agree with you, Bo," Whit said. "I believe that everything happens for a reason."
"But maybe a thing happening is the only reason."
"I wish I could help you understand."
"I understand all right. I've understood too goddamned much for a long time now," Boyle said crisply. "That's the problem."
Whit looked at him with a pained expression. "Holding to what I believe helps me to not feel so bad about Nicky."
"Sure, I understand. I'm not meaning to beat down any of your beliefs that are helping you out now." They both watched Trace walking on alone across the face of the hill. Then Boyle said, "But wouldn't it be truly outstanding if all what's been passed down from the ancient Hebrews really was true? Then we'd all of us and everybody would have some sort of chance at seeing the ones we're missing so bad." He smiled quickly and shook his head, then slowly walked away. Whit followed him.
Somewhere ahead, near where the farmhouse had once stood, a crow cawed loud in the stillness. Then other crows answered as they all rose out of the grasses in front of the two men walking together. Four crows circled, cawing to each other, rising into the bright sky above the man waiting there on the hillside as two other men walked up the gentle slope towards him.
Jack Boyle, across the now cold fire of last night, rolled over in his sleeping bag and looked up at Trace Waterfalling.
"You been awake long?" Boyle asked.
Trace did not answer, reluctant to accept anyone—even his friend--intruding into the silence. Then he said, "Been holding a stand-to on my own up to dawn." He was a big man and spoke quietly in a slow manner.
Boyle considered the reference to their shared past as he regarded the form in a red sleeping bag near him rolling over, setting up, only his face showing in the drawstring-tightened opening.
"What is it?" Whit asked, looking at the other two men. He unzipped the sleeping bag from the inside and then reached his arms clear of it, out into the chill air, stretching as he crawled from the down bag. He was small and wiry, and still seemed faintly boyish even in late middle age, wearing a red stocking cap.
"How do you feel about the day, Tray?" Boyle said. His breath fogged in front of his face. Everything about him was lean and agile, strong and certain. His clear green eyes at first seemed misplaced in his line-carved face.
"It's the only day we have," Trace answered. He would be fifty-four years old in three days. But now, doing what he had done since he was a young boy, he felt without distinct age. Except this September everything was different. He, in some moments, still did not accept that having the boy in his life was now finished, and that nothing could ever be done to change the way it all had ended.
"It's the day that the Lord has made," Boyle said. He looked at Whit and let a faint smile start. "I'm not mocking you or nothing. It just come up natural in me, out here and us all thinking about Nicky." He shrugged. "It seems right and natural to say, somehow, thinking on those sort of things now, being that what we're doing is in his memory."
Trace Waterfalling's nephew, Nicholas, had hanged himself the first day of September: Twenty-two years old, back from Iraq less than three months, discharged a Corporal. Trace had talked with Nicholas earlier in the day that he had killed himself, having only his understanding from his own time in the same struggle to give the young man. But Nicholas did the only thing that he thought would stop what was happening to him. Thinking of this now, Trace took interest in his binoculars and began cleaning grains of dirt from the eye cups. Then he held the binoculars balanced on his fingertips and looked through them to a ridgeline in front of the rising sun. The brightness brought sharp pain behind his eyes and he kept looking there, finding the center of brightness, seeing his heartbeat in the pulsing throb of his view of the line between darkness and light, feeling the pain and grateful for its interference now.
When he was a small boy Trace Waterfalling had lived with his great-grandmother before she sent him to the Sequoyah Orphan Training School at Park Hill, Oklahoma. He had greatly feared going there, but he did as she asked. She was very old and he loved her very much. Her hair was long and straight, white and gathered into a coil against the back of her head. In the brittle-hard hollowness of the dormitory he often thought of her and of how happy he had been during the years when they were together in her cabin, the small room warm and close on a cold day in winter, them sitting in front of the fire, the scent of burning hickory in the air outside when he went into the sharp cold to get more firewood. He remembered the dry hickory snapping and popping in the flames, burning with excited rapidness. Then at night there was the glowing, seething mound of live coals to hold back the cold until the morning fire again.
Now Trace the man, husband, uncle and grandfather turned hunkering and carefully lifted his web belt from where it hung on a trimmed-short limb of a sprout, with the worn black leather holster and his pistol.
~ ~ ~
Where the three men had spread their sleeping bags, the tall dry grass was flattened and a solid covering of short green grass showed through it. Trace sat on the fresh grass and put his boots on. He dripped deer scent from a small bottle onto two fabric pads attached to straps, then slipped a strap over each boot, up near the boot tops. He tossed the bottle to Boyle, then stood and buckled on his web belt. It seemed heavy, with the loaded pistol and two extra magazines. The holster was military issue from more than forty years past: Black leather with a flap that closed onto a brass stud, over the butt of the forty-five automatic. The extra magazines fit snugly in a green canvas pouch on the belt behind the holster. Trace had taken the weapon from a pile of weapons and gear stacked beside a landing zone where casualties were being flown out after a nightlong battle. He did not rate a side arm, but he had kept the pistol, carrying it in his pack during the day and in a trouser pocket at night on patrols and ambushes; having it sometimes made him feel better. He did not give the weapon up when he came through Okinawa on his way back stateside. The repeated warnings of punishment for concealing contraband caused most troops to discard grenades, blocks of C-4 explosive, weapons and ammunition into the fifty-five gallon trash barrels that were there for that purpose.
"I never hunted with the boy," Whit said, "but I know he was a good shot with a bow. At least at targets he was a good shot."
Trace came back from where his thoughts had led him. "He had a sharp eye," he said, "and a good feel for where his arrow would go. He was flintknapping his own points. Made his own bow--a Cherokee bow--the one I'm hunting with next week." He thought of how he had taught the boy to chip flint and chert with hammer stones, deer antler billets and antler pressure flakers.
"He had a tender heart when it come down to taking live game," Boyle said, standing, ready to leave their camp.
Trace looked at him, trying to determine if he meant more than what he had said. Then he regretted the moment of doubt; Jack Boyle would never say anything to hurt their memory of Nickolas.
"But I know he hunted when he was younger," Boyle added. "I don't hold not hunting against nobody, unless they're trying to shame me for doing it. Hell, I almost cried when I was just a little kid and saw Bambi's mother get killed." He started to smile, but then seemed to understand that he had strayed far from the thoughts of Nickolas that were with them now.
Loud calling of distant crows came clearly into the quiet of the brightening day, and the three men looked toward the sounds.
~ ~ ~
They were walking in-file along a dry watercourse in a narrow draw between two steep grass-covered hillsides, Boyle at point and Whit bringing up the rear. Tall grasses had overgrown the rocky stream bed and then had died with summer ending. It was easy ground to cover and the men moved at a good pace, careful of their sound, still in shadow from the highest crests shielding them from the rising sun.
Boyle stopped until Trace came alongside him.
"I don't believe Nick ever killed any just ordinary indigen-eyes," he said to Trace, holding his voice low. Whit stopped, keeping their interval. "Not any innocent civilians I mean," Boyle said.
Nicky had started to see that all the killing was murder, Trace said in his mind. The boy hadn't learned to carry that yet, it hurting him bad and making him into somebody even he didn't know anymore. But you got to learn to stand it, Trace said to himself firmly, hoping that you can hack it day after day.
Trace noted the fresh tire tracks that had flattened the grass across a broad meadow and then joined a worn track near where it crossed the draw.
It'll take four wheel to make it here, he thought. He looked at the tracks and said to himself: They came through here last night before the frost.
The tracks led into a small corral of rusty barbwire strung slackly between old and weathered hand-split posts. The wire gate was open; it lay tangled on the ground where it had been thrown aside. Boyle led the way toward a small corrugated feeding shed, moving loose and natural. As they came near the shed Boyle froze. He slowly raised one arm to signal a halt as he cautiously crouched. The three men held still, looking at a young buck with a small two-point rack, standing motionless not more than twenty yards from Boyle. Trace noted that the slight breeze from behind the deer was holding their scent away, and saw that the deer appeared healthy and strong. As the three men crouched, holding very still, another buck came from around the corner of the shed--a fine eight-point--turning his head and looking at Boyle. The buck gave several short jerks with his neck that shook his rack, then turned and lifted away in high-stepping leaps--his white tail raised--and disappeared into the dark treeline. The young buck sprang lightly away into the trees too.
Whit looked at Trace and then to Boyle. "Beautiful," he said in a hushed voice. "Thank the Good Lord for letting me see that." He took off his red cap and absently passed one hand across his mostly-bald head before he replaced the cap, pulling it snuggly down.
The three men stood again, coming closer together, still watching the treeline. Boyle looked there through his binoculars.
"Maybe we're doing wrong driving these deer now," Trace said. "They might be to hell and gone by the time we come back on opening day."
Boyle nodded once but said nothing, still looking through his binoculars. Whit became intent on loosening a plastic water bottle from the side of his pack. Trace helped him. He nodded 'thanks', drinking, and wiped water from his chin. Trace got down on one knee and took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, and then looked intently at his Zippo lighter, a memento of almost forty years past. The gold and scarlet insignia of the Third Marine Division on the lighter was chipped and worn. He rubbed the gold and black caltrop points with his thumb, then watched the treeline again.
Whit regarded Trace closely. "You doing OK old boy?" he said to him. "You're not letting anything get started with you about Nick, are you? Not about him having trouble holding up--or nothing of the like--are you?"
Trace stood again. He kicked into the soft ground hard with the heel of his boot. "Hell no I'm not. I know some of what that kid was going through. He just got caught off-guard that one day, being home by himself, getting taken too far into thinking in bad ways and not knowing how to hold himself out of where he was falling. It was just the goddamned breaks; it don't say nothing about him. Hell, it could of had me too when I first got back to the world. I was just lucky enough to hang-on till I learned some of the ways of fighting it." He hit hard on his cigarette and looked around them. "Goddammit all! I should of known better than to leave that boy alone like I did, specially this time of year. Something about these late September days here brings on--what's the word?"
"Melancholy," Whit said.
"No, that's not what I mean. It brings on too much . . . pondering, thinking about life ending, with summer over and things dying." He drew deeply on the cigarette then threw it down and stomped it into the earth. Slowly he knelt and picked up the cigarette. He stood again and began field stripping the filterless cigarette. He said quietly, "When you finally get out of that hell it does nothing but hurt you more to be trying to figure it all out." He felt his throat become full and closed, and looked up at the white light of the sun showering in all directions clear of the line of a ridge.
"I think maybe I don't want to kill nothing next week when the season opens," Boyle said, not looking at either Trace or Whit.
A faint breeze came across the meadow to them. Trace looked into the distance where sunlight shone bright and clear on receding hillsides. Far away he saw a scattering of ruddy-brown blotches spotting the slopes: Trees starting to change color. He thought of how in a few weeks the colors of the change from Indian Summer would bring a different beauty to this land. He stood still and felt the breeze. The chill of the night was fading under the late September sun. To Trace, the air seemed as it had been when he was a boy, the sun pulling scents of sumac, blackjack oak and buffalo grass into the warming air. Somewhere near them crows again called to each other. Trace listened to their brittle sound crack against the silence, hoping that that might cause a break from what Boyle had said.
Earlier, when Trace had made coffee over a Sterno fire, and after Boyle and Whit had eaten four of the cinnamon rolls he had brought from his daughter's bakery, Trace had poured the coffee that was left into his thermos. Now he slipped his daypack off, hunkered beside it and took out the green enameled steel thermos. The coffee was only lukewarm, but he wanted it. He filled the plastic cap and offered it to Whit.
Whit shook his head. "But thanks," he murmured.
Boyle took the cap full and drank it down, handing it back with a single nod of thanks. Trace slung the last drops out and then refilled it. He sipped the coffee and lit another cigarette. Every day since Nick's mother had told him of her son's death he had felt slightly sick at his stomach, a weakening feeling that became stronger when he recalled moments spent with the boy or thought of how it had been at the funeral: the church full of people, as many people again outside, even with the steady rain.
"That bagpipe player wasn't worth a damn," Boyle said. He shook his head. Trace looked at him quickly, surprised that they were thinking of the same moments.
"Bagpipe music always sounds like that," Whit said. "It's supposed to sound that way. That fellow was OK."
"He was trying," Boyle agreed. "It was all done really fine." He looked at Trace. "I was proud as all hell of that boy then. I mean it Tray. The Marines would have sent a color guard if you'd wanted them to. Our boy rated it, same as you and me will. It was right to go ahead and have a good funeral, with no acting ashamed. I never feel ashamed about what happened; I feel mad as hell."
Trace looked back flatly at him. "Now what does that mean?"
"Nick died from that goddamned useless fucking war same as if he'd been killed in combat. Goddammit that's the way I see it, and you know that's so."
Whit looked away. They all saw a hawk swooping down out of a dead tree, plunging into tall grass near the feeding shed. Then the hawk rose again on beating wings with something small struggling in its talons.
"What say we get on back now?" Whit said. "Laura's gone over to Oklahoma City with her sister, shopping. You guys can hang-out at my place; we'll have it all to ourselves until late." Boyle and Trace said nothing. Whit said, "They're driving over to OKC just to go to some mall. That's sure going to put some miles on the Ford."
"Maybe they'll have a good day of it," Trace said. "Maybe Laura will find something that she likes a lot and go ahead and buy it for herself. You gotta know you're one lucky man, Whit."
"Yeah I know I am. She knows I know it too. I always tell her so." He shook his head and smiled. "I don't really care about the miles; we're doing OK."
Trace nodded.
Boyle looked through his binoculars and scanned the treeline in front of them with only faint interest. "I'm fine to secure this now," he said. "There'll be other days. We can go by Loni's Bottle Shop and pick up some of Mr. Walker's finest. As much as we want. We damn well deserve it, I say. Like a wake."
"A wake's for the day of the funeral," Whit said.
"Says who? We can do this any way we decide. There's never been this day before for all of goddamned history. I say we think about Nick--and all the other ones killed too--and get so goddamned drunk that none of us can move even one little bit of one finger. Then maybe this will start to feel some better. At least for a while maybe it will." Boyle looked to Trace, waiting for him to answer.
Trace said, "That won't do any good, Bo. But you go ahead on if you want to."
Boyle shrugged. "It was just a' idea. I don't care if you want to push on here for a while."
When Trace said nothing, Whit looked into the distance and said, "We're supposed to start getting good color pretty soon after bow season starts. They say that the rains we got at the end of August should make some fine fall colors come out."
Trace nodded. He took a lens cloth from his breast pocket, then carefully blew on his binoculars lenses and into each eye cup. He patiently cleaned the lens and eyepieces. When he replaced the cloth to his shirt pocket, he thought of the shirt he had given Nicholas when the boy graduated from high school. It was the most expensive shirt he had ever bought, combed cotton and silk. It cost the same amount as the brown suit that he bought when he came home from Viet-Nam. He had ordered the shirt from a catalog where there were photographs on every page of young people enjoying happy moments together. He had wanted that for the boy too. Nick's mother had given him back the shirt and he had worn it to Nick's funeral.
"This that we're having right here and now is too outstanding to leave," Trace said. "Let's keep on at it a while, if that's OK with you both."
~ ~ ~
Where they stopped later in the morning the earth seemed to have been gently rolled back to form a shallow bowl. The smooth ground was what remained of a cellar, filled-in long before so that now almost nothing indicated that anything had ever existed there. Nearby, a rusty hand pump stood solitary on a small square of weathered cement that was speckled with smooth, tan river pebbles. Trace pulled off his pack, then sat down and leaned back, using the pack for a backrest.
"We always called this the 'Pearson Place'," Whit said, looking around them. "I never knew the people who farmed here. There's not been anyone working it since the 'thirties, I'd say." He looked around them. "It may not have been that far back. It was when I was little--in the 'fifties--that I was thinking of this being called the 'Pearson Place'." He looked at Trace. "That seems like it was only the blink of an eye ago, doesn't it. But God Almighty how this world has changed. Just look at the difference in our country from then to now." He shook his head. Then he lay back on the ground and put his hands under his head and looked up at the soft blue sky.
The sun was high and there were no clouds in the sky. Trace watched Boyle walk to the pump and raise and lower the long, curved handle several times. Only a rasping hollow sound came. That seemed too loud in the quiet clearing and he stopped pumping. Boyle lay down on the short grass again with his face to the sun, eyes closed, the binoculars on his chest.
Trace sat up, braced his elbows on his knees and began glassing the treeline across the meadow. He did not care if he spotted any more deer. The sun was warm on the back of his neck and on his shoulders. The cool breeze touched his cheeks and slipped inside his shirt collar. Suddenly he became motionless.
Boyle saw Trace freeze and twisted around to see where he was looking. "What have you got?" he said in almost a whisper, watching the treeline across the field.
"Take it straight across at twelve o'clock," Trace said, still scanning there, "then pull back to eleven o'clock, right up against the trees in that tall grass."
Boyle used his binoculars. "I've got it Tray--the rack? Just the top of it. He's down." He cautiously stood, then looked again at the place in front of the trees. "He's down all right. What do you think--hurt or sick?"
When the three men had walked well into the field, Boyle stopped and searched again in quick short sweeps, taking the field glasses from his eyes and then using them again as the other two men went on ahead, crossing the field. As Trace and Whit closed on the position of the deer it did not stand and run. Boyle held the binoculars close to his chest and began trotting after them.
The young buck lay on his side with his forelegs out straight: The arrow in his shoulder was sunk to the shaft's fletching. Trace saw foamy blood around the deer's nostrils and mouth and knew that he was shot through his lungs. The young buck looked at Trace with fear in his eyes and Trace looked away, ashamed. He sensed the deer's intelligence in its soft sienna eyes, and saw clearly its long and beautifully formed eyelashes. But he shut that away and slowly, with as little movement as possible, pulled the holster flap free of the stud. When the buck began struggling to get back to his feet, Trace stopped clearing the pistol from its holster.
Boyle came up beside him.
"Oh goddamn it all to hell," Boyle said under his breath. "Now this makes me fucking furious!" He took a deep breath. "What a beauty too."
Trace looked once more at the deer, then stepped behind Boyle to block the deer's view of him. Whit glanced to Trace and Boyle and saw Boyle looking at the wounded animal, his lips pressed tight and his jaws clinched. Trace drew the pistol--thinking how unforgivable it was not to have already chambered a round--and slowly pulled back the pistol's slide. He saw the brass of the cartridge in the chamber before he let the slide seat loudly. Trace stepped away from Boyle, raised his arm, aimed and fired. The bullet struck the young buck in the side of his head above the spine as the animal was struggling to make his forelegs lift him again. The heavy-grain hollow point blew out the back of the deer's head and slammed him to the ground, lifeless and quivering.
"Damn," Boyle exhaled. "Goddamn that does it." He turned away.
"Feels like a murder," Whit said.
Trace let the pistol's hammer down, then clicked it back to half cock. He left the safety lock off. "That's what it is," he said. "The sonofabitch that shot this buck just murdered the young fellow, taking him more than a week before anybody had the right to."
Whit looked toward the trees, shaking his head. Then he said, "You might want to say that to the young killer coming there, 'cause I'll bet my ass he's the one who did this."
They all looked at the young man coming out of the treeline into the field, walking toward them. He was wearing a Ghillie suit. He was big and seemed strong as he stepped off at a fast pace, looking steadily at them. He carried a camouflaged compound bow in one hand and the boonie hood and face mask of his body camouflage in the other. Trace thought the Ghillie suit made him look like a marsh monster in an old horror movie. The youth's curly dark hair was cut short around his face but fell to his shoulders in a mullet. Trace disliked the young man more now--seeing him--than he had when he only knew what someone had done to the deer.
The bow hunter stopped at the deer's head and said, "There that tough little son of a buck is." He smiled slightly as he looked at the dead deer. When he looked at Trace his smile became fixed and strained. "Thanks for finishing him off for me, sir."
"I didn't do a thing for you," Trace said slowly, "he was suffering."
"Sure. I know. I thought I'd made a good shot. Sometimes only the slightest bit of a breeze . . . ."
"So you do this a lot?" Whit said. He stepped nearer to Trace and Boyle.
"What time of year is it where you're from?" Boyle said. His face was flushed with anger as he looked at the young man. He yanked his cap off and slung it to the ground behind him.
The youth glanced at Boyle and then looked back to Trace.
"I asked you a goddamned question!" Boyle said. "Cause right here where we're standing it's late September. Archery for deer don't start till October! So--goddammit--what the hell you doing taking this young fellow out of season?"
The youth looked from Boyle to Trace, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He pulled at the Ghillie suit--at the burlap bands--as if he were becoming hot.
"You're not from around here are you?" Trace said in a calm voice.
"I was raised near here. I'm living on down in Dallas now." He leaned the bow against his leg, balancing it there with one finger, careful of the laser sight, and dropped his hood and mask to the ground beside him. He smiled uneasily to Trace, and blanched under the cold stare that he got. Whit and Boyle looked at him with hard-set faces. "I know this looks somewhat amiss," the young man said.
"Amiss?" Trace repeated. "You've broken the law. And the simple fact is I'm turning you in. So that's what it is."
The young hunter shoved his chin out and looked back at Trace with sudden sincerity. "I can see how you might be pissed-off about this." He watched Trace taking a cellular phone from his jacket pocket. "Now hold on there sir, please. Please just give me one minute to explain."
"You've got something to tell me that'll take away this dead buck, more than a week before the season?" Trace flipped open the phone.
The young man said earnestly, "You see, the thing is, I won't even be here when the season opens. And I wanted to get a last good hunt in before I go away. I'll be doing my basic training; I'm going off to be a soldier and go fight those crazy jihad terrorist bastards."
They looked at each other through a long silence.
"Then this is something to get straight right now," Trace said. "You'll be finding out that the rules--and punishment--in the military are a scoche harsher than what's out here for the civilians."
"When do you report?" Whit asked the young man.
"Next week. It's still kind of up in the air. My recruiter's supposed to be calling me in a day or so to let me know."
"Who's your recruiter?"
"Hell, I've talked to so many of 'em. A staff sergeant. Nice guy too."
"Over in OKC?"
"Naw, down in Dallas. Like I said."
Boyle walked around the young man and hunkered near the head of the deer. He bent low and looked at the damage done by the slow and heavy hollow point.
"I don't want you guys to think I'm bullshittin' you here," the bow hunter said. "I don't have it all nailed down yet about joining-up. But if things come together like they're heading, I'll most likely miss-out on the season. But hell, I know I've just done a damn-stupid thing, something that I've got no good cause for doing. I'm wrong and I know it." He watched Trace pushing keys on the phone, making the call.
"Now hold on there," the youth said. "I can't be having this shit."
Trace continued entering digits. The young hunter stepped closer, raised his bow and struck Trace's hand with it sharply. The phone spun away and fell to the ground.
Trace grabbed the bow and held to it tight. "Make one more move sonny boy and you're one hurt motherfucker," he snapped.
The bow hunter swung his fist at Trace's head, but Trace crouched and drove his shoulder into the young man's chest, low and solidly, sending him staggering back with his bow raised. As the bow hunter tried to regain his balance, Trace landed a strong hard blow to the side of his head. The boy stumbled, surprise and pain bursting into his face as he sat down hard--a clump of camouflage with a head and face.
"Here now!" Whit yelled.
Trace stood in front of the young man breathing hard, clenching his fists, ready to smash the boy down again if he tried to stand. The boy slumped back, lifting one hand to Trace to stop.
"Sheriff'll hear about this," the boy snuffled. "Three you jump me like this? He'll sure hear."
"He damn sure will," Trace said.
"Let's all calm down now," Whit said. He saw that Trace was watching the boy intently, his hand on his pistol. "There's no call for this," Whit said. "We've got a dead deer is all. Nothing's out of hand here and let's keep it that way."
The boy carefully felt his jaw and the side of his head, then looked at his hand; there was no blood. Trace picked up his phone, flicked dirt and grass from it, then saw that there was no signal. He shrugged and put the phone back into his pocket.
"What do you want to do with this poor dumb sonofabitch?" Boyle said to Trace. Trace gave a weary shake of his head. The boy looked at him with furious anger. "Looks like he'd like to waste you right now Tray. This kid's set on being a killer. Wants to go kill Iraqis--kill hajis. Go kill Afghans. Hell, kill somebody!"
The boy spat. He started to stand. Whit stepped nearer and extended his hand and helped the young man to his feet.
"We're OK here, right?" Whit said to him. "You're not hurt are you?"
The boy did not answer him.
Trace took out his cigarettes, lit one and regarded the young man. He offered him the cigarettes, then his lighter. The young man hesitated before he took them. He looked at the Zippo carefully, mouthing the words under the insignia: 'Third Marine Division Vietnam'. He lit a cigarette.
After a silence Trace said, "Have you signed your name yet on your enlistment?" He watched the young man's eyes until the youth dropped his gaze. The boy handed back the lighter and cigarettes and shook his head.
"The truth is," he said quietly, "I've been talking to a recruiter some, but I haven't signed anything. I'm sure thinking long and hard about it, only my parents don't want me to go just yet."
Trace regarded the lifeless body of the deer. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he felt a coldness growing in him.
"You're right to be seeing that what you're thinking about doing is a dead serious move," he said. The way his voice sounded caused both Boyle and Whit to look at him.
The young man nodded.
"It can cost you your life," Trace said. "Or it can change you forever in ways you can't even begin to imagine."
The youth looked at Trace. "You did it though."
Trace nodded. "Yes I did, when I was young and had no idea what I was taking on." He looked to Boyle. "That tall fellow there and I both went, together on the 'buddy system'." Then he gestured toward Whit. "And that tough little guy there went when he got drafted." He took a deep breath and looked solidly at the young man through a long silence. Then he said, "I've just lost my nephew to this war in Iraq."
The young man looked at Trace Waterfalling closely. "Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that."
Boyle said, "Aw hell Tray, let this kid have his goddamn dreams. Don't go thinking you owe him nothing--no warning from experience. You know you can't tell him nothing." Boyle looked at the boy then shook his head. "I'm already seeing how this'll go, and you ain't even shipped out yet--deployed as they say nowadays. I can already see a picture of you in the paper--in the obits--you looking serious, in your uniform. There'll be some good words about you--about how much you liked to bow hunt. But hell, I've already seen this one, over and over for-fucking-ever."
A strained smile formed on the youth's face.
"No need for that, Bo," Trace said. He looked at the boy. "This today went wrong is about all I can say. Now let's go on our separate ways and try an' do better."
The young man nodded.
"What about him?" Whit said. Trace looked at Whit, uncertain of what he meant.
"The trophy buck?" Boyle said sarcastically.
"Leave him for nature to take care of," Trace said. "Wolves'll clean this up."
Boyle said hollowly, "The goddamn bugs'll finish it."
The youth looked at the buck. "I'm sorry," he said to Trace. "I mean it. Not only about this thing that I've done, but about your nephew too." He looked at Trace. "How'd it happen, if that's not wrong of me to ask? Was it one of those Improvised Explosive Devices that got him? A' IED?"
Trace looked at the sun. It was being shielded now by high clouds. "It's plenty wrong for you to be asking," he said quietly.
The youth nodded in a slow, small repeating gesture and mouthed a single word: 'Sorry.'
The breezed rustled the tall grass around them.
"My nephew was in the same division that Boyle and I were in back in Viet-Nam," Trace said, his voice going thin.
The youth looked back blankly, waiting, but Trace did not say anything more.
"Let's get on out of here, Tray," Boyle said. He looked around them, and then scanned across the empty field. "We keep standing here the game warden'll be noticing us."
Trace said to the boy, "You should pull your arrow out of him. They might check it for prints, and they'll print you if you enlist." He jolted with a single silent laugh and then looked at Boyle, shaking his head as he shrugged his shoulders.
The bow hunter grasped his arrow and put one foot on the dead deer's chest. He worked the arrow around until it finally came free. He looked at the bloody shaft a moment. Finally, he turned and picked up his bow and camouflage, and walked away toward the treeline without looking back.
The three men watched the shaggy camouflaged form leaving.
"Let's didi," Boyle said to Trace. He took a deep breath. "I want to forget about the season for this year. We can do something else to be remembering Nicholas by."
"Forgetting sounds good to me too," Trace said.
"That it does," Whit said. "And Loni's is sure sounding good to me along about now. What do you say?"
"Maybe that'll work out alright after all," Trace answered.
As they started back across the meadow Boyle turned and looked back; he could no longer see the bow hunter.
"Let's don't talk about this to anyone," Whit said. "We maybe should have done something--turned that kid in like Tray started to do."
"Tray's heart wouldn't let him," Boyle said, and shoved Trace's shoulder in an affectionate way.
"Let's not talk about it anymore, even among ourselves," Trace said in a stark tone. "It's done. Finished. We wanted to do something for Nicky is all . . . ."
"Maybe you did, Tray," Whit said, stopping. They all stopped. "I believe what just happened is for a reason. We were meant to be here just now, for that kid . . . to bring him the message about Nick so he'd maybe understand something that's awful important for him right now."
Boyle looked at Whit and shook his head. He smiled slightly. "I can still remember when I used to believe like that too, Whit. But I look at all of this now as being one long crapshoot--just chance colliding with chance--one thing leading to the next, on and on and on."
Trace walked on out in front of them.
"I don't agree with you, Bo," Whit said. "I believe that everything happens for a reason."
"But maybe a thing happening is the only reason."
"I wish I could help you understand."
"I understand all right. I've understood too goddamned much for a long time now," Boyle said crisply. "That's the problem."
Whit looked at him with a pained expression. "Holding to what I believe helps me to not feel so bad about Nicky."
"Sure, I understand. I'm not meaning to beat down any of your beliefs that are helping you out now." They both watched Trace walking on alone across the face of the hill. Then Boyle said, "But wouldn't it be truly outstanding if all what's been passed down from the ancient Hebrews really was true? Then we'd all of us and everybody would have some sort of chance at seeing the ones we're missing so bad." He smiled quickly and shook his head, then slowly walked away. Whit followed him.
Somewhere ahead, near where the farmhouse had once stood, a crow cawed loud in the stillness. Then other crows answered as they all rose out of the grasses in front of the two men walking together. Four crows circled, cawing to each other, rising into the bright sky above the man waiting there on the hillside as two other men walked up the gentle slope towards him.
