Hunting Season

by Nevada Barr

  The murmur of his engine faded. The night reknit itself. Chill air smelling of downed leaves, campfires and a faint indefinable perfume that triggers nostalgia so sharp the ache overcomes the sweetness, brushed down from the rooftop to touch her face. Breathing deeply she hurt for everything that was and everything that wasn’t in a past that became harder to remember every year.

  A thin slice of moon beckoned from over the treetops. Anna looked to her house: warmth and light and the two loving spirits who did duty as her family. She was tired. The day had gone on so long Lonnie Restin’s wedding seemed like a memory from another lifetime. Still she knew she wouldn’t sleep, not even if the cat deigned to curl up on the pillow beside her and purr.

  Still in uniform, Anna retrieved her gun and, ignoring Taco’s most piteous pleas to come along, returned to her patrol car. It was Saturday night, America’s night out. Surely she could catch somebody doing something. Then she’d come home to bed. Ruining someone else’s evening was bound to have a soporific effect.

  The campground was disappointingly quiet. Four groups were overnighting, all were either enjoying the last embers of their fires or tucked up snugly for the night.

  Anna drove down the Trace. Going nowhere, really, just drawn, perhaps by the shade of poor ol’ Doyce Barnette, toward the ancient inn at Mt. Locust.

  Traffic was virtually nonexistent and the rich confusing draughts of air from a semi-tropical land shutting down for its short winter’s sleep tugged at forgotten dreams. Anna wondered where the drunks and speeders were when you needed them.

  North of Mt. Locust she finally got lucky. A flash of light at treeline caught her eye. Killing the headlights, she pulled to the side of the road. In the inky shadow of a huge pecan left behind when a frontier home had been reclaimed by the land, she turned off the ignition to listen. In the darkness she couldn’t separate it from the black and jagged line of the woods, but she knew the hunting stand that had been built on the parklands was there. Most they tore down. This one had been left in hopes of catching the perpetrators using it to poach the public’s protected deer.

  Till coming to the South, Anna hadn’t been acquainted with the phenomenon of hunting stands. They came in all shapes and sizes, from a couple of boards nailed into the crotch of a tree to the twenty-foot-high portable metal towers complete with chair, railing and gun rest sold at the local Wal-Mart come hunting season.

  The point of the things was to get the hunter above the prey. Evidently deer seldom look up. It had been many generations since death had come from the trees.

  Hunters with little sporting blood spread feed under the stands in the fall to accustom the deer to coming there to eat. Bone-lazy hunters with no sporting blood whatsoever would put the feed in automatic timing devices to habituate the deer to come at a certain time every day, no waiting involved.

  The stand built in Anna’s woods was of the least dishonest variety. No timer, no feeder, just a platform built about fifteen feet above the ground with a rudimentary ladder and a railing of two-by-fours. The platform was eight feet long, the length of a standard cut of lumber, and three wide. One end was nailed into the pecan tree, the other supported by stilts.

  The meadow was dark, the trees beyond impenetrable, but Anna had looked at the stand every time she’d passed by for two months. She could have rebuilt the wretched thing without a plan.

  No sounds came to her but those integral to the night. She’d not expected any. Men incapable of quiet in any other circumstances often managed silence when stalking their fellow creatures. Time passed. She waited without impatience. Over the years she’d come to like waiting as she’d come to like the night. There was power in darkness and focused inactivity.

  Finally, the light showed, a flashlight carelessly handled. This flash was not at ground level but in the trees. A hunter had wandered into the trap he’d set for the unwitting deer.

  “Gotcha,” Anna whispered.

  At the south end of the meadow, the stand overlooked a line of trees reaching to the road. The black shadows would cloak the patrol car, the woods would hide her.

  Accustomed to working alone, she hesitated before reaching for the radio. She’d be a fool not to let dispatch know where she was, but a call to them was a call to Randy Thigpen. This was his shift and staking out the hunting stand was his idea. Anna bit the managerial bullet and picked up the mike.

  “Five-eight-one, Five-eight-zero,” she radioed first Thigpen’s call number, then her own to identify herself. He answered immediately and Anna was surprised. First the willingness to work on the Barnette case, now timely response to a radio call. Maybe the man was turning over a new leaf.

  Briefly she told him where she was and what she was up to.

  “You’re not on duty, are you?” came accusingly back over the radio.

  This was more like the Thigpen Anna’d come to know and be wary of. “I am now,” she said. “What’s your location?”

  A moment of that peculiar empty silence generated by dead phone lines and unanswered calls leaked from her radio, then Thigpen’s voice dispelled it. Whatever attitude he’d assumed at first hearing Anna had intruded on his night shift evaporated. He sounded clear and businesslike and Anna was grateful.

  “I’m at mile marker thirty-five. Give me twenty minutes. There’s an old dirt road’ll take me behind them. You come in from the Trace side.”

  Mile marker thirty-five was ten minutes or so north of where Anna had parked. “Ten-four,” she said. The park service, along with many other organizations, had gone to clear speak for radio protocol, abandoning the ten codes but, for old-timers, the habit was hard to break. “No radios,” Anna said. “We don’t want to scare them off.”

  “No radios. Be careful you don’t get yourself shot,” Thigpen said. “These boys’ll shoot at anything that moves.”

  The warning sounded heartfelt. Anna wondered if it was or if he was just playing to an audience of one in the dispatcher’s office, three hours north in Tupelo.

  Anna drove the half mile to the line of trees growing close to the road without headlights. That peculiar acuteness that one sees in a stalking cat’s eyes and the line of a hunting dog’s spine on the scent pervaded her. Her mind was clear, her eyes sharp, her skin alive to the messages carried by the cold sweet air.

  Slipping from the car and pressing the door gently shut, she reminded herself that these were poachers she was going after, armed men, probably hunting in packs, fuelled with the night, the dream of blood and possibly a couple six-packs of beer. Too many months of lecturing noisy campers and chasing teenage lovers out of Deans Stand had dulled her edge.

  An image of the pallid remains of Doyce Barnette served to bring on the keen bite of evil. Thus armed and cautioned, she slipped into the woods. A six-cell flashlight served as both light and, though strictly against regulations, a baton if need be.

  In the high deserts of Mesa Verde, Colorado, and Guadelupe Mountains, Texas, where she’d spent a bulk of her professional life, Anna might have attempted this night hunt without a light. In dryer, higher climes one could actually come to know the woods. Not so in Mississippi. Here the forests were rich and deep and as changeable as the sea. The land was not forged of granite and lava. There were no rocky outcroppings or mountains to hold the earth in place. Waterways changed their courses. Rivers and streams, not under the iron hand of the Army Corps of Engineers, left their beds to form new ones. Windstorms and tornadoes downed trees or uprooted them from the soft loess, the region’s powdery soil, and flung them into the boughs of their fellows. Ice storms shattered branches, crushed them into the ground beneath. Through this ongoing upheaval and change, life as tenacious and persevering as that of the people who lived in the south pressed on. Vines claimed the fallen trees; trees sprang up in the old streambeds. The dirt itself rotted underfoot, crumbling away at a touch.

  Shielding the light as best she could, Anna picked her way through the tangle. In high summer she probably wouldn’t have tried it. T
he chance of becoming lost even in this small bit of the world would have been too great. With leaves down and scraps of light leaking through from the stars and a fingernail moon, she trusted she could keep her bearings.

  Despite her best efforts, walking in true silence was not an option. Ankle-deep leaves of oak, maple, locust, dog-wood, ash and sweetgum crackled with each step.

  Every few yards she stopped her crunching to listen. When she’d reached what she guessed was the halfway point she was rewarded. Voices, no words, just murmuring and one short, sharp shout of laughter quickly stifled, carried through the still air.

  Not a lone hunter, then. Two, more probably three. Anna checked her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. Randy should be in place. She moved again, changing her pattern. If she could hear them, they could hear her. She walked in short erratic bursts, altering the length and timing of her steps so that the rustle of her passage might ape the natural sounds of the woodland creatures. Always, she kept trees between herself and the meadow over which the hunting stand stood sentinel.

  When she’d worked in Texas the hunters there had what they called a “sound shot,” perfectly acceptable to their way of thinking. A sound shot was where they merely blasted away blindly at a noise in the bushes. Anna had no intention of falling victim to a hunting accident should the tradition of the Texas “sound shot” include the entire South.

  Twice more she halted her progress to listen but there were no more murmurings. Either they’d recommitted themselves to the business of hunting or they’d heard her coming and were even now motoring away, popping the top of a cold one and having a good laugh at the ranger’s expense.

  Fifteen or so yards from the stand she checked her watch. Thirty-two minutes had passed since she’d put in the call to Randy Thigpen. Time enough.

  For the length of ten breaths Anna was absolutely still. A silence that felt unnatural in its totality descended. The breeze that had stirred her so when she’d first left the house in Rocky Springs had died. No leaves rustled overhead. No nightbirds chattered. Frogs, asleep with the cold, kept their own counsel. And no sound from the hunters. This close on a windless night sound carried as surely as it would underwater. She should have been able to hear the scraping of a boot on the wood, the shush of fabric, the click of a rifle barrel rested on the railing.

  Nothing.

  They must have spotted the patrol car or heard her and left. The thought brought with it a letdown. The fatigue of an over-long day began to seep into her bones. Then she smelled it: cigarette smoke. Somewhere in the hopeless night, in the trees surrounding her, someone had lit up. Whoever it was screened the flare of the match and cupped the glow of the cigarette, someone who’d been hooked on tobacco for so long he’d forgotten normal people didn’t breathe that kind of air on a regular basis.

  Anna unsnapped the keeper on the holster of her Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter. The slight snick of the snap letting go was echoed by a shush from the trees, a shifting of weight or a shuffling of feet. The sound came not from the direction of the hunting stand but from the tangle of trees behind her.

  In that instant Anna went from the hunter to the hunted. The excitement of the chase turned to cold, hard fear.

  They had known she was coming. Instead of fleeing, they’d laid an ambush and she’d walked right into it. In other circumstances she would have cursed herself for a fool, but hunters, for the most part, weren’t given to felony behaviors. Bluster, intransigence, even threats were common fare but not ambush and assault. The stakes weren’t high enough. To lie in wait for law enforcement was freakish.

  Fear accelerated; Anna could feel it reach her heart, upping the beats. Thigpen. He smoked like the proverbial chimney. He must have come in from the road and, finding no one at the stand, come to meet her.

  Without a light.

  Not Thigpen.

  Anna shifted the heavy flashlight to her left hand then eased the semi-auto from its holster. Had she known where the smoker and, she had to assume, his cohorts, were she would have done the sensible thing and slunk away under the cover of darkness. Till she figured out their whereabouts she didn’t dare move.

  Another rustle, then a man’s voice shouted, “Now!” and the night erupted in screaming light and sound.

  Not a flash but a high-powered spotlight exploded from the trees to Anna’s right, blinding her with such violence she threw up an arm as if warding off a blow. Other smaller lights joined it. Anna felt as if half a hundred men charged from the edges of a nightmare, but it might have been a trick of her wounded night vision or the shattered edges of fear.

  Raucous voices clamored: “Hoo boy!” “We got us a lady ranger!” “We’re gonna have us some fun now.” Phrases right out of a cheesy remake of Deliverance mobbed Anna and, even as part of her mind noted the threadbare clichés, the words served their purpose. The terror of ten thousand years of abused women welled up from a gender memory she’d not known lay buried in her sinews.

  The deafening report of a rifle fired at close range spun her around. She dropped to one knee, her back to the rough back of the tree she’d thought herself hidden behind. The Sig-Sauer had found its way into her hand, and she pointed it into the harsh glare of the spotlight.

  Though she kept her pistol pointed at the spotlight, Anna resisted the natural instinct to stare into the light, try to see who was behind it. In a moment or two spill from the spotlight began to work for her. Flashlight beams danced lustfully and erratic as fireflies to the left of the spotlight. There were three men, possibly four. Two at least wore camouflage, pants, jackets and hats. Not the green and gray shapeless blobs of the military’s all-purpose stuff but hunter camouflage: fabric printed with a litter of leaves and twigs. At first, in the glaring spot and moving beams of light, she thought her attackers were African-American, though they didn’t sound black.

  In polite society one wasn’t allowed to say someone sounded black, looked Jewish or any of a hundred other racial, cultural or religious generalizations. Anna’d learned to take information regardless of the package it was presented in. Clichés were based on old regional truths and, in the south at least, a majority of blacks sounded black. The men that harassed her sounded white and as southern as grits. In the wild play of the lights, she could see monster faces, faces daubed with mud or grease or paint.

  “Turn off the spotlight or I shoot it out,” she shouted over the tumult.

  Catcalls died. Anna could feel their insecurity. These were Saturday night hunters, crazed by darkness and power and playing at predators. By day they probably checked groceries at the Piggly-Wiggly or pumped gas. “Turn it off,” Anna said again. Into the new-won silence came the sibilant sound of a whispered conference followed by a hooting laugh that sounded, to Anna’s hyper-extended ears, both relieved and exultant. A thick voice said, “You can’t shoot us. We don’t plan to hurt you none.”

  “Leastways it ain’t gonna hurt much,” came another voice. Laughter followed. Crude remarks. Boots pushing through duff. Mob courage was reasserting. Voices—only three—Anna’s mind took note even as she fought down panic. Sexual remarks, sneering, inarticulate whoops melded into a cacophony of pack hatred. The lights began to converge on her.

  “Stay back,” Anna yelled. “I don’t want to shoot anybody tonight.”

  “She ain’t gonna shoot,” said the speaker, the holder of the spotlight. “She can’t. It’s the law. We ain’t threatening her life.”

  A whoop from the left and the lights moved closer. Taking careful aim, Anna pulled the trigger. Noise and light and breaking glass shattered as the spotlight exploded into a thousand pieces. A man screamed, high and wild like a hawk shot on the wing.

  The ring around Anna fragmented. Lights spun, men shouted. Cloaked in chaos, Anna fled into the black of the woods behind her. Bat-blind from the spotlight, she stumbled and fell in a parody of countless film heroines destined to be run down by the villain.

  The part of her mind that was never off-duty noted the yells
of the men. “The bitch shot at me.” “You said she couldn’t...” “Shut the fuck up.” “Fucking bitch.” Then, with a baying of the hounds of hell, they came after her.

  5

  For a nightmare’s eternity, Anna ran, fell, stumbled, noted without feeling the banging of her knees and elbows, the rip of thorny branches across her face and forearms. Her Sig-Sauer was still in her hand and she used it like a club, bashing through foliage that seemed sentient, closing around her trying to trap and hold. The six-cell flashlight had been dropped when she’d pulled her weapon, and she fought on in a darkness so complete she was choked with it.

  Bit by bit her night vision returned and with it came a hopeful smattering of gray to her left: the meadow with its pooling of light from moon and stars.

  Too far. The hounds were closing in. The pitch of their baying rose in the excitement of the chase. The cut of flashlight beams slashed green from a glut of oak hydrangea to her right. They’d not yet seen her, but only followed the racket she made.

  Forcing down the panicked need for flight, she made herself stop. The crash of boots and the guttural yells would cover small sounds. Quick as a burrowing fox, Anna dove for the ground. Crushing herself into the scratchy embrace of a drying shrub, she pulled leaves and needles up over her as best she could. Curled in a ball, elbows touching knees, shoulders hunched, she raised her gun up to eye level and waited. A snake in the grass. Like a snake, her blood grew cold, her eyes narrowed, and a snake’s ethics took over. If her pursuers came too close, she would strike. If they passed by, she would let them live.

  For half a minute, the crashing came on: three flashlights jabbing through the trunks and creepers. Anna counted them by the lights. Their voices had melded into one hurting cry of many notes. Lying as she was, coiled half under a bush covered imperfectly with leaves, she felt as exposed as if she stood naked on an empty stage.