by Rio Youers
He shuffled back to the car, grabbed his BlackBerry, and dialed 911. The dispatcher told Matthew that an officer would be on the scene as soon as possible. Matthew hung up, thinking that “on the scene” sounded somewhat ominous, as if some terrible crime had occurred.
Still, that was one problem dealt with. Matthew hoped the police would arrive quickly, but didn’t think they would—not because a dead (or not quite dead) deer would be considered low priority, but because this was the backwoods, where “quick” was not a way of life. He couldn’t sweat it, though. It wasn’t his problem anymore. The Podunk Police could take their sweet time, but Matthew was only prepared to hang around for as long as it took the wrecker to arrive.
He fished the rental agreement from the glovebox and dialed the appropriate number. After several minutes of automated frustration, he finally got to speak with a representative, and had just started to explain what had happened when a white police cruiser rolled toward him, sunlight bouncing off its windshield, HOLLOW COUNTY SHERIFF painted on the door. Jesus, that was quick, Matthew thought. He raised his hand to the sheriff as the cruiser slipped by, then gestured at the phone and flipped two fingers to indicate that he would be a couple of minutes. The sheriff nodded from behind the wheel, parked his cruiser in front of the deer, and flicked on his lightbar.
Slightly more than a couple of minutes, as it turned out. Matthew gave (and repeated) required information, wiping sweat from his brow, stealing glances at the sheriff to see what was going on. He couldn’t see the deer because the cruiser was in the way, but the sheriff was standing with his hat cocked back on his head, hands on his hips, staring down at the unfortunate animal. It must have died already, Matthew thought. He’s waiting for me to finish on the phone so I can help drag it to the side of the road. Finally he hung up, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and walked over to the sheriff.
“Sorry about that, Sheriff, you came a little quicker than—” Matthew’s throat locked, allowing only broken sounds through. He had stepped around the hood of the cruiser, his eye drawn to the deer, seeing that it was still alive, after all. It blinked rapidly, foamy blood caked around its nostrils, one leg twitching.
“No problemo, amigo,” the sheriff said. “I got all the time in the world.”
Matthew took a step back. He needed the support of the cruiser’s front fender to keep his legs from folding beneath him. “What—?” His throat jammed again and he shook his head. How long had he been on the phone? Six or seven minutes, at least, and all that time the sheriff had been standing here—hands on hips and gun in holster—watching the animal suffer.
“Jesus,” he said. The word pounced out of him, breaking through his constricted windpipe. He looked at the sheriff with stricken eyes.
“Bitch of a day, huh?” the sheriff asked cheerfully.
Matthew blinked hard and gave his head another little shake. “You could say that.”
“Well, you won’t get much sympathy from her,” the sheriff said, and—incredibly—kicked the deer. Not hard, but enough to make it jerk and look at him. Matthew felt a ripple of nausea roll through his stomach. He looked away—stared at the red and blue lights whirling on the cruiser’s roof.
This isn’t right, he thought. I know they do things differently upstate, but holy God, this just isn’t right. He took a deep breath, counted slowly to three, and turned back to the sheriff.
“It happened about twenty minutes ago,” he said, not able to look the sheriff in the eye. “Maybe thirty, I’m not sure. But it’s been suffering for a long time, and I think—”
“You been drinking?” the sheriff asked. His voice had all the delicacy of a blunt axe.
“What?” Now Matthew did look him in the eye, to better express honesty, but also to gauge the earnestness of the sheriff’s question. “Of course not. Jesus Christ.”
“You sure?” the sheriff pressed. “You look a little glassy-eyed.”
“I just hit a deer,” Matthew said, his voice tight with tension. “Fucking thing came out of nowhere. I’m dazed . . . upset.”
“Watch your tongue,” the sheriff said. He took a step toward Matthew and leaned close (having to stoop, being a good six inches taller). He wrinkled his nose, testing Matthew’s breath. The hairs in his nostrils trembled. Nodding, apparently satisfied, he retreated a step and directed his attention to the dying deer.
“It’s a crying shame,” he said, “that God made one of his most beautiful creatures so damn stupid. Look at her: pretty as they come, but a brain like a catch rag.”
“She doesn’t look pretty at the moment,” Matthew said. “She looks in pain.”
“Get dead deer on this road all the time,” the sheriff went on. “Here and Boulder Pass, between Oak Creek and Wharton. It’s like a goddamn horror movie some mornings. Blood and shit all over. You’d think they’d learn, huh?”
Matthew shrugged. His temples were throbbing.
“I’m not usually called out, of course.” The sheriff looked at Matthew and smiled. “Country folk know how to take care of their own.”
“I’m sure,” Matthew said.
“I see the decals on that Jap rental you’re driving,” he said, nodding toward it with a distasteful expression on his face. “Brooklyn, huh? What brings you to our little slice of the pie?”
“I used to live here,” Matthew replied. “A long time ago.”
“Hollow County?”
“Yes. Point Hollow.”
“That so?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff’s stony eyes glittered in the shadow cast by his Stetson. He was broad as well as tall, with thick wrists and handfuls of flab spilling over his belt. There was a stain on the front of his shirt—blueberry jelly, or something—and rings of sweat beneath his arms. The name on the thin gold bar pinned to his chest read, TANSY. His nose was crooked, clouded with ruptured capillaries, and the cleft in his chin was deep enough to lodge a nickel in.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Matthew Bridge.”
“Bridge . . . ?” He looked at the dying deer while turning the name over in his head.
“My father was Peter Bridge,” Matthew said. “He was an accountant at the mill.”
Sheriff Tansy nodded and snapped his fingers. “I remember. Pete the Jew.”
“We’re not Jewish.”
“I know that, but we called him Pete the Jew, anyway. Good with money. Went off to seek his fortune in the Big Apple, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Another flyaway. But then, he never did jig with the town.”
The deer moaned, flicking its eyes from Matthew to the sheriff. Even its ears were trembling. Matthew looked at it, nervously rubbing his beard. How long were they going to stand here, making idle chat, while the deer bled and suffered?
“Do you think we could—?” he started, pointing at the deer, but the sheriff’s voice bulldozed through the end of his sentence.
“Shit, you’re the kid that got lost in the woods.” He snapped his fingers again. His face wore the surprised, expectant expression of a man who has revealed three matching numbers on a scratch card.
Matthew nodded. “You remember that, huh?”
“I was part of the search party,” Sheriff Tansy stated proudly. “That was what . . . eighty-three, eighty-four?”
“Eighty-four,” Matthew said. “Listen, can we—?”
“We thought for sure you were dead as dogshit. We half expected to find you mauled by bears, or lying at the bottom of Abraham’s Faith.”
Matthew blinked, shook his head. He hadn’t thought about Abraham’s Faith since leaving Point Hollow, but now it towered in his mind again. And there was something else—a feeling, more than a memory, that he couldn’t quite grasp. Frail images, possibly dream fragments, trailed across his consciousness. He shuddered, suddenly co
ld, despite the heat.
“—coming for you, then?” Matthew caught only the tail end of Sheriff Tansy’s question.
“I’m sorry?” He hugged himself, feeling the ripple of gooseflesh on his forearms.
“I said, this is something of a homecoming for you, then?”
“Yes,” Matthew replied. “Something like that.”
The deer had fallen still, no longer bleating or pawing with its foreleg. Its wide black eyes continued to blink, though, reflecting the blank sky and the two men that stood watching it die.
“Not even across the town line and you’re already making trouble.” Sheriff Tansy grinned and booted the deer’s rump once again. It made a hurt sound and showed its teeth. “Maybe you should have stayed away.”
Matthew winced. “No maybe about it.”
“Let’s see if we can help you out, then.”
Thank God, Matthew thought.
Sheriff Tansy sleeved sweat from his brow. “Boy, you surely knocked the beans out of her chili.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it’s in a lot of pain.”
“It’s a she,” Tansy said. “A doe. Beautiful, too.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever.”
“A whitetail,” Tansy continued. “About six years old.”
“Maybe we can spare the life story,” Matthew said, “and just get this over with.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sheriff Tansy agreed. He unclipped his holster and drew his gun. It was fat and black, too dull to catch even a bead of sunlight. The sheriff passed it from one hand to the other, as if measuring its weight.
“Right,” Matthew said, and a trickle of sweat stung his left eye. “You’re going to shoot it—her. Yes . . . I knew that. Okay.”
“I’m not going to shoot her,” the sheriff said. “You are.”
Matthew knuckled the sweat from his eye and looked at the sheriff, trying to calculate, again, his level of earnestness.
The sheriff stared back with a serious expression.
“This is a joke, right?” Matthew said.
“No joke,” Tansy said. “You ever fire a handgun before?”
“No,” Matthew replied quickly. “And that’s not about to change.”
“Nothing to it.” Tansy’s eyes gleamed, small and bright. “Every God-fearing American should fire a gun at least once in their life. Now’s your time to shine.”
Matthew tried to smile. His lips twitched and trembled, presenting an expression closer to grief. “While I appreciate your wanting to expand my cultural vistas, I really don’t think this is the best time for me to handle a lethal weapon.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Look at my hands,” Matthew argued. “They’re trembling. I could shoot my foot off.”
“Uh-huh.” Sheriff Tansy nodded, removed the magazine, checked it, and slid it back into the shaft. “This is a Glock 20. She’s a 10mm, and more power than you need, so don’t be holding her like a pussy.”
“I’m not going to be holding her at all.”
“Keep your arms straight, but relaxed, with your firing hand around the grip and your weak hand securing from beneath—not behind the slide.”
“The slide?”
“Right.” He tapped the top of the gun. “The slide. She’ll rip back when you pull the trigger, and you’ll lose a good part of your hand if it’s in the way.”
“Listen, I’m not—”
The deer interrupted him, piercing to the bone with another of those harrowing moos. Matthew shuddered and looked at it. Still broken. Still bleeding. Still suffering. Blood trickled around his sneakers and he stepped back with a little gasp.
“She’s hurting,” the sheriff said.
“Shoot her, then,” Matthew said.
“You’ve been gone a long time. We take care of our own in Point Hollow.”
“This is insane.” Matthew uttered a cracked, nervous laugh. “You know, I left the city to get away from . . . everything for just a few lousy days. I’m not—”
“Listen carefully,” Sheriff Tansy said, driving through Matthew’s words the same way Matthew had driven through the deer. “When I hand her to you, she’ll be live, which means there’ll be a round in her chamber. Now, there’s no conventional safety—no levers or buttons. The safety is built into her trigger. So keep your finger away from it until you are absolutely one hundred percent ready to shoot. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but—”
“Good.” He yanked back the slide. Matthew imagined a slick 10mm round hopping out of the magazine and into the chamber.
“I’m not doing this.”
Sheriff Tansy laid the gun flat on his palm and held it out.
Matthew shook his head.
“Take the gun.”
He wiped sweat from his brow and, for some incredibly stupid reason, said, “I work in Internet marketing.”
“Whoopee for you. Take the gun.” Tansy nodded at the dying animal. “Take care of your own.”
Matthew looked at the gun. Compact and black. He had a sudden vision of letting himself into the house he shared with Kirsty, creeping up the stairs, toward the sex opera booming in the bedroom—his bedroom. Opening the door to find Kirsty doing the reverse cowgirl on one of her young co-workers. Hips grinding. Pussy shaved clean. Too lost to notice him pulling the Glock 20 from inside his jacket. 10mm. Arms straight, but relaxed. Firing hand around the grip. Weak hand supporting from beneath. Bang. One shot. More power than he needed. Most of Kirsty’s head sliding down the wall, only two shades brighter than the paint they had bought at Benjamin Moore.
He took the gun.
“There,” Sheriff Tansy said. “How does that feel?”
“I’m scared,” Matthew said.
“You’re pumped,” Tansy said. “That’s seventy thousand amps of pure adrenaline bolting through your system. Now all you have to do is channel it, push it all into one bullet, and let yourself glow.”
“Glow, huh?” Matthew curled his fingers around the grip, somewhat mesmerized by its cool, deadly feel. It was lighter than he thought it would be, and the fact that it could do so much damage—that it could end lives, whole lives—was staggering.
“Feels good, huh?” Sheriff Tansy said.
Matthew nodded.
The sheriff laughed. He removed his hat, ran one thick hand through his hair, then popped the hat back on, slightly askew.
The deer grunted. Its ruined body twitched.
“Now, remember what I told you.” The sheriff made a pistol out of his fingers and pointed it at the deer, demonstrating arm and hand position. “Relaxed, but firm.” He mimicked pulling the trigger. “One shot.”
“Right,” Matthew pointed the gun at the deer. “Head shot?”
“Head shot.”
“What if I miss?”
“There are fifteen more rounds in the mag.”
“Right. Okay.” Matthew’s skin prickled. He aimed at the deer’s blinking eye, looped his finger around the trigger.
“Easy she goes,” the sheriff said.
“I’m not sure about this.”
“It’s all you, city boy. You can do it.”
Matthew held his breath. He took up the trigger slack—felt the biting point.
I can do this, he thought, and applied a little more pressure, waiting for the gun to snap in his hand. I can—
And all at once the world was spinning. A cowl of nausea wrapped around him and the gun became a block of lead, too heavy to keep steady. It pulled his arm down—dragged the sights away from the deer’s blinking eye.
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Jesus and Moses,” the sheriff said. He took the pistol from Matthew, aimed it at the deer, and—as casually as lighting a Zippo—pulled the trigger. The gun kicked in his hands as if elect
ricity, rather than a bullet, had passed through the barrel. Half of the deer’s head disappeared in a drizzle of red. Blood and pieces of bone peppered his pants.
It—she—wasn’t in pain anymore.
Matthew stumbled to the side of the road and leaned over, hands on knees, sucking in huge breaths. The world revolved in a series of soft-edged shapes, and all he wanted was to lie down—to sleep and wake up in a different place, a different time. Long minutes passed, dragging their feet. He eventually stood and looked at the trees. The lights whirling atop the cruiser pulsed in his eyes like a visual headache. He heard the sheriff talking on his cell phone:
“—out here while she’s still warm. On twenty-three, about five miles out of town. Not much left of her head, but her ass is still good for the grill.”
I didn’t just hear that, Matthew thought.
“I’ll be over at nine-thirty, Gray. Pabst in hand. You just fire up the jets.” The sheriff chuckled, hung up, and tossed his cell phone through the open window of his cruiser. He turned to Matthew, the mirthful expression falling from his face as if the elastic holding it in place had snapped.
“Okay,” he said, pointing at the deer. “Let’s haul her ass out of the road.”
“Right,” Matthew said distantly.
The sheriff hunkered down, grabbed the deer’s forelegs, and nodded for Matthew to take the rear. Matthew flexed his fingers, tiptoeing through the blood, looking for a position to crouch and take hold.
“Bearded Christ, she’s not going to bite you.” Sheriff Tansy’s eyes flickered impatiently. “Grab a handy-hold, city boy. I got places to be.”
“But there’s only one . . .” Matthew made qualmish motions toward the leg that was joined only by a thread of meat. “I can’t . . .”
The sheriff shook his head and shuffled to the deer’s rear end. He wrapped both hands around the one firm leg. Matthew stepped around him, leaned over, and sheepishly grabbed the forelegs. My God, they’re still warm, he thought. They still feel alive. A streak of blood painted his palm and bubbled through the cracks of his fingers.
