In truth, I didn't have anywhere near enough confidence to voice my newfound conviction that I wouldn't go hunting when the season began. There was no one I could talk to about Emma. I certainly wasn't going to tell my friends that I had been speaking with deer, and learning to heal an old, arthritic dog. If anyone among the boys at school had the least reservation about hunting, I never heard it. And they weren't going to hear it from me.
Indeed, my friends at school were certain that I was going to go hunting. My father had told me months before that he would take me hunting on my birthday. And for years my parents had said, in answer to my pestering and pleading, that I could have a shotgun of my own for my twelfth birthday, but not before. All this my friends knew, because I had told them.
So in the lunchroom that day it was natural that I would, after all, be drawn into the talk of hunting season.
“You going to the meeting tomorrow night?” Cady, one of my friends, asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, “I have to help my dad with stuff.”
“My dad says ‘next year, maybe next year,’” Cady said, “but it's my mom that won't let me go.”
I just nodded. There was a meeting for hunters at the firehouse the next night, and my father would be talking about hunting safety there. I was going.
“My dad told my mother I was going hunting whether she liked it or not,” Mike said.
“If my dad said that to my mother, she would kick his ass,” Cady said matter-of-factly.
We chuckled, but only a little. We all knew Cady's mom.
“I'm gonna find me a buck and BAM,” Mike slammed his fist down on his tray with sufficient force to make his tater tots pop into the air, which pleased him enough that he slammed his fists in rapid succession. “BAM BAM BAM!”
Cady shook his head. “You saw a buck, you'd wet your pants.”
“You can kiss my big ol' butt,” Mike said companionably.
“My dad says you don't even see one, half the time,” I said. “Don't even see a deer.”
“Where are you all going to go?” Cady asked.
I shrugged.
“We're going out behind my grand-daddy's farm,” Mike said. “There's all kind of land back there, and can't no one hunt it but family. I'm going to find me a buck, you watch.”
“You want to bet?” Cady asked.
“Well,” Mike said, “my father won't let me bet, or I would.”
“Sure you would,” Cady said, and then turned to me, and tapped his fork on the table top. “I wish I was going with you, wherever you all go.”
“Probably won't be anything,” I said quietly.
“Your dad will find some deer, you watch.”
That evening my father came home early from work, which was rare. I had only been home from school for a half an hour or so, and was more or less moping around the house.
“Not going prowling in the woods this afternoon?” my mother had asked.
“Not today,” I said. “I've got some stuff to do.” Which was clearly not the case. Our little dog, Toby, was following me around from room to room. All at once I thought I felt the question ‘play?’ form inside me, and I swung around and looked at Toby, who was just standing there, staring at me. His tail flipped from one side to the other, and then he stood still.
“Come here,” I said, and sat down on the floor.
Toby bounced over and pushed his head against my side, his tail wagging, ready for a bit of play.
“No,” I said. “Hold still.”
He was still interested in playing, but I managed to get him still, and then I slowly ran my right hand along the ridge of his small back, my eyes closed, trying to rediscover that other, strange, wonderful sense, trying to recreate what Emma had showed me to do with Abigail . . . but there was nothing there, just Toby's back, like always. I frowned. Toby began wagging his tail again. And then I heard my father's cruiser pulling into the drive.
I went over to the window and saw my father walking to the house with a couple of shotguns cradled in one arm and a box of shells in the other. I scrambled outside to help him.
“Hey, sport,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “Give me a hand, here?”
I immediately reached for the smaller of the two shotguns.
“You remember John McCumber?” my dad asked.
I nodded.
“This gun belongs to his wife; he ordered it special for her. I thought we might shoot a little before dinner, see if you like it.”
I nodded again. The gun was a beauty. It had a good weight and balance to it. I wanted to shoot it. I can't explain the reason why. For all that had happened to me in the past weeks, I found the gun beautiful, enticing, and I wanted to shoot it.
We walked down to the field down behind the house. My father lugged down an old door that had been sitting in the shed, and I carried the shotguns and the shells. He leaned the door against a tree and we moved back thirty paces or so.
“Well, say we're going to shoot at this door,” my father said.
“Guess we're not going to use it for anything,” I said with a grin.
“Not if we manage to hit it,” my father said, “but if we're going to shoot at it, what are we going to do first?” I nodded. I knew what he was after. “Well, we want to check the guns, make sure they're clean, that the barrel is clean, and the shells are good.”
“I've done that,” my father said.
“Uh huh,” I said, “but I'll check my gun anyway, 'cause you should always check your own gun.”
My father nodded. I could tell from his eyes that he was pleased with me.
“And there's nothing down there behind that tree; the house and all is behind us and there's nothing down there, but we might walk down and see, you know.”
“There's nothing down there,” my father said.
“And I know where you are, you know, my shooting partner. There's nobody else with us.”
“Good,” my father said. “That's fine. Well, let's see if this thing'll shoot.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
I cracked the gun open, sighted down the barrel. It was beautifully clean and oiled, as I knew it would be. My father handed me a new shell. I popped it into the barrel, snapped the gun shut, placed the stock against my shoulder.
“Snug,” my father said. He was standing beside me, and pressed the butt of the gun more tightly against my shoulder. “Good and snug, but not rigid. Brace it, but let it come back into you. It's going to pop you one, but just keep it snug and keep your eye and cheekbone up. Up. You don't want to get a black eye.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
He messed my hair. “Okay, step away,” he said. “You're too tight.”
Before this, I'd only shot a little .22 rifle, plinking at tin cans on the ground from time to time with my father. God, I really wanted to fire that shotgun and shoot it well. The feeling was so strong: a tight, edgy joy, like great avarice on the brink of being satisfied. Ten minutes before I had been sitting on the floor with Toby, trying to practice the skills Emma had taught me, with no idea my father would be bringing a shotgun home for me to shoot. Now I was acutely focused on aiming at that door and hitting it square with buckshot, without another thought in the world.
My father nodded at me. “Snug against your shoulder, cheek bone up, squeeze the trigger. Have at it.”
A moment later there was a roar and a ripping sound of splintered wood. The door spun to the right—I had hit the right side of it—did a comically slow pirouette, and fell to the ground with a deeply satisfying “whuu-ump.”
I laughed, my father laughed.
“Great shot,” my father said, and I knew he meant it.
I rubbed my shoulder and said “Oww,” and my father laughed again.
My father set the door up and we fired at it a few more times. By the time we finished there was nothing left of it recognizable as a door.
That night I went to bed with an ice pack on my shoulder. I had a sizable welt that would t
urn into a splendid bruise. I was happier than I could ever remember being. It was a door, after all, that we had been shooting at. No harm had been done. I thought for a moment of Emma, and believed that I could spread a circle of strength and well-being all the way to Mars.
My father came in then to check on me, and take the ice pack.
“You handled that gun real well,” he said. “I'm proud of you.”
“I was a pretty good shot,” I said.
He nodded. “And you knew what to do beforehand, which is what's really important. I liked that you checked the gun, even after I told you it was okay.”
“You told me always to check it myself,” I said. “You told me that a bunch of times.”
“Well, you listened,” he said. “That shoulder going to keep you awake?”
“It'll be okay,” I said.
“Good,” he said. Up to now it had been my father's custom to give me a kiss goodnight, on the forehead. This night he hesitated, a look of what I knew was pride on his face. He gave my leg a couple of good, hard pats.
“Good night, Thomas,” he said.
My shoulder was aching, but I soon fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
Each year they had a big meeting of all the local hunters, or most of them at any rate, where you could buy a hunting license for the year if you didn't have one already, and where a deputy from the sheriff's department would go over any changes in the hunting laws and talk about safety issues. Very little of anything new was said at these meetings, but it gave the men an opportunity to get together each year and talk guns and hunting, argue about the best places to hunt, and tell tall tales about hunts from the years before.
For the past several years my father had given the safety talk to the hunters, and just the year before he let me come with him and help set up. There wasn't anything for me to do, really, except hand out some informational brochures the state had made up about hunting safety. I think my father just wanted me to be there. Certainly, the year before I had very much wanted to go. Now, the day after firing a shotgun that I knew would be like mine, I kept any reservations I had resolutely to one side. Nothing had been decided. It was just a meeting, a chance to see a bunch of people we knew, and I was glad to be going.
We pulled into the parking lot of the firehouse and I carried a big box full of safety brochures up toward the house, one step behind my father.
The fire station had a meeting hall upstairs in a large room above the truck bay. I always loved going to the firehouse. If there was anything better in the world than being a sheriff's deputy, like my father, it might have been being a fireman and riding around in one of those fantastic big trucks. We walked past the open doors of the truck bay—my father didn't look at the trucks so I tried not to, as well—and on upstairs to the meeting hall.
It was a big meeting and there were men we knew all over the firehouse. Downstairs in the dispatch bay some guys were talking, and more men were clogging up the steps. Just ahead of us I heard someone, laughing, chiding, “Son, you're too big to stand there. Either go up or go down, but go somewhere.” There was laughter. It was Roy Campbell talking to Mac Lewis, and Mac was a big man, sure enough, and he laughed and stayed right where he was, and we slid past him up the stairs, saying hello to everyone. Mac slapped me on the butt on my way by.
There were snatches of conversation, greetings called out. I heard Harmon Williams say, “Yeah, up to my little cabin, gonna sit with a little George Dickel an' my shotgun an' shoot anything that I see ...” this being received with Andy Powell's high pitched laugh: “Gonna shoot anything you see!” Andy repeated. Tom Lamott saying quietly, intently to Lester Houchens, “Won't go to the doctor and I can't make her, you know?” and Lester nodding.
We moved through the crowd of men up towards the front of the meeting room. We knew everyone there. The county was only so large, my father had lived there all his life, and it was just a fact of life that everybody knew everybody else. Being somewhere like the firehouse, full of all these people we knew, was a good feeling, better than good: it felt like home, an extension of home. Maybe there were eighty men there, and I would say at one time or another they had all been to our house, and most had sat to dinner with us.
I remember when my Uncle Robert died, it seemed like everyone we knew came to our house that day, to be with my mom, to bring us food, or just to be there. And like any occasion when everyone would get together, people broke off into different groups, some talking quietly, and some not so quietly, and laughter here or there. I don't know, but every man at the meeting that night might have been at our house the day after Uncle Robert died. Maybe.
We got upstairs and my father gravitated over toward Richard Healy, the captain of the fire department, and a good friend of my dad's. Who all was there? Mitchell Cromer, Mike Powell, Merwin's brother (Merwin would be along eventually), and Andy Karl was there, with this godawful bad haircut, cut really close but splotchy with bits sticking out here and there.
“Hey, Tom,” Mitchell said to me. “Come to help your Daddy?”
“Yes sir,” I said, nodding to the box I was carrying.
“They got some Cokes back in the kitchen if you want,” Mike said. “Can the boy have a Coke?” he asked my father.
My dad nodded. “If you want,” he said to me.
I set the box down on the table up front and was about to go to the kitchen when Hally Lynch came over, his eyes big, grinning at Andy.
“Now what on earth got a hold of your head?” Hally asked Andy, checking out his haircut from a couple of angles.
My father doesn't like to laugh at people. When he doesn't want to laugh he just grins and his body shakes a bit. He started shaking now.
“Aw, Allison said she'd cut my hair ...” Andy began, but Hally didn't let him finish.
“Was she drunk?” Hally asked, slow and loud, happy, relishing every word. “Did you all have a fight?”
Allison and Andy had only recently been married. Andy was blushing now, but he was still trying to keep his dignity.
“She said why pay Martin seven dollars for a haircut when she'd be happy to cut it for me,” he tried to explain.
Hally was shaking his head, trying to look serious. “Son,” he said, putting his hand on Andy's shoulder. “Pay the seven dollars. If it's a matter of money, I'm sure we can come up with a little for you.”
“Well,” Andy said, trying not to laugh, “you see ...”
“Now I don't like to say anything bad about anybody's wife,” Hally continued—there were a few people standing around us now, laughing—“and Allison is a fine lady; but, Andy, keep that woman away from your head!”
My father was laughing now as hard as anyone else, and I was too, and Andy was laughing, and he turned to me and pushed my shoulder and said, “What are you laughing at?” and that made me laugh the harder.
Hally walked off, probably to give someone else a hard time, and my dad pointed toward the spot where he wanted me to set out the brochures. I started putting the brochures in small stacks. The room was filled with loud and cheerful conversations, laughter. I looked up and Mike was there, the necks of two bottles of Coke pinched between the fingers of his broad right hand. He held out a bottle to me, and I took it with a shy nod. He winked and nodded, took a swig from his bottle of Coke, and walked away. I had a swallow, too, and looked over and saw my dad on the other side of the room talking to Richard Healy and Hally and Mitchell. Hally was laughing hard at one of his own jokes, and my father was grinning, his shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter, and I could hear Mitchell say, “You ain't right in the head.”
I loved these men. How far away from Emma was I at that moment? Certainly I didn't give her a thought. She was a source of joy and wonder for me, but there was a deep feeling of joy here, as well: the joy of home, the joy of being with a group of people who knew me, and, for good and for ill and through thick and thin, were an inextricable part of who I was. I had no such thoughts then, of course. But I
was caught by a kind of joy and pride about being part of this group, of being at the meeting and, more to the point, of belonging there.
After a while the meeting got under way. My father talked at length about hunting safety. He emphasized the importance of wearing blaze orange. He talked about planning the hunt carefully beforehand, and sticking to the plan; about knowing where you were heading, and how long you intended to stay out. He stressed the importance of knowing exactly where your hunting partners were at all times, and of not wandering off yourself without letting your partners know. Then my father began telling about an incident from the year before.
One county over, maybe thirty miles away, a man had shot his brother because he mistook him for a turkey. The fellow had walked a little ways off to relieve himself, and the unexpected rustle, the snatch of red clothing that might or might not have looked like a turkey's neck, had caused his brother to fire. The single rifle shot had pierced the man's throat. The shooter ran over, thinking to find a turkey, and found his brother crumpled on the ground, his pants twisted around his knees, dead. Everyone knew the story already. It had enough elements of the macabre, the tragic, to be well known. But my father told it again to good effect.
“Hell of a way to die,” I heard Hally say from a few rows behind me. “Get popped while you're taking a crap.”
There were a couple of grumbles, some nervous laughter.
“It's not funny, Hally,” someone said.
“I know it's not funny,” Hally shot back. “It scares the hell out of me.”
“Good,” my father said brusquely. “It should scare you.”
I thought: “Even Emma couldn't have saved him.” It was the first time that evening that I had thought of her.
Just then I heard a woman's voice. It seemed that everyone's head turned as mine did.
“Officer,” she called to my father as she walked toward the front of the room.
The Healer of Harrow Point Page 7
