“God help us,” I heard someone mutter. Everyone watched her as she walked. She was a young woman, very fair, with light, light blond hair. She was so thin she looked frail. Her jaw was set tight as she walked, her eyes set straight ahead, ignoring the men all around her.
“Go home, Carole Ann,” Corey Hughes called out. His voice was flat, not unkind but definite.
“Officer, can I say a few words?” she asked my father. She was standing only a few feet away from me. Her jeans hung loosely on her thin hips. She was wearing an oversize sweater that seemed to engulf her.
For a moment my father didn't speak.
“Aw, for gosh sakes, Singer, we didn't come to listen to her!” This was Lyle Abbott. I knew all these men; I didn't know her. Merwyn Powell was seated next to me, his hands folded lightly on his large belly, a look of quiet disapproval on his face.
“Who is she, Mr. Powell?” I whispered.
“She's a nut. But if I know your father, we're gonna listen to her.”
Several of the men were complaining now, but my father already had his hand up. The room settled down.
“Gentlemen, this is a public meeting in a public building. If Miss Proffitt wants to talk to us, briefly,” he paused and looked at her. She did not flinch. “. . . then let's give her our full attention.”
“Some of you might know ...” she said softly. Her voice was quavering.
“Speak up, darlin'!” someone from the back called.
“Some of you might know,” she said more slowly, loudly, looking down at the floor, then up at the ceiling, and then, suddenly, fixedly, at me. “I'm the president of the local animal rights group.”
“Oh for crying out loud!” Chester Lanz started.
My father banged the flat of his hand, once, on the table top, and Chester frowned, and was silent.
“I know you don't want to listen to me. I know you think there's nothing I could say to you that could change how you think about hunting,” her voice was shaking. I thought it was nervousness, then realized in an instant that it was anger, a true and deep anger. She took a breath. All at once the anger seemed gone, to be replaced by sadness, resignation. Her voice became too quiet. “You're probably right. There's probably nothing I can say.”
“Nothing that we can hear!” Hally shouted, which brought some laughs. Even my father looked down at the floor and smiled.
“Nothing that I can say,” she repeated more loudly. “But I want you to listen to Charlie Hatch for a minute.”
She gestured toward the back of the room. Charlie was back there, his hands jammed in his pockets.
“Charlie, come on,” the woman urged, motioning him toward the front.
Charlie stood quite still. There was a long silence; you could hear the Coke machine buzz.
“How ya doing, Charlie?” Hally called to him. No one laughed.
“Okay, so I was hunting last year, right?” Charlie spoke loudly, apparently to his shoes. “And I was with my friend Landon, ya'll know Landon, and we were up in tree stands, you know, fifteen feet up or something, only we just had the one ladder, and Landon was up in his stand last, about fifty yards away, okay, and so he had the ladder at his stand. And this buck walks underneath me, just, damn, right there,” he stopped abruptly. He had been speaking quickly. For the first time he looked up at us. “Right there beneath me, and I shot him.”
Charlie stared back at the floor and kept talking. “And I shot him once and I'd have shot him again but my gun jammed. He went down on his forelegs and he was trying to get back up; he was, like, spinning there in place, kneeling on his forelegs, trying to get up, and I hollered for Landon to come over, and, well, he did, he climbed down and come over but it was, I don't know, minutes, four or five or six minutes, and that buck just spun, and struggled, and fell, and tried to get up and couldn't. It took him forever to die, before Landon got there. I just stood up there like I was some god in the sky, some big man that could kill an animal like that. I just watched him. And I knew right then that I shouldn't have ought to shot him, and I tell you, I won't do it again. And that's all that I'm going to say. I mean, if you shoot something ...” he stopped abruptly. The room was silent. Charlie blinked his eyes, like he was blinking away tears. We waited, and Charlie began again.
“I mean, if you're going to shoot something, well, I just figure ...” He took a deep breath. “God goes to all this trouble to make a deer, you know? So if you shoot one, just make sure you're prepared to watch it die.”
He kicked at the floor, looked up at us, and said, “Good night,” in an odd, almost formal tone, and hurried out of the back of the room, shouldering past three people who were lugging in some huge object in a sheet. The sheet was stained with blood. My head swum a moment, and then came crystal clear. Two men and a woman—I didn't know any of them—were lugging a dead deer wrapped in a sheet to the front table. They heaved it with a thud on the table in front of us all. The rank smell from it filled the room.
“She's a pregnant doe,” Carole Ann Proffitt said sharply. “One of you shot her two days ago off the back of Mavis Gentry's property. Anybody want to claim it?”
She said this last around my father, who had moved in front of her. The room was in commotion, men moving to see, a chair fell over, someone was cursing.
“Let's go,” my father said sharply, to Carole Ann and the people with her. “Outside. Thomas, come with us. Richard,” he nodded to Richard Healy, and gestured toward the deer. “Burn that thing.”
My father led us down the center of the room. Sherman Kyle, another particular friend of my father's, fell in silently behind us. He was a quiet, lanky man. I was glad to have him there. I don't believe anyone could possibly have come to any harm there; indeed I'm sure Carole Ann and her friends could have left in safety, with no more than some jeering. But as it was, we moved swiftly out of a nearly silent room.
My father took the steps rapidly, the first one down the stairs. I could tell he was angry, a rare state for him. I ended up next to Carole Ann. As we descended the stairs she gripped me by the wrist, hard.
“Don't become like them,” she whispered sharply. “You don't have to be like them.”
“That's my father,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think of to say. He was holding the front door to the firehouse open ahead of us.
We spilled down the steps into the parking lot. The night had grown much colder. After all the activity upstairs, it was strangely quiet outside. It was a muted group that climbed into a couple of pickup trucks and drove out of the firehouse parking lot. My father stood silently watching them go, Sherman Kyle at his side. I didn't realize how angry he was until he spoke.
“Now what the hell did they think they were going to accomplish by that?” he asked sharply, and turned to look to Sherman, and saw me. His face, tight with anger, softened. “Son,” he said quietly.
“I don't know,” Sherman said, in his slow, easy drawl. “I expect they thought they'd make an impression.”
“And what's Charlie Hatch want to get caught up with them for?” my father asked.
Sherman shook his head. “Charlie's a good boy. I can't see that he meant any harm.”
“No,” my father agreed. He seemed to force a smile. I could see that his anger was fading.
“I'm cold,” I said.
Sherman laughed. “I'm a-cold, too,” he said, and the three of us went back inside.
Upstairs the evidence of the deer carcass having been there was all but gone. A couple of the men were slowly, methodically cleaning the table up front with wet, soapy sponges. Mitchell was rolling the mop and bucket away, having cleaned a wide path up through the center of the room. The deer itself was gone. Several of the men were still very agitated. Some even questioned if charges couldn't be filed against Carole Ann and her group for disturbing the peace.
“You can swear out a complaint,” my father said, his even temper returned. “But I wouldn't bother with it.”
They burned the c
arcass in the little field behind the firehouse. Some of the men went out back to watch, but it wasn't much of a fire, and the night was very cold. I could see the flames from the windows of the meeting room, while my father and I packed up the leftover brochures.
“Need a hand with that box?” It was Sherman Kyle. “No sir,” I said, “thanks, but it's not heavy.”
“I hear we'll be going out together next week,” Sherman said.
He meant hunting.
“Yes sir,” I said quietly, moving the brochures around in the box, not looking up.
“Well that's good,” Sherman said. “That's real good.”
Chapter 6
In the days that followed, I was alternately certain that I would not go hunting with Sherman Kyle, my father, and their friends, and then so unsure of what I would do that I felt ill with doubt and anxiety. I missed Emma. I walked out into the woods one day after school, but Emma was not there to meet me. The woods themselves felt strange, or I was a stranger to them. I was so preoccupied with my one great dilemma that I was not seeing the landscape around me, feeling the air, sensing the ground beneath my feet. The quiet, the sense of harmony and order that was so basic to my time walking in the woods, especially with Emma, was lost to me now. It could scarcely be literally true, but it seemed to me that there were more brambles, more impenetrable thickets, steeper and rockier hills, than there had been just the week before.
The morning of my birthday came. I had never spoken to my father again about whether I would go hunting with him. He talked a lot that week about where to go hunting, what to bring, what the weather might be like, what sort of luck there would be. There seemed to be an unspoken assumption that of course I would be going too.
So, at five in the morning my father came in my room with two bulky parcels.
“Happy birthday, son,” he said.
I hadn't been asleep. I knew what was in the parcels. I knew what was about to happen. I felt powerless. No, that's not right. I wanted to feel powerless. I didn't want to be responsible for whatever happened.
The shotgun was beautiful, like the one I had shot, but even lovelier. It was the perfect size for me, shorter than a normal shotgun, and lighter. Its weight and balance were perfect. The stock was hand-turned, the wood a rich, glowing red, like silk to the touch. I couldn't wait to shoot it. I didn't want to shoot it. I didn't know what I wanted. The other parcel contained my bright orange hunting jacket. It fit perfectly, like I had known it would.
“Breakfast is on,” my father said. He gave my leg a little slap, and left the room.
This is the time, I thought. This is the time when you have to make up your mind. I wished idly that there was a door that led from my room to the backyard. Then I could have simply plunged into the woods and spent the day there, hiding. It was a pointless wish.
I felt flat and defeated. I got out of bed and quite mechanically washed and dressed myself. When I was done I stood in front of my bed and looked at the shotgun lying there, the hunting jacket beside it.
“Well,” I said out loud, to Emma or to myself I do not know. “Anyway, I'm sorry.”
I hefted the gun into the crook of my arm, picked up the jacket, and walked out into the kitchen.
My mother gave me a strange, concerned look, but didn't say anything. My father was cheerful, unusually noisy for him. I half expected him to break into song. My mother was quiet, and I was resolute, grim.
Finally, she placed her hand on my wrist, lightly, and said “You be careful today, okay?”
“He'll be fine,” my father said. “He's just nervous.”
“Of course he's nervous,” my mother said.
“I'm okay,” I said, which may have been my first and only words at the breakfast table.
We were meeting a few men at the firehouse. I stared out the window as we drove along. It was very dark out, but there were lights on in a lot of the houses.
“Lots of people going to call in sick to work today,” my father said with a chuckle. “First day of hunting season—they ought to go on and make it a holiday, have done with it.”
I didn't answer. I was wondering where Emma was. In a way, I was wondering if she really existed. I hadn't seen her in so long. It all seemed like a dream: Emma and Reggie, Abigail and her hip, all the events of the past few weeks. It all seemed so long ago, so strange and so terribly unlikely. I felt miserable.
The men at the firehouse didn't help. They made a big fuss over this being my first time hunting, and would I have live shells in my gun, and did I know the difference between a deer and a stump? They had a big play argument over what I would shoot first, my foot, or one of them. They made me angry, and embarrassed. I was angry, too, at my father. He had told me that the men knew I was coming that day, but they acted like they had never heard about it.
My pride was hurt. But it was more than that. After weeks of turmoil over whether I would go hunting, my nerves were frayed past the breaking point. Now that I was there with the men, I desperately wanted to be accepted; I couldn't see that their teasing was in a way a part of that acceptance. I couldn't see past my need to be with them, regardless of the cost. I didn't even admire all the men there. My father and Mr. Kyle, yes. But they weren't the ones having the most fun at my expense.
Harmon Williams was a big, loud man who was also a county deputy. I could tell he envied my father, envied his easygoing nature and his popularity. He loved to tease my father, to catch him out in some mistake (which was rare enough), to tell stories on him in ways that they didn't really happen. My father laughed along. He seemed to think Harmon was okay. Harmon was dressed all in camouflage, with black grease paint under his eyes. My father didn't like that; he thought the camouflage could make it difficult for us to see him.
“That's the point,” Harmon said with a laugh. “If you can see me, for damn sure the deer can too.”
“Someday you're going to get a butt full of shot,” my father muttered. He and I were both wearing our huge, bright orange coats.
Harmon brought a 30:06 rifle with a fancy sighting scope, which my father also didn't like. A rifle's range was too great, my father said; if you missed your target heaven knows how far the bullet would travel, or what it might hit. But Harmon would hunt with nothing else. He didn't want to lose a trophy buck because it was too far away for a shotgun to reach.
Then there was Andy Powell, who carried an old shotgun because it was all he had. Andy was the type of person who never really got the hang of anything. He thought Harmon was a scream. Anything Harmon said, Andy would repeat, at least twice, and laugh like mad. Harmon got more fun out of teasing me than he had probably had in years, and Andy laughed and laughed. Sherman just smiled, now and then, and my father smiled and patted me on the back and shoved my hat around on my head.
Sherman Kyle was tall, thin, and quiet. Next to my father I'm sure he was the best hunter. My father insisted Sherman was the better woodsman, and Sherman just said, “Naw, naw, that's you.” Sherman wore a red plaid shirt and a red plaid jacket and, in deference to my father perhaps, a blaze orange cap. He carried a shotgun, “in case we see some turkey out there,” he said. A rifle's bullet will destroy a turkey, leaving nothing worth cleaning to eat, where shotgun pellets will not. In truth, I don't think he cared for rifles either, for the same reason as my father, though he wasn't inclined to say so.
The last to arrive was Merwin Powell, Andy's brother, who rolled into the firehouse parking lot about a half an hour late. No one expected him to be on time. Merwin was a big, jowly, slow man who was always late for everything. I had always liked Merwin. His great size and quiet manner somehow felt comfortable and safe for me. But even he started in on me.
“We bringin' the boy?” Merwin asked.
My stomach twisted into a tighter knot; we'd have to go through it all again.
“Yeah, li'l peckerwood here,” Harmon said. “Maybe he can catch him a squirrel.”
“Li'l peckerwood,” Andy said, and guffawed.
> “I don't much care to hunt with a young 'un,” Merwin said. “Not in a group.”
“He'll be fine,” my father said. “I've taught him.”
“Yeah, er, tha's fine, but I don't much . . .”
“Probably just shoot a stump!” Andy said.
“... care for huntin' with young 'uns,” Merwin continued.
“A stump, or us!” Andy said.
I was battling back tears. If I cried I would never hear the end of it.
“So where we fixing to go?” Sherman asked. “It's about time we started.”
“I was thinking east, off Highway 6,” my father said.
“There's some good land there, and it's open to hunters.”
“Aw, everyone's going to be up there, Singer,” Harmon complained. “That's no good at all.”
“Too many up there today,” said Andy. “Scare off all the deer.”
“We could go on back to my place,” Merwin said. He had a couple of hundred acres just north of town.
“What 'a you think, peckerwood,” Harmon said to me, and winked at Andy. “You want 'a shoot some 'a Merwin's stumps?”
“I know where there's the biggest buck you ever saw,” I flashed back at him, angry, unthinking, aware only of Andy's raucous laughter. “Up south of Harrow Point. I know where there's a mess 'a deer up there.”
“It's good hunting up there,” Sherman said.
“Won't be many folks driving up that far,” my father said. “You might have hit on the place, Tom.”
I was breathing fast. The men were quiet a moment, and I waited for the terror of what I had done to grip me. I felt hollow, though, and suddenly weak.
“No, I don't know,” I mumbled. “There's probably nothing up there.”
“Naw, the boy's got a good idea, I guess,” said Merwin. “Yeah, I know a way in up there, just a few miles south of Harrow Point. Nice and open. Yeah, son, you got a good idea.”
It was decided. I felt powerless to stop what I had started. We piled into Harmon's beat up old Land Rover and headed up Highway 12 to Harrow Point. My heart was pounding against my ribs. But the men were happy. They actually complimented me, each of them in his way, on choosing Harrow Point, once we were headed that way. It only took us twenty minutes or so and we were parked, and then unloaded, and then had plunged into the woods.
The Healer of Harrow Point Page 8
