Tracker

by Gary Paulsen

  They talked as if nothing were going to happen. As if things would go on and on.

  “Those calves will have to come on hay in a couple of weeks, hay and a little silage, or they won’t be ready for grass in the spring when we let them out,” his grandfather said Wednesday morning. “We don’t want them to bloat when they hit the pastures.”

  John nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

  “We’ll have to check the traces on the stoneboat for hauling manure out to the back forty sometime this week. If we don’t I think they might break with the load and we need to get manure on top of the snow this winter so it can soak in or we won’t make good corn next spring …”

  “I’ll see to it after school.”

  “There’ll be a lot of work.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  And his grandfather had gone back to carving the small figures, the way it had always been. In the evenings they would sit in the kitchen and take heat from the kitchen wood stove and his grandfather would carve little horses and men from the old logging days and talk of all the work that had to be done and John would nod and smile and eat pie and drink cold milk from the well house and finally go to sleep, right at the table if he didn’t catch himself.

  The work went on. After school there was a small amount of homework and then the work of the farm. John fixed the stoneboat traces, put new boards in the workhorse stalls where the team had cribbed the old ones, drained the tractor for winter, sealed the granary to hold the harvest. The work went on. It fed on itself so that work made more work.

  Once the stoneboat traces were fixed it was necessary to use the stoneboat to clean out the large manure pile behind the barn and that meant using the two horses and that meant still more work.

  “They call them workhorses because it’s a lot of work to use them,” his grandfather said almost every time they harnessed the team. “But it’s a good work, a full work. And they always start up in the winter, horses do—always. Not like tractors in the cold.”

  John liked using the team, even with the extra work. The horses were huge and immensely strong and yet full of a kind of gentle courtesy, a slow thoughtfulness that made them better than a tractor.

  When he harnessed them they stood to the collar and put their heads in and made it easy for him to reach up and around and to throw the harnesses over their backs. They were named Jim and Lars and they were both brown and had white blazes on their faces, but they had different minds. Jim would stand tight in the harness, leaning forward slightly against the load, while Lars stood easy and relaxed and jerked out when told to get up.

  John hauled manure for three nights after chores, late into the night. The work kept him from thinking. When milking was done, his grandfather would help him harness and he would use the fork to load the stoneboat from the manure pile in back of the barn, then stand in front of the load on the planking while the horses took the stoneboat out to the field.

  They had been doing it so long that he could leave the reins tied to the rein bracket in front. They knew where to go and what had to be done when they got the load out there, and John stood leaning against the fork in the darkness while the steel runners crunched through the shallow snow.

  It was cold, November cold when the body isn’t used to it yet, and he wore his heavy chores jacket, so when he got to the field he had to take it off because it would be too warm when he started to fork the manure off. And it was while he was taking his coat off Wednesday night that he saw the deer.

  The horses were standing in their own steam and he had jammed the fork down in the manure and pulled one arm out of his jacket sleeve and turned in the moonlight—and there she stood.

  It was a doe, a small one—he could tell by her neck and lack of antlers. She wasn’t thirty feet away to his right rear.

  Deer often came out to check the manure, that wasn’t unusual. There were seeds which passed through the cows and horses, and after snow the deer had to work a little harder for food, so the seeds were easy picking.

  Many times in the past John had seen deer working through the clumps of manure. But this one was different.

  She stood and stared at him for what seemed like hours, stood with little puffs of steam coming out of her nostrils in the moonlight, flaring to smell him, and didn’t run.

  Usually when deer separated the man from the horse smell they ran—man killed, man was the death smell.

  But she stood, stood as if waiting for something, and John hung with one sleeve off and one on and stared at her, saw every part of her, saw her ears flick and her eyes move and then she was gone—gone so fast that she might not ever have been there.

  But she left something in John, a picture of beauty that hung in his mind the way a picture will sometimes stay in your eyes when you close them, burned in.

  The horses took the stoneboat down the field and he threw the manure off to each side, a fork left and a fork right, and still the picture was in his thoughts, and on the way home, the quarter mile back to the barn, he realized that the only way he could make the picture whole would be to compose a poem about it, the way his grandfather said the Japanese did.

  The doe stood in

  puffs of steam

  waiting.

  Later that night in the kitchen after supper he told his grandfather about it, about the way the deer stood and the beauty of it and the poem he had composed.

  “A rare moment,” Clay said. “But the poem only has partial meaning for me. What was she waiting for?”

  John thought, wondering why the word had come into the poem in the first place. “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes the best beauty comes from that.”

  “From what?”

  “From where you don’t know, from instinct.” His grandfather smiled. “The best joy and beauty are the kinds that are unplanned, and the same is true of painting or poetry. Don’t chew at it too much. It’s beautiful, and it makes you remember a beautiful part of your life and that’s enough.”

  John nodded but he couldn’t get her out of his mind just the same. Tired as he was, late as it was, he lay in his bed upstairs and remembered the deer and the small poem and tried to think of what she might have been waiting for—why she would have stood looking at him for so long. Especially in fall, in snow, only two days before deer season when all the deer seem to sense danger around them and get jumpy and will actually run from each other, let alone a man.

  It was as if she had been waiting for him, waiting for John, standing in the moonlight against the snow, waiting for him.

  But to do what?

  FOUR

  Deer season.

  The time for the taking of meat, the time for the giving of death to the deer for the taking of meat to get through the winter.

  John did not think of hunting in the normally accepted manner. Once, a man came up from another state to go deer hunting and he talked of why he hunted.

  He talked of how it made him more of a man to hunt and kill a deer. He talked of all the skill it took to kill a deer, all the knowledge it took to kill a deer.

  John’s grandfather would not allow the man to hunt on his land because he made deer hunting more than it should be.

  “We take meat,” he told John, watching the man drive away. “That’s all we do—we take meat with a gun. It doesn’t make you a man. It doesn’t make you anything to kill. We make meat, that’s all.”

  And that’s how John thought of hunting—a way to put meat up for the winter.

  After four years, the edge was largely gone from hunting, but there was still a nudge of excitement the night before season, a small thrum in the back of John’s mind as he took down the rifle and began to clean it, to make sure the sights were set correctly.

  He worked at the kitchen table with a small screwdriver and took the rifle apart completely and used an old toothbrush to clean each part and screw.

  His grandfather carved, and drank tea and nodded approval now and then, though it wasn’t required.r />
  “If you work that swamp down to the north early in the morning you should come on some nice bucks. Get a buck first for the tallow. You can take a doe later for good meat.”

  John nodded. “I thought about the swamp, but it might be a little rough going with the new snow.” It was snowing outside as they talked, large flakes with almost no weight. They would make a light powder, ideal for tracking. With new snow in the morning any track John saw would be fresh. “I wish you were coming with me.”

  “Not this time. I’ll take a year off.” His grandfather’s hands stopped carving for a moment and he looked out the window. “I’ll pass this year—I’ve had plenty of hunting.”

  John felt his eyes moisten and fought the feeling down. “Well. I’ll make meat all right but, you know, it’s just more fun with you …”

  For a time neither of them said anything and his grandmother turned from the stove where she was kneading bread on top of the water reservoir. She said nothing but looked at the table, at them, then looked back and John saw she was crying.

  “Dammit. That’s enough of that now. There’s been enough of that damn caterwauling and carrying on around here …”

  John was startled. Rarely did his grandfather swear, and never in the house. He put the parts of the rifle down and sat still.

  “What’s happening to me happens to every single human being on the face of this earth—nobody gets away from it. Nobody. So quit all this misting up and raining and let’s get to the business at hand.”

  He sat still, very still, and stayed looking out the window—as if he might have been talking to the world, though it was dark and nothing showed but flakes now and then as they came into the glow from the table lamp.

  John’s grandmother looked at his back for a full ten seconds and then fled from the room crying and John waited another half a minute before picking up his rifle and starting to clean it again, though it was clean enough.

  His grandfather sighed. “I didn’t do that well, I’m afraid. I meant it to come out better, come out nice. But you see what I mean, don’t you?”

  John nodded. “Sort of. It’s just that—well—you know. It’s you this time, not somebody else. And when it’s somebody close…” He let the thought trail off.

  “I know. But that doesn’t change anything, does it? It still happens. That’s the one fact that holds true about this sort of business, no matter what you do, you can’t change it. It’s coming.”

  How strange it is, John thought, for him to talk about it this way. He’s talking about his own death, his own end. The end of him.

  “When I was young I used to think it couldn’t be.” The old man started carving again, looking down at the wood in his hands. He was making a workhorse that would go on a small sled which he had yet to make. The chips and shavings curled off and dropped on the table and when he had a small pile of them he carefully scraped them together and got up and put them in the wood stove. Then he started carving again, gentle curves coming off the soft clear pine. “But I was wrong.”

  For a time there was silence, John staring down at the rifle on the table, his grandfather carving. Before they spoke again John’s grandmother came back. Her eyes were moist and some hair had loosened from the gray bun at the back of her neck. She stood over the stove but there was nothing to cook and she was just waiting.

  “I’m sorry, Aggie,” Clay said, still carving. “Sometimes I lose control and … I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  And John thought that just then, that second, things were back to normal. He was carving and she was at the stove and there was that making-business sound in her voice, as if they had been fooling around and joking the way they sometimes did and she wanted them to stop.

  “You bring the liver home when you get a deer, hear?” His grandfather looked up from the wood. “I’ve been thinking of fresh liver for a long time. You bring it home.”

  “I will.” For the last two years there had been rumors circulating that deer livers were not good because they had some kind of tiny worms, and they had left the livers in the woods when they gutted the deer out. “I promise.”

  “Good. You take a fresh liver and fry it up with some fresh onions and some good greasy potatoes and you got a meal.”

  “Grease isn’t good for you.” Agatha turned from the sink, where she was pumping water to refill the reservoir on the stove. “Too much grease is bad.”

  The old man smiled. “Well. Yes. I suppose it is—but I’m not too sure it matters anymore. I think if I want to get a little greasy with my food it should be all right.”

  “Just the same, just the same.”

  “I’ll get the liver,” John cut in. “Don’t worry. The liver and the heart. If I get a deer.”

  “You’ll get one. You’ve got the touch of it. Some people hunt and hunt and never get a deer and some go out and get one every year. You’ll get one just the way I always get one.”

  “I wish you were going out with me this year.” It came without John calling for it, just slipped loose and was gone and he saw the corners of the old man’s eyes tighten and he hated himself then, hated himself for the stupidity of what he had said, hated himself for causing hurt.

  “I’ll stay back and do the chores,” his grandfather said, looking down. “This is your year to go alone. This is your year, not mine.”

  John clamped his teeth together and went back to cleaning the rifle as, outside, the new flakes came down, roiling in the slight puffs of wind, taking life briefly as they slid past the window and hit the yellow glow from the lamp.

  FIVE

  John awakened before the alarm went off and sat bolt upright in bed. It was opening morning, deer season, and the old ways had come back, the old excitement. At least for the moment.

  He kicked out from under the quilt and put his feet on the floor, the cold floor. John had an upstairs room without heating grates and when the wood stove went down to a smolder in the kitchen, the upstairs cooled fast. He pulled on wool socks, thick ones his grandmother had knitted out of raw wool, and pulled his pants on over them with a scrape of cold cloth.

  He could see his breath. It must have dropped quite a bit during the night and that’s good, he thought. If it got down around zero and there was new snow it would be still and clear and that was good for hunting.

  Downstairs he heard his grandmother moving about in the kitchen and he smiled. It was three in the morning—earlier than he normally got up, so he could do chores before he hit the woods—and it still didn’t matter. He couldn’t get up ahead of her, even if he tried. She always got up first and put coffee on the stove and had the fire going before he made it to the kitchen.

  John pulled his shirt on and went downstairs, two steps at a time but quietly because he knew his grandfather would still be asleep. He was sleeping later now, and needing it.

  In the kitchen he was assailed by smells. The tang of the pine kindling in the wood stove cut above everything, but it was mixed with the soft smell of bread warming on the warming rack and of raw potatoes frying with canned venison from the year before.

  “Good morning.” John’s mouth was watering already. “Sure smells good in here.”

  “Morning.” His grandmother smiled. “I’ll have breakfast for you after chores.”

  John went to the door and pulled on his jacket. Outside he was met with a wall of cold. It was, he guessed, a little below zero—he could tell because the hair in his nose froze and stuck together—but it felt colder because he’d just come out of a warm room.

  The rubber on his shoe pacs stiffened and the snow crunched as he walked to the barn in the dark.

  Inside the barn it was warm, as always, and he quickly fed the cows and scraped the gutters and went back to the house for the buckets and separator parts while the cows were eating.

  He was surprised to see his grandfather sitting at the kitchen table when he came back in. He was sipping a cup of hot coffee, the steam working up around his che
eks.

  “Good morning,” John said.

  The old man nodded his greeting. “How are things in the barn?”

  “Fine. Calves are all right, cows standing to milk. I fed silage and hay. Grained the horses. I’m going back out to milk.”

  “You go ahead and milk and separate. I’ll take it after that so you can hit the woods.”

  John hesitated. “Are you sure? There’s plenty of time and I can just as easily do it all.”

  “No. It’ll gray up in the east pretty soon and you want to be out by the swamp when it comes into light.”

  John nodded. That was right: hunt early, eat early is what they said. Hunt late, stand and wait. “All right. If you’re sure.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be fine.”

  John went back out to the barn with all the buckets and got to milking. It was still pitch dark but some of the chickadees around the granary were starting to make morning sounds and it spurred him a bit.

  Milking went well. Nobody kicked over any buckets or was froggy—hopping around—and he got through it without problems. Also, hunting had entered his mind and it kept him from thinking about his grandfather quite so much, took his thoughts away from bad things.

  When he finished separating the milk and cream he carried the cream back to the house and left the milk in buckets for the calves. He debated about feeding the calves but his grandfather would have become angry and perhaps would have felt useless, and John didn’t want that.

  Outside, the morning was coming. John stopped halfway to the house and looked to the east. Not enough light yet to hunt, certainly—he couldn’t see the front sight on the rifle—but it was coming.

  He walked a little faster. Inside the kitchen, breakfast was on the table and he smiled. It amazed him how his grandmother always knew when he was coming in to eat. He could be out in the fields with the tractor, have a breakdown and walk in for a part and there would be food on the table when he walked in the door. She always knew. She always knows everything, he thought—just quietly always knows everything there is to know.