by Gary Paulsen
He shook his head. It was wrong to project when hunting. Nothing came the way it was supposed to come and planning didn’t work. You might stand and watch a clearing for hours, waiting for the deer to come out, and it would pass ten feet in back of you and you wouldn’t know it.
He washed his mind clear, took a mouthful of snow to wet his tongue and replace some of the moisture he was losing by perspiring. He was not warm, but he knew he was sweating into his clothes because that’s what always happened when he worked in the winter.
It was noon now. The sun was peaking and he turned his face toward it as he walked, let the heat warm his cheeks. It would get cold tonight, very cold. Maybe fifteen or twenty below. He would have to be sure to get the doe early so he could start back. If he was out much after dark he would either have to keep moving or stop and build a fire and ride the cold out. He had matches and the sandwiches and his grandparents wouldn’t worry. He knew how to handle himself in the woods—he’d had a good teacher in his grandfather. Still, he didn’t relish the discomfort of standing over a fire all night.
He would get the doe early, he decided. Work a little harder and catch up, get a shot. He grunted a bit as he stepped over a windfall—a large poplar the wind had torn out of the swamp, with a disk of roots sticking in the air. His leg came down and went through the deep snow and grass and threw him over at an angle, put him in an awkward position and he looked up and there she stood.
She had made a bed on the far side of the windfall where the sun could warm her, protected by the roots from any wind. John’s eyes took it all in. The small cupped bed in the grass, still warm and steaming, the sudden flurry of movement, a blur of red-brown as she got up and the freeze, the freeze as she stood.
John was leaning to his left and while it threw him slightly off balance to stand that way, it did not keep him from being able to use the rifle.
She stood frozen, eyes wide open, staring at him. He’d caught her somehow, off guard. He was on top of her and she panicked and froze and stood now, stood waiting for death.
The rifle came up, floated up to his shoulder in a fluid movement, a movement he’d known many times. It happened with great speed but he visualized it always in slow motion; the rifle coming up, his thumb pulling the hammer back, the bead of the front sight nestling into the sloping buckhorn of the back, the bead coming perfectly to rest on the doe’s shoulders where, in back of the hair and muscle, he knew the heart pulsed, pumping, beating.
His finger tightened on the trigger and that, too, was automatic, all part of the same motion, all natural and flowing. The gun up and the hammer back and the sights on target, on her heart, on her death and his finger squeezing and squeezing the trigger to give her that death, to blow her over and down and make her into meat.
But he didn’t shoot.
The moment hung for hours, burned into him, became part of him. The doe standing side-on to him, so close he could see her hairs, eyes wide and clear, little puffs of steam from her nose, a twitch in her back leg from a ready muscle held in check. All of it seen over the blue black of the rifle barrel. Two seconds that lasted hours.
Just pull the trigger, he thought. Pull it and let the sear drop and that will let the hammer fall and set off the primer which will ignite the powder and send the bullet out to take her life.
His finger was tight on the trigger, knuckle tense and white under the mitten.
But he didn’t shoot.
Why am I not shooting? We need the meat and there it is and I’ve hunted this deer to give her death and make her meat and it’s all here for me, for us, and still I don’t pull the trigger. Why?
The doe moved.
Her back foot lifted and stepped forward a couple of inches and settled into the snow again but her head was still.
It’s the same doe, he thought suddenly, finger still tight on the trigger. It’s the doe from the other night.
And with that thought came another one: She knows me.
She remembers me from the stoneboat and spreading manure and the horses that night. She knows who I am and that’s why she isn’t running, isn’t trying to leave. And he knew that had she moved at first he would have fired and killed her, and he knew that it was getting harder and harder to kill her.
Knowing her made it hard to finish the trigger squeeze and having her know him made it still harder, and still the moment hung, suspended—time in the cold—frozen time.
He had not breathed for twenty seconds now and more, holding only half a breath, and he let it out in a burst that made an explosive sound.
“Whewwwgh!”
She jumped. With no gathering of muscle she exploded up and away and came down thirty feet to the side in a great burst of snow and then two more bounds and she was out of sight and gone.
And still he did not shoot.
The snow was still hanging in the air, drifting down like traces of white flour when he lowered the rifle, staring after her, seeing the image of her still, etched in his eyes: the doe standing and the rifle sights on her—and he not shooting.
It made no sense.
He was still leaning over the windfall in a bad position. It took him a few seconds to get his leg loose and drag it over the log, then another two or three to brush the snow off his leg and clean out the top of his boot and when he looked back down the trail he thought he saw the outline of her standing in the willows. He couldn’t be sure but he saw the markings of a deer in the vertical gray, caught in the sun, and then it was gone.
He shook his head. Part of all this didn’t make sense. Why should he not shoot, and why should she stand to him, stand for death that way?
John looked around, as if trying to see the answer, then up at the blue sky and down at the rifle in his hands and then he started to walk.
He followed her trail in the new snow, followed the part of her that was left behind.
He did not know why.
He knew that he hadn’t shot her, and he knew he had wanted to shoot her and that made no sense, no sense at all. He did not understand himself, did not know what made him hold the death back. But there was something later for him, something later on down that he wanted to see, to hear, to feel.
It all meant more than just the deer and the gun and him. It meant something bigger that he couldn’t understand just yet.
That’s what he thought, anyway. But another part of John told him that he was following her because he really had no choice. He could not hunt another deer having failed on this one, and he could not turn and go home because it was not a finished thing.
He followed the doe’s tracks because at that time that was all there was for him—the tracks leading off into the snowy woods.
The tracks called him and he followed.
NINE
He could see the fear in her now.
He was following her and the fear drove her and she ran hard; long and deep in the first burst the way she would have run to get away from wolves—she ran for her life.
John followed the tracks easily, not hurrying. He still wasn’t quite sure why he was staying with her, tracking her, but he kept going for another hour and a half to cover the same distance she had covered in eight and a half minutes.
Speed was everything to her, to all deer. When mortal danger threatened the only recourse was speed, burning speed, speed that tore energy from the center of the deer and used her up.
She ran that way now. Ran from the danger of John and while she had paused long, too long, in the freeze position, she made up for it by now getting as much distance as possible in the shortest possible time between her body and the man with the gun.
But running long and hard burned her out. It showed in her tracks, a slight wobble now and then from running past her short-range endurance. She would have to rest soon, he knew, would have to bed down.
John knew this from hunting and from talking with his grandfather and other old hunters. There were stories of men who had taken time and walked deer down and John had
always figured they were just that, stories. But he knew that deer had a short burn, nonetheless, and that was in his mind now as he followed her tracks.
The tracks.
The tracks were her and they were more, too. They were small stories in the snow. At first, when she ran scared from him she had torn the snow and left diamonds scattered in the sun across the white. But when she settled down again and began looking for a place to rest, the tracks were more controlled, her feet almost inserted in the snow, with no splashing.
He knew her from the tracks. Knew more about her all the time and kept going at first for that, he thought: to learn more about her, to try and find what it was that made her stick in his mind. She was there already, as if she’d been there before he came hunting.
The second time he got her up she didn’t freeze but made off to the left, the north, in a smooth, low run. He could easily have hit her. She started forty yards away and he had a good sixty- or seventy-yard run to get the sights on her but he didn’t even raise the rifle.
He cut the corner and again picked up her tracks and started following once more. Again there was panic in the tracks, the long burst, but he knew he wouldn’t lose her, because it was all new snow and there were no other deer and it was clear and there wouldn’t be any more snow to cover her tracks.
I’ll follow for a while, he thought, having used up all the reasons and excuses. Maybe I can still kill her and take liver for Grandpa. Maybe I can make her into meat, he thought, knowing that something about that was wrong. Maybe I’ll just stay with her. I’ll follow for a while and see what happens.
The sun was moving toward evening now. It was still well above the southwestern horizon, but it would drop fast and when it did it would get dark. John frowned, trying to remember the moon. Finally he remembered that it would be nearly full so there would be good night light. Sometimes when there was new snow and the moon was full he could almost read at night.
He took a sandwich from his pocket and tore the paper off while walking. His first bite tasted so good that it made his jaws ache but on the second one he remembered that it was a venison sandwich and the meat seemed to take on a taint, not so much a bad taste as a bad feeling.
He did not take a third bite but put the sandwich back in his pocket and instead ate the apple. When he was finished he threw the core away and kept walking, always walking.
He was tiring now, but not exhausted. The calves of his legs ached slightly now and then and his stomach hurt a bit from stepping over the swamp grass, but it was nothing to him yet and he walked easily.
I’ll bet, he thought, I could track her all night. I’ll bet I could just keep going in the moonlight and stay on her tracks and then …
He did not know what came next. Just and then …
He was halfway through a stand of jack pine on a small sand island in the sea of swamp grass when dark caught him.
John knew that starting in November for four months dark hammers down fast in the north. In literally minutes it goes from day to dark night, so fast it catches things. Dark can catch a rabbit in a clearing, letting a fox find him. It catches mice in the open and lets owls have them.
And it caught John.
He stopped then, studied the sky and the terrain. There were times when he was young when he would have worried—being caught in the dark miles from home in a strange woods. But not now. He could see the stars, see the polestar, and though it was cold, the wind had also died so the cold didn’t blow in.
And there was the moon. The moon would be south, go to bed in the southwest. “You’re never lost when you can see the sun and the stars and the moon,” his grandfather had told him. The moon was a pale-blue light that took life from the snow and changed the dark to just a different kind of day, not night at all, so John wasn’t lost.
The tracks shone in the moonlight, called to him from the inside, and he started walking again, following.
At first, while he worked the tracks and went deeper and deeper into the swamp he saw other things, saw beauty.
He moved to within fourteen inches of a snowshoe rabbit, frozen in the moonlight like a white ghost, caught by surprise while playing fox-and-geese. John could not tell where the snow ended and the rabbit began; the rabbit was a part of the whiteness.
A timber wolf followed him for a short time, until John turned in a clearing and saw him. The wolf had been looking for mice and for a time John thought he might be after the doe and it angered him and he made a sound in his throat.
It was an animal sound—a sound that wasn’t a sound. It came from inside some way, from a pit that he didn’t understand. It was a sound for the wolf, a warning for the wolf—a thing that went out from John, out to the wolf.
He did not want to kill the doe. He didn’t want the wolf to do it either and he was glad when the wolf turned away, not in fear, but just naturally.
She is not mine, he thought, stopping suddenly, but she is of me now, somehow; I will follow her for a while and we shall see.
I will follow her for a while and I will touch her.
The thought came like a fast wind, working around the sides of his brain into the middle.
I will follow her and I will touch her and she will be mine then, mine without me having to kill and give her death and make her meat.
But why? He had never thought like this before. He was tired now—had been tracking for twelve hours, moving steadily, getting the deer up and pushing her ahead, often without seeing her. But he wasn’t odd-tired yet, just tired—and yet he wanted to touch the doe.
He would touch her.
He would stay on the trail until she couldn’t get away from him anymore, stay and stay and when he caught her he would touch her.
And if I do that, he thought, if I can follow her and touch her without giving her death then death will be cheated.
If I touch the deer.
He looked to the moon again and saw that it was indeed full and there would be good light all night and he started walking.
There was purpose now, an aim. He thought suddenly that it would be better to dump the rifle, to leave it hanging in the branches of a tree. He would pick it up on the way back, if he came this way. If not he’d come out on his tracks and get it later. It was of steel and heavy and meant death and he didn’t want to carry it any further. It did not fit with the doe any longer, or with him, and when he put it in the tree he felt a weight lifting from him that was out of proportion to the four pounds the rifle weighed. It was a weight from his thoughts. An extra part was gone, a part that didn’t matter. Now there was just John and the doe and the night and the tracks, and he fought the tiredness away and kept going. He picked up the stride and worked to increase the pace.
He did not come to see how the deer was his grandfather, or the spirit of his grandfather’s life, until later in the night, almost daylight the next morning.
And by then nothing was the same as it had started out to be. The deer wasn’t a deer anymore and he wasn’t John Borne anymore, either. Everything was changed.
TEN
Through the night he moved, weaving amongst the willows, flowing across the clearings, following her tracks, watching the doe change from a deer to something more and something less.
She went mad in the night. She ran too hard and went down and fell and he saw the splotch in the snow where it had happened and at first he smiled, some part of him felt good that he had caused her to run, but then it changed to sadness and he hoped that she would not do that again, would not panic and fall and perhaps hurt herself. But she ran in jerks through the night, great tearing runs that took her energy.
She ran across clearings and amongst the willows and pine, away, away—always away from the sound of the steps that kept coming.
And John in some ways became less than he was before—less the hunter, less the man tracking her—and in some ways he became more than he was before. He took strength from the snow and the winter and the beauty of the night, took power from the
moon and the white light and kept going.
More than once he fell asleep while he was walking. From three in the morning on to daylight he had a terrible time staying awake. His legs and body kept on but his mind and spirit went out and he dropped, face down in the snow, and it was hard to get up.
Once he simply lay and felt the sleep come and knew that if he didn’t get up the sleep might let him freeze, but he still couldn’t move and wouldn’t have moved except that he heard the deer.
The deer.
He heard her move in the red willows in the white light and he looked and saw her and she was afraid but she was somehow beckoning, too. The sound pulled him and he got up and stood on his feet and started walking again.
In the night he changed.
In the night he changed from following the deer to becoming the deer. A part of him went out to the deer and a part of the deer went out of her into him, across the white light and he wasn’t the same. He would never be the same again. He was of the deer and the snow and the night and he kept himself but he lost his spirit and gained a new one.
I am not
but I am.
I am the deer.
It became a chant, a song that he did not sing aloud but which still went out before him down the line of tracks to the deer and he hoped she knew the song, knew the beauty of the song and knew that he meant her no harm.
But she could not know.
She could know only that this man kept following, stayed on her trail the way no wolf would have done, spent energy the way no predator would have done, stayed and stayed and stayed until the fear was alive in her.
Big-eyed terror. She was tiring in the night, her muscles quivering. She ran in bursts ahead of John, ran until she was out of sight and then went down in the grass to rest, but always the steps kept coming.
