A Thousand Deer

by Rick Bass

  Nothing much happened to me on this year’s hunt. As the land ties us together, linking us and our stories to our elder relatives and their stories, so too does our quarry. And yet as we age, the chemical within us that once made us want so badly to shoot a deer or turkey has waned considerably.

  Uncle Jimmy and Dad still go out into the hills, carrying a rifle, as if waiting for the inspiration, the need, the desire, to return—like a retired farmer going out and looking up at the sky for rain, is how I think of it, even though the farmer no longer has any crops planted—habit—but the urge never returns, for they observe the deer, watch antlered bucks slipping through the cedar, but never fire any more.

  Perhaps we imagine that it, the missing desire, is like the deer used to be, and it is that desire we are searching for, rather than deer, when we go out on their walks, still carrying a rifle.

  I notice it in myself more each year. More and more, I do not shoot deer that in the old days I would have shot. I have killed dozens of deer, but now it seems as if they are almost all slipping away from me, escaping like sand through my outstretched fingers, flowing away, and I do not mind. I too am content only to wander the hills with my rifle in hand—Old Granddad’s ancient .270, rebored after the First World War—and to walk quietly, and take in the world’s scent, and to listen, and to just see what happens.

  It rained like stink this year: not the frequent hill country fog and mist, nor one of the brief yet powerful thunderstorms that accompany cold fronts from the north smashing into the humid southeast Gulf weather systems, but instead, a cold and steady toadstrangler, for day upon day and night upon night.

  Still, we had come to hunt, and so on opening morning we each departed for our favorite places, our nooks and niches, where we might or might not be able to stay dry. Curious to see what the land would bring us, this year. Seven of us, this year. (Frank was sick in Vermont, stomach virus and high fever, unable to travel; a disappointment to us all, and a feeling as unsettling to me as if the stone wall were to have one of its middle emplacements pulled out.)

  Nothing happened, all that first morning. No one shot any deer, no one saw any deer. I sat for hours in my camouflage rainsuit beneath a big oak, rain dripping hypnotically onto my head and shoulders, lulling me into a motionless trance. I waited and waited, believing as a hunter believes that at any moment, a nice buck was going to come walking past.

  The only thing remotely like that occurred just before I was about to stand up and stretch and walk squish-booty back to camp for lunch. A thoroughly drenched raccoon (we were to see several, that year) came trundling through the tall grass, head down and rump tipped in that car-up-on-jacks way the big ones have of walking.

  He was heading straight for me, heading straight for my tree, and it was easy to see that he had but one idea on his mind, to get out of that miserable rain.

  I was perfectly still and perfectly camouflaged. He kept coming on, thirty feet, twenty feet, ten feet—stopping now and again briefly to snuffle at some rich scent, some delicacy beneath the rotting autumn leaves.

  Finally he was right at the tip of my boots—I could have nudged him if I wanted—and, not knowing what etiquette demanded—clearing my throat seemed like too human of a thing to do—I instead merely wiggled my toes, which were less than a foot away from him.

  He was so cool. He didn’t blow up like a ball of dynamite, all heart-stricken and wall-eyed, the way I would have.

  Instead, he froze, reared up on his hind legs (his front paws clasped in front of him as if begging my pardon for some ill-considered intrusion), peered at me only briefly, as if to be absolutely certain of what he was seeing, but not looking too long—as if believing that staring, too, would be rude—and seemingly without regret, he dropped back down to all fours and ambled back off into the steady rain.

  Nothing else happened all day. And I doubt that I can carry that image, that little story, beyond my own life—it is no one’s foundation—but it was a quarrystone in my accretion, and a fine way to spend a rainy morning, and a fine thing to see. And to remember. Handling the image in my memory as if it was a stone, trying to decide which way to stack it.

  On day two, I almost made a kill. Once again I had sat quietly, watching and waiting, but had seen nothing; and growing chilled and miserable, I rose and began walking, not really hunting but just slogging, moving through the dripping cedar as if in a dream. From time to time I would remember that I was supposed to be hunting and would resume skulking and scouting, paying attention to shadows and wind direction, faint noises near and far—but somehow it was mortally tiring in the steady rain like that, and soon enough I would slip back into the straight-ahead plod, the slog-o-rama.

  Until I heard the turkeys, that is. They gobbled only once, sounding very far away, and, though I had never heard turkeys gobble in a driving rain before, they sounded very wet and very unhappy, feeble and dispirited: ass-whipped, dejected with the world. I could see them in my mind’s eye, marching single file, feathers sodden, trudging as if on the way back from some country funeral, their once-iridescent shimmering feathers now drooping and rain-blacked.

  So familiar am I with the lay of this land that it seemed to me that even from that one little distant outburst of squabble-gobble—one lone gobbler lifting his voice, perhaps, to protest the steady drenching—I was pretty sure where they were.

  In my mind, I was exactly sure where they were—I imagined I could see the tree they were marching past, half a mile away—and with all the previous rain-torpor vanished from me immediately, and the full blood of the hunt returned (this, perhaps, was the thing I and the older guys had been out wandering in the fields in search of), I galloped through the woods, wet cedar fronds swatting me in the face and knotty oak limbs smacking my forehead as I rushed toward the place where I thought I could best lay in wait to ambush them, if they came wandering my way, taking the path I had assigned to them in my imagination, and that, with every bit of my hunter’s fire, hunter’s force, I was now trying to will them to take. And all this energy was being dispensed while at the same time I was trying to balance the negative capability of not thinking about them at all in order to reduce the risk of alerting their keen senses to the mere resonance of my being.

  I was down in Panther Hollow, also sometimes called Turkey Hollow, near where the fence divides our property from the next: cleaving the creek in two, in places, as the ancient rusting barbed wire and drill-blasted metal fenceposts zigzag back and forth across the meander of the shallow, narrow creek, down in that dark hollow of hickory and oak, where nobody ever goes, and where certainly, if you went across that line, nobody would ever know.

  I could hear the turkeys coming right down the fenceline, as I’d hoped they would. I was wearing camo, was hunkered behind a cedar, motionless, and it was raining hard on all of us. Surely with their bedraggled, down-tipped heads, they would not notice me, but would pass right by me, close enough for me to almost reach out and grab one by the neck if I desired.

  I didn’t move a muscle—I emptied my mind of desire and became the rain itself—but somehow they sensed or saw me, for I heard the first telltale putt!, the sound of me being busted, and then a quick scrabbling, followed by a thumpy, screechy, bass cello or guitar sound, as that lead bird hopped nimbly over the fence and detoured onto the other land, traveling away from me now at a ninety-degree angle.

  No problem. They had to be walking single-file—the trail through the dense cedar and along that old fence was too narrow for them to do anything but that—and if the lead one scooched away, well, not to worry, I’d take the number two bird, or even number three or four or five. I remained motionless, confident in my hiding spot, and waited.

  But once more, I heard the little alarm peep, from not fifteen yards away, just on the other side of a big cedar, followed by that same guitar-twanging sound of a turkey vaulting the fence.

  Again, I remained squint-eyed and motionless—they couldn’t possibly see me—but this time, throu
gh the dense screening of cedar, I thought I saw the airborne head of a gobbler, bright blue in the rain, as he fluttered over that low fence like a gymnast mounting the parallel bars, or even taking low preliminary leaps on a trampoline—a little three- or four-foot leap in which he ascended, wings still tucked to his side and legs paddling the air heroically, just enough of a bound to clear that fence—and then descended on the other side, the safe side, and watching the place where I was hiding all the while.

  The third turkey vaulted the fence in the same spot, in this same manner, as did the fourth and the fifth. I continued to refuse to believe they were seeing me, even though as each one floated over that top strand of fence, I could see the beady eye of each lone jumper fixed on me with an eerie intensity, scowling stern as a judge.

  Maybe the number six bird will be different, I told myself, trying to pretend that with all their fretsome and concurrent gobbling and purring and putting and fussing, they weren’t broadcasting the word to each and all, 5'7" Caucasian male/blue eyes/balding/gap-toothed/kind of lecherous-looking/twelve o’clock sharp, fifteen yards out; at the same place, the number six bird made his little vault, and I thought, Maybe number seven will keep on coming on, but there was no number seven, only absence, after that.

  I could see them, scattered here and there, wandering confused and nervous, unsure of what to do next, and trying to regroup: a blue head here, a long beard behind a cedar there, drumstick legs, the scuttling silhouette of a body, a snakelike head peering out from behind an oak tree before putting! and ducking back behind the tree.

  I could have taken almost any one of them, a fairly simple twenty- or thirty-yard shot, climbed the fence, taken a few strides, lifted the old tom up, and walked back onto my property—no one would ever have known, and hell, maybe even the other turkeys wouldn’t have known—but I wasn’t even remotely tempted. They had been on our property, but now they had beaten me, fair and square.

  In the old days, I would have been tempted sorely, but this day I just sat there in the rain and watched them and smiled at how close it had been, and at the waning of desire, though not pleasure.

  And after they had hurried off into the woods, and I rose to leave, I looked down at my soggy boots and saw then what surely each of them had been seeing: the solid band of duct tape, as brilliant as the gleaming aluminum fuselage of an airplane, from where I had repaired my old sole-flapping boots that morning; and I laughed, marveling at how it must have leapt out at them, back there in the dark hollow, shiny as a new beer can on that gloomy day, and at the luck of those turkeys, and how they just weren’t meant to be gotten that day.

  I was just pleased to have wanted one. To have wanted one pretty badly.

  Evenings spent fixing big old artery-clogging stroke-summoning steak-and-potato dinners, or jambalaya, or fried ham and red-eye gravy, or fried doves and biscuits and cream gravy. Song of the South: Old Granddaddy underground, Uncle Jimmy still fighting his way back from his stroke, my father and I unscathed for now.

  It’s not like we eat like this all the time. Maybe just once a year.

  Telling stories—that rain still drumming the tin roof—and mixing, now, some of the newer ones—my cousins’ and mine—with the braid of some of the really old ones.

  Hardly ever are the evening stories about deer. About the only time a deer story gets told is when someone brings a new deer into camp, and we are standing around admiring it, and are reminded of other deer, sometimes from that same locale, other times not, and sometimes appearing similar to the new deer, though other times, different. Memories unfolding upon memories, like dominoes.

  Nothing, then. A raccoon by my boot and a flock of turkeys spooked by my boot. Two little things to add like keepsakes into a small bag or pouch, a life.

  Day three: more slog-hiking, walking all over the place, trying to burn off some calories from all the heavy feeding. By this time I was not only accustomed to the steady rain, but was also kind of enjoying it. It made everything quiet, and I was kind of getting into the routine of coming back to camp each evening, drenched, and drying my boots by the fire, getting them dry just barely in time to put on the next day, and start all over again. In such inclement weather, there can be a solace and comfort in the repetition of small things.

  I went way over onto the back side. Randy had shot a deer on the east side the day before, a nice buck with dark mahogany antlers, and cousin Rick had shot a nice one at dusk that same day. I still didn’t have the fire of old desire that’s often required to take a deer—as if that desire must reach a certain depth or temperature within the heart of the hunter in order to kindle the hunter’s luck—in order for the deer to present itself to the hunter, almost as if summoned—giving the hunter a chance, at least.

  I just wasn’t to that point. I was enjoying walking around, but I just didn’t really want a deer. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what I would have done if I’d seen one. I was just walking.

  I believe completely what hunters the world over have counseled since time immemorial: that to truly have success in catching up with one’s quarry unawares, it is best for the hunter to empty the mind of his or her desires, while simultaneously and seemingly paradoxically remaining intensely aware of all the tiny necessary steps required of the hunter’s rendezvous—faint sounds, tracks, wind direction, hiding cover, forage, water, escape routes.

  So my mind’s eye was empty; I was doing everything right, even if I wasn’t all excited about happening upon a deer. I was in the perfect state of mind to stumble onto something, and passing through a lane of oaks, through the old sandstone cliff country—ancient Aeolian ridges of cross-bedded dunes from a time when the highest known form of life was invertebrates—I happened but to glance up and see that a pack of young coyotes was watching me, each one drenched, as if they’d been out hunting all morning. Each one was camouflaged almost perfectly against the reddish-gray cliffs.

  It wasn’t even the coyotes themselves I saw, at first, but instead a faintly different line in the crossbedding—the cant of an ear running at a forty-five degree angle against the strike of the bedding plane, and then a wet black button of a nose, and then another nose, and another; more ears, and then a pair of sentient eyes set back in the stone: eyes everywhere, I saw suddenly, until I counted five young coyotes watching me, all frozen in various positions of watchfulness.

  I stopped and stood there in the falling rain, amazed at their naivete—did they not know, even if only by the instinct of their much-persecuted kind, that there were others of my kind, vertical human beings, looking not all that different from me, who would just as lief begin firing into their midst, as look at them? People who might believe that one more dead coyote might equal one more living deer, or that one more dead coyote might somehow equal a better day?

  After what seemed like a long time, but was probably only seconds, they turned and broke and ran, scattering into the brush. And I kept on walking home, through the brush and through the steady rain, trying to hunt, but beginning to daydream—as if by seeing all those coyotes, something inside me had been filled, and I no longer wanted a deer, or anything, but was content with the world and my place in it, precisely the way things were. Boots squishing, hair drenched, fingers wet and cold. It was all just right, just perfect; one more day.

  Russell’s only a few years younger than I am, but he hasn’t hit the midlife wall yet: like any of us, he’s happy just to be out on the landscape, but unlike the old graybeards we’re so quickly becoming, he really, really wants a deer. Already, he’s passed up an easy shot at a decent six-point buck on the first day, waiting for something larger, and already, in retrospect, he’s been ruing his choice. If we’ve heard him say it once, we’ve heard him say it a hundred times, with a shake of his head, on this hunt, “Dang, I shouldn’t have passed that buck up.” And, of course, his older brothers, Rick and Randy, are merciless, responding not with any tender words of support or understanding and affirmation, but instead bobbing their heads g
leefully and agreeing with his misery wholeheartedly, chorusing “Thass right! Thass right!” And when Russell glowers at them, totally abandoned, totally deer-less, they’ll leap up from their seats on the couch and walk back outside to go examine their deer, which are hanging from the meat pole, and they’ll make a big point of trying to out-brag each other on the other’s deer—Rick complimenting Randy on the long brow tines over his deer, for instance, and the body size, while Randy pretends not to hear any of it and instead declaims loudly, for all to hear, about the beautiful mahogany color and impressive width of the antlers on Rick’s deer. Brothers!

  Each day since that first day, Russell has gone out with an increasing sense of mission and commitment, and, to his credit, he hasn’t been shy about camouflaging it. I really want a deer, he says each morning; and throughout the pasture, we listen for a single shot from his .270, but hear nothing—and each evening, back in camp, sitting around the woodstove inside, sipping a vodka-and-tonic while the rain drums ever harder on the roof, he seems glummer and glummer, though to his credit again, always he wrestles with his frustration, remembers his priority, and shrugs and says, “Well, anyway, it’s great to be here with everyone together again, that’s all that really matters”—a statement with which the two Asshole Brothers will enthusiastically agree, just before jumping up and running back outside to comment loudly and favorably once more on each other’s deer.

  Late on the third day—the next-to-last day—Russell finally gets a deer, and that night he is utterly radiant with a beatific mix of joy and relief. It’s a nice big fat deer, a fine, gnarly eight-point, and after supper, while sitting around the woodstove later in the evening, he tells us again how the hunt went. He’s been reliving it all afternoon, thrilled by his good fortune, and even though I know exactly what he’s feeling—I felt that way as recently as a year or two ago—there’s still a bit of an odd feeling for me, like being on a boat, I think, that is pulling away from shore: like looking back at others who are not on the boat, but who have remained behind, still standing on the dock from which you departed, and with a distance accruing even as you look back.