Nothing Ventured

by Roderick Price

  After wallowing through an assortment of eggs, sausage, pancakes, bacon, French toast and tall, cold glasses of fresh, chalky whole milk and then more coffee, each of the group picked up his bill and headed to the front cash register to pay.

  Finally, they were ready to depart Elmo’s. It was daylight. Martin’s dad slid behind the wheel. Martin’s brother also sat in the front, and Martin took the back seat, piled high with blaze-orange hunting clothes and supplies for the week. Martin had not seen his brother for more than eight months. When the subject of family came up, Martin’s father had shot him a warning glance in the rearview mirror. Now was not the time or the place to open this up to a three-way discussion. They drove north toward Osseo to get on the Interstate. The conversation quickly turned to local sports and then moved to a fight brewing in Lacrosse over a proposed freeway that the damn environmentalists were fighting. Martin was tired from the night before. His back ached from sitting on the curved- back plastic chairs in the Minneapolis airport, and the five hours on the plane from Houston and Minneapolis. It was cooler in the back seat and he was getting toasty in his down vest. He leaned his head against the frosty glass of the back window. The voices in the front seat drifted farther and farther away. Soon he was breathing deeply in a well-deserved sleep.

  Deer hunting season each year in Wisconsin is from the Saturday before Thanksgiving until the Sunday after. During these nine days, over four hundred thousand men, women and children put on warm clothes and head for the Wisconsin woods. Some find comfort simply in spending time outdoors with friends, interested in game only if it presents itself. There is a broader band of young and middle-aged men, set on getting a kill during these nine days to fill a license they have purchased and to finish something they have decided to do. There are other slices of hunters too, from women who like the thrill, to boys going with their dad on an annual journey toward manhood. Some drive all night from Chicago to enter the woods in the predawn hours Saturday to wait in the foreign darkness for the onslaught to begin. Martin had first gone with his dad when he was only twelve years old. He remembered the drive “Up North.” He remembered the seemingly large, old men with oversized knives strapped to their belts, talking loudly as they played cards late into the night. The cabin would smell of beans, bacon and cigar smoke. The frost on the windows would grow heavier and heavier as the temperature dropped ever lower and the heat from the ten men and boys in the cabin made itself known on the windows.

  In his dreams, Martin could remember the alarm clock go off in the darkness at around 4:30 a.m. After some shuffling about, Don Larsen would usually be the first one up. He would start by throwing several short, stout logs into the woodstove. Next could be heard the hissing sound of gas as it raced out of the stovetop before a quick match caught it and held it captive. Taking a huge old frontier-day black iron kettle, Don would stand over the sink and fill it to the brim. Then he would clang the huge pot down mightily on the stovetop to boil coffee for the day. As the door of the refrigerator was swung open, cartons of jumbo eggs, thick sliced smoked Canadian bacon, orange juice and homemade bread were ceremoniously unloaded and stacked roughly on the counter beside the blazing stove top. Don was standing in his insulated underwear with a heavy, plaid wool shirt hanging almost to his knees. Finally, when all was set, Don picked up an oversized roasting pan and began vengefully beating it with an old, bent-up stainless soup ladle. The sound was deafening, the image memorable, but the glimmer in Don’s eyes let everyone know that it was a special time of the year again. A time to begin the hunt.

  Martin awoke from his nap. They rolled up Highway 53 in caravan now. As they neared Hayward, the roughness of the land continued to build. Abandoned homesteads and unused cabins, each with its own furtive legacy, stood off in the woods along the road. The soil was poor, and many that had come later had finally just given up the idea of farming the land or raising their family on poor soil so begrudging. An old log home with a tarpaper roof now served as a wintering stable for some steers, worriedly watching for winter’s onset. The wind, now clearly blowing in from the north, swept across the dull gray skies of late November.

  “And yes, I remember Graybeard,” said Martin’s brother excitedly from the front seat. “Remember him, Marty? Remember? I’ll never forget that we were walking down North Country Trail off Ruth Lake Road. It was just Marty and me and it was near dusk. It was a Tuesday. We hadn’t seen a hair all day.”

  Martin could feel the excitement building in his brother’s voice, even though he’d relived this story a hundred times.

  “Well, the doe came first. She was a big doe, stood right in the center of the trail. Big doe eyes. No kidding—big doe eyes. We froze in our tracks; she was looking right at us, no more than sixty yards away. She was big, but she didn’t move. She looked and she smelled, looked and smelled. But we were downwind. Then she looked back. When she did, I knew he was back there.” Martin’s brother loved hunting.

  “Wasn’t Rich over on your old stand?” asked Martin’s father.

  “Just left. I think Richie kicked them through because he had just gotten back to the road when he heard us shoot. Anyway, after about a minute, and I mean a really long minute, you know, I see a flash of gray. There’s a huge buck standing directly behind the doe. Nobody’s moving. They’re just looking and smelling, looking and smelling.”

  Now even Martin was getting caught up in reliving it.

  “Yes, I was actually just behind your right shoulder, right? So, I whisper, ‘I’m bringing up my iron’ and slowly, slowly, slowly I raise my rifle over your right shoulder. I look in the scope and all I see is horns. I can’t see a leg. I can’t see a body or head. All I see is horns sticking up from behind Mrs. Doe.”

  Now Martin’s brother is very excited. “All of a sudden, they are off like a rocket. I mean they are crashing through the woods. His rack was so huge he had to hold his head back when he was crashing through the brush. Even without scoping him you can see he’s big and he’s old. He’s so old he’s got a gray beard. You could see it with the naked eye couldn’t you Marty? He had a gray beard.”

  “I couldn’t open up because I was behind you,” confessed Martin. “But when he got out there in the opening, I just unloaded on him. Never touched a hair.”

  “Don saw him two years ago,” said Martin’s father. “Don’s sitting on his stand. Windier than hell, and he looks at a tree and sees a nose and some horns—that’s it. When the damn thing starts running, it looks back at him and he can see the gray beard.”

  “There were shadows everywhere, Marty,” offered Martin’s brother. “He was gone like a ghost. We’ll get him this year. I’ll get him. This is my year.”

  “How long ago was that?” wondered Martin.

  “It was your senior year in college,” said Martin’s dad. “I remember you took the train up to Lacrosse from Madison. That was fifteen years ago.”

  Fifteen years, thought Martin. Where had he gotten in fifteen years? He had felt his jaw tighten minutes earlier when his brother announced that this was his year, and now, thinking back, Martin wondered how he’d gotten where he was. Twenty years ago, he had been cruising through life looking for all it had to offer him, and now… his thoughts drifted away. He thought of his diligence at work, the dedication, and now with this divorce looming, it all seemed meaningless.

  Things were good. Martin, by most standards, had a good, stable job. That was what Liz had called it—stable. She said she didn’t need stable. She needed more, but she just could not seem to articulate exactly what she needed more of. He knew it was money, for sure, but money was not enough. Martin had to admit that it had not been great these last few years. Basically, she just was not interested in maintaining the status quo for twenty more years. He loved her more than he ever could say, or ever would say. But even love, simple love, was not good enough. Love meant willing to make a difference, start a venture, take a risk. He was angry, and he was getting ready to do something abou
t it. Management at work had taken him for granted. Hadn’t promoted him. Fuck them, he would show them. Good old Martin.

  Rich was driving the lead vehicle in the caravan. When they got to old Highway H, he pulled his Jeep over onto the far-left side of the scarred pavement and waved the other two vehicles up alongside. From the back-seat, Martin could view the scene unfold as a spectator. Three abreast, they sat idling steadily on an all-but-abandoned road in the wilderness of northern Wisconsin. They were a hundred miles from any city that most people had ever heard of. Martin could feel the gray cold creep into the cabin of their vehicle as the exhaust-laced air rolled in through the open windows.

  “Okay Don,” Rick started in, looking across the front seats of two vehicles to address the elder statesman of the group. “I’m thinking it’s getting a little late in the day and we got a light dusting of snow. Rather than go by the cabins first and stow our goods, we need to settle on who’s standing where in the morning.”

  Don’s worn, wool-checkered cap rested easily as he nodded his head in agreement. “We’re with you,” he replied. Steve and Patrick and I will follow you down as far as the old game farm and come in from Silver Lake.”

  “We’ll go down to the new clear-cut north of you and walk south,” said Rich. “How about you, Bob?”

  At a very young sixty-four years of age, Martin’s father replied without hesitation. He had hunted various parts of this forest since he was seventeen years old. Before there were roads, or resorts or stores, they used to ride the train in as far as Delta and get dropped off with enough supplies to last for ten days. “We need to check out the Triangle. We got cold and snow coming in tonight. I’m thinking they will be in the big pines before sunup. We’ll walk in a couple of miles and if we don’t see any fresh signs, we’ll meet you on the east side of 411 around four o’clock.”

  “Sounds good, General,” Rich said, smiling at Martin’s dad broadly. “Let’s get ‘em!”

  With that, he dropped into full-time four-wheel drive and floored it. Snow, ice, rocks, and mud flew up from all four wheels as he churned wildly off the shoulder, gained control, and led the charge on down Old County Trunk Highway H. Rich wasn’t the best pure hunter in the group. But his love of the sport, and his understanding of the importance of fellowship, easily made him the most welcome member. At any second, he could drop his truck into a frozen rut, run over an old log or skid across a boulder and rip the bottom off his vehicle. Nonetheless, the truck rocked and churned through the muck and he fishtailed on down the road.

  “Crazy bastard,” said Martin’s brother admiringly, “look at him go.”

  Martin’s father slowly shook his head and smiled as he eased in behind Rich and headed down the old road. By four o’clock that afternoon they had seen thirteen deer between the eight of them. Each of them had settled on a special place to start the season in the critical early morning hours of opening day. By six that night they had unpacked clothes and supplies back at the Ruth Lake Lodge.

  Martin wasn’t a good card player, but he liked to sit around, play cards and drink beer. He had never been much for hard liquor. He had worked two summers at a brewery in Lacrosse when he was going to college. During that time, he had found that he not only enjoyed drinking beer—he was good at it. College down in Madison had been a party. This night had started off extremely well. Martin had been a partner with his dad playing pinochle, and they were cleaning up. The more they won, the louder they got. For the Cantrell’s, pinochle wasn’t a game, it was a religion. When Martin was a kid, and the weather was bad on summer weekends, they would sit around the kitchen table for hours and play game after game. One year on a deer hunting trip, the weather had turned to a cold slushy rain around 11 a.m. on Monday morning. After two hours, the whole hunting gang had been chased back to the camp, soaked to the bone in freezing rain. Somebody got the cards going and Martin and his brother had won seventeen games of pinochle in a row. They still occasionally reminded everyone of that fateful day. Tonight, there wasn’t enough time for seventeen games. In fact, after three devastating wins in a row, Martin and his dad declared victory. Then they all headed for the Log Cabin restaurant for dinner. Martin pulled on a coat and followed everyone out the door and down the rock steps to their vehicle below. In five minutes, they were walking into the bar/store/restaurant/lodge for dinner.

  Somebody had Hank Williams Jr. on the jukebox, and the pre-hunt crowd was the biggest Martin had ever seen “Up North.” Rough looking locals with torn hands and wind-worn faces were eating fish baskets at the bar. Nice-looking families from Madison were sitting at orderly tables across the dining room. The Ripon Bunch and the Delta Gang were there. Martin didn’t really know any of the members of those hunting groups, but they would occasionally see each other out in the middle of the wilderness during the hunting season. After a while, each group had come to mutually respect the toughness of the others. For starters, they had all learned the lay of the land in the three hundred thousand-acre boundaries of the Chequamegon State Forest. In fact, three years earlier, the Delta Gang had gotten those new blaze-orange hunting caps with their green delta insignia sewed on. From then on you could look through your rifle scope a quarter mile away and pick them out with their fancy damn caps.

  “All right,” said Rich, “I got the first round.” He had to holler over the music. The older guys slid onto the bar stools around one of the standup cocktail tables while the younger ones checked the crowd and pulled popcorn out of the machine and cradled it in nasty looking red plastic baskets. The popcorn was delicious.

  “Hi fellas. What can I get you tonight?” asked the woman hustling drinks. She just looked too good to be doing this during hunting season. She was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt. She looked perfectly at home, oblivious to the crowd around her.

  “Well given Richie’s shaky financial standing I’ll just have another light beer,” said Don. He had that big round face and sparkling eyes, even in his sixties he could get away with just about anything.

  Martin’s dad went next. “Old-fashioned for me.”

  After they ordered drinks, they got back to the serious business of talking up the hunt. Martin’s brother had been bow-hunting with Rich in early fall. Over a long weekend they had hunted most of the regular territory. They had also gotten two really nice bucks from their vantage point in the tree stands. The conversation was pretty animated walking back through the fall hunt. Martin had lost track of which forest trail intersected with which logging road. He was having trouble picturing in his mind the contours that lay north of Canthook Lake. Soon his dad and Don were talking about their Florida winter homes and his brother was caught up in conversation with his buddies. Martin very much belonged, but he found himself to be somewhat of an outsider. He drank two beers in almost no time, matching the two he had had back at the cabin. He realized the jukebox had run out of money. He went to the bar to get change. Then, standing over the jukebox he surveyed the list of available songs, turning the quarters slowly in the palm of one hand while sipping a beer in the other. He tossed in his first three selections.

  A woman came up beside him.

  “What are you doing in here buddy?” She said. “Are you going to pick out some Texas music for us Northerners?”

  He turned and saw Taylor Thompson. She was giving him that big smile and then looking with him down toward the bright lights of the music box.

  “Taylor. Taylor, what are you doing here?” A nearly speechless Martin stumbled.

  “Umm, you forgot I live here, right?” Said Taylor. “Well, actually my parents live up here.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m just so used to thinking of you being from Madison, I did forget,” said Martin.

  Taylor smiled, “Well, after twenty years I guess it’s time you meet my parents.” A nice-looking old couple was standing behind her. “Mom and Dad, this is Martin Cantrell; guess you could say we used to date back in college. Martin, these are my folks.” They
shook hands all around and then stood awkwardly looking at each other.

  “Wow, I can’t believe bumping into you like this,” said Martin.

  “Up for the hunt, I assume,” said her dad.

  “Yeah, there’s a crew of us, including my dad,” he responded, nodding toward their table.

  “So, we’re going to get our name on the list and see if we can get a table,” said Taylor.

  “I’m guessing you’re in for a wait tonight,” said Martin, looking around at the overflow crowd.

  “We’re pretty good friends with the owners. You know, we live about five minutes from here,” said Taylor’s mom. “There’s a chance we won’t have a long wait.” She smiled.

  “Well, very nice to meet you,” said Martin. “Don’t want my buddies to start missing me and send out a search party.”

  “They seem to be doing just fine without you,” said Taylor smiling. “Unreal to see you.”