A Miracle of Catfish (61 page)

He kept watching them and watching them caused him to forget about the cold. What if he went home and got the '55 and drove it over here and parked off the road somewhere and dragged them out and put them both in the trunk? The only way he'd get caught would be if a game warden personally stopped him and searched his car. But what if he went home and got rid of all his hunting clothes, got rid of his orange vest, got rid of his hunting boots, got rid of his rifle, got rid of his orange hat, […] and put on some more clothes, maybe some blue jeans, and maybe his Tony Lama ostrich-skin boots, the ones Lacey liked so much, and came back over here and parked the '55 out on the road, and then got Rusty to listen for traffic for him, and loaded them into the trunk and took them home and unloaded them behind the trailer and hung them up in the shed to skin them by flashlight? He wouldn't get caught that way, would he? Look how much meat he'd have. Two whole deer. But where was he going to put it? They didn't have a deep freeze. Hell, Carol had one. He could get them dressed and cut them up and slice them up and wrap up all the meat in some freezer paper and tape it up good and mark it with a Magic Marker, put
steaks
or
roast
or whatever it was on it and haul it down to Carol's house at Bruce and leave it down there in
her
deep freeze. He could tell her she could have some of it if she wanted it. He didn't know if she liked deer meat or not. He wondered if she was fucking anybody. She still looked pretty good for an old chick.

He kept sitting there trying to decide what to do. The doe and the fawn were slowly working their way past him. And at any moment they might step back into the sheltering pine saplings and be hidden again. He needed to shoot was what he needed to do. Shoot something. While it was standing right in front of him. So he raised the rifle on up, very slowly. They didn't know he was there. They hadn't seen him. It was a real good thing he hadn't lit that cigarette. It was good to be strong. It paid off.

He slowly fitted the scope to his eye and swung the 30.30 to cover the doe. He was still shaking a little from the excitement, but he tried to hold the gun steady. He wished he had a rest. Rusty had gun rests on all his stands that he used. This one was just an extra one that had been lying in Rusty's backyard gathering rust. It didn't have a gun rest.

The doe was nibbling at something on the ground and Jimmy's daddy
had the crosshairs of the scope centered on her chest. The fawn walked forward and suddenly blocked the doe's chest with its hindquarters. Jimmy's daddy waited. He was surprised that they couldn't see the breath fogging from his mouth. And he didn't care if Rusty did cut his shirttail off. He was going home today with some fresh deer meat. That he'd killed all by himself. For the first time. He couldn't wait to show the deer to Jimmy whenever he got it or them home.

He swung the rifle left suddenly, onto the fawn. Why not just shoot that little son of a bitch? Kind of leave the doe for seed? Naw, shit, it was too small. Look how tender it would be, though. You could probably cut that meat with a fork. Once you got it cooked.

The deer kept working their way past him while he sat there trying to decide what to do. He couldn't shoot both of them. No way. As soon as he shot the first one, the other one was going to run. There was more meat on the doe. That was what tipped the scales. The little one would just have to make it on its own. It would just have to learn that it was a cold cruel world out there. So Jimmy's daddy swung the crosshairs back onto the doe's chest, pulled the hammer all the way back to full cock, and fired. The rifle slammed him a sharp jolt in the shoulder and the deep boom from the muzzle rolled out across the frosted stillness. The fawn dropped and the doe froze for a moment, tail clamped tight against her hindquarters, and Jimmy's daddy said out loud, “Fuck!” The doe looked up, saw him, ran, two hops and she was gone. The fawn was kicking on the ground and Jimmy's daddy levered another shell into the chamber, the spent one flipping out of the way in a brass blur. He was shaking worse now. Did he need to shoot it again? And how the hell did he shoot four feet to the left of where he was aiming? The fawn was still kicking and Jimmy's daddy was afraid it was going to run off, so he shot at it again. And nothing happened except the jolt to his shoulder and the echo of the second report rolling out across the pine trees. Rusty was going to hear him. He thought he'd missed it completely that time. Should he shoot again? Was he shooting four feet to the left? Should he hold four feet to the right and shoot again? Jesus. It was still kicking, and now it started making this throat-clogged blatting noise, like a strangling goat. Oh my God. He had to put the little son of a bitch out of its misery. Shoot again? Or get down and cut its throat? None of the
hunting videos had ever showed any of this shit. He levered the spent shell out and a fresh one in and held four feet to the right of the fawn and fired. He saw a puff of hair from a hindquarter. But it still wasn't dead. Of course it wasn't dead. No way it was dead. You weren't going to kill anything shooting it in the damn ass. He levered another shell in and sat there. He was going to have to get down and cut its throat. That's all there was to it. So he stood up and turned around and started down the ladder that Rusty had welded to the deer stand. He made it fine about three steps and then he accidentally bumped the rifle pretty hard against the ladder and it went off almost beside his ear,
boom!
, which scared him so badly that he dropped it, and grabbed the ladder with both hands just in time to keep from falling off. Oh my God! He'd damn near shot himself! He heard his beloved Marlin Glenfield hit the ground, and that
hurt
him, and he had to stop for a moment, seventeen feet off the ground, and compose himself. His heart was racing incredibly fast. Son of a bitch hit the ground! From twenty feet up! Holy shit! The little deer was still blatting, and it was an awful sound. But he knew his hunting knife was right there on his belt. What was he going to do, stab it or cut its throat?

He hung there, swaying on the ladder, his breath still fogging out in front of his face. His legs were shaking and he didn't trust his feet to lower him safely yet. So he had to stand there and listen to the little deer and the noises it was making. He wished it would shut up, and he wondered if Rusty could hear it. He was definitely going to cut his shirt-tail off now. He guessed that bump in the dark this morning must have been harder than he'd thought.

Finally he started lowering himself. He took it slow and made sure he didn't miss a rung. His hands were cold against the cold metal, and he wished he'd eaten some breakfast. And now it felt like he might be going to have a little diarrhea on top of everything else. But he had put part of a roll of toilet paper in his coat pocket, just in case he needed to go to the bathroom while he was out hunting. So he
had
thought of one thing to bring.

At last he was on the ground, but he couldn't see the little deer now. He bent over and picked up his rifle. Oo. Oo-oo. The end of the barrel was full of dirt, must have landed muzzle down. He couldn't shoot it
without getting that shit out of there. It would blow up in his face. And one of the mounting brackets on the back of the scope was bent. It must have fallen over against the tree after it hit the ground. So he just set it back down, sick as a damn dog. Then he started to draw his hunting knife from its scabbard on his belt, but instead he lit a cigarette. It didn't make any difference now. His quarry was down. And lying somewhere just on the other side of that clump of honeysuckle that had been killed by the frost. He took a few puffs, and then he drew his knife. […]

The little deer wasn't hard to find, blatting like that. Jimmy's daddy went forward, cigarette in one hand, knife in the other. He parted the pine saplings with his body and there it was, lying on its side and trying to raise its head, front legs trembling. There was some blood but not much. Jimmy's daddy eased up to it and stood there looking at it. He'd never been this close to a live one before. He could see the bloody hole in its hind leg, but that wasn't the shot that knocked it down, he didn't think. Unless he'd hit it in the same spot twice. He tried not to listen to it, but it was hard not to. It was so loud that he thought anybody around could hear it. And there were other people around. They'd driven past some parked pickups this morning in the dark, a couple of them sitting not too far from where they'd turned off and opened a gate that Rusty had a key to. So he needed to go ahead and shut it up.

But he walked around to the other side, still trying to see where the first shot had hit. And then he saw it. There was a short groove cut right across its back. He'd shot it through the backbone, and he guessed that was why its back legs weren't moving. What the hell was he going to do, stab it or cut its throat? Somehow he couldn't stand the idea of cutting its throat, and he knew he had to do something quick, so he stuck the cigarette in his mouth and bent over and pulled its head up by one ear, and stabbed it in the throat. The knife didn't go in very deep, so he had to stab it harder, again. And again. And again and again and again! The little deer blatted and blood dripped from its tongue and spattered on the frozen ground and Jimmy's daddy thought he might be going to throw up. But it didn't last long. The little deer relaxed and Jimmy's daddy turned loose of its ear and watched its head slump to the ground, and while he watched, the dark eye fixed and glazed over like paint healing over in a bucket, only lots faster.

Jimmy's daddy took the cigarette from his mouth and stood there, panting a little, looking down on it. It didn't look like much. It looked about like a thirty-pound deer. It looked illegal as hell. Son of a bitch. What the hell? Four feet to the damn left? He wondered if Rusty had any coffee in the pickup. He looked at his knife. It had some blood on it, so he bent and wiped each side of the blade in the frosted grass, then put the knife back into the scabbard on his belt. Then he looked around, still smoking. He was cold again now that all the excitement was over. Maybe he ought to drag it toward Rusty's pickup and hide it somewhere, and then if he wanted to he could go ahead and get in the pickup. Rusty had put the key on top of the right front tire. There was a cooler in the back and knowing Rusty it had some beer in it. He'd probably warm up dragging the deer. But what if he ran into somebody? What if he ran into some law-abiding son of a bitch who'd run right out to his truck and get on his CB radio and call a game warden? Maybe he needed to hide it here, get his rifle, get the dirt out of the barrel with a little stick if he could find one, go back to the truck, get the key, crank it up, get the heater going and get warm, look in the cooler and get a good cold beer, and then just sit in the truck and drink beer and wait on Rusty to come out of his stand. Take his boots off and rub his cold feet. Let his toes warm up. So that's what he did.

That night Jimmy's daddy placed thick-sliced steaks of a pale color over an almost perfect bed of coals, red showing within the gray-ashed briquets, small yellow flames lapping among them, Jimmy sitting quietly on the trailer steps watching him as he sprinkled the steaks with salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce, and then poked them gently with a fork. He knew not to cook them too long, to keep them naturally tender. He'd read a few deer-cooking recipes here and there. He sipped his beer, glad now that Jimmy hadn't seen the dead baby deer, just the parts of it that he'd brought home, one hindquarter and one shoulder, since the bullet had ruined the other hindquarter and Rusty had reluctantly accepted the other shoulder as a gift from Jimmy's daddy, sort of a hunter-sharing-the-spoils thing, saying that it was barely big enough to make a sandwich. They'd skinned it in the woods and chopped it apart with a little sharp hatchet Rusty kept in the truck, Rusty cussing
the whole time, and walked out with the three pieces under their coats. Took all the ice and beer out of the cooler and put the meat in the bottom and the ice and beer back on top of it, all the way to the top. Didn't see a game warden. Didn't even see a green truck. Didn't see a soul. Drove right on out with it.

Jimmy's daddy stood there and poked at the meat. There was very little grease dropping from the grill onto the charcoal. It just kind of sat there and sizzled dryly. But it was going to be good. It was also free.

The Marlin was broken. He hadn't noticed it when he'd first picked it up, but the lever had been at a halfway position, and now it wouldn't move at all and Rusty thought a part inside it must have gotten broken in the fall. But Rusty also knew a gunsmith who worked at Nationwide Gun Store in town and he thought this guy could probably fix it, he'd fixed one for Rusty once. So that was more money if he wanted to deer hunt anymore this year. Or shoot at some hogs.

Jimmy was sitting there on the porch steps holding a plate and watching his daddy cook. His daddy had told him to hold the plate until the meat got ready.

“How you doing there, Hot Rod?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I'm doing good,” Jimmy said. “That sure smells good, Daddy.”

“Shoot,” Jimmy's daddy said. “It
is
gonna be good. Why don't you get me another beer, Sport?”

“Okay,” Jimmy said. He put the plate down on the step and walked over to the cooler and reached in and got his daddy a fresh cold one. He handed it to him and his daddy handed him the empty. His daddy opened the fresh one while Jimmy went back to his seat and picked up the plate again and tossed the beer can into a garbage can.

“You think them taters is ready?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I stuck a fork all the way through em,” Jimmy said. “I believe they done.”

“Good,” Jimmy's daddy said. “It won't be long now.”

He stood there poking at the steaks a little more, and sipping his beer. “Johnette and them girls don't know what they missed, eating uptown,” Jimmy's daddy said.