Daddy hung his skinning rack on the mulberry tree during hunting season. Clipped to another branch close by, he kept a spotlight. On dark Sunday nights, he and my brother Steven returned from the hunting club to skin what they killed.
I watched from the darkness while Steven stood in the spotlight. With short strokes he shaved the hide from the hanging carcass. Gripping what he could in his fist, he leaned with all his weight and the freshly bared muscle steamed in the cold November air. It was slow work for a twelve-year-old, but when the blood trickled down his arms no one made a move to wipe it away.
“Pull,” Daddy said. “Just keep pulling.”
As the skin passed the shoulder, Dad pointed to the place where Steven’s bullet had hit. “A kill shot,” he said. From the hole, blood poured to the ground. The metallic smell of the deer’s insides hung low and there was no wind to blow it away.
The next morning, when the school bus came, I stood out beside the mailbox alone. Steven had stayed up late, so he didn’t have to go into school. I didn’t argue. It was a privilege he’d earned in blood.
That night, Mamma battered the tenderloin with flour and mustard then fried it in a cast-iron pan of grease. At the table, Dad recounted the stories of every deer he and Steven had ever killed. Steven butting in only to correct the story when Daddy got it wrong. I watched this dance between proud father and dutiful son. As the second born I knew I could cut in at any moment and ask to go along. But I didn’t want to kill anything. The story was all I ever wanted.
I was fifteen when I killed my first doe. A late bloomer by Alabama standards. It was a warm day in December and school had just let out for Christmas. Daddy set me up overlooking a clear cut surrounded by a thicket of five-year-old pines. “You’ll see some deer here,” it was a promise I was getting used to hearing.
Using a rusted tree stand, I inch-wormed my way twenty-five feet up. After I was set, I pulled my rifle up with a roll of string. Daddy waited at the foot of the tree staring up; hands in his pockets, with his blaze orange toboggan half-resting on his head. I gave him a thumbs up and he just stood there grinning. I threw up my hands, and whispered “what?” But I knew why he was smiling.
I was dressed in mismatched hand-me down camo holding a borrowed gun. I was a beginner in a family full of experts. I flung my hand, waving him off. Eventually, with slow steps, he started walking back the way we came.
It was our last hunt of the weekend and I had yet to see any deer. But I had fallen in love with the stillness. Leaning back against the tree, chin tilted down, my eyes were all that I allowed to move. With each passing minute, I sank deeper, till eventually I was no longer there, and the woods became alive.
Time was measured in shadows and each sound had an identity. Stretching my ears as far as they could hear, I put a name to what I heard.
Squirrel…acorn…armadillo…hoot owl.
The doe had walked to the middle of the clear cut before I noticed her. She was sixty yards from my tree stand. With shaking hands, I rested my rifle on the crossbar of the tree stand. I lined the cross hairs of my scope with her front shoulder. To the place my Dad had pointed to so many years before; the kill shot.
When I pulled the trigger, her body dropped where she’d stood but she didn’t die the way I had imagined. She laid on her side and kicked like a dog chasing a rabbit in his dream. Pumping out the last few seconds of her own life to end the pain.
A high ringing resonated in my ears and the feeling of butterflies in my belly bordered on nausea. I had betrayed the stillness. Hoping to find a little pride buried beneath my agony, I imagined the pop and sizzle of frying grease in our kitchen while Daddy told the story. No one thought I could do it. Finally, I had joined the dance. Then I saw her fawn step into the clear cut.
He walked slow, as if he were on his tiptoes. Pausing every few steps to sniff the air. Then, he called. I closed my eyes and prayed that when I opened them, he’d be gone. But he only got closer, inching forward until he was standing over her. Again, he called.
I pulled back the bolt of my rifle and sent the empty shell case flying. Then I pushed in a second round. But the fawn never lifted his head. He wasn’t scared of me. My guilt was no match for his grief. I clicked the safety on and aimed my muzzle towards the sky. Killing was the easy part. I came for the story. So, I sat there, watched and earned it.
