Jim watched as the deer came to within a hundred yards of him. His mouth grew dry and his breathing quickened as the creature continued toward him. His fingers nervously stroked the barrel of the Winchester and his right leg began to tremble involuntarily.
Seventy five yards, now fifty, the deer came closer. Soon he would be able to hit it with a stick. He slowly raised the rifle from his knees and lowered it gently down on the rock in front of him, resting it on his left hand as his right hand moved to the trigger. Stealing a quick glance to guide his shaking fingers he drew a deadly bead on the still unsuspecting quarry.
Can't miss at this distance, he thought, squinting down the rifle's sight at the animal's heart. This is what he had come for. This was the reason Robert had planned this trip. One moment in time, alone in the quiet Texas back country, just him and the deer, another rite of passage would soon be behind him. He would slowly pull the trigger and he would forever be a man.
*******
"When are they picking you up, Jimmy?" Allie yelled as Jim ran through the house into his room.
aytime now, Mother," he answered, barely audible from inside his closet. "Where's my sleeping bag?" He yelled. He was tossing things out into the room as he searched for the missing bag. "It was here the other day."
In the laundry", his mother said. "I washed it for you. Take some extra socks and clothes." She heard a car pull up in the driveway and the horn honking. It was Robert Cunningham; she knew his sound by now. Rich kid, with too much time on his hands, she thought to herself. Allie did not like her son's friend. He was so different from Jimmy, more irresponsible.
She couldn't understand why they had been friends for so long. That was Jimmy's choice. "Robert is here," she yelled.
"Damn!" She heard him say.
Watch your mouth, Jimmy, your sister is home."
Sorry, Mother", he said, still rummaging around in his closet for missing items. His sister Sarah, upon hearing her mother's admonition to her older brother immediately came into his room.
She was bright eyed and pretty, beautiful being a more appropriate adjective, with long brown hair like her mother. She was walking on her tiptoes. "Where are you going?" She asked.
"Hunting," he said, trying to ignore her.
"Hunting What?"
"Deer hunting."
"You're going to kill them", she said, matter-of-factly.
"If we're lucky, we are," he said.
She wrinkled up her nose and stared at the tip of it, causing her eyes to cross. "Why?" she asked.
"
Why what?"
"Why are you going to kill the deer? They don't hurt anyone." Her eyes remained crossed and she continued looking at the end of her nose.
"I don't know," he said, "we just do. Don't cross your eyes, they might stick like that."
“Emily Harper says that's just a myth. Eyes won't stay crossed like that. That's no answer, we just do. Why do you want to shoot a deer? They don't hurt anyone."
He stopped and looked at her. She was waiting for an answer. "Emily Harper doesn't know everything, you know," he said, as Robert started laying on the horn again. "Damn," he said. "I wish he'd stop that."
"Mother told you to stop cursing."
"I'm sorry," he said. Putting his arm around her, he kissed her on the top of her head. "Go get my sleeping bag for me will you?"
"Okay," she said, and skipped out of the room to retrieve the bag.
"Don't forget these," his mother said, handing him a large bag, as he entered the kitchen.
"What's this?"
"Apples, baking apples, you know, with cinnamon and sugar like I fix them for you."
"Oh, yeah, thanks Mother, the guys love these. I'll be back Sunday night. We're staying at Grandpa's tonight, don't worry about me."
"Be careful," she yelled, as he ran out the door.
Robert was holding the trunk open and Jim threw his things in and they both jumped into the car. Robert jammed the gearshift into reverse and the car squealed back out of the driveway then sped off down the street. "You got everything?" He asked.
"I hope so. I threw everything together as fast as I could. Where are we picking Bill up, at his job?”
“Yeah,” Robert said. “Dave Ingles is coming along too, if he shows up that is."
Robert swung the car into the drive-in where Bill McCarthy worked. They could see Bill through the window of the store cleaning up. Robert honked the horn to get his friend's attention and pointed to his watch. Bill held up all ten fingers indicating that he would be finished in ten minutes. He then pointed to the curb where Dave Ingles was sitting cross legged, looking down and dejected.
"Hey Dave," Robert yelled, motioning for him to come over. "Get in. Where's your stuff?"
"At home," he said. My old lady locked me out again. I'll have to climb in the window." Dave got into the back seat. "What did you bring to eat?"
"We haven't even left yet and he's hungry," Robert said.
“I brought some steaks and pork chops and Jim brought some stuff, and those apples his mom always makes."
"Good deal," Dave said, and slid down in the seat. Bill came out shortly. He was carrying his pack and rifle with him. Some heads turned to observe the boy walking across drive-in parking lot with the deer rifle in his hand.
"Old dead eye," Robert said. "Best shot in Texas."
"Hey guys, how's it going?" Bill said, as he climbed into the back seat. "Move your stilts, Dave," and Dave struggled to get his six feet, two inch frame out of the way.
At Dave's house, he instructed Robert to pull up quietly in the alley that ran behind the house. "I don't want old lady Morgan, next door, to see me," he said. He got out and went around to the side of the house and started prying open a window.
"What's going on?" Jim asked.
"Dave's mother is a clean freak," Robert said, "a real idiot, according to Dave. She keeps the house spotless. They don't even wear shoes in the house, and well, you know how Dave is." They both nodded. "She locks him out and won't give him a key. He's not allowed in the house unless she’s home or his sister’s home."
"What about his dad?" Jim asked.
"Gone," Robert said.
"Gone, you mean dead?"
"No, just gone, ran off with another woman. Can you blame him? Every time the poor guy farted Dave's mother would have the place fumigated."
Dave was coming out the back door with his things. He had strapped a brown leather holster, holding a 38' Special, around his waist.
"Dave was born a hundred years too late," Jim said.
"Really," the others agreed. "He couldn't hit the side of a barn," Robert said, "but he thinks he's a cowboy."
Dave neared the car, as a window opened up in the house next door and the wrinkled, angry face of the next door neighbor, Mrs. Morgan, appeared. Jim noted that the woman was still wearing curlers in her hair, at three-thirty in the afternoon.
"Dave," she yelled at him. "You know your mother don't allow you to go in that house when she's not there."
Dave did not look at her and she yelled again. He still did not look but he stuck up his middle finger at her, causing the woman to gasp loudly and close the window.
"Old bitch," he said, as he got back into the car.
Robert pressed down hard on the accelerator and the big Pontiac surged ahead to seventy-five, increasing speed as he held his foot to the floor. Jim watched from the passenger's seat as the speedometer reached eighty-five and then ninety and still Robert did not let off the gas. The car ate up the highway. The lines in the road rushed up, as if they were inspecting the vehicle, and then dashed madly under and behind it. An oncoming car met them just as the speedometer topped one hundred mph and the other driver, caught by surprise, veered off the road and skid to a stop in the bar ditch.
"He's okay," Robert said, looking in the rear view mirror.
"How do you know?" Jim said. "What if that guy calls the cops?"
"Are you serious? We could be in Mexico by the time he gets to a phone."
"What if he got your tag number?"
"We're doin' a hundred. That guy's lucky if he even saw what kind of car we're in."
"Maybe," Jim said, "but slow down; if you're going to kill us, at least wait until after the weekend when I bag my deer."
"C'mon Jim, you scared of a little speed?"
"I am when you're driving. You could kill us all, and the two sleeping beauties in the back would never even know what happened."
Robert was showing off again. Jim had seen the look of terror on his friend's face when they met the other car and knew that he was more afraid of his own driving than Jim was.
"Just slow this thing down. You've impressed me enough today."
"Okay, okay," Robert said, glad to have an excuse to slow down without losing face, "if you insist." He let off the gas and the car backed down to sixty.
Robert was a showoff, a braggart, and overbearing. He and Jim had been friends for six years and Jim still wasn't sure just why. They were so different, like night and day according to Allie Hargrove. Jim's mother did not like Robert and she didn't make any bones about it. His folks were good people, down to earth, she said, and Robert did not appreciate them. He was too loud and too arrogant, not at all like her son Jimmy. But Jim saw something in his friend that others did not see, some hidden quality, perhaps, he wasn't sure. Bill McCarthy hung around with him because Bill liked to hunt and Robert's dad was a hunter. The elder Cunningham always took Bill along on hunting trips. There seemed to be a common bond between them that was independent of Bill's friendship with Robert. Mister Cunningham described Bill McCarthy as "my cold eyed little killer."
At five feet six, Bill was shorter than the other boys but he deferred to no one. He handled a rifle like a marine and never flinched when it came time to pull the trigger. Even Jim Kemper, who was generally considered the leader of the group because of his level head and possession of wisdom beyond his age, held the dark eyed, sullen boy in the highest regards although they were never as close as he and Robert.
“Bill never gets close to anyone,” Robert had once told Jim. “He’s a loner. He likes my dad, ‘though,” Robert added.
Dave Ingles, on the other hand hung around with anyone who would tolerate him, and Robert had sort of taken him under his wing.
The Cunninghams were well off, quite well off, much more so than the Hargroves, although Jim's stepfather, Trenton, had provided a good living for his family. Robert's parents had been a local success story in Abilene, where Robert had spent the first ten years of his life. Inheriting half interest in an oil field service company from an uncle who had died, both elder Cunninghams had worked very hard. Robert's mother managed the office and his father ran the field operations and, together they built the business into a profitable concern. They eventually bought out the other stockholders and moved the company to Dallas because, as Mrs. Cunningham often explained, "nobody lives in Abilene, Texas if they have an option."
Jim did not know for sure just how much money Robert's family really had but it was rumored to be in the millions. A lot of money, he thought. He couldn't imagine having that much money. The Cunninghams had always been gracious to Jim. They were self made people and not the least bit pretentious. He had stayed at their house many times and it always seemed to Jim to be very pleasant. That changed only when Robert and his dad came together in the same room. It was then the tension mounted. There was an undertone of animosity between father and son, a deep conflict that neither allowed to surface completely. It disturbed the otherwise congenial atmosphere of the Cunningham home.
**********
"I was just blowing out the engine a little," Robert was saying. "My old man never gets it over fifty."
"What, what's that?" Jim had lost his train of thought and suddenly realized that Robert had not stopped talking the entire time that he had been thinking.
"He drives worse than my mother," Robert added.
"No he doesn't," Jim said. "I've ridden with your mother. Nobody drives worse than your mother. Good cook, bad driver."
Robert laughed out loud. "Right you are," he said, amused that one of his friends would make such an affable remark about one of his parents. His friends all liked Robert’s folks. This was a source of amusement as well as irritation to him. He thought his parents were not much more than a nuisance, an ever present intrusion into his daily life. "We're coming into Comanche now," he told Jim, "how do I get to your grandfather's place?"
"Turn right at the square, that’s Austin Street, then to Wright, w-r-i-g-h-t, not right," he said, holding up his right hand, "then left to Mt. Pleasant Church road, I'll show you where to turn."
The others were waking up now and stirring around in the back. "Where are we?" Dave asked.
"Comanche," Robert said. "We're spending the night at the Kemper farm."
Dave was stretching and rubbing his eyes trying to wake up. "Well E-I, fuckin’ Oh!" He said.
"Watch it, dipshit," Robert said, seeing the look in Jim's eye. "Kemper will kick your ass for making fun of his family."
"I'm sorry", Dave said. "I was just kidding."
"Nothin' more important to Kemper than family," Robert said ominously.
Jim's grandmother had prepared a feast for the boys. Dave's eyes almost popped out of his head when he looked over the table that was completely covered with ham and pork chops and mashed potatoes, corn, squash, and okra. Through the steam rising off the table he could see two pies cooling on the stove.
"I never saw so much food," he said, "not for just one meal."
"It's a special occasion," Mary Kemper said, her plumpish frame moved quickly around the table as she tended to the boy's needs. "It's not often Jimmy brings his friends home to see us."
Robert held up his clean, empty plate for Mary to see. "Didn't care for it, Mrs. K.” He said.
I can see you didn't, Robert, maybe the second plate will be better."
Robert laughed as he spooned a second helping of mashed potatoes.
"Slow down, Dave," Bill said; "you're eating like a convict."
"Now leave him alone," Mary said. "I like to see a hungry man eat all he wants." Dave looked up and smiled at her, then went back to eating.
After dark the boys set up camp in the south woods and built a fire. Alton Kemper joined them later and, to his grandson's delight, made a big hit with the other boys. He told them stories about the old days and bits and pieces of Texas history. "There was a time," he said, "when it took a tough and tenacious people to settle this land we're sitting in right now. This country can be as harsh as it is beautiful. The weather was the biggest problem they faced, I suppose, then the snakes and other dangerous critters. And if that wasn't enough to give a man heartburn then he had to fight the damned Indians."
"I'm an Indian fighter," Dave said. "I mean I would have been an Indian fighter if I'd lived back then. I should have lived in the old west.
"You'd have been the first one shot," Robert said.
"That's right," Bill agreed. "It wasn't fun and games. It wasn't like in the movies, and you're not John Wayne."
"Indians weren't pushovers," Alton said. "They were tough alright but they weren't the noble savages that people say they were either."
“Wasn't an Indian's word his bond, Mister Kemper?" Robert asked. "I heard that an Indian could be trusted if he gave his word."
"He could as long as you kept a Colt 45 to his head. But then that's how it is with most people, I think."
Robert said he would have wanted no part of the old west. "They didn't have cars," he explained. "I couldn't live without a car. Bill here would have been right at home back then; he could have been a buffalo hunter. Jim too, Jim's as tough as they come, but I don't know about Dave. I think Dave would have been with Custer."
"Those good old days, Alton said, "were never as good as people like to believe. They are just inventions of old men's memories. It was a hard life back then. The only thing good about the old days was that I was young then. When I was eighteen, like you boys are now, I had my life in front of me. As a man gets older he runs out of future so he starts looking back. People around here like to fancy themselves as pioneers, but it's not so. They sit in their air conditioned houses and watch television and pretend they are in kinship with the early settlers. We even have Old Settlers Day every year, but the old settlers are long gone."
"You sound like my dad," Bill said. "He says people now days are soft."
"Most are," Alton agreed "But it's not their fault so much as it is that life has just changed so much. Things are easier now and that's not necessarily bad, not really. People don't change though. People never change. There are good folks and there are bad wherever you go. If you're smart and watch people close enough, you can pick out the good ones from the bad.”
When he had left for the night, Jim showed the others the Winchester 30/30 that Alton had given him. It was a magic gun according to Jim. He had seen his grandfather shoot a chicken hawk out of mid-air with it from at least a hundred yards away.
"No scope,” he said, "Grandpa never uses a scope. He's just like Bill."
Jim was still amazed at that marvelous shot. He told them the story. The hawk was perched on a telephone pole and flew off just as Alton took aim. Jim remembered wincing and closing his eyes, thinking that the shot was surely lost then he heard the crack of the 30/30 and looked up just in time to see the hawk fall out of the sky and crash to Earth.
"Lucky shot," his grandfather said, but Jim knew better.
"I never saw anybody shoot a bird in mid-air with a rifle," Dave said, a look of disbelief on his face.
"It could be done," Bill said. "If you had a bead on him before he flew and tracked him just right it wouldn't be too hard a shot. It's just hand eye coordination, that's all it is."
"Yeah," Robert spoke up, "and what do you know anyway, Dave? You couldn't hit a chicken, much less a chicken hawk."
They pitched two tents. Bill and Dave slept in one and Jim and Robert in the other.
“Can I ask you a question?” Robert said, just as Jim was about to drop off to sleep. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Your Grandmother said that you didn’t bring friends home very often.”
“I don’t very often,” Jim said “It’s kind of out of the way and you guys are always playing baseball or chasing girls.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. She called this your home. You’ve always lived in Arlington, as long as I’ve known you, but she called this your home.”
“This is my home,” Jim said. Arlington is where I live but this farm is my home. I couldn’t have asked for a better stepfather than Trenton Hargrove but my grandparents are my home. Where ever they are, that’s where my home is.”
When Allie Kemper remarried she made her father-in-law a promise that she would never take his grandson away from him. Allie Hargrove had kept that promise. Jim spent many weekends and
every summer at the farm. It was the reason he had never gotten involved in after school activities. Although his stepfather had encouraged him to play baseball Jim did not do so, preferring to keep his free time free so he could spend it with his grandfather.
The next morning before dawn the boys were awakened by the clanging of cow bells. Jim could hear the shuffling of many hooves near the tent. Robert sat up with a start. "What was that?" He yelled, poking his head quickly out of the tent flap.
"My grandfather's cows," Jim said. "Relax, they won't hurt you."
"What do they want?"
"Nothing," he said, chuckling; "they don’t want anything, they're just nosy. Cows are very curious creatures."
"There's someone out here." Robert said.
In the pre-dawn light Jim could make out the lanky form of Alton's right hand man. "It's Danny Carlisle. He works for my grandfather. Hello Danny."
"Mornin', Jim, Mary said to tell you boys that she'd have breakfast ready in about a half hour."
The mention of breakfast was sufficient to roust the boys out of their beds and get them heading toward the house.
"This is good, Mrs. K." Robert said, "What is it?"
"It's sugar syrup, Robert. I make it by boiling sugar in water until it thickens. It's cheap molasses. Do you like it?"
"Yes Ma'am," he said, "everything is good."
"Where did you say you were going hunting?" Alton asked Robert.
"My father has an oil lease south of Abilene. We hunt on the lease. That is, we go and blow holes in nature's woodland creatures."
Alton studied the boy for a moment. "You don't like to hunt?"
"Oh, sure Mister Kemper, my old man has been taking me hunting since I was a kid. My brother Randy is the real killer in the family, 'though. Randy shot his first deer when he was twelve. We still have the head hanging on the wall at home. My dad is real proud of Randy because he went to West Point. Now he's a captain in the regular Army."
"Well, hunting isn't much of a sport," Alton said, "at least not for the animals. But if you don't do it for fun, I mean if a man hunts for food then there is nothing wrong with it. A man shouldn't kill just to prove he can kill something. I don't think that's right."
"Bill always gets a deer but he doesn't kill for the trophy. He takes the deer home and his dad makes sausage and stuff out of it."
"That's good," Alton said, nodding at him. "That's the way it should be. That's why God created them, for man's food, not to be killed for sport."
They all nodded agreement, except for Dave. He was busy reaching for another biscuit.
After breakfast, they broke camp and loaded the car. Each boy thanked the Kempers for their hospitality. Jim waited until the others were in the car and then talked with his grandfather. "I appreciate everything, Grandpa. I hope we weren't any trouble."
"Of course not, Jimmy," Alton said. "Your friends are always welcome here, you know that."
"They get a little loud and unruly sometimes, Robert more so than the others. Mother doesn't like him. She thinks I shouldn't hang around with him so much."
"They're good boys, especially Robert." Alton said. "He's got a good heart. You can see it in his eyes. He's troubled, that's for sure, but underneath all the bullshit, I believe he's got a good heart. Your mother can't read people the way we Kemper men can."
"Thanks Grandpa", Jim said, and hugged Alton. "I'll see you soon."
**********
"Ten more miles," Robert announced, "ten more miles to the campsite."
"Good", Dave said, "but I gotta’ go to the bathroom before we set up camp."
"I hate to tell you this, Dave, but there are no bathrooms out here. You'll have to wait 'till we get home, and when did you ever help setting up camp. Move your ugly head, I can't see in the mirror."
"This whole country is one big bathroom. What do you mean I don't help set up camp? I always help, and since when do you look in the rear view mirror. You don't watch what's in front of you, much less what's in back."
"He's got you there," Jim said, giving Dave a thumbs up, and they all laughed.
Robert eased off the gas as the car approached a gravel road that was guarded by a metal gate. "Somebody get the gate." He said.
Jim and Dave jumped out and opened the gate and waited as Robert drove through, then closed it and got back in. Robert jammed his foot down on the gas and the big car fishtailed down the road throwing up a cloud of dust and gravel as it went.
The campsite was just a clearing in a mesquite thicket, but it was a good campsite, with a permanent fire pit. A circle of logs had been placed around the outer perimeter of the camp, to define it, and another around the fire pit itself for people to sit on. The Cunninghams came here often, and Bill with them, so the camp had a well used look about it. Several spots had been cleared of rocks and leveled with sand for tent pads.
Dave went to the car and retrieved his '38 Special and strapped it around his waist. "I'm goin' to kill something," he said, and walked off a short ways from the others and started blasting away at some imaginary foe.
"Don't shoot in that direction," Robert yelled at him, pointing toward the area where the lease operator's house was located. "Old man Nichols won't appreciate you shooting holes in his house or killing his sheep. He hates kids anyway so try not to be so barbaric."
Dave looked dumbfounded, not understanding the need for restraint in all this open country, but nevertheless, as always, he complied with Robert's order and turned and started firing in another direction.
"Who put all this wood here?" Jim asked, pointing to a neatly stacked pile by the fire pit. There was at least a full cord of wood. Some smaller logs had been chopped into kindling and it was stacked next to the larger pile.
"Old man Nichols did that," Robert said. "He always fixes things up before we come."
"I thought you said he didn't like kids."
"He doesn't, but he likes my dad. They go way back."
Jim suggested they go and thank the man, grateful that they would not have to gather firewood.
"I already did", Robert said. "I called him before we came."
Dave had tired of his game and was returning to camp. The others had pitched the tents and had a roaring fire going. He backed up to the fire and warmed himself as his friends busied themselves with other campsite duties.
"It's gettin' colder," he said. "This fire feels good."
"It won't feel so good when you catch your pants on fire," Bill told him, seeing Dave's backside smoking.
"Ow!" He yelled as the heat reached his skin. "I'm on fire." He slapped at his rear end in an effort to relieve the pain, as the others rolled with laughter, but that did not help so he finally just took off his pants and stood there in the cold rubbing the affected area until it had cooled sufficiently.
"There goes your fire safety merit badge, Dave," Robert said. "Put your pants on before you freeze."
Dave found his pants and felt the seat to be sure it was safe to put them on again and then sheepishly complied. "What's for supper?" He asked. "I'm starved."
"What's new?” Bill said.
Robert was pulling stuff out of the cooler. "We've got steaks, pork chops, and some baked potatoes, and Jim brought some chicken and those famous apples his mom makes. They placed all the food, wrapped in tin foil, down into the coals and let the meat stew in its own juice. The apples that Jim's mother had learned to prepare from Mary Kemper were always a big hit. The apples were first cored and then packed with cinnamon and sugar and butter. Baked in coals from a campfire, and eaten out in the cold country air, the taste had no equal.
The four boys ate ravenously, with their hands, "like field hands," Jim said. Bill said he hadn't realized how hungry he was until he started eating.
"Yeah, me too," Dave said. "Why is that?"
"Just one of those things, I guess."
Robert raised his hand authoritatively. "Your stomach is inactive and all the gastric juices just lie there dormant until you put in some food and once they go to work they don't know when to quit."
"Well, there you go," Bill said. "Professor Cunningham has cleared that up. Thank you, Professor Cunningham. Thank the professor, Dave."
"Why? He just made that shit up."
"It sounded good, didn't it?”
Dave started tossing bones over his shoulder and Robert yelled at him.
"Pick up your scraps, Dave. How many times do I have to tell you? Don't throw food around the campsite. It'll attract animals."
"Animals got to eat too, don't they," he replied.
"Okay, leave 'em there but after we turn in I'm going to pick up all your scraps and put them around your tent so the coyotes won't have too much trouble finding them when they come around tonight."
"Oh," Dave said. He understood that, and went off to pick up the leftover food scraps for proper disposal.
The sun was sinking slowly behind a line of low hills, finger-shaped hills that were called mountains although they were far from being mountains, not real mountains like in Colorado. They were more like rounded mesas dotted with scrub brush and mesquite trees. Night fell quickly as the sun disappeared completely in the west.
Jim left the others talking and wandered off away from the camp until he was out of earshot. This was beautiful country; he’d always thought so. It was harsh country, as his grandfather had said, and unforgiving to the unprepared; but exciting and even fulfilling to those who gave it the proper respect. The sky was endlessly deep, a dark blue, almost black, and the stars were brighter than he had ever seen them. He spotted two constellations, one of the dippers, he wasn't sure if it was the big one or the little one, and another but he couldn't remember its name. Closing his eyes, Jim listened intently to the sounds of the night. The wind, the gentle searching wind that rarely stopped blowing sifted through the mesquite thicket, caressing each limb and spine, in a lover's embrace, and sang an eerie song of seduction that numbed the senses. He felt that he understood now how a man could become one with the land, how a man could love the land so much. He had felt this many times on his grandfather's farm but never like this. He had never seen the night like this before.
The rhythmic, metallic heartbeat of a pump-jack somewhere out in the dark captured his attention and he listened a while longer. This was the real heartbeat of the land, the oil pump. The oil pump was the heartbeat of Texas. It had made Texas wealthy and arrogant. It had made Robert's family rich as well and brought a better standard of living to most people in the state but it had also left a legacy that Jim was not sure was worth the affluence it had offered. The pumps scarred the landscape, making it ugly and foreboding. "Dollar Bills", Robert called them. “They're not pumping oil, they're pumping dollar bills." True enough, Jim agreed, but those dollar bills always seemed to go into someone else's pocket.
The yelp of a coyote not too far away disturbed his thoughts. Jim remembered that he had not brought a weapon with him. He also remembered that his grandfather had once told him that it was much easier to be one with the land if you kept a rifle at your side. He hoped he would not have to confront a coyote this far away from camp.
He heard gunfire coming from the direction of the campsite. "Dave," he thought. The others must have heard the coyote and Dave had opened up on him. It was time to head back.
**********
The sun was just beginning to intrude through the tent flap when Jim awoke to the sound of a rifle shot. The single report, perhaps a half a mile off, told him that Bill McCarthy was at work playing his deadly game. Robert was still asleep and Jim kicked his friend's foot to awaken him. "Robert, get up," he yelled. "The others are in the field already, let's go."
"Go ahead," Robert mumbled, barely audible. "I'd rather sleep. They don't need my help killing critters." And he buried his head in his pillow.
Jim had not heard. He stopped long enough to get his rifle and was headed in the direction of the gunfire.
Not far from camp he found Bill and Dave squatting beside a huge deer that was lying lifeless on the rocks of the little stream where it had come to drink. It was shot cleanly through the heart. The two boys were studying the kill. Bill as usual remained serious while Dave was beaming like a Cheshire cat, as if he had shot the deer himself. He spotted Jim and waved. "Look at my deer," he yelled.
"You shot him? I don't believe it," Jim said.
"Nah, Bill did it. I was just foolin' around. I never saw anything like it. He never misses. Nothin' is safe in the woods with this guy. He was five hundred yards away."
"Five hundred yards, come on," Jim said, looking at Bill who was shaking his head.
"It wasn't that far," he said. "It was an easy shot.”
"For you maybe," Dave said. "Nobody I know can shoot like that."
Jim looked at the deer, once a magnificent animal; its tongue protruded from the side of its mouth and the teeth were clenched down hard on it. Eyes that only a few moments before had warily searched for sign of danger were now dull and blank and searched for nothing. Life blood flowed out of the wound and ran in little rivulets across the rocks and mixed with water in the stream.
"Poor creature," Jim thought. "He'd had the chance misfortune of wandering into the flawless sights of young William McCarthy, sharpshooter nonpareil in these parts; a cold eyed little killer, as Robert's dad had so admiringly referred to him, with adoration, and a national treasure if the country ever went to war again.
"Help us string him up, Jim, so I can field dress him," Bill said. Jim helped them drag the deer to a tree that would support the weight then he and Dave lifted the animal up while Bill secured the rope to the hind legs. Then Bill went to work immediately with his knife. He had been so confident of his own abilities that he had brought all the equipment needed to perform this task.
Jim noticed that he had forgotten to bring his own field dress kit. "I'm going upstream to look for another one," he said, not wanting to watch the butchering. "If you hear shooting, come and help me out."
They said they would and he left them to their business. "Heck of a pair," he thought, pondering the strange relationship between the two, Dave Ingles, of whom it was said could not tell the truth with a gun to his head, and Bill, who would not lie even at the risk of hurting someone's feelings. Yet they seemed to be good friends, strange pair indeed, Jim thought.
About three miles upstream, Jim decided to stop and rest for a while. He sat down behind a large rock and rested his rifle across his knees and waited quietly for about fifteen or twenty minutes. He was thinking about heading back to camp and had started to get to his feet when a faint noise somewhere up ahead caught his attention. It sounded like an animal moving slowly through the brush. He cupped his hand behind his ear trying to make out where it was coming from. The sound grew louder as some unknown creature, moving through the brush, came closer.
Jim eased farther down behind the rock, and listened intently, with nervous excitement, fighting with his own emotions to remain calm. Then he saw the deer. Taking slow deliberate aim he drew on the trigger, ever so slightly, a little more, then still a little more. His hand began to shake and he loosened his grip momentarily then drew up again. Again his hand betrayed him and then his leg started shaking involuntarily. It seemed as if he were losing complete control of his whole body. He struggled to be still.
The deer lifted its head, seemingly unconcerned, and stared directly into Jim's eyes. Animal and boy remained transfixed on each other for what seemed to Jim an eternity. He felt as if the big brown eyes were looking into his very soul, and then they were suddenly frozen by the terror of impending doom. Still they stared at him, almost pleadingly, as if unable to turn away.
"A deer can't think like a man," Jim thought. "It can't look a man in the eye and beg for its life. They just don't do that. It's just an animal." He lowered the rifle and continued looking into the eyes of the creature he had been so intent on killing. If he could just stay calm the deer would not run away. He could still do this. Quickly he raised the weapon again and tried to pull the trigger but his finger would not obey the ambiguous signals his brain was sending.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't shoot the deer. "Grandpa was right," he said out loud. Kill only out of necessity and only when absolutely unavoidable.
As if suddenly aware that he had been given a reprieve the deer bolted and turned in mid air and was gone as quickly as if he'd never been there. Jim sat there limp, not sure how he felt about what had just happened. He heard his trophy crashing through the brush, now well out of harm's way, back in its own domain. He had heard about people getting buck fever. They said it happened all the time but he never thought it would happen to him. He took some comfort in knowing that, at least the others wouldn't know. He could just say he never saw a deer. It was a small lie. Grandpa wouldn't approve but Grandpa didn't have to face Jim's three friends and tell them he had failed at something that they seemed to take for granted. He guessed he could live with such a small bit of deception. He got to his feet and started to turn when he noticed some movement out of the corner of his eye.
"You okay, Jim?" It was Robert. He was standing there watching him. He must have gotten out of bed after all and had followed along after. He had seen everything, surely. Jim tried to speak but his mouth was dry and no words would come out.
"I must have scared him off," Robert said, "I'm so clumsy. I'm sorry man."
Jim finally found his voice and said. "You didn't scare him off, Robert, I did. I couldn't shoot him."
Robert's face took on the look of one much older and wiser than his eighteen years and he spoke to Jim as one would speak to a younger brother.
"Listen Jim, I know you think that most of what I say is hog wash and I don't take things serious enough but I'm telling you straight now. Killing something just to be doing it is nothing to be proud of and not being able to kill is nothing to be ashamed of. I never wanted to kill a deer. My old man made me do it. I shot one in the face so he couldn't hang another trophy on the wall. I didn't want to walk in every day and see a deer head, my deer head, hanging in the den next to the one my brother Randy shot. He never took me hunting again after that."
Jim had never seen this side of his friend. Underneath all the posturing and bragging, when his defenses were down, Robert was a different person. There were feelings and compassion in him that Jim had never imagined existed.
"Why didn't you just refuse to shoot them?” Jim could simply not visualize his grandfather, or his stepfather ever faulting him for failing to do something. They just weren't like that. "Why didn't you just tell him you didn't want to hunt? If he insisted then you could have shot high or wide or something like that."
"He knew if I missed it would be on purpose and he would not allow that. My old man could never accept that one of his sons could not pull the trigger on a deer, or anything else for that matter. That would show weakness and he could not tolerate weakness, he's a self made man, you know, so I shot him in the face to make sure he didn't have it mounted. It was easier that way, not for the deer of course, but for me it was. I know it wasn't right. I guess you could say it was a lack of personal fortitude on my part I just didn't have the balls to tell him no. Mind you now, I don't have a problem with others who hunt for sport, that's their decision to make, and if I had to kill an animal to feed my family then I'd do it, but I just can't do it for fun."
"I understand," Jim said. "I guess I'm the same way. I didn't know it until today but I guess I feel the same way.”
A sad look came over Robert's face momentarily, a look Jim had never seen before, and then in an instant it was gone and the old Robert had returned. He squared himself and adopted his usual demeanor. "I don't think we need to share this moment of soul searching with the unrefined, old buddy, if you know what I mean. We don't want to destroy any images today."
"Thank you," Jim said, "thank you Robert." They shook hands. Jim didn't know why they shook hands, it just seemed appropriate, like sealing their new relationship, he guessed. Now he reckoned he knew what the glue was that had held their friendship together all these years.
He would take home a trophy today but it would not be one to hang on the wall. It would be a trophy that he would keep in his memory and in his heart for the rest of his life.
Back in camp, Robert relived the incident for the others, telling and lamenting about how he had stumbled upon the scene and ruined Jim's shot for him. Jim, he said, had exercised tremendous self control by not shooting at the fleeing deer, perhaps wounding it and leaving it to crawl off and die in agony.
Jim listened quietly, saying nothing, now more concerned about Robert's lying than he was about what Bill's and Dave's reaction would have been to his inability to shoot the deer. The old Robert had indeed returned. That night as the car roared down the highway, with Bill McCarthy's deer tied to the fender, Jim sat in the passenger’s seat and smiled to himself about the day's events.
Some years later, when things that take place in the life of an eighteen year old boy tend to lose their perceived gravity, Jim would tell the others what had really happened on that fateful hunting trip. They would laugh, and he would laugh too, and he would discover that their friendship was not at all diminished by the revelation. Even more so, he would not forget the friend who had so zealously guarded his feelings and his boyhood honor.
Robert pressed down on the accelerator and the fence posts beside the road shot by with ever increasing speed. Jim folded his jacket and placed it between his head and the car window to keep the vibration from making his nose itch and he drifted off to sleep.
