Buford took another sip of whiskey and turned the engine off. The truck continued to sputter and wheeze for another thirty seconds. As it was dying down Buford reached behind his head and grabbed his rifle from the rack in the back window. The gun was nothing special. Margaret, his wife, had given it to him as a gift upon his voluntary retirement from the paper mill eight years before. On that day Buford had joked that he would be killing all of their food from that day forward, but his hunting trips had yet to yield even a single meal.
Buford opened the door with a pained grunt. The metal door squeaked a weary complaint. His work boots, caked with eight years of mud and dirt, made a sound like crinkling cellophane as he stepped into the snow, which lay three inches deep on the ground. He slammed the door shut. The hollow noise died quickly in the still air.
As he walked, he stepped on candy wrappers that had fallen from the cab of his truck. Halloween had been two days ago, and Buford had been sneaking chocolate from the candy bowl in the front hallway whenever his wife wasn’t looking. She would have been angry at him, and so would his doctor. His cholesterol numbers hadn’t been nearly what his doctor would like to have seen at his last check-up, but a man can only take so many oatmeal breakfasts before he feels compelled to jam a few peanut butter cups in his face.
There had been very few trick-or-treaters that year. Each year seemed to be slower than the one before it, as it became more common for parents to take their children to chaperoned tours of local malls and schools than door-to-door. Buford missed the steady stream of children that the neighborhood had hosted on Halloween night in decades past. He loved all of their smiling faces, watching them grow a little bit each year, until finally they would be replaced by a fresh group of younger children. He loved their costumes as well, from the most intricate (which some parent had obviously slaved over for days) to the simple store bought suits which consisted of flimsy plastic masks and jumpsuits with the character name printed on the front. Those cheap ones made Buford smile the most. He liked that everyone, even the not so bright or creative, got to enjoy the night.
In the years after he graduated high school, Halloween had always a big night of partying, usually down at The Whistle with Tiny Bachmeier and Big Jim Berry from the paper mill. Each year they bet Buford that he couldn’t finish 20 shots, and each year they rolled him onto the pool table to sleep it off when they were proved right. He’d come to associate the day after Halloween with face burns from spending the night rubbing against rough felt. The nights that he was able to walk out of the bar under his own power he usually ended up taking some girl home. Rhonda Stickelman and Betty Berven were the easiest options, because they were always there and always ready, but at two in the morning it didn’t really matter who it was.
He had met Margaret that way. He never would have guessed that one night of drunken fumbling in the backseat of his Mercury would lead to thirty years of marriage, but it had. It was not been a marriage of necessity - Margaret had been adamant about the “no children” thing from the very beginning - it was a marriage of comfort. Both parties had decided that they were happy enough with each other and that they were weary of the prospect of making a life with anyone who might expect a bit more effort. It had been a terrifically relaxed thirty years.
Buford stepped heavily through the snow toward the harvested oat field on Dave Walsh’s property. The Walsh farm was just outside Cohasset, and only a short drive from Buford’s home. Beyond the field was a row of trees, the beginning of a thick patch of woods. Halfway into the woods was a tree stand that Walsh shared with Buford and a few of the other guys who had been lifers at the mill. Buford had come out here every day of deer season in the years since he’d taken his retirement. By this point it hardly seemed like Walsh’s land at all. Now the field and the woods served Buford far more often than their owner.
The tree stand had fallen into disrepair from exposure to the elements for the past twenty years. The boards reeked of mildew, and groaned with Buford’s weight as he climbed the ladder, which was only a series of wooden boards nailed at regular intervals up the side of the tree. When Buford reached the top he was winded from the climb so he sat down, leaning his back against the tree and letting his legs dangle limp in front of him. He took a long, slow sip from his flask and set his gun down at his side. He closed his eyes and listened to the far away sounds of birds calling to each other in the tree tops and field mice scuttling through the dead leaves on the ground below. Soothed by those noises, and his warm, whiskey-filled belly, he fell into a deep sleep.
Buford was startled out of his rest by the sound of a branch snapping. He raised up onto his knees and leaned against the railing of the stand, slipping on the fresh dusting of snow that had fallen during his nap. He looked down into the clearing below, expecting to see Walsh walking toward the tree to say hello, as he did infrequently. Instead, he saw a whitetail buck grazing quietly, oblivious to his presence.
Buford grabbed his rifle and brought it to his shoulder. He aimed through the scope and saw the deer in his cross-hairs. It was only a two-pointer. It looked starved and lean, and its ribs were clearly visible. Everyone Buford knew had commented how scrawny the deer looked this season. Heavy flooding during the summer had led to bad crops in the fall, which meant there was little for the deer to eat. In spite of its leanness, the deer Buford watched through his scope was clearly a powerful young animal.
The deer lifted its head and stared at Buford. Through the scope Buford could see its calm face clearly. The deer’s eyes were bright and clear hazel, and seemed to Buford to be almost human. The deer chewed calmly on the grass in its mouth and regarded Buford with no fear.
Buford held the deer’s gaze through the scope, then lowered the rifle slightly to look at the animal with his own eyes. Without the magnification of the scope the deer seemed fragile, the humanity Buford had sensed before was replaced with peculiarity. The deer’s twisting horns became demonic, its elegant neck became alien. And still, the deer’s gaze was steady. Buford’s hands began to shake.
A sharp report echoed through the clearing. The deer’s legs buckled and it let out a high squeal followed by a guttural moan. It was a long moment before Buford felt the hot barrel of his rifle in his hands and realized that he had fired a shot. The deer ran into the woods, jumping like a twitching marionette, shrieking as it ran into low hanging branches along the way.
Buford panicked. The shot was sloppy. The wound was low and far away from the heart. Death for the animal would only come after many long, painful hours. Buford shouldered his rifle and climbed down the makeshift staircase as fast as he could manage. The toe of his shoe scraped against a piece of rotted wood, which snapped. Buford fell backward, clawing at the air to grab the tree, hanging in the air just long enough to realize he was about to fall ten feet onto the ground. He slammed hard into the frozen dirt. His back and joints were rattled with pain. His vision went black for a moment and he struggled for breath. He crawled over to his rifle and felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder. He was pretty sure it was dislocated, but had no time to stop and tend to himself.
He thought of all the hits he’d taken playing football in high school on winter nights. Each tackle carried an extra sting in the cold, and sometimes it was a relief to stay at the bottom of the pile just for the warmth. His memories of those nights came so vivid that he was young for a moment, stout and hardy. Then the moment passed and he was an old fool again, lying on the ground in the woods.
It began to snow. Thick flakes filled his bushy eyebrows and covered the frames of his glasses. If he didn’t find the deer’s trail soon it would be covered. The pain he felt as he rose to his feet was incredible. He scanned the clearing, and found that he could still see scattered hoof prints. Buford followed the trail into the woods, holding onto his shoulder and limping as fast as he could. Beyond the clearing the woods were untended. Most of the trees were young, with thin trunks, but they had grown so close together that passing through them was like navigating a briar patch.
If Buford was a bad hunter, he was an even worse tracker. He had accompanied his father on many hunting trips in his childhood, but his father had always ended up disappointed in his dull-witted boy. Buford had always managed to lose the compass or the map, or to sneeze at just the wrong time, scaring away the animals. The ride home was usually a quiet one.
Buford struggled to keep the trail, finding torn branches and trampled leaves in a jittery but mostly straight line. Then he noticed a red patch of blood on the ground, brilliant against the white of the new-fallen snow. Buford ran to it, growing more nauseated as he approached. When he came to it he could see that it wasn’t just a patch of blood, but a piece of organ that had been torn out of the deer’s body. A quick glance around the area revealed the offending branch, still glittering with its bloody reward.
Buford followed the gruesome new trail deeper into the woods. The red patches became larger as he ran, until finally he found a large patch of entrails steaming in the snow. Overcome with guilt, he fell to his knees in front of the organs.
The wind buffeted his body and ran in circles around the trees, creating a guttural moan that made the woods sound as a living creature. Buford felt as if he was finally seeing the true face of these woods, and was amazed at how wild nature could be, still so close to his home. The snow fell faster, making it hard to see even the glowing pile of guts five feet from his face. Buford took a gasping breath of air and staggered to his feet. He strengthened his grip on his rifle and charged forward into the woods.
Soon Buford came to a thin, dry creek bed. Still running at full pace he tried to cross quickly. He stepped onto a rock and took an unbalanced jump toward the other side. His leap failed and he tripped forward. His rifle flew out of his hand and the butt of the gun slammed into the ground, firing a round straight into the air. Buford’s right hand was caught in the blast and burst like a water balloon, covering his face in blood and tendons.
Buford collapsed into the creek bed, howling incoherently. His glasses lay on the ground next to him and shattered. His entire body pulsated. He squirmed on the ground like a worm. He opened his mouth to scream again, but nothing came out. He curled into a ball, sank his head deep in the snow and waited to die. Falling flakes covered him.
As Buford lay on the ground he thought of the deer and he thought of his home. The wind died down and the air became still. The snow fell silently. The only sound was the ragged scrape of air filling his lungs and releasing. Buford closed his eyes. In between the wheezing he heard a clear and gentle sound cutting through the silence softly, like the wind chimes on a summer evening. He recognized the sound as water flowing over rock, and then he realized where the deer had gone.
Buford stood up. Waves of pain ran through his body, and stabbing electric needles pierced his joints. He picked up his broken glasses from the ground and put them on. As he took his first whimpering step forward he realized that he was fulfilling a promise that had been made the moment he’d charged off into the woods after the deer. The end had been implied in the beginning, and nothing else in his life mattered.
He tried to find the trail again, but the snow had covered it completely. He began to understand that that he would never see his home again, would never see Margaret or touch her face again, would never take another step that wasn’t in agonizing pain. He felt his body shutting down. He thought of the machines in the paper mill, and the way that you could tell, after decades of experience, which machines could be repaired and which ones needed to to be scrapped. His body was now just useless equipment.
The noise of the water became louder as he ran toward the edge of the woods. He emerged from the tree line and saw the deer. It had collapsed by the edge of a brook, its hind legs dangling in the water. It was still breathing, a horrible whistling sound that came from its muzzle. Buford ran toward it and fell, his legs giving out for what he knew was the last time. He hit the ground hard and crawled the last agonizing feet toward the dying creature.
Buford crawled next to the deer, and draped his wounded arm over its belly. The deer’s heart was exposed. Buford watched with fascination as it expanded and retracted, still fighting to pump blood. He looked into the animal’s eyes, searching for the spark of humanity he had witnessed earlier, but they were glassy and black. Whatever it is that gives a living creature its spirit was gone. Buford found himself wondering what his own eyes looked like.
Buford placed his hand over the cold, dry muzzle of the deer. The deer’s lips felt slimy in his hand and its tongue was rough as it reflexively flicked his palm. Buford grasped the muzzle tight and plugged the nostrils shut. The deer’s legs kicked in the air and its eyes made ghastly circles in their sockets, and then the animal was still.
Buford rolled onto his back and stared up into the winter sky. No scene from his life flashed before him this time. No memory came to hold him in comfort as he died, but he was satisfied. It was enough: the deer and the snow and the sky. He curled up against the deer like a puppy nesting with its litter mate and closed his eyes, and that was how they found him in the spring thaw.
Dedicated to Yvonne
