By Rachel Hall

He didn’t want to miss any of it, but he must’ve dozed off because the drive is a blur—He remembers waking in the dark and cold, the big breakfast his mother made them, his egg yolks garish in the kitchen’s fluorescent light. The bacon sizzling on the stove. The slow tick of the kitchen clock over the sink: 4:00 a.m.

“Eat up,” his father had said. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

His mother was silent at the stove, her ample backside made wider by the apron over her velour robe. She’d go back to bed after they left and do this all over again when his younger brothers and sister woke later. Remembering, he feels a pinch of something for his mother—guilt or longing as if he’s leaving her for a long time—neither of which he will mention to his father, who dislikes conversation especially when he’s driving. Beside him, his father is smoking Pall Malls and taking wary sips from the thermos of hot coffee while he drives. The radio in the old truck goes in and out of service.

Then they are there, pulling into the gravel lot where his uncles and older cousins are waiting, stamping their feet against the cold and drinking from thermoses and flasks—to stay warm, they say, laughing. All of them are in camouflage parkas and pants, blaze orange vests or hats like Lesley and his father.

The uncles pat him on the back in welcome. “Today your big day, Les?” Uncle Mac asks.

“Yup,” he says. “I’m ready.”

His mother dislikes this shortened version of his name, but she’s not here to say anything. Lesley was her father’s name, she likes to remind him, a good solid name even if girls are called it more often than not these days. He’s a dark-haired boy, freckled like his mother’s side of the family and narrow-shouldered. All the men, and even his cousins, seem more solid and substantial. He tucks his gloved hands into his pockets, listens to the men talk about the Bills, business, the boon of this extended hunting season.

They’ve met here on old family land that abuts a land conservancy. Once it was orchards and some of the old trees still produce fruit—pocked, lumpen apples that even the deer don’t care for much. The old farmhouse, its siding chapped grey, has been abandoned for years; it’s crumbled in on itself as if it’s being swallowed back up by the earth, season by season, bit by bit. In one window, there’s a scrap of lacey curtain behind the dusty glass. Seeing it now, Lesley thinks of home, his mother and siblings sleeping, the cozy warmth of his own bed. Even with all his layers, he’s cold.

Eventually, the men splinter apart into pairs, a couple groups of three. Les follows his father into the field. The snow is undisturbed here except for fallen branches and animal tracks. The gun Lesley carries, a twelve-gauge, was his Christmas present this year.

“Keep an eye out,” his father says as they enter the woods. It’s a bit of a walk to the tree stand that Lesley helped build over the summer. It’s like a tree fort, really, and while he and his father built it, he had to keep reminding himself what it was for, not games with his brothers. This was serious business. No trap doors or secret compartments. In the summer, it’s lush and green here, the sun through the old trees dappling the ferns and the dark, loamy soil. There are lizards near the creek and velvety moss-covered rocks, wild flowers they pick for their mother.

Now, it’s uniformly white and grey, but Lesley knows what to look for: markings on the trees where the bucks rub their antlers to stake out their territory, the piles of droppings, tufts of fur. He likes knowing these things in the same way he likes knowing the flowers they pick here are asters and bird’s foot trefoil, Indian paintbrush.

Once they climb the stand and settle in, the sky has turned pearly. Every sound seems promising at first, but then Lesley determines that one noise is a woodpecker at work on a nearby maple. The wind keeps knocking about a broken branch. Dried leaves rustle above; others skitter across the snow. It’s cold, especially when the wind picks up. Lesley doesn’t say anything. He’s hungry but won’t ask about the bologna sandwiches. This, like so much with his father, is a test. He is being tested. If he fails, then what? To be here at all, he had to pass the hunter safety course with 100% and earn money for and purchase his own blaze orange vest. This is what his father calls commitment. He says things like “anything worth doing is worth doing right,” and “There are no short cuts, son.”

Time creeps. His stomach growls.

“I’ll be back,” his father says.

Lesley figures he’s going to smoke, though mostly he tries not to since it can alert deer to their presence. But he can only go so long without a cigarette and then he’s snappish. As far as Lesley knows, this is his father’s one weakness. He takes a swig from the thermos. The coffee is bitter and only lukewarm now. He doesn’t understand the appeal. He’s screwing the cap back on when he hears something: footsteps. Not twenty feet away is a doe, her tail up, twitching in alarm. His father’s movements must have rustled her out of her nest.

Lesley knows he needs to move quickly. He raises his gun, aims for the lungs. He doesn’t hesitate. The sound of the slug leaving his shotgun is loud—a thunderclap—in the quiet of the woods. His chest and arm smarts. In his gun safety class, much has been made of the recoil. He’d  worried that he’d stagger from it, see stars swirling, then stumble like the coyote in that Saturday morning cartoon. But it’s the deer who staggers and crumples into the snow, sudden and ungainly, her neck thrown back.

He clambers down to her, the snow crunching beneath him. Even though her fall was awkward and ugly, she’s beautiful curled in the snow, her long white neck arched as if reaching for fruit from a tree. He wants to stroke the smooth expanse of her neck, as if doing so could wake her. Get up, he thinks, get up! Go! What has he expected? Her winter coat is velvety except where the slug has entered, in exactly the spot where he’s been taught to aim. There, blood oozes, bright red and puddles darkly beneath her. He looks away but not fast enough, and then he’s retching into the snow, emptying his gut: the stale coffee, his breakfast. His eyes blur and water. He knows all the words for what he is: pussy, wimp, wuss, weakling, coward, namby-pamby, chicken shit. What happens to a boy like this? At least his father hasn’t seen him sick. He uses handfuls of snow to wipe his face. He kicks more snow over his vomit, covers all evidence.

Lesley knows about field dressing, of course he does. He knows about dragging the deer out after. They have a special tarp and rope for that. Later, they will hang her from the barn rafters to drain. But he hasn’t considered this: the doe’s big glassy eyes, her long legs splayed, the terrible loneliness. The wind pummels his ears.

“Goddamnit, son!” his father says, jogging over to where he stands. His breath is ragged from the cold and his cigarettes. “You did it.”

His words echo in Lesley’s mind: you did it, you, you, you.

Later, his uncles thump his back in congratulations. His cousins say “beginner’s luck,” but they don’t seem to hold it against him. They even sneak him their flasks. The alcohol burns his throat, but it’s worth it for the camaraderie, for the way the whiskey blurs the hard edges of his thoughts, makes the present moment bigger, absorbing.

There will be years of drinking in search of this feeling. In that time, he will wrap the family truck around a tree and come away unscathed; he will wake in places he doesn’t remember going, in the beds of women whose names he can’t recall, on gritty, scuffed floors, or with his faced pressed against nubby carpet reeking of beer. He will be a great drinker, the best; he will be the guy insisting on a nightcap, on one more round, on one for the road. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. In those years, his father will often be furious with him, disappointed, but that had seemed inevitable.

The burn of the booze going down and the gun’s kick through his body after shooting are intertwined for him. It will take years to unknit these from each other. And in that time, his father will die of lung cancer, Lesley will marry and divorce, and eventually, with difficulty, get sober. When the hard edges of things return and nag at him, his sponsor will encourage him to get outdoors. This, she says, has helped her. She suggests kayaking in one of the nearby lakes, but Lesley knows where he wants to go.

***

It’s a bright day, and the snow sparkles in the light. The family land has been divided amongst his generation, though only one cousin has sold his share. There’s new construction going on there, in the lot closest to the road, clearly interrupted by the snow. Two sides of a structure are up. A house? A barn? He can’t tell from this distance. Bright blue tarps ripple and snap in the wind. The camera around his neck, a Nikon he’s bought used, sways against his chest as he walks.

As Les heads to the tree stand, he sees that the old farmhouse is gone except for its stone foundation. The orchard closest to the farmhouse is overgrown with brush, but he can still see the rows of trees some long-ago ancestor planted with diligence and optimism. Despite the snow, the apple trees have held onto some of their leaves. He takes a shot of the dark branches coated with snow, another of the snow beading on the browned leaves. He can’t see any of the apples; if the trees still produce, the fruit is buried under snow. He wears his father’s old orange vest, and like the house where his mother lives alone now, it smells of his father’s cigarettes. Hard to believe he’s been gone more than ten years.

At the base of the tree stand, Lesley climbs the planks he once nailed in, testing each before putting his full weight on it. His camera knocks against his chest as he climbs. At the top of the ladder, he slides himself over. He can see that someone—a cousin, probably—has replaced some floor boards, fortified the railing. He stands then, looking towards the lake. He can’t see it through the trees, but he knows it’s there. He knows there are glacial moraines, deep glens that cut through shale and siltstone, and further north, grassy marshland. He sets down his camera bag. He appreciates the delicacy and precision of this instrument, the methods he has studied and learned, all the necessary steps. It has the feel of ritual to him, ceremony, a practice that requires his focus and rewards with calm. Is this part of what his father loved about hunting? If he were alive, the old man would scoff at the comparison, but that doesn’t make it less possible. Lesley remembers him carefully cleaning and oiling his rifle, the use of a special flannel cloth.

He makes himself comfortable in the stand, waits for the golden hour, that last hour of light when the sun is softer, less harsh. For a while, the only sound is the wind in the branches. He glimpses a fox bounding up the hill, the sun burnishing its rusty coat. It’s gone too fast to shoot. When he tells himself to be patient, it’s his father’s voice he hears, but it doesn’t singe him any longer. He breathes in the cool air, feels it in his lungs.

He’s about to pack up, call it a day, when he sees the bird, swooping in the last light. It’s a red-tailed hawk, its underside snowy white and its tail more pink than red in this light. The hawk lands on a branch of a nearby tree. Lesley adjusts his lens, so he can see the intricate houndstooth of the bird’s wings, the white fluff pantaloons. It’s fierce beauty. He aims and shoots. As if offering a gift, the bird opens its wings. Lesley leans forward, and shoots. Then crouching, he shoots again, getting the bird in profile. And again. He shoots until the last light is gone.

~~~

Rachel Hall is the author of Heirlooms, which was selected by Marge Piercy for the G.S. Sharat Chandra prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in a number of journals including New England Review, Cimarron Review, and Blackbird. She has received honors and awards from Glimmer Train, Lilith, New Letters, Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, Ragdale, Ox-Bow School of the Arts, and Write On Door County. She lives and writes in Rochester, NY. @rachelhallwrites