Execution of Responsibility
Originally published in the Moon City Review 2012
By Joseph Cover
The Saturday following opening day of bow season, I was up before dawn and banging on the door to my Uncle Jimmy’s two bedroom stucco farmhouse. I had recently turned thirteen and he had promised to take me on my first deer hunt, which was the only way my mom, Jimmy’s sister, was going to let me go. I could still hear my mom’s car driving down the lane when Jimmy’s girlfriend, Megan, greeted me at the door and ushered me towards the Formica table. The normally stale air in his house was filled with the fragrance of Megan’s shampoo.
“You’re up?” I asked.
She smiled and patted my hair, “Stayed up all night just to see you Buddy. I even showered for you.”
Though she was easily twenty years my senior, I was captivated by Megan who had been living with Jimmy for about a month now. I watched her move quietly through the kitchen. Her flannel robe, pulled tight at the waist, accented her figure. Slight cleavage showed through the gap at the top of her robe. Without makeup her skin had a natural auburn tone. Freckles danced lightly across her cheeks, and her eyes were round, brown, and accented with long black lashes. Her smooth legs were connected to her bare feet with perfectly sculpted ankles. At that moment, I had the desire to just reach out and take her hands in mine, draw close, and be engulfed by her essence.
Setting a cup of coffee before me, she asked, “What’ll it be, Buddy, Eggos or Quaker Oats?”
“Eggos.”
“All righty,” she replied, pulling her coarse red hair into a ponytail and tying it with a thick black band she had around her wrist. I watched her brown checked robe gently sway as she moved across the kitchen to the freezer and to the toaster.
“Where’s Jimmy?”
“Passed out. He won’t be up for awhile, but yesterday he set you up a ladder to that tree stand in the oak on the north side of the barn. Eat these Eggos and get on up there. He said deer pass by there moving from the fields to the woods down by Clear Creek. Where’s your gun?”
“My bow’s outside. No gun. It’s bow season. It’s a felony to even carry a gun when bow hunting, much less use one.”
She sat the waffles in front of me and smiled. “Well then, don’t be carrying no guns today. Wouldn’t want to see my Buddy going to the pen.”
I wolfed down the waffles, headed out the door, and glanced back to catch Megan looking over her shoulder in my direction, but her brown eyes seemed distant, as if she were seeing something a thousand miles away. I grabbed my Bear Archery compound bow with a camo tape covered metal handle and fiberglass limbs imprinted with the words Whitetail Hunter around a drawing of a buck’s head and headed across the feed lot towards the barn.
The damp October morning air was refreshed by a slight breeze. Excitement made my step feel light as I dodged cow pies, fresh and dried, on the hard packed dirt around the barn. The oak stood just far enough from the barn the widest branches missed touching the wall. Running up the side of the tree was a pale green metal ladder attached to a two-man tree stand about fifteen feet above the ground. There was a length of bailing twine dangling from the stand. I gave the twine a tug to be sure it was secure, and I tied it through the top wheel on the bow, and once in the stand, I used the twine to pull the bow to me.
The tree stands I’ve seen in the Cabela’s catalogue have a safety bar to prevent the hunter from falling and a seat to rest in while tethered to the tree with a safety harness, but Jimmy had made this one out of metal grating from a left over walkway when they moved the Zenith television factory to Mexico. There was no seat, and it was framed and attached to the tree with angle iron. I sat on the edge and dangled my legs over the side. I laid the bow beside me, removed the quiver, and notched an arrow, placing the shaft on the arrow rest so when a deer came along all I would have to do was pick up the bow and draw the string. I was ready.
I had spent the previous summer getting ready. Buying the bow, arrows, points, and targets, including a 3-D buck with replaceable inserts over the kill zone, consumed most of the money I earned hauling hay. Just learning to hit the targets cost me at least two dozen arrows, yet every morning by sunrise, I was outside practicing until I could consistently nail targets at twenty, thirty, and forty yards. I practiced standing, kneeling, and sitting. By now, I was more than proficient enough to take down a deer.
To the east I noticed what appeared to be car lights coming down the lane, but these were only the first rays of the sun cresting over the horizon and filtering through the trees along the edge of Clear Creek. I watched the fields to the west for any activity. The cold metal of the tree stand was making my ass numb, so I picked up the bow and stood for a while, leaning up against the tree’s rough bark. There was a harness tied to the tree and I slipped it on, but I couldn’t sit while wearing it, so after what seemed to be an hour of standing, I took it off and sat down again at the edge of the stand.
I sat there and waited. I laid the bow next to me. Then I held it. I laid it down again and stood up. I sat down again. I began to wish I had brought something to read. A portable television would be nice. As I waited, the sun rose higher in the sky. Still no sign of deer. I dozed, jerked myself awake, and slowly drifted off again only to be awakened by the heaviness of my head lolling backward. I finally surrendered, curled into a ball on the platform of the tree stand, and fell asleep.
The soft patter of feet filtered through my ears. Deer! I sprung awake and grabbed my bow. Scrambling to my knees I drew the arrow and spun in the direction of the sound just to see Jimmy standing on the ladder, inches from me. He smiled with a mouth too large for his egg shaped head. His face had a flattened appearance where a cow had kicked him shattering his nose. He had waist length straight black hair, and few people who didn’t know him would guess that he was a successful cattleman. Knuckles battered from hard work and fist fights held out a small backpack as Jimmy said, “Whoa there Buddy. Don’t shoot. I’m friendly.”
We sat side by side as he pulled a thermos from his pack and used the lid to pour me a cup of coffee. Taking a collapsible cup from the pocket of his Carhartt overalls, he poured himself one before he said, “You gotta stay awake to shoot a deer.”
“Yea. Fell asleep.”
He ran his finger along the edge of the corrugated steel floor of the stand. “This isn’t the best place for napping, and even as big as this stand is, you roll the wrong way, you’re going down. Ground’s going to hurt.”
I looked down. “I didn’t see any deer.”
“I know. The waiting can be long, but when you see one…” Jimmy’s voice trailed off as he stared towards the west. He shook his head. “When you shoot one, you forget all about the waiting.” He lightly punched me on the left shoulder. “Get one this year, and you can be bragging at Thanksgiving.”
When my family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, sitting around the table passing mashed potatoes and turkey, we talked hunting. Although my dad didn’t hunt, all three of my mother’s brothers, and their kids, did, and at every get together, the oldest brother, Bob, would try to talk Jimmy into selling his Belgium Browning over-under twelve gauge shotgun.
“Jimmy, before you go pawning that thing, sell it to me. I’ll give you six, maybe even seven hundred for it.”
To which Jimmy would hold up three fingers and reply, “You know it’s worth three grand. But I’ll just be holdin on to it a while longer.”
Thanksgiving, coming on the heels of gun season, the real talk centered on deer hunting, and the relatives would share their newest, or most favored, adventures. Bob would tell about the time he shot a buck in deer camp. As he told it, he was sitting on an upturned piece of firewood and eating a hot dog when he noticed a twelve point buck sneaking through the woods. Leaving the hot dog in his mouth, Bob leaned over, picked up his 30-30, aimed just ahead of where the buck was traveling, and when he stepped into the line of fire, Bob dropped him, as they always did, in one fatal shot, at which time he set the rifle down and finished his lunch before going to dress the deer.
I turned as Jimmy pulled a couple of peanut butter sandwiches from his pack. “Megan sent these over. Got a couple apples too.” My heart swelled as I realized how lucky Jimmy was to have a woman like Megan. What I didn’t realize was that less than two weeks later she would disappear in the middle of the night taking her clothes, the money in Jimmy’s wallet, and his Belgium Browning, and leaving him with a broken heart and hepatitis C.
“Where’d you meet Megan?”
“At Hilltop over on old 66. She showed up with someone else, but after a night of dancing, she left with me.”
I knew the place. It was an old two story house just outside Halltown where a bootlegger ran an unlicensed bar. I’d been in there once with my dad, and I could see myself with Megan, gliding across the dance floor, holding her close, feeling her breasts pressed into me. It was me she went home with that night instead of Jimmy.
We sat quietly drinking our coffee, lost in our thoughts for several minutes. Jimmy finally spoke. “It’s just a little after noon. Sunset about 6:30 so we got a few more hours. You wanting to stay?”
“I’m not leaving ‘til I get my deer.”
Jimmy winked. “That’s the spirit.”
I stood and scanned the tree line from the creek to the field, looking for any sign of action. “Jimmy, where’s your bow?”
“Didn’t bring it. Today’s ‘bout you getting a deer. Got your tags? Right?”
I pulled them out of my hip pocket. “Just like you told me.”
“Good deal, Buddy.”
With the exception of stirring once to go pee off the back of the tree stand, and missing as I tried to shoot the stream onto the side of the barn, the rest of the afternoon passed in long periods of silence punctuated with brief discussions about the best way to skin a squirrel or fry frog legs or how Jimmy would help me fix up Grandad’s old pickup. Mostly it was silent waiting. Sitting. Looking. Standing. Snapping to attention at every twig snap, leaf rustle, or foot fall, only to find a squirrel running through the woods. Then more waiting. Looking, listening.
The sun had just begun to spray its final rays through the tree tops as it lowered itself behind the ridgeline at the far edge of the hay field when I saw her. My chest tightened. The doe’s step was gentle as her auburn body emerged from the woods and entered the trail that ran along the barn and just below the tree stand. Her path was taking her under us, making a clean shot difficult. Trembling hands held my bow as I carefully drew the string, raised the bow, and considered how best to take the shot. I wanted to ask Jimmy, but I didn’t dare speak for fear of spooking her.
She stopped about twenty-five yards from the stand. Her head went up and she began to sniff the air. Her head turned from the right to the left and she seemed to inhale deeply. Her tail twitched up then she lowered it. A wave of remorse swept over me when I realized that, even through the barnyard smells of cattle dung and hay, she had probably scented my urine from earlier. Remorse gave way to hyperventilation as she turned in the trail and stopped. She was standing as still and lifeless as my 3D target. I could visualize the lines of the replaceable insert around her lungs. I peered through the peep sight and lined her up halfway between the twenty and thirty yard pins.
I don’t remember releasing the string, only hearing the arrow whisper through the air as my hand rested peacefully against my cheek. Instead of falling over dead, she jumped and ran towards the nearest brush.
Lowering the bow, I turned to Jimmy who was standing, arms folded, and staring at the spot where the doe had stood. Without as much as a twitch he whispered, “You got her, Buddy. You got her.”
“I missed.”
“No. I don’t think you did. Let’s check it out.”
I stepped too quickly, bumped into Jimmy, and dropped my bow to the ground causing the string to pop out of the cable. I looked at Jimmy who only shrugged his shoulders and said, “Can’t worry with that now; we don’t have a press out here. Let’s go find her.”
Once on the ground we went to where she had stood. Jimmy squatted low and began searching the area.“Don’t see no blood. Course that don’t mean much.” He pulled a small plastic bottle from his pack and began spraying a mist on the ground.“Peroxide,” he explained. “Foams when it hits blood.” There was a slight amount of foam. Five, six drops at the most. “I knew you hit her. Let’s go.”
My heart soared as my feet took flight behind Jimmy. We had just landed in the tree line when he stopped and raised his hand. There she was, maybe twenty yards away. She stood stiff, head high, breathing deeply. Jimmy raised his hand as if to say stop. “She’s in shock. Come on.” We approached her slowly. She stood her ground.
We came along side her. I’d been around dead deer, and of course my life size 3D target, but somehow, standing there she seemed larger than I thought she would be. The evening air was filled with the pungent odor of decaying leaves and dirt, and I heard a squirrel scampering through the leaves. The doe didn’t move, but I heard the sound of water hitting the ground as she urinated inches from me. Jimmy’s eyebrows arched as he shook his head. We had been standing beside her for a minute, watching her twitch and tremble, when Jimmy reached inside his pack and drew out a Smith & Wesson Snubnose 357. He moved closer to her. I reached out and touched his arm. “It’s a felony during bow season.”
“She’s suffering,” Jimmy said. “Might be hours before she drops.”
I took a deep breath, held it, and placed my hand on the pistol. I exhaled. “It’s my deer. She’s my responsibility.” I knew what I needed to do. Jimmy wouldn’t tolerate letting an animal suffer this way. And I wouldn’t either.
He released the pistol, and my hand dropped from its unexpected weight. The grip, smaller in my hand than I would have thought, felt smooth and slick in spite of the checkering.
The doe turned her head and looked at me with round brown eyes. Her long black lashes blinked once, and I heard Megan say, “Wouldn’t want to see my Buddy going to the pen.”
Under my breath I said, “Even if I go to prison, I’m doing what’s right.”
A hand rested on my shoulder, and Jimmy whispered in my ear, “I can do it, Buddy. It’ll be alright.”
But it wouldn’t be alright. Whichever way it went, it wouldn’t be alright. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down. I’d watched deer hunting videos, and sometimes the deer drops right away, others the hunter might have to follow a blood trail for fifty or sixty yards, but they always find the deer dead. Last year on opening day, Jimmy took his bow up to the barn loft, saw a buck crossing the field, and dropped him in his tracks at 45 yards. Never had I heard of anyone shooting a doe execution style.
The doe’s breath came in short shallow gasps. Mine came in long deep draws. My knees were putty as I stepped closer. My arms shook as I raised the pistol.
Jimmy reached for the gun, but I shook him away. I gripped the snubnose with both hands and placed the barrel where her skull met her spine. Her left eye rolled in my direction and my eyes closed as I squeezed the trigger. I saw myself handcuffed, a deputy’s hand on my head, guiding me into the squad car; Megan’s arm around the shoulders of my crying mother, assuring her that I was a martyr. The explosion jerked my eyes open. The doe was on the ground. Round brown eyes, staring, not seeing.
I lowered the gun. I looked for blood, brains, and bone bits on my shirt, my pants, my hands. Nothing. I was clean.
While Jimmy field dressed the deer, I ran back to the house and asked Megan to bring the hay truck around the feed lot and as close as possible to the downed doe.
“Buddy, I heard a shot.”
“Yea. She was wounded; my bow broke.”
“You going to be in trouble?”
“Not if we don’t tell anybody.”
As the truck pulled to a halt yards from Jimmy and the doe, Megan said, “Then we won’t tell anyone.”
And that was when it hit me. I wouldn’t be sharing this episode with the family this Thanksgiving or with anyone ever. This was before hunters called in their kill by cell phones. To check the deer, we were going to have to take her to the Check in Station in Walnut Grove, and I, along with Jimmy, really would go to jail. The world would label us as poachers. Being a kid, I would get out of it with probation, but Jimmy, being thirty-one, would go to prison.
We loaded the doe onto the truck and went back to Jimmy’s house. Nobody said a word. Megan gave me a ride home in her Jeep. Instead of being excited to be alone with her, I just looked out the window wishing the night was over. I left the bow where I dropped it. I suppose Jimmy did something with it. I never asked. I never went bow hunting again, and although I went gun hunting with the family a few times as a teenager, I never shot another deer, even when I saw one in season. And until this day, if anyone asked, I told them that I have never killed a deer.
By Joseph Cover
The Saturday following opening day of bow season, I was up before dawn and banging on the door to my Uncle Jimmy’s two bedroom stucco farmhouse. I had recently turned thirteen and he had promised to take me on my first deer hunt, which was the only way my mom, Jimmy’s sister, was going to let me go. I could still hear my mom’s car driving down the lane when Jimmy’s girlfriend, Megan, greeted me at the door and ushered me towards the Formica table. The normally stale air in his house was filled with the fragrance of Megan’s shampoo.
“You’re up?” I asked.
She smiled and patted my hair, “Stayed up all night just to see you Buddy. I even showered for you.”
Though she was easily twenty years my senior, I was captivated by Megan who had been living with Jimmy for about a month now. I watched her move quietly through the kitchen. Her flannel robe, pulled tight at the waist, accented her figure. Slight cleavage showed through the gap at the top of her robe. Without makeup her skin had a natural auburn tone. Freckles danced lightly across her cheeks, and her eyes were round, brown, and accented with long black lashes. Her smooth legs were connected to her bare feet with perfectly sculpted ankles. At that moment, I had the desire to just reach out and take her hands in mine, draw close, and be engulfed by her essence.
Setting a cup of coffee before me, she asked, “What’ll it be, Buddy, Eggos or Quaker Oats?”
“Eggos.”
“All righty,” she replied, pulling her coarse red hair into a ponytail and tying it with a thick black band she had around her wrist. I watched her brown checked robe gently sway as she moved across the kitchen to the freezer and to the toaster.
“Where’s Jimmy?”
“Passed out. He won’t be up for awhile, but yesterday he set you up a ladder to that tree stand in the oak on the north side of the barn. Eat these Eggos and get on up there. He said deer pass by there moving from the fields to the woods down by Clear Creek. Where’s your gun?”
“My bow’s outside. No gun. It’s bow season. It’s a felony to even carry a gun when bow hunting, much less use one.”
She sat the waffles in front of me and smiled. “Well then, don’t be carrying no guns today. Wouldn’t want to see my Buddy going to the pen.”
I wolfed down the waffles, headed out the door, and glanced back to catch Megan looking over her shoulder in my direction, but her brown eyes seemed distant, as if she were seeing something a thousand miles away. I grabbed my Bear Archery compound bow with a camo tape covered metal handle and fiberglass limbs imprinted with the words Whitetail Hunter around a drawing of a buck’s head and headed across the feed lot towards the barn.
The damp October morning air was refreshed by a slight breeze. Excitement made my step feel light as I dodged cow pies, fresh and dried, on the hard packed dirt around the barn. The oak stood just far enough from the barn the widest branches missed touching the wall. Running up the side of the tree was a pale green metal ladder attached to a two-man tree stand about fifteen feet above the ground. There was a length of bailing twine dangling from the stand. I gave the twine a tug to be sure it was secure, and I tied it through the top wheel on the bow, and once in the stand, I used the twine to pull the bow to me.
The tree stands I’ve seen in the Cabela’s catalogue have a safety bar to prevent the hunter from falling and a seat to rest in while tethered to the tree with a safety harness, but Jimmy had made this one out of metal grating from a left over walkway when they moved the Zenith television factory to Mexico. There was no seat, and it was framed and attached to the tree with angle iron. I sat on the edge and dangled my legs over the side. I laid the bow beside me, removed the quiver, and notched an arrow, placing the shaft on the arrow rest so when a deer came along all I would have to do was pick up the bow and draw the string. I was ready.
I had spent the previous summer getting ready. Buying the bow, arrows, points, and targets, including a 3-D buck with replaceable inserts over the kill zone, consumed most of the money I earned hauling hay. Just learning to hit the targets cost me at least two dozen arrows, yet every morning by sunrise, I was outside practicing until I could consistently nail targets at twenty, thirty, and forty yards. I practiced standing, kneeling, and sitting. By now, I was more than proficient enough to take down a deer.
To the east I noticed what appeared to be car lights coming down the lane, but these were only the first rays of the sun cresting over the horizon and filtering through the trees along the edge of Clear Creek. I watched the fields to the west for any activity. The cold metal of the tree stand was making my ass numb, so I picked up the bow and stood for a while, leaning up against the tree’s rough bark. There was a harness tied to the tree and I slipped it on, but I couldn’t sit while wearing it, so after what seemed to be an hour of standing, I took it off and sat down again at the edge of the stand.
I sat there and waited. I laid the bow next to me. Then I held it. I laid it down again and stood up. I sat down again. I began to wish I had brought something to read. A portable television would be nice. As I waited, the sun rose higher in the sky. Still no sign of deer. I dozed, jerked myself awake, and slowly drifted off again only to be awakened by the heaviness of my head lolling backward. I finally surrendered, curled into a ball on the platform of the tree stand, and fell asleep.
The soft patter of feet filtered through my ears. Deer! I sprung awake and grabbed my bow. Scrambling to my knees I drew the arrow and spun in the direction of the sound just to see Jimmy standing on the ladder, inches from me. He smiled with a mouth too large for his egg shaped head. His face had a flattened appearance where a cow had kicked him shattering his nose. He had waist length straight black hair, and few people who didn’t know him would guess that he was a successful cattleman. Knuckles battered from hard work and fist fights held out a small backpack as Jimmy said, “Whoa there Buddy. Don’t shoot. I’m friendly.”
We sat side by side as he pulled a thermos from his pack and used the lid to pour me a cup of coffee. Taking a collapsible cup from the pocket of his Carhartt overalls, he poured himself one before he said, “You gotta stay awake to shoot a deer.”
“Yea. Fell asleep.”
He ran his finger along the edge of the corrugated steel floor of the stand. “This isn’t the best place for napping, and even as big as this stand is, you roll the wrong way, you’re going down. Ground’s going to hurt.”
I looked down. “I didn’t see any deer.”
“I know. The waiting can be long, but when you see one…” Jimmy’s voice trailed off as he stared towards the west. He shook his head. “When you shoot one, you forget all about the waiting.” He lightly punched me on the left shoulder. “Get one this year, and you can be bragging at Thanksgiving.”
When my family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, sitting around the table passing mashed potatoes and turkey, we talked hunting. Although my dad didn’t hunt, all three of my mother’s brothers, and their kids, did, and at every get together, the oldest brother, Bob, would try to talk Jimmy into selling his Belgium Browning over-under twelve gauge shotgun.
“Jimmy, before you go pawning that thing, sell it to me. I’ll give you six, maybe even seven hundred for it.”
To which Jimmy would hold up three fingers and reply, “You know it’s worth three grand. But I’ll just be holdin on to it a while longer.”
Thanksgiving, coming on the heels of gun season, the real talk centered on deer hunting, and the relatives would share their newest, or most favored, adventures. Bob would tell about the time he shot a buck in deer camp. As he told it, he was sitting on an upturned piece of firewood and eating a hot dog when he noticed a twelve point buck sneaking through the woods. Leaving the hot dog in his mouth, Bob leaned over, picked up his 30-30, aimed just ahead of where the buck was traveling, and when he stepped into the line of fire, Bob dropped him, as they always did, in one fatal shot, at which time he set the rifle down and finished his lunch before going to dress the deer.
I turned as Jimmy pulled a couple of peanut butter sandwiches from his pack. “Megan sent these over. Got a couple apples too.” My heart swelled as I realized how lucky Jimmy was to have a woman like Megan. What I didn’t realize was that less than two weeks later she would disappear in the middle of the night taking her clothes, the money in Jimmy’s wallet, and his Belgium Browning, and leaving him with a broken heart and hepatitis C.
“Where’d you meet Megan?”
“At Hilltop over on old 66. She showed up with someone else, but after a night of dancing, she left with me.”
I knew the place. It was an old two story house just outside Halltown where a bootlegger ran an unlicensed bar. I’d been in there once with my dad, and I could see myself with Megan, gliding across the dance floor, holding her close, feeling her breasts pressed into me. It was me she went home with that night instead of Jimmy.
We sat quietly drinking our coffee, lost in our thoughts for several minutes. Jimmy finally spoke. “It’s just a little after noon. Sunset about 6:30 so we got a few more hours. You wanting to stay?”
“I’m not leaving ‘til I get my deer.”
Jimmy winked. “That’s the spirit.”
I stood and scanned the tree line from the creek to the field, looking for any sign of action. “Jimmy, where’s your bow?”
“Didn’t bring it. Today’s ‘bout you getting a deer. Got your tags? Right?”
I pulled them out of my hip pocket. “Just like you told me.”
“Good deal, Buddy.”
With the exception of stirring once to go pee off the back of the tree stand, and missing as I tried to shoot the stream onto the side of the barn, the rest of the afternoon passed in long periods of silence punctuated with brief discussions about the best way to skin a squirrel or fry frog legs or how Jimmy would help me fix up Grandad’s old pickup. Mostly it was silent waiting. Sitting. Looking. Standing. Snapping to attention at every twig snap, leaf rustle, or foot fall, only to find a squirrel running through the woods. Then more waiting. Looking, listening.
The sun had just begun to spray its final rays through the tree tops as it lowered itself behind the ridgeline at the far edge of the hay field when I saw her. My chest tightened. The doe’s step was gentle as her auburn body emerged from the woods and entered the trail that ran along the barn and just below the tree stand. Her path was taking her under us, making a clean shot difficult. Trembling hands held my bow as I carefully drew the string, raised the bow, and considered how best to take the shot. I wanted to ask Jimmy, but I didn’t dare speak for fear of spooking her.
She stopped about twenty-five yards from the stand. Her head went up and she began to sniff the air. Her head turned from the right to the left and she seemed to inhale deeply. Her tail twitched up then she lowered it. A wave of remorse swept over me when I realized that, even through the barnyard smells of cattle dung and hay, she had probably scented my urine from earlier. Remorse gave way to hyperventilation as she turned in the trail and stopped. She was standing as still and lifeless as my 3D target. I could visualize the lines of the replaceable insert around her lungs. I peered through the peep sight and lined her up halfway between the twenty and thirty yard pins.
I don’t remember releasing the string, only hearing the arrow whisper through the air as my hand rested peacefully against my cheek. Instead of falling over dead, she jumped and ran towards the nearest brush.
Lowering the bow, I turned to Jimmy who was standing, arms folded, and staring at the spot where the doe had stood. Without as much as a twitch he whispered, “You got her, Buddy. You got her.”
“I missed.”
“No. I don’t think you did. Let’s check it out.”
I stepped too quickly, bumped into Jimmy, and dropped my bow to the ground causing the string to pop out of the cable. I looked at Jimmy who only shrugged his shoulders and said, “Can’t worry with that now; we don’t have a press out here. Let’s go find her.”
Once on the ground we went to where she had stood. Jimmy squatted low and began searching the area.“Don’t see no blood. Course that don’t mean much.” He pulled a small plastic bottle from his pack and began spraying a mist on the ground.“Peroxide,” he explained. “Foams when it hits blood.” There was a slight amount of foam. Five, six drops at the most. “I knew you hit her. Let’s go.”
My heart soared as my feet took flight behind Jimmy. We had just landed in the tree line when he stopped and raised his hand. There she was, maybe twenty yards away. She stood stiff, head high, breathing deeply. Jimmy raised his hand as if to say stop. “She’s in shock. Come on.” We approached her slowly. She stood her ground.
We came along side her. I’d been around dead deer, and of course my life size 3D target, but somehow, standing there she seemed larger than I thought she would be. The evening air was filled with the pungent odor of decaying leaves and dirt, and I heard a squirrel scampering through the leaves. The doe didn’t move, but I heard the sound of water hitting the ground as she urinated inches from me. Jimmy’s eyebrows arched as he shook his head. We had been standing beside her for a minute, watching her twitch and tremble, when Jimmy reached inside his pack and drew out a Smith & Wesson Snubnose 357. He moved closer to her. I reached out and touched his arm. “It’s a felony during bow season.”
“She’s suffering,” Jimmy said. “Might be hours before she drops.”
I took a deep breath, held it, and placed my hand on the pistol. I exhaled. “It’s my deer. She’s my responsibility.” I knew what I needed to do. Jimmy wouldn’t tolerate letting an animal suffer this way. And I wouldn’t either.
He released the pistol, and my hand dropped from its unexpected weight. The grip, smaller in my hand than I would have thought, felt smooth and slick in spite of the checkering.
The doe turned her head and looked at me with round brown eyes. Her long black lashes blinked once, and I heard Megan say, “Wouldn’t want to see my Buddy going to the pen.”
Under my breath I said, “Even if I go to prison, I’m doing what’s right.”
A hand rested on my shoulder, and Jimmy whispered in my ear, “I can do it, Buddy. It’ll be alright.”
But it wouldn’t be alright. Whichever way it went, it wouldn’t be alright. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down. I’d watched deer hunting videos, and sometimes the deer drops right away, others the hunter might have to follow a blood trail for fifty or sixty yards, but they always find the deer dead. Last year on opening day, Jimmy took his bow up to the barn loft, saw a buck crossing the field, and dropped him in his tracks at 45 yards. Never had I heard of anyone shooting a doe execution style.
The doe’s breath came in short shallow gasps. Mine came in long deep draws. My knees were putty as I stepped closer. My arms shook as I raised the pistol.
Jimmy reached for the gun, but I shook him away. I gripped the snubnose with both hands and placed the barrel where her skull met her spine. Her left eye rolled in my direction and my eyes closed as I squeezed the trigger. I saw myself handcuffed, a deputy’s hand on my head, guiding me into the squad car; Megan’s arm around the shoulders of my crying mother, assuring her that I was a martyr. The explosion jerked my eyes open. The doe was on the ground. Round brown eyes, staring, not seeing.
I lowered the gun. I looked for blood, brains, and bone bits on my shirt, my pants, my hands. Nothing. I was clean.
While Jimmy field dressed the deer, I ran back to the house and asked Megan to bring the hay truck around the feed lot and as close as possible to the downed doe.
“Buddy, I heard a shot.”
“Yea. She was wounded; my bow broke.”
“You going to be in trouble?”
“Not if we don’t tell anybody.”
As the truck pulled to a halt yards from Jimmy and the doe, Megan said, “Then we won’t tell anyone.”
And that was when it hit me. I wouldn’t be sharing this episode with the family this Thanksgiving or with anyone ever. This was before hunters called in their kill by cell phones. To check the deer, we were going to have to take her to the Check in Station in Walnut Grove, and I, along with Jimmy, really would go to jail. The world would label us as poachers. Being a kid, I would get out of it with probation, but Jimmy, being thirty-one, would go to prison.
We loaded the doe onto the truck and went back to Jimmy’s house. Nobody said a word. Megan gave me a ride home in her Jeep. Instead of being excited to be alone with her, I just looked out the window wishing the night was over. I left the bow where I dropped it. I suppose Jimmy did something with it. I never asked. I never went bow hunting again, and although I went gun hunting with the family a few times as a teenager, I never shot another deer, even when I saw one in season. And until this day, if anyone asked, I told them that I have never killed a deer.