The Survivors (15 page)

And he really has to pee.

Leaving his gun behind, he takes a short walk behind the blind. His bladder is full enough to write his name in snow—first and last, in cursive—but he concentrates on making the smallest steaming hole possible. He still feels shaky. In the middle of things, he looks up suddenly. The old dog is watching, lying thirty yards deep in the woods. The dog spooked the buck!

He lowers his eyes as if he has not seen the dog and finishes peeing. He zips up and kicks snow over his mark. Casually, as if in no hurry, he walks back to his brush blind. Out of sight behind the tree, he eases up his gun, clicks off the safety, then wheels around.

But the dog is not where he was.

He is not anywhere.

To make sure he was not seeing things, he walks deeper into the woods, tracking left and right until he spots a matted, melted spot in the snow. A dog bed of oak leaves. He swears, kicks at the wet oak leaves, then returns to his brush blind. Still steamed, he plops down and leans the gun against the tree. As if any deer will come now. He fights off the urge to go home....

Not many people can last a whole day on a deer stand. If you can do it, you'll get your chance
.

“I had my chance,” he mutters. He pours a cup of lukewarm coffee and eats half of a cold fried-egg sandwich. After his snack, he settles back against the tree. Soon the forest slowly tips, rights itself, then tilts sideways again. His eyelids weigh a pound each. They droop and sag. He gives in to a nap—just a short one....

He jerks awake with drool on his chin. The light is higher. Two chickadees flutter and peck close by. One suddenly lands on top of his stocking cap, walks across it, and gives him an upside-down look. He blinks, and the little bird darts away to the next tree, where it continues to feed. He wipes his chin and gathers his gun closer.
Bucks move in the middle of day, especially if they've been up all night horning around after does. They bed down at sunup, sleep a few hours, then start sniffing around again. When they're in full rut, they can't stop moving....

But through midday nothing stirs except gray squirrels and a small flock of Canada geese that comes over on its way to the river and the rice bed. He should be hunting them instead of deer.

Along about three
P.M.
, the pale sunlight takes a slow step backward. The trees straighten. Listen. Among them and the leaves and the trail there is an expectancy. A feeling that something is going to happen. Miles's heartbeat kicks up a notch. He squeezes his gunstock, touches the safety, rests his finger near the trigger. Turning his head ever so slowly, he makes sure the dog is nowhere around, then focuses again on the trail.

By four
P.M
. the light turns gray and grayer. As the depth of field shortens, pine needles and the fine spear ends of brush fur, fuzz, turn indistinct. His heartbeat is running fast and steadily now, like river water channeled around a narrow bend. Something is going to happen.

Then, as if he has called him up from the forest, a little buck appears. Barely half the size of the big one, this deer is a “spike”: two small, irregular antlers poke up in front of his big ears. The deer stops to paw for acorns, finds none, then continues closer, oblivious to the brush blind. To Miles's unsteady gun barrel, swaying as if he's suddenly on board a ship.

“Buck fever”—every hunter has it at some point. Men do crazy things—jack the shell out of the chamber, shoot into the ground—and swear they were aiming dead on. They can't figure out how they missed, but the real reason is buck fever
.

Miles sucks in a deep breath, tries to hold steady, and fires. The shotgun rocks him, but he hears no report, no sound. The little buck wheels sideways and runs.

There is a blood trail on the snow, scarlet drips that turn to blotches, then to sprays of crimson. Blood on small aspen trees where the deer has ping-ponged against them—and then ahead, lying on the snow, the brown length of the deer himself. A wide-open eye with long and delicate lashes stares blankly at the sky.

To dress a deer, you start at his hind end. First roll him onto his back—and make sure his butt is pointing downhill. He'll drain out better that way. Work your knife around his bunghole, and be sure not to cut into his bladder. The goal is to keep the meat as clean as possible. After you've cut around his business end, you're ready to empty out the stomach. Make a small slit at the base of his belly, then put two fingers in there to hold it open. With the other hand, put your knife, blade up, between your fingers. Then move both hands upward, cutting only the skin. You want to keep the gut sack whole. Once you've cut all the way up the vee of the rib cage, you've got to reach in all the way to your elbows and cut those membranes that hold the gut sack in place. If you do it right, the whole thing will come loose in one big bag
.

Kneeling, breathing hard, his arms elbow deep in hot blood, Miles works by feel. The steamy scent is like one of his mother's herbal teas, only stronger. Ranker. His stomach clenches as if he might throw up; but suddenly the jiggly sack is free inside the cavity. With both hands, he rolls it out like a big blubbery basketball.

Be sure to save the liver, and the heart, too. They're good eating. Cut 'em in thin slices and fry them up with onions
.

“I don't think so,” Miles murmurs. He goes to the front of the deer and pulls it forward by its antlers, away from the mess. The gobs of blood behind are already clotting into red, quivery jelly. Taking up his knife again, he closes his eyes and feels around farther up inside the chest for the heart and lungs, which must be removed.

The lungs are pink and foamy, the heart harder to find. Working by touch, he finally cuts it free. Lifts it out. It fits exactly in the palm of his hand. His shotgun slug has shredded the bottom lobe of the heart. A perfect shot.

The air is colder now, and with snow he scrubs blood from his forearms and wrists and hands. He washes with handfuls of snow. It melts away pink and watery, and the real color of his skin returns. He stuffs handfuls of snow inside the deer to clean it, too. The cradle of the ribs appears, pale boned, fresh, clean. As he works, a crow drifts over and caws to another. A raven squawks not far away, and in the brush, like a ghost, the old dog appears. Miles reaches for his gun, then stops himself. He needs to stay focused on his deer and get it back to the cabin before dark.

Removing his belt, he loops it around the little buck's neck and drags him away from the gut pile. The deer is surprisingly light—his brown hair slides easily on the snow—but then again, Miles is full of adrenaline. With every yard he moves away from the kill site, the old brown dog eases a yard closer. Miles stops; the dog stops.

After he has dragged the deer about a hundred feet, the old dog is ten feet from the gut pile. Suddenly he lunges forward and gulps up a chunk of fat. Miles has plenty of time to lift his gun and get rid of the dog once and for all, but he doesn't. The old dog feels Miles's gaze, crouches lower for a moment, then snatches the deer's heart and runs.

BY NINE A.M. SHE'S COLD
and totally bored—until two hunters appear on the trail heading toward her. They wear camo-pattern blaze orange and carry rifles with black telescopic sights. Both have dark, short beards. Taking a breath, she slowly stands up in her brush blind. She moves the gun into the open where the men can see it.

The other hunters pull up; they confer briefly, then turn around and slowly disappear back into the trees. She sits down; her heart goes
whumpa-whumpa
in her chest.

By midday the shooting has almost stopped, and she heads back to the cabin for lunch and to warm up. Miles does not come in with her; he has packed his lunch.

“Did you see anything?” Nat asks.

“Some other hunters,” Sarah says, “but they turned around when they saw me.”

“That was Miles's plan,” Nat says, sounding pleased.

“More like that old man Kurz's plan,” Sarah says. She's cold and crabby. “How do you think Miles knows so much about the outdoors? It's not like he learned it in Minneapolis.”

After lunch, she heads back to the woods. The shotgun on her shoulder feels lighter now, almost as if it's part of her body. It's kind of cool carrying a gun, and she makes a couple of sudden moves—draws down on an imaginary bad guy.
Boom
. And another bad guy behind her—
boom
. Mackenzie's dad—
boom!

In her blind she's not sleepy now. At two o'clock a fat partridge glides into an aspen tree not far away—lands on a branch with a flutter of wing beats. For long moments it looks around, then starts to peck on the fine bud ends of another branch. She raises her gun and takes aim but cannot pull the trigger. And anyway, she's shooting a slug. As the afternoon drags on, she spends a lot of it thinking about Ray. Trying to remember every detail about him. His eyes. His teeth. His laughing mouth. The drawing pencil—a special kind with wide lead—that's always behind the raven's wing of hair over his ear.

Poom!
A shot startles her. It comes from Miles's direction. She swivels her head to pinpoint the location, but a second shot doesn't come; she can't be sure it was him. She checks her watch and settles back onto her stump.

Thirty minutes later blaze orange appears among the trees.

Miles waves excitedly. “I got one!” he calls.

She gives a small wave in return. “Great.”

He hurries up to her. “Want to see it?”

“Do I have to?”

“If you want to see your dog,” Miles replies.

“Is he all right?” she asks quickly. Brush has been missing all day—she's sure it's because of the muffled gunshots across the countryside.

“Yes,” Miles says. “Come on.”

In the snow, more of which is falling, she trudges behind Miles.

“So there I was, totally hidden in my blind,” he begins. Leading the way through the woods, he narrates the entire hunt like a documentary film in need of serious editing—including some parts she doesn't need or want to hear, such as the blood trail and gutting the deer—but soon enough they reach the kill site.

The little buck lies brown on the snow. Sarah squints and tries not to look at the caved-in belly, at the blood on the white hair and the spots of red on the snow.

“I saw your dog over there,” Miles says, and points deeper into the woods. “He's probably still lurking around.”

At the site, Miles kicks at some chunks of fat covered in a thin layer of snow. The white vein-covered gut bag looks like a giant, deflated mushroom.

Still holding her gun, she hunches her shoulders. “Ick.”

“It wasn't that bad,” Miles says. “I thought for a second I might puke, but I didn't.”

“Great,” Sarah mutters.

“And it was amazing—the crows were here within minutes!” Miles says.

Brush's tracks are all around the remains; there's a bare spot where he lay down to eat. She kneels. Puts her palms on the leaves; they are soft but cold. As Miles rattles on about the deer, she looks over her shoulder. One brown ear pokes out from behind a tree. “There he is!” she says.

“Where?” Miles says quickly.

“Promise you won't shoot him?” Sarah says.

Miles pauses. “I won't shoot him.”

“Over there, to the right, behind those trees.”

Miles swivels around, but Brush's brown head disappears.

“He's afraid of you,” Sarah says. She keeps her voice low, her movements slow. “Let me see if I can get closer to him.”

“Don't!”

“Why not?” Sarah says. “He used to belong to somebody.”

Miles lets out an exasperated breath. “Maybe. But he's surviving on his own. He knows how to find food. If he didn't, he'd be dead by now.”

“But he's always out in the cold. Poor Brush.”

“Brush?”

“That's my name for him.”

Miles shakes his head sideways. “This is stupid. I have to drag the deer home.”

“Do you need some help?”

“No. It's not that big, and it slides on the snow. Just be careful around that dog.”

“Don't worry—he's not going to bite me.”

When Miles is out of sight behind some trees, she kicks loose a chunk of meat. Or fat. Something yucky. Holding it away from her body, she walks to the side, keeping her posture low and nonthreatening. She sits down in the snow where Brush can see her, whispers to him but keeps her eyes downward.

Brush sits up from his crouch and watches. He cocks his square head.

“That's a good dog. Good Brush. Come on, you can do it. Good dog…”

His stubby tail wags once—as if it has a brain of its own—then stiffens again. It's as if his friendly tail is not connected to his wary brain. Gradually he eases closer, as slowly as the minute hand on a clock. She keeps murmuring her nonsense conversation; if she looks directly at him, he will stop.