Town Burning (27 page)

Then came the time, a few seconds out of all the years of his life that he would always remember fully—a time made vivid and everlasting by an act perfect, instinctive and final. It seemed like love: he first saw a white flag flickering through the black trunks of a spruce grove, angling away from him, yet heading toward a small clearing open to him through a chance avenue of trees. The deer had seen him first and ran low to the ground, stealthy even in its long leaps, silent on the waterlogged spruce needles. As he saw the deer’s long gray body his rifle came up and for once, still under the spell of the ritual of slowness, he did not begin firing through the trees. He waited, watching the brighter clearing through his sights, the black bar of his front sight waving at the level of a deer’s chest. It seemed a miracle that the deer came on and crossed the space of daylight. He fired just ahead of the deer as it leaped for darkness and heard a rattle of aimless hoofs and a thud. His spent cartridge tinkled on the breach and fell brightly to the spruce needles. His hand flicked the lever and the action slid forward with a new shell in its teeth. It snapped shut loudly. As he ran forward he automatically put the hammer on half-cock—and the deer was there. A miracle again—so big, so obvious against the ground now that it was dead. He poked one large round bottomless eye with his rifle barrel. The deer was dead.

He saw now for the first time that the deer was a buck, with four perfect, beautiful tines on the left antler. On the right a strangely dwarfed single spike grew like a root. And then he thought it was too bad the buck had run into such bad luck in a single season—a dwarfed horn and a .30-.30 slug. He might have been a bachelor buck with his strange antler; a poor, frustrated fellow who ran into bad luck wherever he went. And yet he was a beautiful animal, strong and muscular, with a fine clean coat. And heavy.

John fired three shots in the air, counting slowly to five between each, then rolled up his sleeves and spread the linen-white belly, legs open, to the air. He was still trembling, still awed by the amazing, beautiful treasure the deer was to him then.

His knife drew through the hair easily, then through the skin and peritoneum. He was careful. The bullet had gone clean through the ribcage, and he was able to draw the stomach and entrails out unbroken and steaming, genitals attached. In the round, hot heap, peristalsis slowly, steadily worked. Billy came, and John borrowed Billy’s big knife to chop through the pelvis and clean out the anus. The heart was smashed, but the kidneys and liver were whole and clean.

When the deer was gutted and ready, Billy crowed with joy and whacked John on the back.

“A buck! Johnny, ain’t you happy?”

He was happy. He could only grin and rub his bloody hands together. The blood rolled off easily on the spruce needles. Much later he remembered and wondered why, with all the blood and matter he had probed with his hands, the image of the old Filipino had never come; the old women hadn’t screamed in his head.

But they hadn’t, thank God. It was too perfect. He sat down, shaking, leaned against a tree and took out a cigarette. Billy reached into the deer and took out another small handful of lung.

“Clean as a whistle. No sense dragging more than we have to. Let him bleed out a while, too. No hurry. We ain’t got more than a couple hundred yards to drag. By God, Johnny, you done good!”

“He was running,” John said. “I was right back—look right down there—I was right back there. Right back by that blowdown. Ash. See it? He was running.”

Billy paced it off, counting out loud. “Seventy-five yards!” he called as he started back, counting again. “Seventy-five yards and a hair,” he said.

“He was running,” John said, “but he wasn’t going out straight. He saw me first. I went slow like you told me.” He found that he was out of breath. The cigarette had given him the hiccups. He tried to erase an inane grin from his face, but couldn’t. His cheeks ached with it. He looked up through the trees to the sky, pale fall blue and turning cold; fine cirrus clouds were forming high up above Leah.

“Well, ain’t you going to tell me from the start?” Billy said.

He could see the white flag flickering past the black trunks of the spruces, and the black front sight waving again. He told it to Billy from the beginning. When he came to the end and found the deer, the grin fastened itself to his face again.

“There he was!”

“There he is!” Billy said, slapping his knee. “Give me your rifle!”

John handed it over. Billy took his knife and pressed the point into the bottom of the stock, leaving a little triangular dent.

“There you are. You got a witness to prove it.”

Finally they began to drag the deer toward Billy’s house. When they reached Billy’s dooryard they hoisted it into the back of the truck and went inside. John had blisters on both hands.

“You can have him weighed if you want,” Billy said, “but I’ll tell you right now he weighs a hundred-seventy pounds. I dragged out enough deer in my time. I can tell every time. You take him down to the freezers and have him weighed. You just do that. Hundred-seventy pounds.”

“I’ll give you a hindquarter, Billy.”

“Like hell you will! Never you mind about that. I got more meat picked out right now than I can use.”

“You got yours already?”

“Hell, no! Know where it is, though. Keeps better in this warm weather, it ain’t dead. Git my buck any day I want, providing some damn’ fool don’t run on him meanwhile.”

“You take the liver.”

“Well, O.K., Johnny. I’m kind of sweet on liver. I’ll take it.”

“How about some backstrap? Peel some off, Billy.”

“Nope. Nothing doing. Now, we going to have a snort?”

They were both a little drunk on hard cider when they brought the deer down to Leah and hung it in the Cotter garage. John’s father brought beer out to them and they all stood around with the neighbors, admiring, hefting and patting the deer. When Bruce came home he had one thing to say: “I suppose Billy shot it for you.”

Franklin sat on the edge of his box, his beer held carefully in both hands, his expression tense and interested. Billy had come to the place where they were dragging the deer out of the woods.

“Heaviest hundred-seventy pound deer I ever dragged out,” he said. “I told Johnny. I says, ‘That deer weighs a hundred-seventy pounds.’ You know what they weighed him down to the freezer lockers?”

Franklin shook his head.

“Hundred-sixty-eight pounds! Now that was next day. See, Frank? He bled and dried out a little that night. I bet my skivvies he weighed one-seventy on the nose, we got him dragged up here. I dragged out enough deer, by God. I can tell every time!”

Franklin shook his head in amazement, and John was startled to see on his face a quick look of amusement.

“How was the liver?” Franklin asked. By his expression he didn’t like liver, but the idea of eating the liver out of the deer obviously fascinated him.

“Tender,” Billy said. “Tender as all hell, as I recall.”

“What’s
that?”
Franklin asked, pointing under the table and drawing his feet up.

Jake the raccoon put his pointed nose out into the light, and snarled.

“That’s Jake,” John said. “He’s a friend of Billy’s.”

“Sometimes he is and sometimes he ain’t,” Billy said. “He sort of hangs around here.”

Franklin watched the raccoon warily.

“He’s wild?” he asked.

“He is when he wants to be,” Billy said. “The other day I caught him thinking how good one of my chickens would be could he git the feathers off. He could, too. I laid down the law, by God I I put the law on them chickens, far as Jake’s concerned. Old Jake, he got kind of riled up in the process and so didn’t I. What come of it, he took off and never come back for three days. Figured he never would come back, but I guess he cooled off some. He’s a hell of a lush, far as cider’s concerned. Can’t leave it alone. That’s why he’s mad now. Got himself a hangover.”

The raccoon snarled again and hit Billy’s leg with a long arm, claws scratching against the denim.

“You watch it, you goddam drunk!” Billy yelled, leaning over and glaring into Jake’s determined eyes. Jake backed away, snarling.

“I always give him some,” Billy said resignedly. He took down a jug of amber cider and poured a bowlful. Jake lapped a few times, shivered and backed away, then approached cautiously and began to drink.

“He hates it sometimes, but he can’t leave it alone. Let that be a lesson to you, Frank,” Billy said.

Franklin was so absorbed in the sight he hardly heard.

“Look at him lick it up!” he said. Jake stopped lapping and gave Franklin a wary glance. “That’s O.K.,” Franklin said quickly.

“Don’t let him scare you, Frank,” Billy said. “He knows he gits rough with the guests he’ll be nursing a sore hide!” He laughed and stamped his foot. Jake looked suspiciously at the foot, then went back to his cider.

“Did you catch him?” Franklin asked.

“Nope. He just come bumming around. Lazy. Too damn’ lazy to catch his own living. Eats some frogs, though, down to the swamp.”

“He eats
frogs?”

“Why, sure. Killed my cat, too. Et
her.
That damn’ coon’ll eat anything at all.”

“Didn’t you get mad when he ate your cat?”

“Well, yes, I did, Frank. But Old Jake’s just as good as a cat—maybe better. More company.”

“I mean, didn’t you
like
the cat?”

“I guess I liked her well enough for most purposes. She didn’t particular care for me, howsomever. You know cats. They just don’t give a damn.”

“I guess that’s so,” Franklin said. “Not like a dog.”

“You damn’ well right, Frank.” Billy sat for a moment, then jerked his head up and stared at John. “Johnny, you remember Daisy?”

“Sure I do, Billy,” John said.

Billy’s face evened out; his eyes seemed to grow still and dark. He became as serious as John had ever seen him.

“Atmon shot her. Or Bemis did it. One.”

“No, Billy!”

“Yes they did—one. Bragged about it too….” His voice went high and unstable at the end.

“How come?” John asked, half believing it. Billy shook his head jerkily, hunched his shoulders and put his mouth into a hurt, childish line.

“Don’t
know,”
he said, his voice rising on the second word. “When I was gone…You know, when I was gone…”

“Why would they do a thing like that?”

“Said she was running deer. Said she was running deer….” Billy tried to control his voice. He shook himself like a dog and reached for his pipe, set his face but couldn’t manage it. He took a long drink, then, too carefully, set his can on the windowsill. “Can you imagine that, Johnny?” he asked.

“
Bemis?
I didn’t think he’d do a thing like that.”

“Oh, he would, all right. They was hunting together. Running
deer,
for Christ sake! Daisy
never
run no deer. Be like a squirrel running a God-damn’ lousy damn’ bastard
horse!”
He looked apologetically at Franklin, then added softly, “For Christ sake. She was just a little bitty rabbit dog. She didn’t care for
nothing
but rabbits.”

“Nobody took care of her when you were gone?”

“I asked everybody would they take her. Bob Paquette said he would. Now it ain’t Bob’s fault, I know that. She just come back here looking for me all the time. Bob, he wrote me a letter. Only letter I got when I was away. He told me he just couldn’t keep Daisy to home. She come back to Pike Hill looking for me. Bob come and got her back two, three times. Next time she was dead. Bob says he found her out by the road, right next the graveyard there, shot four times through the body. It was Atmon himself told me he and Bemis found her running deer. Wouldn’t say which one done it. Maybe he and Bemis both had some fun….”

“I’m sorry,” Franklin said.

“I asked the game warden could they do that? He says they ain’t supposed to. How do you like that? They ain’t
supposed
to! He says you know for sure who done it? Goddam right I know! He says you better git a lawyer and witnesses and habeas corpusses and e pluribus unems and Christallmighty! A man killed my dog, that’s all I know! Daisy, she was the sweetest little dog you ever see. She never hurt nobody, except rabbits. She was all hell on rabbits. Shot forty rabbits front of Daisy one year. I damn’ near lived on rabbits that year. You ought to heard Daisy on a hot trail.
Ki Yi Yi!
Jesus! Wouldn’t she go right out straight? Daisy’d dream about rabbits. Sometimes she’d wake right up out of her sleep a-running and a-yelling! Right after them rabbits, right out of her sleep! You’d see her little legs begin to twitching and her nose to puckering. Didn’t she look ashamed to herself when she woke up! She’d look all around pretending they was a rabbit under my bed. I’d look down at her and grin, then she’d look up at me and give a shit-eating grin and go back to sleep. Damnedest dog.”

Billy reached over and weighed Franklin’s beer in his hand. “You ain’t doing too bad, Frank.” He opened a couple of cans and handed one to John. “You ever see a beagle, Frank?”

Franklin nodded. “They’re nice little dogs. My uncle Jaynis has one.”

“Best dog there is, bar none. I aim to git me another come the time I git twenty dollars together. I don’t hope to git one nice as Daisy. You don’t git one dog like her your whole life.” His mouth formed into the crooked line of the hurt child again and his eyes turned darker. They seemed to be sinking deep into his head. The beer can crumpled slightly in his big hand.

“You know what I’d do if I run acrosst them two doing that to Daisy?” He spoke softly. “I’d shoot their legs off, only I don’t mean their legs.” He looked meaningfully at John. “And I’d leave ’em die slow out in the woods all night laying on the cold ground like Daisy done. A man’s got to be
mean
to shoot a little dog like that, Johnny. I can’t understand it, he’d have to be so mean.” He drank, spilling a few drops on his shirt and overalls.

Franklin watched him, frowning in a tense effort to hide his pity. And it was pity, John felt, not just sympathy, as if Franklin knew better than Billy that people could be that mean. He looked quickly at John, and caught his eye for a moment. The look said clearly, “I can’t stand much more of this.”