Tracker (6 page)

He did not know why.

He knew that he hadn't shot her, and he knew he had wanted to shoot her and that made no sense, no sense at all. He did not understand himself, did not know what made him hold the death back. But there was something later for him, something later on down that he wanted to see, to hear, to feel.

It all meant more than just the deer and the gun and him. It meant something bigger that he couldn't understand just yet.

That's what he thought, anyway. But another part of John told him that he was following her because he really had no choice. He could not hunt another deer having failed on this one, and he could not turn and go home because it was not a finished thing.

He followed the doe's tracks because at that time that was all there was for him—the tracks leading off into the snowy woods.

The tracks called him and he followed.

NINE

He could see the fear in her now.

He was following her and the fear drove her and she ran hard; long and deep in the first burst the way she would have run to get away from wolves—she ran for her life.

John followed the tracks easily, not hurrying. He still wasn't quite sure why he was staying
with her, tracking her, but he kept going for another hour and a half to cover the same distance she had covered in eight and a half minutes.

Speed was everything to her, to all deer. When mortal danger threatened the only recourse was speed, burning speed, speed that tore energy from the center of the deer and used her up.

She ran that way now. Ran from the danger of John and while she had paused long, too long, in the freeze position, she made up for it by now getting as much distance as possible in the shortest possible time between her body and the man with the gun.

But running long and hard burned her out. It showed in her tracks, a slight wobble now and then from running past her short-range endurance. She would have to rest soon, he knew, would have to bed down.

John knew this from hunting and from talking with his grandfather and other old hunters. There were stories of men who had taken time and walked deer down and John had always figured they were just that, stories. But he knew that deer had a short burn, nonetheless, and that was in his mind now as he followed her tracks.

The tracks.

The tracks were her and they were more, too. They were small stories in the snow. At first, when she ran scared from him she had torn the snow and left diamonds scattered in the sun across the white. But when she settled down again and began looking for a place to rest, the tracks were more controlled, her feet almost inserted in the snow, with no splashing.

He knew her from the tracks. Knew more about her all the time and kept going at first for that, he thought: to learn more about her, to try and find what it was that made her stick in his mind. She was there already, as if she'd been there before he came hunting.

The second time he got her up she didn't freeze but made off to the left, the north, in a smooth, low run. He could easily have hit her. She started forty yards away and he had a good sixty- or seventy-yard run to get the sights on her but he didn't even raise the rifle.

He cut the corner and again picked up her tracks and started following once more. Again there was panic in the tracks, the long burst, but he knew he wouldn't lose her, because it was all new snow and there were no other deer and it was clear and there wouldn't be any more snow to cover her tracks.

I'll follow for a while,
he thought, having used up all the reasons and excuses.
Maybe I can still kill her and take liver for Grandpa. Maybe I can make her into meat,
he thought, knowing that something about that was wrong.
Maybe I'll just stay with her. I'll follow for a while and see what happens.

The sun was moving toward evening now. It was still well above the southwestern horizon, but it would drop fast and when it did it would get dark. John frowned, trying to remember the moon. Finally he remembered that it would be nearly full so there would be good night light. Sometimes when there was new snow and the moon was full he could almost read at night.

He took a sandwich from his pocket and tore the paper off while walking. His first bite tasted so good that it made his jaws ache but on the second one he remembered that it was a venison sandwich and the meat seemed to take on a taint, not so much a bad taste as a bad feeling.

He did not take a third bite but put the sandwich back in his pocket and instead ate the apple. When he was finished he threw the core away and kept walking, always walking.

He was tiring now, but not exhausted. The calves of his legs ached slightly now and then and his stomach hurt a bit from stepping over the
swamp grass, but it was nothing to him yet and he walked easily.

I'll bet,
he thought,
I could track her all night. I'll bet I could just keep going in the moonlight and stay on her tracks and then …

He did not know what came next. Just
and then …

He was halfway through a stand of jack pine on a small sand island in the sea of swamp grass when dark caught him.

John knew that starting in November for four months dark hammers down fast in the north. In literally minutes it goes from day to dark night, so fast it catches things. Dark can catch a rabbit in a clearing, letting a fox find him. It catches mice in the open and lets owls have them.

And it caught John.

He stopped then, studied the sky and the terrain. There were times when he was young when he would have worried—being caught in the dark miles from home in a strange woods. But not now. He could see the stars, see the polestar, and though it was cold, the wind had also died so the cold didn't blow in.

And there was the moon. The moon would be south, go to bed in the southwest. “You're never lost when you can see the sun and the stars and the
moon,” his grandfather had told him. The moon was a pale-blue light that took life from the snow and changed the dark to just a different kind of day, not night at all, so John wasn't lost.

The tracks shone in the moonlight, called to him from the inside, and he started walking again, following.

At first, while he worked the tracks and went deeper and deeper into the swamp he saw other things, saw beauty.

He moved to within fourteen inches of a snowshoe rabbit, frozen in the moonlight like a white ghost, caught by surprise while playing fox-and-geese. John could not tell where the snow ended and the rabbit began; the rabbit was a part of the whiteness.

A timber wolf followed him for a short time, until John turned in a clearing and saw him. The wolf had been looking for mice and for a time John thought he might be after the doe and it angered him and he made a sound in his throat.

It was an animal sound—a sound that wasn't a sound. It came from inside some way, from a pit that he didn't understand. It was a sound for the wolf, a warning for the wolf—a thing that went out from John, out to the wolf.

He did not want to kill the doe. He didn't want
the wolf to do it either and he was glad when the wolf turned away, not in fear, but just naturally.

She is not mine,
he thought, stopping suddenly,
but she is of me now, somehow; I will follow her for a while and we shall see.

I will follow her for a while and I will touch her.

The thought came like a fast wind, working around the sides of his brain into the middle.

I will follow her and I will touch her and she will be mine then, mine without me having to kill and give her death and make her meat.

But why?
He had never thought like this before. He was tired now—had been tracking for twelve hours, moving steadily, getting the deer up and pushing her ahead, often without seeing her. But he wasn't odd-tired yet, just tired—and yet he wanted to touch the doe.

He
would
touch her.

He would stay on the trail until she couldn't get away from him anymore, stay and stay and when he caught her he would touch her.

And if I do that,
he thought,
if I can follow her and touch her without giving her death then death will be cheated.

If I touch the deer.

He looked to the moon again and saw that it
was indeed full and there would be good light all night and he started walking.

There was purpose now, an aim. He thought suddenly that it would be better to dump the rifle, to leave it hanging in the branches of a tree. He would pick it up on the way back, if he came this way. If not he'd come out on his tracks and get it later. It was of steel and heavy and meant death and he didn't want to carry it any further. It did not fit with the doe any longer, or with him, and when he put it in the tree he felt a weight lifting from him that was out of proportion to the four pounds the rifle weighed. It was a weight from his thoughts. An extra part was gone, a part that didn't matter. Now there was just John and the doe and the night and the tracks, and he fought the tiredness away and kept going. He picked up the stride and worked to increase the pace.

He did not come to see how the deer was his grandfather, or the spirit of his grandfather's life, until later in the night, almost daylight the next morning.

And by then nothing was the same as it had started out to be. The deer wasn't a deer anymore and he wasn't John Borne anymore, either. Everything was changed.

TEN

Through the night he moved, weaving amongst the willows, flowing across the clearings, following her tracks, watching the doe change from a deer to something more and something less.

She went mad in the night. She ran too hard and went down and fell and he saw the splotch in the snow where it had happened and at first he
smiled, some part of him felt good that he had caused her to run, but then it changed to sadness and he hoped that she would not do that again, would not panic and fall and perhaps hurt herself. But she ran in jerks through the night, great tearing runs that took her energy.

She ran across clearings and amongst the willows and pine, away, away—always away from the sound of the steps that kept coming.

And John in some ways became less than he was before—less the hunter, less the man tracking her—and in some ways he became more than he was before. He took strength from the snow and the winter and the beauty of the night, took power from the moon and the white light and kept going.

More than once he fell asleep while he was walking. From three in the morning on to daylight he had a terrible time staying awake. His legs and body kept on but his mind and spirit went out and he dropped, face down in the snow, and it was hard to get up.

Once he simply lay and felt the sleep come and knew that if he didn't get up the sleep might let him freeze, but he still couldn't move and wouldn't have moved except that he heard the deer.

The deer.

He heard her move in the red willows in the white light and he looked and saw her and she was afraid but she was somehow beckoning, too. The sound pulled him and he got up and stood on his feet and started walking again.

In the night he changed.

In the night he changed from following the deer to becoming the deer. A part of him went out to the deer and a part of the deer went out of her into him, across the white light and he wasn't the same. He would never be the same again. He was of the deer and the snow and the night and he kept himself but he lost his spirit and gained a new one.

 

I am not

but I am.

I am the deer.

 

It became a chant, a song that he did not sing aloud but which still went out before him down the line of tracks to the deer and he hoped she knew the song, knew the beauty of the song and knew that he meant her no harm.

But she could not know.

She could know only that this man kept following, stayed on her trail the way no wolf would have done, spent energy the way no predator would have done, stayed and stayed and stayed until the fear was alive in her.