Hunter's Choice, page 10
He kept making his ridiculously slow and painful movement in the direction Hunter and Annette had gone. The sun was low in the west, and with the mountains in the distance, it would set even earlier than elsewhere.
“Dad, we’re losing the light,” Yumi said, free of the bitterness and whininess that she’d displayed earlier.
“I know!” Uncle Rick snapped. Sweat beaded on his face. “Do you honestly think I don’t know that?” He kept inching forward. Too slow. This was never going to work.
“Dad, can I help to—”
“I said I’m fine.” Uncle Rick grunted again as he tried to speed up.
Yumi closed her eyes and breathed deep as if trying to calm herself, but Hunter knew her well enough to know she couldn’t edge out the anger. She watched Uncle Rick hobble a few yards past her. She folded her arms in frustration.
Hunter frowned. Why did Uncle Rick keep saying he was fine when he obviously wasn’t? Why wouldn’t he let Yumi help him? Hunter thought about calling out to offer help, but if Uncle Rick wouldn’t accept Yumi’s assistance, he wouldn’t lean on Hunter. Or, worse, he would let Hunter help, and Yumi would be furious.
“Dad,” Yumi tried again. “Maybe if you used me as a crutch, we could—”
“Yumi! I don’t need your help! I don’t want your help! The last thing I want is to lean on my own little girl—”
“I’m twelve! I’m not a little girl! And you do need help! You do!” Her eyes watered, and as hard as Yumi bit her lip to keep from crying, she couldn’t stop the tears and quickly wiped her wet cheeks. “You act like you’re fine, you say you’re fine, but you’re not! You’ve been hiding at the lodge out here in the woods for over a month! That’s not fine! That’s messed-up!” As her tears broke loose, a month of sorrow, anger, and frustration came gushing out.
Uncle Rick opened his mouth to speak, but he shook his head and stopped himself.
“Mom does the same thing. She acts like everything is normal. She acts like you being gone doesn’t bother her, but it does. I hear her crying at night sometimes. Worse is how she acts happier than she ought to be, like it’s a super-joy to make toast or clean the sink. Why doesn’t anyone talk honestly about anything? Why won’t you talk to me, I’m your daughter, why won’t you talk to me?”
She sobbed, mumbled a curse. For a moment Hunter thought she might hit her dad. Then she shook her head and sobbed again, her shoulders slumping as if she were deflating.
Now Hunter was sure he couldn’t reveal himself to them. He was kind of trapped. If he emerged from his concealment, they’d know he’d been listening and Yumi would turn her wrath on him.
“Yumi . . .” Uncle Rick reached out a shaky hand. “Can we . . . can we talk about this later?”
“When? That’s all you and Mom ever say. We’ll talk about this later, Yumi. Not now, Yumi. This isn’t a good time, Yumi.” She kicked a rock and sent it skittering a few feet. “When? When will we finally try to fix this?”
“I don’t . . .” Uncle Rick slapped his fist on his chest and blinked watery eyes. “I don’t know if I can be fixed, kid. I think maybe I’m broken. I’ve been home from the war for years, but still sometimes I . . .” He slung his rifle and ran his hands down over his face. “I can’t stop thinking about it! I want it out of my head, but I can’t get it out of my head, it won’t stop, it won’t stop!” He sniffled and shook his head. “This isn’t the kind of thing for a kid to hear—”
“Dad, tell me. Please. I just shot a deer. I’m not a baby.”
“You don’t get it. I didn’t want all the . . . from over there, coming back to you.”
“I want to know about what happened over there. I’ve read online all about 9/11 and the Afghanistan war. But I know next to nothing about what you did over there. Dad, you earned a Bronze Star. A bunch of other medals. Why won’t you tell me about that? You’re a hero.”
“No!” He threw his rifle to the ground, an unthinkable act. Hunter had heard of rifles going off from less than that. Yumi would have been grounded until she was sixteen for doing that.
“I’m no stupid hero! Me and my guys got lit up! That’s all! I should have ordered my squad to take a different route. Our convoys had driven through that intersection way too many times. And every time it had been fine. There was another way we could have gone to get to this meeting at the governor’s compound but we were running late. So, I said we’d take the short way. The usual way.” His face was red. Tears ran down his cheeks. “The usual way! If we know the usual way, so does the enemy. And they did. And I should have known something was wrong because that intersection is usually packed with chaos traffic, and that morning it was wide-open. Basically nobody else there. And the Taliban ripped into us from on top of the buildings from all directions.”
Hunter watched his uncle, the brave hero, the man who had literally been through a minefield. And now his armor of strength and courage and always knowing what to do was cracked, and beneath it was this man who was so sad and so afraid.
“People have called me a hero. I hate that. I was just an idiot. Criminally negligent. Because our lead Humvee was disabled and my troopers were being shot up. So I threw one grenade on one roof and a second on another, and rushed up to get my guys out of there so we could withdraw.” He wiped his nose. “We lost two guys. Another hurt real bad, still has problems. And I wake up from nightmares about the whole thing. And I can’t stop thinking about it, and sometimes I get so . . .”—he gritted his teeth and squeezed his hands into shaking fists—“so angry about it. And I . . . and I . . . I didn’t want all that ugliness . . . polluting my family’s life.”
“But we miss you so much,” Yumi said. “You could never pollute my life. You’re my daddy.”
Her dad sobbed, and almost dropped, so that Yumi rushed to his side. Without saying a word, she picked up his rifle for him, and she grabbed his hand and put his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” Uncle Rick said.
“It’s OK. We’re OK. Or we will be.” They were quiet for a moment. “Let’s just go get that deer,” Yumi said. “Lean on me.”
“Are you sure you—” But Uncle Rick took a step, testing her out as a crutch, and she braced herself against the weight he put on her. She smiled, despite the obvious strain, as though happy her father felt he could depend on her. And together the two of them made their way up the hill and on toward the deer they’d worked together to bring down.
Hunter was about to show himself when Yumi spoke up. A part of him felt terrible for accidentally eavesdropping on the moment, but he somehow also understood the two of them needed this conversation. Hunter didn’t know too much about this kind of stuff, but even he understood that whatever tension had been building between these two needed to be released.
“You said you were sorry,” Yumi said softly, but loud enough for her father and Hunter to hear. “I should apologize too. You got shot at, got shot, and I act like you staying at the lodge is so tough.”
“No, Yumi,” her dad said. “Don’t apologize for feeling bad. It’s my job to be there for you, and I haven’t been doing my job.”
Yumi opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself, frowning and biting her lip. Finally she tried again. “I only mean I haven’t been making this any easier for you. I’m sorry about that. Even just this hunting trip. I kind of acted like a spoiled brat, complaining when you wanted me to come along.”
Uncle Rick stepped on an uneven rock and groaned, speaking really fast through the pain. “No, it was great because I had the chance to meet your friend Annette.” He let out a long breath. “She’s pretty cool. Almost as cool as you, kid.”
Hunter let the two of them walk well past him before he started following. “Uncle Rick? Yumi?” he called out after a moment. They stopped, and he hurried to catch up with them. “I got all turned around coming back to find you. Just spotted your blaze-orange a second ago. We found the buck! Come on! I’ll show you the way!”
“Good job, Higgins,” Yumi said.
“You need any help, Uncle Rick?” Hunter asked.
Uncle Rick smiled and looked at his daughter. “I got all the help I need.”
Hunter led them back through the woods until he finally spotted his blaze-orange vest hanging in the branch. “There!”
As the three of them approached Annette and the buck, Yumi looked up and met her dad’s smile with one of her own.
“He’s big, ain’t he?” Uncle Rick said.
“He’s incredible,” Yumi said.
“Feeling any better, Uncle Rick?” Hunter said.
“Ankle still hurts like crazy.” He squeezed Yumi’s shoulder. “But I feel better than I’ve been in a long time. Not one hundred percent, but getting better.”
“Come on!” Annette took out her phone. “We need to get a photo while we still have the light! I’ve seen posts online. If you kill a deer, you’re supposed to lift its head up and pose for a photo.”
Yumi checked with her father. He leaned his rifle against a nearby fallen tree trunk and rested against the mossy wood himself. “She’s right,” he said. “Go on. I’m good here.”
With some reluctance, Yumi left her father’s side and hurried to the deer. She knelt behind it and, taking hold of its antlers, lifted the head upright, smiling over her first deer.
Hunter tried his best to appear happy for his cousin, to keep any trace of bitterness or disappointment from his expression as Annette took pictures, but Yumi must have seen through him.
“Come on, Higgins. You tracked this big guy. Get in here for a photo.”
“Seriously?” Hunter asked.
“Yeah. Hurry up!” Yumi said.
Hunter felt a little weird, like he was hogging the credit for the kill, but maybe it was OK. He had tracked the buck after he was hit. It had been a team effort taking the deer. It certainly would take a group effort to haul the big thing back to the lodge.
“Why don’t all three of you kids get in this photo?” Uncle Rick said after Annette had photographed Yumi and Hunter. He eased himself off the log and slowly made his way to Annette, holding out his hand for her phone.
Annette looked at Yumi and Hunter as if to ask if it was OK if she joined them. Yumi laughed. “Get in here, Annette!”
She rushed to them, dropping to her knees on Yumi’s left. Hunter pressed in on Yumi’s right. All three of them smiled from behind the buck’s rack.
“OK. I want to make sure I take my time with this. Don’t want to waste the film,” Uncle Rick said.
“The what?” Hunter asked.
“He’s making a terrible joke like her phone is an old-fashioned camera from the 1900s,” Yumi explained.
“Ah.” Hunter forced a little laugh. “Good one.”
Uncle Rick laughed for real, returning Annette’s phone. He whipped out his antler-handled Buck knife and flipped open its four-inch blade. “Now we need to get this deer skinned, field-dressed, and quartered, while he’s still warm. This is the part where it gets pretty bloody.”
CHAPTER 14
“IT’S GETTING DARK,” SAID UNCLE RICK. “SO INSTEAD OF talking you through and having you do this, I’m going to show you how to field-dress this deer.” He held up the knife. “Had this Buck knife since I was sixteen. You gotta have a good knife. Sharp and sturdy. Use a small knife? It’s no good. A little blade could turn in your hand when it hits bone. You’ll wind up slicing your fingers off.” He pointed at the deer. “Help me get the animal on his back, pull the head uphill.”
Hunter grabbed the buck by the neck and pulled, grunting. “He’s heavy.”
“Yeah, he is.” Uncle Rick laughed. “Put your back into it!”
Annette looked as reluctant to grab hold of the dead animal as Hunter had felt, but she bit her lip and wrapped her arms around it, helping Hunter pull the head up the slope.
“Hold up a sec,” Yumi said, running over to the big log and leaning her rifle against the wood next to her dad’s gun. “Just wait, you guys!” She rushed back and pushed against the deer’s front shoulder, not seeming to care at all as blood seeped from its wound between her fingers. “Come on! Let’s move this thing.”
The deer slid in the grass so his head was uphill, and the three of them, with some help from Uncle Rick, rolled him onto his back.
“That’s the way. Put rocks under his shoulders. Help keep him from rolling.” Uncle Rick slid rocks beneath the buck’s hips. With practiced efficiency, he sliced around and under the buck’s genitals. “Don’t want urine and all that on the meat,” he explained.
Annette held up her phone. “Now that the hunt is over, would it be OK if I got some video?”
Uncle Rick nodded. “If you think there’s enough light. Go ahead.” He slipped the tip of his blade into the deer between his hind legs. “We want to slit the skin and peel it back before cutting through the muscle layer. This will help keep hair away from the meat. Plus”—he cut and peeled back skin—“it will make it easier to see what we’re doing. So I’m gonna make this shallow slit all the way to the breastbone up close to the head.” He was quiet for a moment as he worked. “What do you think, Yumi? You want this head mounted? Your first kill on the wall of the lodge?”
Hunter looked away. For the rest of his life, this deer’s head would be a monument, a reminder of how he had not been able to summon the will to kill and Yumi had. Yumi was cool about it, yeah, talking about how he’d done a good job tracking the animal, bringing him and Annette in on the photo. But on the drive home, there would be no congratulations from Dad about the great buck he’d brought down. When Mom asked how the hunt went, he could only tell her about failure and wait for another at-least-you-got-fourth speech.
“Yeah,” Yumi said. “I think he’s definitely a trophy.”
“In that case”—Uncle Rick kept cutting—“we cut only to the breastbone, here behind the forelegs.” He turned the blade upward, holding it in a sort of reverse grip, trailing it with his left hand. “Now through the muscle, spreading everything open as we go.”
Steam rose from the incision, and Uncle Rick’s hands were covered in the warm red blood that soaked the grass where the buck had died. Still he cut, quickly but carefully, his muscles straining as he sawed through the breastbone cartilage. He explained cutting to remove the anus as well as slicing through the windpipe and esophagus.
Hunter thought he heard something, a rustling of leaves. Was that a twig snapping? He turned to scan the shadowy woods, but saw nothing.
“Now the really gross part,” Uncle Rick said. Hunter turned his attention back to the matter at hand as his uncle gripped the bloody hose of the windpipe. “I gotta pull this real hard and . . .” A whole mess of organs slid down to the deer’s midsection. Hunter wrinkled his nose, watching, trying to ignore the squishing and sucking sounds as it all moved around.
“How do you know how to do all this?” Annette said, circling around to get a better video angle. “You’re like a surgeon.”
“Well, I’m not cutting for the first time.” Uncle Rick smiled. “Years of practice. My dad first showed me how to do this when I was about your age. He kept teaching me with every deer we took. So I’d end up doing this a couple of times every year. There really aren’t that many steps. Just have to be willing to get your hands dirty, try not to think about how gross it is. It’s just meat prep.”
Hunter noticed Annette frowning, looking into the distance up the sharp slope behind him.
“What is it?” Hunter asked, turning to see whatever she’d noticed. There was nothing.
“Thought I saw something move up there, behind that clump of trees.” Annette shrugged. “Just for a moment. Must be a trick of the light.”
“Twilight can be weird like that,” said Uncle Rick. “The changing light. The spreading shadows. It can fool us. Look like movement.” He returned his attention to the deer. “Now we turn him on his side.”
Yumi and Hunter rushed to remove the rocks and help turn the deer. Uncle Rick cut around the ribs, then had them turn the buck over to cut tissue away from the other set of ribs.
“Here we go,” said Uncle Rick. “Fun time.”
A bloody gooey mess of entrails pulled out of the animal in one squelchy movement. “When we do this, we want to try to keep any gut juices away from the meat as much as we can.”
“OK, now, that’s gross.” Annette pressed the back of her hand over her mouth and nose.
Uncle Rick laughed. “Yeah. Just focus on how good the meat will taste.”
Yumi laughed too. “I kind of don’t want to think about eating at all right now.”
Annette glanced back at the woods for a moment, then pointed at the entrails. “I’m sorry to be the baby here. I’ve cleaned fish before, but the largest fish I’ve ever caught is half the size of all that muck.”
“There’s more to do,” said Uncle Rick. “Can you all try to find some clean, straight sticks? About a foot long? We’ll need them to prop the buck open to cool him down. Yumi, when I lift him up by his hind legs, you slide that big rock under his rump. We gotta cut through his pelvis.”
Hunter and Annette went looking for sticks. Spotting a possibly suitable candidate, if the thin limb was snapped in half, Hunter shifted his slung rifle from his shoulder onto his back. Holding the wood over his knee, he pulled until it snapped loudly.
Then there was a second snap.
Hunter looked to Annette who was still searching for a stick.
Uncle Rick and Yumi had stopped working and, on their knees next to the deer, straightened up, listening.
Annette saw it first. She gasped and almost dropped her phone.
A low, mean growl added to the chill in the valley.
Up on the hill, standing in the space between two towering pines, was a massive gray wolf. He bared his rows of sharp white teeth, long top and bottom fangs like daggers.
“Daddy?” Yumi’s voice shook.
“Oh no,” said Uncle Rick.
Annette moved closer to Hunter.
The wolf raised his head toward the first stars in the sky, and its deep ghostly howl echoed through the woods. He took a few steps closer, muscles taut and ready. The wolf had other plans for Yumi’s deer.
