Hunter's Choice, page 6
Hunter tapped his uncle and pointed at the prints. They all risked walking over there to look.
Dog? Annette wrote.
Hunter took the notebook. Coyote?
Uncle Rick shook his head. He poked his finger into the wet earth in the middle of the print. Then he took the notebook. Wolf prints, he wrote. Fresh.
Are we in danger? Annette wrote, looking all around them. Hunter and Uncle Rick also surveyed the area.
Uncle Rick wrote next. We’re safe. Wolves cover ground very fast. It’s probably long gone by now. I’ve only seen a wolf out here on this land one time. Years ago.
Hunter and Annette patiently waited for Uncle Rick to finish writing, and they both felt better having read his words. Still, the idea that wolves might be out here, might have come through this very area only last night, prodded Hunter’s adrenaline, filled him with an excitement, a sense of fear, and a reminder that this was all real. He held his gun a bit tighter.
He should have spotted those wolf prints as soon as they reached their position. Instead he’d been messing around watching the eagle and writing notes with Annette. He would focus now. He exchanged glances with Uncle Rick, who looked about, as if searching for the wolf, before shrugging and smiling, like it was all no big deal. That’s what he loved about Uncle Rick. A warrior. A fearless man. And powerful. He always knew how to help Hunter.
Hunter rolled into the prone position beside his rock again and waited. Hoping, praying, willing the deer to come through their sector. He fought to keep from wondering if Kelton Fielding had taken a deer yet. He tried to stop worrying about Yumi and Uncle Rick. Above all, he forced himself not to think about what Annette had meant when she had called him sweet. A couple of times he spotted movement and for a moment his heart leapt, but it turned out to be another raccoon and later two squirrels chasing each other around.
Then he heard the loud snap of a twig, saw the lower branches of a pine shake a little, and there at the far edge of the bowl, a fine big buck emerged from the woods. Oh, he was big, and moving slowly toward them, starting up the slope toward the gap. Another, smaller buck and three does were with him, one of the does skittish, checking behind her and trotting a little before slowing down and checking again. Had Grandpa, Dad, and Yumi pushed this little herd right here?
It was perfect. Hunter already had a round in the chamber. He eased the safety off. The weapon was ready to fire.
Hunter sensed now, could feel somehow, that the other two were watching, well aware of the opportunity before them. Uncle Rick was a great shot, and from his position, with that McMillan TAC-338, he couldn’t miss. Hunter risked a look up at his uncle, who smiled before he gave a gentle head nod like, You take the shot.
Here it was, then. This was the big time. Hunter’s moment. He probably could have shot the buck already, but as long as it was still approaching, he’d let it move a little closer, the easier to score a solid clean kill shot. Hunter’s heart beat so loudly, he worried the deer would hear and take off running.
The buck was magnificent. Hunter scanned its rack. Unbelievable. It couldn’t be—that was impossible. The Phantom? But how many perfect ten—No! It was bigger than that. Yumi had been right. It was a twelve-by-twelve. Twenty-four total points, and two of those were drop tines! Two perfect drop tines pointing downward. He was enormous. Powerful. Beautiful.
Hunter brought his rifle stock to his cheek and closed his left eye. He peered through his scope, centering crosshairs over where he’d have to hit to pierce the deer’s heart.
He had to control his breathing so the natural rise and fall of his chest didn’t move the rifle all over. A few deep breaths to try to calm down. Then he breathed in—and out—and in.
Finger on the trigger.
And he breathed out.
Just pull the trigger! Hunter screamed at himself inside his head. Shoot it! You can’t miss from here! Shoot it!
He watched the incredible animal, the kind of buck that would be family legend for years to come. How many years of hunting had the buck survived? No humans had taken it. It had avoided wolves. It was the kind of perfect majestic beast whose picture belonged on the cover of outdoor magazines.
Shoot it! Don’t be a chicken! Don’t be a loser or one of those snowflake hippie anti-hunters Grandpa is always complaining about. Please. Please shoot it!
But how could he kill a beautiful powerful wild animal? How?
The more he thought about it, the more upset he became. His breathing came on harder. He had to wipe the sweat from his eyes. He was deep in the adrenaline rush of a full buck fever, but it was hopeless.
“I can’t do it,” he said, lowering his head in shame.
Coward! Failure! Hippie!
When he looked back up and wiped his eyes, he could swear the buck looked right at him. It was as though even the mule deer knew Hunter was a useless disgrace to his name. It stared at Hunter and his rifle in the perfect understanding that neither posed a real threat. Then it stamped a hoof and snorted. The ears of the other deer perked up a split second before the big buck bolted along the base of the South Ridge, heading west and curving back in the general direction from which they’d come, but probably well out of the way of where the others had planned to focus their pushing efforts.
Hunter sat up and looked down at the useless rifle in his hands. No. The rifle was not useless. The gun was perfectly good. Hunter put his rifle on safe, dropped the small magazine, and pulled back the bolt to eject the round and clear the chamber. He was the useless one. He’d wanted so badly to succeed as a real hunter like the other men in his family, but when the perfect moment finally came, he’d failed completely. He hadn’t even taken the shot. He had not.
CHAPTER 8
YUMI TRIED TO HIDE HER DISAPPOINTMENT. THAT WAS the problem. Yumi was trying to hide her disappointment with Hunter’s cowardice, and Hunter knew she was trying to hide her disappointment. He would have preferred it if she yelled at him.
Come on! We worked hard making those deer move your way! How could you have missed that shot!? What’s the matter with you?
Instead, after she’d more or less figured out that Hunter had had the perfect buck lined up in a perfect shot, she forced a smile. “Well,” she’d said, “it can happen to anyone.”
Anyone who was a coward. Hunter’s rifle felt extra-heavy, hanging from its sling, weighing down his shoulder. How could this have happened?
Dad, Grandpa, and Yumi had joined them at the foot of the South Ridge, gathered around to hear the pathetic story near the place where the proud buck had stood. Hunter felt like he’d slipped into a nightmare. Except that Hunter could never get back to his own dimension, a place where he had taken the shot. Taken the shot because he was hunting! Now they might never see a buck like that for years, perhaps ever.
“It’s getting late,” Grandpa said. “Sun’s well up. The deer will be bedded down now. We’ll head back to the lodge, get something to eat. Some rest. Come back out and try again at dusk.”
Yumi gently pulled Annette along with her, leading the way back in the direction of the lodge, both of them whispering and sneaking pitying glances back at Hunter.
He walked slowly, to let everybody else get ahead. Dad started to hold back, but Uncle Rick coughed and cleared his throat, and Dad moved along.
The only thing worse than being too chicken to shoot that deer was how everybody treated him like a helpless pathetic baby. Except that he was a helpless pathetic baby.
In fourth and fifth grade, Hunter had tried wrestling, joining the McCall Youth Warrior wrestling team. He’d joined mostly because Barett Wilson was super-excited about it. Barett was good. Hunter was, well—Coach always said he “needs improvement.” At tournaments at McCall and neighboring schools, Barett usually took first or second place. Hunter did not do nearly as well, though once or twice he was happy to take second. One time, while they walked dejectedly across the parking lot to Dad’s truck after another particularly bad tournament, Mom put her arm around his shoulders. “Well,” she said with a faltering tone of forced optimism, “at least you got fourth.”
Fourth was last place. Dead last. To earn fourth place a wrestler had to lose to all of the three other wrestlers in his bracket. Mom had basically been saying, at least you were last or at least you were beaten by everyone else or at least you were the worst. She’d been trying to cheer him up, that eternal optimism that librarians seemed to keep on the shelf and check out as needed. She’d meant well, but the hollow encouragement had felt worse somehow.
Now Uncle Rick fell into step beside him as they walked down the sunny slope from the South Ridge, and he waited for the at-least-you-got-fourth consolation speech.
But none came. The two of them walked in relative silence. From far off in the green temple of spruce and pine came the shrill caw of a crow. The cry grew anrgier, more frantic as the two of them approached the tree line on the far side of the clearing.
“What’s wrong with me?” Hunter finally whispered, more to himself than to his uncle. But sound does tricky things in the woods. Uncle Rick must have heard him.
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” said his uncle. “You were reluctant to kill. Nothing wrong with that at all.”
“It’s cowardly,” Hunter said. “I’m a wimp.”
“It only means you’re a decent person. You understand and have respect for the power to kill.” He held back a low branch for Hunter to pass by on the trail. “Some people don’t have that respect. They treat killing like a cheap game, meaningless fun. Or, worse, they enjoy killing for its own sake. They like inflicting pain.”
“But the whole point of what we’re trying to do out here is to kill.”
Uncle Rick shook his head. “No. We’re trying to take an animal, for meat, and for the triumph of outsmarting and taking a clever wild animal that knows these woods and the meaning of the hunt more than we ever will. Killing is part of our method, but it is not our purpose.”
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Finally, Uncle Rick must have read the look of confusion on his nephew’s face, because he sighed deeply. He spoke quietly. “You know I was in the war?”
Hunter almost laughed. He’d been told Uncle Rick had been awarded a Purple Heart for being wounded in battle. He’d earned a Bronze Star Medal. Hunter had looked it up online once. The medal was awarded for heroic achievement. Of course he knew Uncle Rick had fought in the war in Afghanistan. He just didn’t know anything about what Uncle Rick had done there.
His uncle stopped them beneath a mossy outcropping of rock that loomed above them, dripping wet and leaning out over the trail a little so it almost felt as if they were in a cave. “You want to know if I killed”—he paused, and then nearly spit out the next word—“people.”
Mom had always told him that his uncle probably didn’t want to talk about any of this, so Hunter remained silent. And then Uncle Rick talked about it.
“I hate the Taliban,” he said. He looked off into the distant woods with a cold, hard fury, and Hunter noticed him pull his rifle up a little. “Not like . . . not like you hate a pop quiz at school or some kid who’s been picking on you. I mean, hate that eats down deep, poisons you. Makes you burn inside. I hope you never have to experience it.” He laughed a little then. “You know Star Wars? It’s like the dark side of the Force. Hate like that, kind of takes you over a little. Only you can’t choke people with the power of your mind.”
Uncle Rick looked down at his rifle and continued. “I hate the Taliban. They are monsters. Pure evil. Not because they want to kill us Americans. That’s war. That’s fair. That’s how the game is played. But—” He choked up, cursed. “Why don’t they leave their own kids alone? They’d kill girls just for going to school. They terrorize their own people. I hate them. I killed fifteen of them.”
Hunter couldn’t hold himself back. “See? You weren’t scared! You killed—”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Hunter! I was terrified the whole time!” Uncle Rick’s voice echoed off the rocks. “Sometimes I still—” He clenched his rifle and groaned, fighting to regain control. “It isn’t about courage. It’s about the purpose. My purpose wasn’t to kill. We were trying to get paper, pens, and other school supplies to a girls’ school! I was trying to get my guys out of—” He stopped himself again.
“I could have hit that buck,” Hunter said. “No problem. But I didn’t because—”
“Were you scared of the buck?” Uncle Rick asked.
“No.”
“Think the deer was going to hurt you?”
“Of course not. I don’t—”
“So it wasn’t about fear, Hunter. You recognized that deer as the beautiful creature that it is, and it made you recognize even more the awesome, the holy power to kill. You just need to reconcile to your purpose and choose to kill in service to that purpose.
“I absolutely hate the Taliban. But still, each one had a mother, maybe family, was a human being. If possible, I would have rather not had to kill anybody. But killing was an essential tool for my purpose at the time, and so I fired my weapon as accurately and as many times as I could. I forced myself to consciously make the choice to use that terrible power in my hands.”
“What if I can’t do that?” Hunter asked.
“You might not be able to,” Uncle Rick said. He resumed leading the walk back toward the lodge. “Or you might not be able to kill on this hunting trip. Maybe you’ll figure it out next time, or next year. You take a deer when you’re darn well good and ready. Not before. My point is, your hesitation doesn’t make you a coward. It doesn’t make you weak or less of a man. It makes you human. It makes you a good person. Roger?”
After a long moment Hunter answered. “Roger that, Uncle Rick.” He’d said he understood and agreed, and he smiled like he felt much better. He supposed that this talk with Uncle Rick helped him a little, and he was honored that his uncle would choose to share so much with him. But Hunter still had to go back and face the rest of the family—and Annette—having just let the best buck any of them were likely to see for years walk away easy.
Despite the awkwardness from the morning, it felt good to get back to the lodge and get out of all that hunting gear, in the warm confines of the cabin. The lodge’s furnace ran on propane, but in the cabin part there was also a round black woodstove in which Grandpa had a hot fire burning. The girls sat on the floor around the woodstove, Yumi with Uncle Rick’s desert camo poncho liner over her shoulders, Annette draped in a woodland picture blanket with a five-by-five buck image staring right at Hunter, as if mocking him. The men were in the kitchen, having a beer and talking about the morning.
Hunter dropped onto the camo-upholstered recliner in the middle of the living room.
“Hey, Hunter,” Annette said brightly. “I was just telling Yumi that I can really see the fun in this sport. I’m going to take the hunter safety course and get my license, and maybe I’ll get into hunting. Of course, my thing, besides journalism and writing, is fishing. This summer maybe we can get out on Payette Lake or Payette River and catch some trout or catfish.”
“That would be great,” Yumi said, flashing a quick look at Hunter.
“What do you think, Hunter?” Annette said. “I know some choice fishing spots.”
Hunter forced a smile and nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.”
Maybe Annette was just being nice. Perhaps she really was simply enthusiastic about fishing, and eager to share her favorite outdoor sport with the two who were sharing theirs with her. Annette really was very nice. But he felt like she was offering a consolation prize, an outdoor adventure to serve as a replacement for this one at which he’d so obviously failed.
The funny thing was he’d gone fishing plenty of times. He’d caught a few fish. A twenty-two-pound salmon once that he’d hardly been able to reel in. The fish had died not long after he’d pulled it ashore. By taking it out of the water, he’d effectively killed it. And he’d had no problem with that. So what was wrong with him and deer?
It always came back to his failure with the deer.
They all ate lunch, the last of the previous year’s venison steaks from the deep freeze out in the garage. For a while Grandpa, a Republican, debated with Dad, a Democrat, about some tax issue in which Hunter wasn’t particularly interested. Uncle Rick, who insisted he supported no party save for the party of common sense, spoke up once in a while. Yumi and Hunter exchanged a nervous look. Sometimes these debates exploded into loud bitter arguments that only a walk or a hunt through the woods could subdue. Hunter hoped nothing like that would happen today, especially in front of Annette.
“You know, I remember a hunt,” Grandpa said, finally changing the subject from politics, so abruptly that everybody listened closely, “back when I was a boy. A month before that, two boys in my grade, Eddie Mara and Bruce Callard, had been out hunting. Bruce hadn’t been paying close enough attention when he shot a deer, hadn’t seen Eddie way back behind the animal. The bullet severed an artery, and Eddie bled out and died. Bruce was never quite the same after that.”
“I remember Bruce Callard,” said Uncle Rick. “He, um, had a lot of problems.”
Grandpa waved away any further discussion of Mr. Callard’s trouble. “Anyhow, when I was out there hunting that fall, my buddy Josh was pushing. There I was, with the best rifle I had in those days, lined up on a perfect shot. Solid four-by-four buck. That was the big time. I was full into the buck fever. Adrenaline coursing through me. Heart pumping heavy. That sort of hyper-alert state of mind, fully in touch with the buck and the wilderness around me. But—” Grandpa took a swig of beer from his can. “I don’t know what it was. It’s hard to describe. The hunter’s instinct. Not a literal voice, but the understanding, something telling me to stop, to wait. Something felt not quite right. The buck eventually took off out of range, and at first I thought I’d been busted, that maybe it smelled me or saw me. But a moment later Josh pushed through the shrubbery right behind where that deer had stood. If I had fired, I might have killed him, just like Bruce killed Eddie.”
