The wind was calm this evening and that suited Charlie just fine. The clearing before him was a vast hole in the forest wall, a peninsula of springy grass and tall weeds, flanked by giant, fir sentinels. In the gap sat the still smoldering foundations of Charlie’s cabin, its charred bones jarring against the verdant green.
He sat opposite the wreckage, concealed in the overgrowth at the edge of the woods, a .45 muzzleloader resting casually in his lap. Charlie didn't need a blind. The deer were trusting enough. Besides, he had never been much of a hunter and would probably bungle the entire thing if he tried to set it up. No, the local whitetail were coming to this salt lick because it's what they knew. Charlie had purchased the land twenty-five years ago, 6 months after his father suffered a stroke and "went home to Jesus" as his momma would have said.
He built the place that was now smoldering across the way, a few years later, and married Donna the year after. They made it their summer home—just a little one-bedroom, with a standing shower and a gas stove. They didn't need much, since the kids were grown and gone and they enjoyed sitting out on the front porch, watching all the nature that living on the side of a mountain could provide.
Charlie had a feeling Donna would love to watch whitetail and he knew just the thing to bring them in. Though he was never much of a hunter himself, his dad had taught him a trick or two as a boy. The salt lick was the obvious choice. It was simple, effective, and the deer had come willingly enough. It started with a trickle and quickly turned into a flood. At first, the deer spooked—as he expected they would—every time there was movement or noise from the house. But, as the years went by, the deer that routinely showed up at the salt lick became more and more docile.
Charlie shifted in his little fold-out seat, internally groaning at the way his bones seemed to rub together more and more with each passing year. He was getting on up there in age and the days of sitting Indian-style on a carpet of pine needles were far behind him. He took a sip from his coffee thermos, his warm breath sending a plume of white vapor into the chill evening air.
There was movement just inside the tree line about a hundred yards away. One of them was coming at least. There were so few now. Charlie slaughtered them with gleeful abandon. He didn't eat them, as a typical hunter would. Instead, he tossed their still-warm carcasses in the back of his old Ford pickup, drove them down to the cliffside about a mile outside of the property, and dumped them. He didn't care. Not anymore anyways—not when he tossed and turned in bed at night, that echoing thump sound reverberating in his skull, the bed empty and cold beside him.
He grimaced at the thought, showing his teeth to the evening air. Donna had been his junior by 8 years. In the natural state of things, he should have gone first and she deserved to die better, not soaking wet, in the cold, harsh fluorescent lights over the shower stall in the bathroom. He heard the thump while sipping his morning coffee and skimming through his son's text messages from the night before. Donna was dead before he set his coffee cup down. Dead as he shambled across their small living room. Dead as he stepped inside their small, cramped bathroom. Dead as he cradled her, screaming and sobbing. Dead as the stupid deer showed up daily and licked that ridiculous salt lick.
The tree line, about 30 yards to the right of the smoldering wreck of Charlie and Donna's summer home, parted—giving way to an enormous buck. Charlie had seen him before. He was the oldest of the bunch that frequented the salt lick. Charlie knew that whitetail bucks had an average lifespan of 5 or 6 years. This one was in year 7, with a massive chest and squared shoulders rising to a thick, bulky neck, rippling with old but powerful muscles. As old as he was, his rack must've been at 95%. Bucks dropped their racks once a year, growing them back thicker and stronger than the year before. This buck was on its 6th cycle at least.
As he watched, it raised its head and blew twice into the silent evening air before stepping out into the clearing. Charlie already had the stock of the muzzleloader in the hollow of his shoulder socket. The buck was quartering toward him and there was nothing impeding his shot. Charlie wanted it dead and done. He watched as the buck casually eased its way across the clearing, toward the salt lick. Two does stepped into the clearing behind him and Charlie laughed to himself. This buck was so confident he disregarded the laws of his own nature. Normally, a buck would allow the females to proceed ahead of him, knowing that any potential danger would come at them first, allowing the buck to escape. Charlie loved its confidence, as it would be the thing that ended it.
He had done this many times now and he knew his business. Charlie sighted in. The range was good and the shot was as clear as anything he'd ever had with a buck, especially one of this size. His finger itched to pull the trigger and put an end to this—the last of what he had built on the side of their cozy little mountain.
For her.
He pulled the trigger.
The rifle roared and before his sight was clouded by the massive plume of white smoke, he saw the buck jump, along with the two does behind it. Even with the ringing in his ears, he could hear the crashing escape of the two remaining deer.
He sat for a while after that, sipping his coffee and allowing his thoughts to fill up with black thunderheads that eclipsed the sun. His heart was a steady pounding in his ringing ears, each thump reminding him—always reminding him. In his mind, he kept getting up from the kitchen table, over and over. He heard his own screams in the distance. He watched as the first flicker of flame caught in the doorway. It was as if the fire was tasting the cabin, finding it very flavorful indeed, before consuming the entire front with writhing, orange glee.
The gun smoke was clearing, slowly floating up into the breezeless sky. Charlie couldn't see the buck but that was neither here nor there. His aim was true and if it had a moment to run, it hadn't gone far. The muzzleloader was a gift from his son. Gerald had assumed his father would want to hunt, living on the side of a mountain and all. Charlie took it with the proper "oohs and aahs" that came with accepting a gift when you don't really want it but don't want to hurt any feelings.
"It's an inline muzzleloader," Gerald said.
They were all sitting around the large, red-brick fireplace at Charlie and Donna's winter home in Pennsylvania, a place that had become the only spot for unwrapping Christmas presents every year, as these things tend to go. It was the natural, "falling in place" that just happens without question. Families create traditions just by doing and being.
"What's an inline muzzleloader?" Donna asked. She looked intensely curious as she bounced her new grandchild on her lap.
"It just means it's easier to clean," Charlie said, presenting the muzzleloader to her, as if by looking at it, Donna could perceive the obvious. He was grinning as he did so, knowing her lack of understanding would make Donna snap at him later. Gerald was also grinning. Partly because watching his 10-month-old son with his grandmother, bouncing on her knee and practically cooing, warmed his heart and partly because he knew there was no explaining it to her. His mother was one of the smartest people he knew but she wasn't interested in guns or hunting.
Charlie grunted as he stood up. The smoke was completely cleared now and there was no sense sitting and reminiscing on memories of Donna. As it turned out, the muzzleloader had a use, after all. The sun was quickly settling in beyond the horizon and night would take over completely soon enough.
Charlie stepped into the clearing, heading straight to the spot where the buck was standing when he took the shot. He saw nothing at first. His eyes weren't what they used to be and it took him a moment to pick up the blood trail. The blood was light but it didn't matter. The buck lay a hundred yards away, a brown lump, heavily shadowed in the fading sunlight.
Charlie propped the stock of the muzzleloader under his armpit, muzzle facing down as he had always been taught, and strolled across the open field to retrieve his kill—the last majestic creature to haunt his dream of a long, comfortable life with his wife. The life that was taken from him, leaving him alone and confused, destined to wither away until the ground welcomed him home at long last.
When he reached the buck, he simply stood there for a moment, summoning the energy to take care of the rest. His mind was a whirl of dark emotions, full of blood, manic hatred, and the desire to wipe the whole slate clean and walk away as if this was a life never lived.
What would Donna think of me now?
The thought startled him. What did it matter what Donna would think? She was dead and buried six feet below the hollow grounds of Boiling Falls Church back in Asheville, North Carolina. Donna didn't think anything. So where had the thought come from then?
A breeze was starting to kick up and the trees surrounding the clearing were swaying in the faded orange-red of the dying sunlight, casting shadow fingers across the ground. It looked as if the shadows were waving at him.
Hey Charlie, we see you. We bear witness. We see. See.
Charlie shuddered at the thought. It was so random, so out of left field. He hadn't thought about anything Donna would think or say in the 9 months since she passed. And those trees...
The buck's antlers were facing downward, almost as if the animal had fallen asleep by trying to lay its forehead against the ground.
Interesting way to die, Charlie thought.
Then again, death was never supposed to be a pretty thing. It wasn't like the movies or the books. People didn't close their eyes. They stared openly, mouths and eyelids, no longer constrained by active muscles, gaped open. Their eyes crossed. They defecated and urinated all over themselves. Death was ugly.
Donna's death was ugly. It was uncalled for. It was a freaking travesty and he would raze the entire mountainside, avenge her untimely death by stripping this land to its—the buck exploded upward from beneath him.
Charlie never saw it move. In one instant his pulse was a raging inferno in the dark depths of his mind and the next, he felt his front teeth shatter as they came together. The world blinked white, a strobe light of bright stars as his breath left him. The agony was a trace of fire from his lower face to his belly.
He tasted blood and had time to think, I'm lucky my tongue wasn't between my teeth, before the buck's rear end kicked out. Charlie wasn't directly behind the deer, or its razor-sharp hooves might have impaled him and ended his life for good, right here in this clearing, next to the goddamn salt lick. Instead, one of the hooves caught his calf, shearing through the muscle like hot butter.
Charlie fell forward, the buck's heaving antlers catching him in the armpit, shearing straight through and popping out the top of his shoulder like some nightmare jack-in-the-box, white bone antler, splayed with bright red. Charlie screamed and reached for his belt knife with his good arm.
He was pinned against the buck. It couldn't pull its antlers down and out of his arm and so they danced in the growing moonlight, a screaming bucking shape as the massive deer heaved and bucked, trying to throw him. Charlie felt the knife handle on his belt but the buck dropped its head again, stretching him and pulling his hand away from it. It twisted with him and Charlie felt heard something in his shoulder snap.
A raging ball of white-hot agony laced across his shoulder and neck, like being struck with a flaming whip. As the deer raised its head up again, Charlie grabbed the knife handle and pulled. It popped free right as the deer dipped again and he brought the knife down, burying it in the deer's back. The buck grunted and heaved again. This time, his arm came loose, the antler sliding out of his armpit with a warm, wet, pop. His feet weren't on the ground and he fell, holding onto the knife and carving a deep, red canal down the grunting, heaving buck's back. He felt the knife glint off of something hard and he nearly dropped it.
The buck came down on top of him and his air went out again, this time with an audible blow from his broken nose. The weight of it was huge and despite his nose, the warm, savage smell of the animal filled his panicked brain. Somewhere in the instinctive subconscious of his mind, Charlie knew he couldn't let those razor-sharp hooves near him. The buck would cut him to pieces.
With his left hand, he grabbed the buck's ear, the sheet of agony returning through the gaping hole in his left shoulder. One of the hooves struck his thigh and a warm trail of fire traced down his leg, stopping at the kneecap. With his right hand, he brought the knife around to the buck's throat and buried it again, frantically sawing the blade back and forth.
He screamed and spat blood as the deer twisted above him, antlers striking his face, his shoulder, his chest. He kept his knife hand moving, feeling the warm spray of the deer's carotid artery as it let go in a rush. Blood splattered across his face with a heavy, wet smack. Charlie didn't know whose blood it was.
The buck gave one last giant heave, its hindquarter coming down hard on Charlie's knee and he felt it pop out of joint. He screamed again, feeling the flecks of his shattered teeth sliding across his gums, caught behind his lips. The buck settled—stilled. The world around him grew quiet, filled only with the sound of his wet, ragged gasps.
Time passed. The moon crawled across the sky, unthinking, unfeeling for the shattered man beneath it, bathed in silver light. After a moment, after an eternity, Charlie wedged his good arm beneath the stiffening shoulder of the buck and started a slow, wiggling slide from beneath the animal. Every movement was pain, unlike anything he had ever felt in his life.
Once he was clear, he tried to stand—screamed, and fell down again.
Can't stand on the knee, he thought and tried again, this time using his good leg. He made it to his feet, swayed for a moment, then pitched forward, vomiting. He fell in his own, wet fluids.
I'm dying.
He stood again, using his good leg and his good arm. He looked at the buck, its eyes glazed over, tongue lolling from its mouth.
Dead then.
He forcibly pointed his head in the direction of the trail, the stiff, torn muscles in his neck screaming in protest. Slowly, he shambled in that direction, dragging his leg with the dislocated knee. The trail entrance would lead him back to his Ford, where his phone was and his only hope of ever leaving this place alive.
It took him a half an hour just to cross the clearing. His body was alive with pain and he didn't understand how he could still be standing. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, like a runaway freight train.
When he entered the treeline, the narrow trail was alive with movement. The moon was bright tonight, and the shifting fingers of the trees resembled the grasping hands of the dead, twisting and writhing in the pale light of the moon. He had to breathe through his mouth. His nose seemed as if it were packed with a pound of blood. His chest heaved and snatched air.
His truck was roughly a hundred yards down the trail and he could see the dull metal sheen of it, reflecting the moonlight. As he drew closer, he could see something else next to the truck, a dark shape, nestled in the shadow of the pickup. The trees were swaying harder now and the woods seemed to whisper as they moved.
Charlie stopped. Everything in his body pressed him to go on but there was something about that shape next to his old pickup. It didn't move, yet he had no recollection of a boulder or a tree stump sitting next to where he parked his truck. It was hard to think—hard to remember. His body was weakening. He could feel the blood running down his shoe, saturating his sock. The pain in his shoulder and armpit was enough to make him scream if he only had the air for it.
Yet he could feel the gooseflesh running up his arms. The object sat in complete shadow, despite the shifting trees and bars of silver moonlight breaking through and fading, like one of those live, nightfire exercises he had conducted back in his Army days. He recalled the tracer rounds spitting through the air, lighting the sky up like some sort of science fiction epic made real. He wished he had one of those guns now.
Startled at the realization, he felt his knife in his hand. He had forgotten all about it—hadn't realized he was still carrying it. Without thinking, he underhanded the knife at the object in the shadows. Despite his injuries and constant agony, his aim was true and the knife bounced off the object with a warm, meaty thump. Charlie sank to his knees. His body was rejecting something, some alien thing that he couldn't quite grasp.
For he knew now what the object was, yet his mind whirled at the implications, the sense, the confusion. He knew the moment the knife struck it and, at the same time, knew it was impossible. He felt, rather than heard, the passenger door of his pickup open. He looked up as she got out. Donna. As young, vibrant, and beautiful as the day he met her on a foggy morning jog in the little park near his childhood home. She had her trademark smile, the one that said there was nothing in the world for her but him.
The tears came then and he raised his hand as he knelt before her image, and dropped it again as she faded away. The warmth remained though, and he started to crawl towards the object, the tears flowing freely, snot and blood running down and over his lip. He didn't care. He could feel himself departing and he had to make it to the object in front of him.
He hauled himself up next to it, collapsing against it, feeling the last of its departing warmth. He tried to speak, to reconcile, to tell Donna he was so sorry. He laid his cheek against the great beast. The last of its kind on the mountain—the buck he had shot in the clearing, a short time ago. He breathed in, breathed again, and stopped.