Quiver (3 page)

She smiled and said, “No, I’m a nail technologist.”

Jack said, “Why are you doing that? You had a good job.” He regretted it as soon as he said it.

“You ought to talk.” She gave him a dirty look. “What did you say your current occupation was?”

He tried to smooth things over by asking a couple questions. “What do you like about your job?”

Jodie perked up a little. “You really want to know?”

Jack said, “You bet I do.” Trying to put a little enthusiasm behind it.

“Well, for one thing, it gives me a chance to be creative. I design decorative, colorful little things for
fingernails and toenails. My favorites are gorgeous flowers made out of pink and green rhinestones and beautiful butterflies and ladybugs made out of crystal-clear teardrop rhinestones and pink round rhinestones.”

Jodie was grinning. She couldn’t help herself; she was so excited.

“I also do patriotic designs like American flags. They were very popular after 9/11. One of my customers met her boyfriend ’cause he loved the sunshine design I did on her toes. How about that? And I do New York manicures and French manicures and warm paraffin manicures. Once I did a pink ribbon for a breast cancer survivor. I do guys too, give them manicures and paint their toenails. I think it’s great there are men who are masculine enough to express themselves in such a fun way.”

Jack had stopped listening after “teardrop rhinestones.”

Jodie’s goal was to open her own shop one day. She was going to call it Ultimate Nails. “I think that says it all,” Jodie said, “don’t you?”

He thought, that’s what happens, you try to be nice to someone, they bore the hell out you.

The next day he drove Jodie to work and went out for a few hours, looking for a job. He was almost out of money and Jodie’d made it clear right up front, she wasn’t in a position to help him out financially.

In his brief job search, he tried a couple used car lots on Gratiot, asking if they needed an experienced salesman. They didn’t. He tried a construction site, a landscaping company, and a painting contractor, saying he’d do anything they needed done and struck out each time. He tried two strip joints on Eight Mile, asking if they were looking for a bouncer. They weren’t.

He stopped at a neighborhood saloon and sat at the dark bar that was crowded with afternoon drinkers. He sipped a beer and considered his options. Say he did get hired somewhere: now that he didn’t have the motivation to make probation, how long could he work some menial, chickenshit job? The answer was not very, if at all. He didn’t see himself showing up for work every day, doing something he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t see himself starting over, like he’d ever started in the first place. He was the way he was and wasn’t going to change. Not at age thirty-eight.

For the first time since leaving Arizona, he thought seriously about getting a gun and hitting party
stores, small markets and retail shops that one person could manage. He’d just be more careful this time around, the fear of incarceration fading after six months on the outside.

She remembered the day it happened, waking up to a creaking noise, the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She was in her bedroom at the lodge, varnished log walls and a cathedral ceiling with interlocking oak beams. The clock on the bedside table said 5:07 a.m. There was a log smoldering in the fireplace, giving off the faint smell of wood smoke. She got up, crossed the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser, took out the Smith & Wesson .357 Airweight and went into the hall. She saw a man in mossy oak camouflage come up the stairs and head for Luke’s room. She snuck up behind him and aimed the pistol at his back.

He heard her and turned.

“Hey, Rambo,” Kate said, “better take this. Del Keane said he saw a bear last week.” She handed the automatic to Owen, and he slipped it in his pants pocket.

“Del doesn’t need a gun. Bear probably smelled him and ran away. What’re you doing up?”

“I’ve got to see my men off,” Kate said.

Luke came out of his room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. They went downstairs and Kate made coffee, carrying steaming mugs into the room. A backlog burned in the big fieldstone fireplace. Owen was kneeling on the oriental rug, putting gear in his backpack. He closed the top and laid it next to his compound bow that had a built-in quiver of arrows. She handed Owen his coffee, pulled her robe closed, and stood over by the fireplace to get warm.

Luke came in the room now, a skinny teenager dressed in Skyline Apparition 3-D camo, an iPod dangling from his neck like white plastic bling.

Owen said, “What’re you listening to?”

Luke pulled the earplug out and said, “White Stripes.”

Kate said, “I don’t know that bucks are partial to Motor City garage bands.”

Owen said, “Maybe he’s on to something. Rock instead of doe scent, the new deer lure.”

Luke picked up his dad’s bow and tried to pull the string with its seventy pounds of draw, face straining. He couldn’t do it.

“Lock your arms,” Owen said. “Use your shoulders.”

Luke took a breath and tried again, and this time, drew it about three quarters.

“You’re close, almost there,” Owen said. “Couple of months …”

Kate put her arms around Owen. “Be careful. You don’t know who’s out there drunk with a bow or a rifle. Man has enough bourbon, I’d look like a whitetail.”

“A cute one, too,” Owen said. “I’ll tell you that.”

Now Kate hugged Luke and kissed his cheek. She could see sparse, blondish fuzz on his chin and upper lip. He squirmed and tried to pull away from her, a look of pain on his face.

He said, “Mom …”

She let him go. His voice had changed in the past few weeks. It was deeper now and she wasn’t used to it. “I’ll bet you don’t mind if Lauren kisses you.”

Luke said, “We broke up.”

Kate said, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said. He seemed embarrassed, eyes looking down at the rug.

“Give him a break,” Owen said and winked.

Luke walked out of the room. Owen grinned now and said, “I’ll get all the details, tell you about it later, okay?”

Owen picked up his gear and Kate put her arm around him and walked him to the door. Luke was outside in the dark with Leon. Luke threw a stick and Leon charged after it and brought it back, looking up at Luke, ready to go again.

Owen bent down and kissed Kate. She held his big stubbly face in her hands and said, “Be careful.”

“What’re you worried about?”

“Keep an eye on Luke, will you?”

“You don’t do this,” Owen said. “What’s the matter?”

Kate didn’t explain it, the feeling she had, because she couldn’t.

Owen opened the door and said, “Leon, get in here.”

    The dog came running, banged into Owen, hit the rug, a Persian, slid across it, regained his balance and moved toward Kate, slobbering and pressing himself against her.

Owen had been hunting since he was a kid, loved the woods and streams and wanted to pass the thrill on to Luke. For Owen, there was nothing like it, getting away from the shop, the track, the bullshit. He also loved it because it was the only place on earth you didn’t hear cell phones.

Kate didn’t care much for hunting, but she didn’t
impose her point of view too strenuously. What bothered her were all the bonehead stories about hunters getting hurt or killed. She’d just read one in the Traverse City
Record Eagle
about a man who was shot while he was going number two. The article said he answered a call to nature and was nearly done with his business, wiping himself with a white Kleenex, when another member of his hunting party shot the man in his backside, thinking he was a whitetail deer.

“That didn’t really happen,” Owen said.

“Want to bet?” Kate said. “I’ve got the article right here.”

Another story told about a hunter who was gored by a deer and had to go to the hospital. The man had no hard feelings, though, and said he’d be ready with a load of double aught next time him and the deer’s paths crossed.

Kate said, “If that isn’t proof of the stupidity of hunting, nothing is.”

Owen said, “Most hunting accidents—fifty percent—involve falling out of a tree stand, either climbing up or down.” He looked at her and grinned.

Kate shook her head. “Oh my God.” Leon moved in close and bumped her. “Listen, if you guys aren’t
home by dinner, I’m going to Big Buck Night at the casino.”

Owen said, “What’s that all about?”

“Roman Brady, a soap star from
Days of Our Lives
, is going to be there.”

“He’s the big-buck stud, huh?”

Kate said, “Ever seen him?”

“Not that I recall.”

“You’re not missing a whole lot,” Kate said, “but the ladies love him because he’s on TV.”

Owen said, “So you’re not going?”

“I’m just warning you,” Kate said. “That’s what hunting widows do—get their picture taken with Roman and play blackjack.”

She stood at the window, listening to Leon’s wet irregular breathing, watching Owen and Luke cross the yard, two contrasting shapes in the dim light of a half moon—like Lenny and George in
Of Mice and
Men
, a book Kate had just read again. They moved toward the tree line, disappearing into the thick foliage like they’d entered another dimension.

That was the last time she saw Owen alive.

Luke kept rewinding the scene in his head. Kept seeing himself wigging, hands shaking, trying to draw the bow, but no strength to do it. He couldn’t think of any experience in his life that was like it. It was more than that he’d freaked out, it consumed him. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Had no strength to pull the bowstring. His dad had described the symptoms, but Luke didn’t believe it would ever happen to him. But it did, and in his soul, he knew if he hadn’t lost his nerve trying to shoot the first buck, his dad would still be alive.

The whole thing was a blur after that, like a video in fast motion. Instead of going back to the lodge to get his mother, he ran toward farm buildings he’d seen from high ground in the woods. The farmer, a big man in a red flannel coat and a cap that said
CAT DIESEL
on the front, called EMS.

His mom arrived at the hospital and he felt worse than he ever had in his life. She hugged him, but
he couldn’t look at her. Didn’t know what to do or say and that’s the way it had been since he walked out the back door of the lodge with his dad to go hunting.

Owen McCall died on the operating table. The broadhead had severed an artery before piercing his lung. He’d lost too much blood. The surgeon telling Luke he didn’t think they could’ve saved his dad even if they’d beamed him into the operating theater right after the accident. Luke wondering if the doctor was talking like a Trekkie to impress him.

He had to meet with a sheriff ’s deputy, too. Luke, his mom and the deputy, whom his mother seemed to know, met in the surgical waiting room. The deputy took his Smokey the Bear hat off and placed it on the end table next to him. He had a sweat crease where the hat gripped his head.

Luke told them what happened in straightforward sequence, leaving out the part about getting buck fever. What difference did it make now? The deputy wrote everything he said on a notepad in a leather case. He could feel his mom’s eyes locked on him during the interview, boring into him like lasers. He never looked at her the whole time. When he finished, the deputy, whose name was Bill Wink, closed the notebook that had an embossed western
sheriff ’s badge on the front and fixed his gaze on Luke’s mom.

“I’ve been hunting most of my life and I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“What’re you saying?” his mom said.

“Mrs. McCall, I’m saying it was a bizarre accident.” Now he looked at Luke and said, “I know you’re hurting, and I feel for you, son.”

Luke watched him put his hat back on, finding just the right position, the brim an inch or so above his eyes, the hat the same dark brown color as his shirt. The pants were light brown and had a dark brown stripe that ran down the legs. Luke couldn’t imagine wearing a uniform like that, but Bill Wink looked good in it, with his Marine haircut and muscular arms and his black leather gun belt, the handle of an automatic, a Glock—it looked like—ready to draw.

Out in the hall, Luke heard Deputy Sheriff Wink talking to his mother in hushed tones.

“The DA said it was an accidental death during the act of hunting. It is not a criminal case. It does not rise to the level of criminal negligence. The boy was licensed to hunt.”

Luke couldn’t believe they’d actually considered something else. What’d they think; he tried to kill his own father?

Then there was the visitation at Lynch and Sons, a place where Luke had been a dozen times for funerals of grandparents, uncles and aunts and now his own father. It seemed like hundreds of people came up and talked to him, and he couldn’t remember one thing anyone said. People young and old shaking his hand and hugging him. All he wanted to do when it was over was be by himself.

He had a clearer recollection of being at the gravesite, watching the casket being lowered into the ground. His mother would look over at him, but he couldn’t make eye contact with her. He felt too guilty.

After the funeral, he went in the basement and smashed his bow, the Darton Apache, on a structural steel post in the furnace room, breaking it in two pieces and then four, knowing it could never be repaired and vowing he’d never pick up another one again as long as he lived.

He didn’t believe in God after that,’ cause it didn’t make sense. How could this happen? Why’d God let it? He hurt inside and started drinking to feel better. Found a bottle of schnapps in the liquor cabinet and poured it in a white plastic flask he bought at Rite Aid. He drank before school, the hot licorice liquid burning his throat, but it numbed him, eased the pain, and now he was buzzed most of the time.

Then one morning in homeroom, Jordan Falby, a lineman on the football team, grinned and said, “Hey, McCall, been deer hunting lately?”

Luke, outweighed by sixty pounds, got up from his desk and swung the edge of
Algebra II
into Falby’s cheekbone and blood spurted and Falby yelled and brought his hand up to his face and Luke swung at him again and then kids were grabbing him, holding him back as Miss Hyvonen, their teacher, came in the room and freaked.

Luke was suspended indefinitely pending an inquiry, the assistant principal, Helen Parks, a plump nervous woman with red hair, said.

Luke had to call his mother and had to wait till she came and picked him up. When they were in her Land Rover pulling out of the school parking lot, she looked at him and said, “What’s going on?”

What’d she think was going on? She open her eyes this morning and forget what happened?

“What did Jordan Falby say that set you off?”

Luke told her.

His mom said, “I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

Luke couldn’t imagine his mother hurting a fly.

She said, “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you. I want you to see someone.”

Luke had been thinking about killing himself for a few weeks. The pain he felt wouldn’t go away. It was there in his head before he opened his eyes in the morning and stayed with him till he fell asleep at night, if he could.

He considered sleeping pills. Take a handful, nod off and it was all over. Or he could shoot himself. Load one of his dad’s shotguns, put the barrel in his mouth, and
boom
. It might be effective, but he didn’t want his mom finding him on the basement floor with his head blown off. That wasn’t right. Carbon monoxide was another possibility. Drive in the garage, close the door and let the car run. After giving it a lot of thought, sleeping pills seemed like the best option. But where would he get them? Did you need a prescription?

His mom said, “When were you going to tell me you quit tennis?”

Her voice brought him back. “Didn’t I?”

She glanced at him and looked angry. She turned away, staring through the windshield.

First light. Luke could see now, walking behind his dad along a ridge that sloped down through big Michigan timber and thick cover. They stepped over
a fallen birch tree and maneuvered through tangles of alder and fern, boots sloshing on wet leaves. They’d walked a couple miles, at least. His ears were cold and he could see his breath, wide awake now after a slow start.

His dad stopped and took out binoculars and glassed a stand of oak trees in the distance, a place where whitetail liked to hang out and eat. He lowered the binoculars and looked at Luke. “What happened with Lauren?”

“She said she wanted to be friends. We both kind of decided.”

“You’re probably better off. Having a girlfriend’s a lot of work.”

“She’d get mad if I didn’t call her every day, and sometimes, even if I did.”

“Girls are different, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Yeah, they seem a little odd at times.”

His dad smiled.

“Just wait. You haven’t seen anything.” He handed the binoculars to Luke. “Have a look?”

Luke gripped them, brought them up to his eyes, and panned stands of oak trees and birch and aspen and cedar, the leaves still green, and followed another ridge up to a stand of maple. No deer, but the light
was coming and he could make out the shapes and contours of things. A black squirrel darted across the trail and disappeared.

They kept moving through thick cover, feet unsteady on the slick terrain, approaching an area where the leaves were matted down.

Owen said, “Looks like they just got up from a nap.”

Luke said, “Check this out.” Pointing to tracks that went uphill to a stand of oak trees on a ridgetop in the distance.

The canopy was high and thick, and it was dark as they followed the deer tracks upslope toward the trees. His dad stopped and pointed at deer poop, slick and green and still steaming.

“They’re close. Remember what you used to call it?”

Luke didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Gucks. You’d say, ‘Daddy, I got to go gucks.’” Owen looked at him and grinned. “It’s the perfect word, isn’t it?”

“How about Grandma? I’d tell her I had a stomachache, she’d say, go sit on the toilet and do some popsie doodles, or popsies.”

“Like we were living in a Disney movie,” Owen said.

Luke liked that.

“The pros, like Del Keane, put their hand in it, tell you what Mr. Deer had for breakfast. Want to try it?”

Luke made a sour face.

They followed the tracks over a berm to a ridgetop that was littered with acorn husks, a sign that deer had been there. From the high ground, they could see the tracks continue downslope through a funnel of trees to a cornfield in the distance.

Owen said, “Give me about twenty minutes, then head down. I’ll push them at you.”

“How do you know they’re in there?”

“It’s got everything they need: food, water, and shelter. Make your way to the edge of the tree line and be ready. You’re only going to get one shot. And that’s if you’re lucky.”

Luke sat on a tree stump, the Darton Apache resting across the tops of his thighs, thinking how cool and exciting it was being out here. He scanned the woods with the twelve-power Zeiss binoculars, the sun rising fast now behind him. He caught glimpses of his dad in the distance, a dark shape, disappearing and reappearing through the trees. He panned right, saw something move, adjusted the sight, focused on a deer tail swinging back and forth. He panned left, saw a leg and followed it to the thick
body of a high-racked ten-pointer. The deer lifted its head, rumen drooling from its mouth, sensors on full alert. The buck snorted and stomped its hooves and took off, Luke trying to follow it with the binoculars. Losing it in the thick woods.

He turned and picked up his dad again moving along the perimeter of the cornfield about a hundred yards away, the stalks at least a foot taller than him.

Owen pulled two brittle cornstalks apart and entered the field. He moved along a row that was so straight he could see down a hundred yards, the result of GPS, now available on farm equipment—taking any guesswork out of planting crops in straight lines.

The ground was pitted and irregular, puddles of water covered with a thin layer of ice that broke easily under his weight and made a sound like glass cracking. His boots were wet and soon heavy with mud, making it harder to walk. He carried a Browning Mirage in his right hand, the bow weighing a little more than four pounds with its quiver loaded with carbon arrows.

Wind whipped through the cornfield, rattling the stalks that sounded to Owen like the percussive beat of a jazz tune, and bringing with it the intermittent
reek of cow dung and skunk and the heavy smell of wet hay.

He watched a hawk swoop in from a scattered cloud formation and dive like a fighter jet into the field and then soar back up with something squirming in its talons.

Owen adjusted his Detroit Tigers cap, pulling the brim down to keep the sun out of his eyes. Although his body was heating up under layers of thermal insulation and camo, it was cold. He could see his breath. He went about fifty yards and listened. The wind blew and the stalks clattered. It was tough to hear anything else.

He cut left through the field now, going against the grain, pulling stalks apart and knocking them down. It was the only way to cover a big area fast. He came to a stretch of field where the stalks were mowed down like a semi had driven through. He followed the path and heard them before he saw them: five deer, two big bucks and three does, stopping to eat corn destined for the farmer’s silo and eventually to sell as livestock feed.

He knew the wind would bring his scent right to them, but they wouldn’t know what direction it was coming from. He came up behind them and started yelling and they scattered, the bucks going one
way, the does, another—Owen chasing the bucks, pushing them toward Luke and the cover of high ground—Owen catching glimpses of the bucks jumping, antlers clearing the seven-foot-high corn as they ran.

Luke moved down the ridge toward the cornfield. He stopped, brought the binoculars to his eyes and glassed a wild turkey and then another one—a whole family walking in a line through the woods. He let the turkeys pass and made his way to the edge of the tree line. Leaned against a big maple and waited. His nose was running and he wiped it on the sleeve of his camo shirt.

From this position, he could look straight down a row into the cornfield. He leaned his bow against the tree, slipped off his backpack, opened it, took out a plastic bottle of Gatorade, a cool blue flavor called Frost and unscrewed the top, taking a long drink. He saw something move out of the corner of his eye. A rabbit hopped out of the field and ran into the woods.

Luke was thinking about Lauren, wondering if they’d get back together. He didn’t tell his dad he missed her and thought about her all the time.
Maybe she was going out with someone else. The possibility of that bothered him. He remembered seeing Mike Keenan talking to her in the cafeteria, but decided not to dwell on it any further.

He heard something that distracted him—something big and fast coming toward him, crashing through the field. He thought he heard his dad’s voice now, but couldn’t make out what he was saying, like the wind was blowing it away. He picked up his bow, nocked a Zwickey broadhead.