Rusty Summer (27 page)

He'd passed “bully” and just decided it was definitely getting light when a sudden hissing sounded from the tree Duke had climbed followed by a loud
thwuck.
A strangled, high-pitched cry pierced the dawn.

An arrow had struck something living. A crash followed and then flailing in the underbrush. Beau stood up in the half-light in time to see a deer with a thin silver arrow sticking out of her neck. It was stuck through and flowing blood as the deer staggered in confusion and tried to right herself.

Just then, Beau heard another yowl from a copse of trees several yards distant and his dad came barreling out—at the same time as Duke came bellowing down the tree, his bow and arrow flopping.

“I hit it! I hit it!” Duke kept yelling. “I hit it!” He ran toward the deer and she turned and headed straight at him, feet stiff and charging, a big-ass arrow through her shoulder and sticking out of her neck but missing her throat, splattering blood as she ran.

“Ahh!” yelled Duke as the frantic deer charged him and he fell backwards, screaming, into the brush. The doe sped past him and disappeared down the trail, leaving bloody smears for them to track on the forest floor behind.

“That goddamn son-of-a-bitch charged me! Did you see that?! It charged me like a bull! Goddamn meat thinks he's a bull! Did you see that, Gales?! Goddamn thing thinks it's a
toro!
”

They went after her into the bush. The goddamn deer who thought she was a bull was making tracks, both figuratively and literally. The three humans fell behind; the deer, even wounded, was far more nimble. She also had home court advantage. They, on the other hand, were armed.

All morning they tracked the deer. She would rest and leave a blood pool where she lay down, then, smearing the undergrowth with blood as she tried to make herself comfortable, thrash in restless agony as comfort was denied.

For hours the doe stumbled on in misery. She would lie down, thrash, get up, stagger against the foliage, gasping, breaking the ferns and streaking branches with the same gore she was staining the ground with, in whorls and puddles.

But she wouldn't die.

“How much blood can it lose and still walk?” Beau asked, but nobody answered him.

The two men had been jocular, making jokes and bets, when they first started tracking, but as they trudged on they got quiet. They were getting winded and sweaty and it seemed like all they were doing was going deeper in circles in the woods. Wandering around like idiots.

“Damn thing should be around here somewhere,” Duke wheezed, as they peered around in the dim forest light. “I mean, how long is a damn deer supposed to take to die?!” He bent over and put his hands on his knees to get his breath.

Finally, uphill and through a ravine down a sloping hill, they came upon her. She had tried to go almost vertically up a bluff but instead had fallen into the undergrowth. She fought through the brush as best she could till she was caught and held by the tangled brambles. The arrow had caught her, insuring a slow exhausting miserable death, moaning and thirsty for days.

She was making a noise almost like crying.

When they finally walked up she turned her head as best she could to look at them and her eyes darted from one to the other. She panted but couldn't do anything else, caught by her arrow like she was.

Then to Beau's complete amazement and horror, Duke dropped his gear and grabbed another arrow and started to fit it into the bow.

“No way!” Beau yelled. “No way do you need to use an arrow! Just
shoot
it!”

“Whadaya think I'm doing? Now shut up and let me take this shot. Gales, tell your little nature boy there to STF up!”

Beau wheeled around to his dad, who was standing indecisively, watching the proceedings.

“Dad, do something!” Beau beseeched. “He's crazy, man! Make him just kill it or something!”

Jason flicked his gaze over to Beau to telegraph he had heard him, but merely stood looking at Duke, who was hurriedly fitting the arrow. They were within a range that Beau would have thought too close to shoot things with arrows, but Duke did not seem deterred. The deer seemed to know perfectly well what was going on. Kicking, she tried to get free but got stuck deeper into the brambles and flora and could only flop her head around, the blood oozing down her neck. Her nose was bleeding heavily, her tan coat was drenched red and brown from sweat and blood and still she thrashed, her breathing ragged, little moans escaping her. Duke bore down on her and aimed the arrow at her heart.

For what seemed like forever they were poised there, the shaking deer staring Duke and death in the face, and Duke frozen in place, horribly prolonging and enjoying the moment.

 

Then he let the arrow fly as the deer flailed again, and the arrow missed her heart and pierced her muzzle, tearing through it, and skewering her jaws shut like a clamp. The doe screamed, in renewed torment, writhing and making a noise entirely human. Fresh blood now ran freely from her ripped and dangling black nose and muzzle and dripped on the ground. She groaned with clamped teeth, like someone with a terrible toothache. It was unbelievable that Duke had managed to further torture but
still
not kill her, but he had.

“Jesus Christ!” Jason was horrified. “WTF is wrong with you, Duke?! Shoot bullets!”

“NO!!” screeched Duke. “I'm a traditionalist, goddamn it! Only flintlocks or bow and arrow! I told you once—
I'm a purist!!!
”

And when Duke got ready to load
another
arrow, Jason jumped into action. Finally.

“Duke, you asshole!! Yeah—you're a real purist—with your aluminum arrows! Why don't you just get your rocks off completely and water board the goddamn thing?! Get away and let me finish it!” Beau's dad snarled, speaking through clenched teeth—and then suddenly screamed, when Duke didn't obey fast enough. “JESUS CHRIST, DUKE—you lunatic! I thought you knew what you were doing! NOW! STEP AWAY!”

Jason pulled a handgun from a holster inside his down jacket, causing Duke to scuttle back from both Jason and the gun.

Beau wasn't surprised; he had seen the gun before on former hunting trips—his dispatch gun, his dad called it. Only there had never been anything to dispatch.

Jason pulled the gun out and aimed it at the mangled, bloody, pain-crazed deer. Beau glanced over to Duke in case he tried to attack Jason but he didn't move. Duke was done, he'd shot his last bolt, and Beau stood gob-smacked as Jason, standing like the executioner in all the mob movies ever, took aim and blew the deer's brains out in a huge shattering blast.

That was how it seemed to Beau, anyway, as he watched the cloud of lumpy red mist splatter and settle on the brush around the deer carcass. Beau and Jason stared at each other without expression. Jason matter-of-factly tested the barrel of the gun till it was cooler, and then re-holstered.

The birds were silent in the forest. It was about then that Duke rediscovered his voice.

“Goddamn it to HELL you dipshit asshole dumb-dick son-of-a-BITCH!” screeched Duke. “Why did you shoot it in the FACE? That was my TROPHY! God DAMMIT, GALES!” Then, losing his mind completely, “YOU OWE ME MONEY!”

Beau stood nonplussed, staring first at Duke, bright red with rage, then at the nearly headless deer, then at his dad, then back to Duke, who started bounding around in a frenzy of fury, howling.

“Shut up, Duke,” Jason finally said, curtly. “Just shut up and get a goddamn grip.”

Beau's mind was stuck in the replay of his dad standing blank-faced, in an executioner's stance. It was an image that would haunt his dreams for years: Jason, ice-cold, completely snake-eyed, like he hadn't even noticed the recoil from the gun, which, as Beau knew from target practice, had quite the kick.

“YOU need to dress this deer!” Duke bellowed, after pacing around for a while, swearing. He stomped off for a minute and just as abruptly returned. “Why did you shoot off its head?! Goddamn it! I don't even want the whole thing—I just wanted the head! Goddammit! I was just going to take the head and go! I was going to have it mounted. But now—”

“Go to hell, Duke,” Jason said. “It's a goddamn deer, not a bowling trophy. Grow some respect.”

“You grow some!” Duke howled like a second grader. “It's none of your goddamn business what I have in my house!”

“Not to mention, you'd already shot the poor goddamn thing through the
mouth,
you moron, and ripped its face off! What were you going to do?” Jason sneered. “Just mount it like that—arrows and all?”

“That was just cosmetic! I coulda easily got that fixed!” Duke replied. “You
owe
me!”

“I owe you a kick in the ass, buddy, is what I'm beginning to think I owe you,” Jason said, starting to look at Duke in an extremely interested manner. “Should we just have us a little come-to-Jesus meeting out here in the woods, Duke—you and me?” He held his hands up in a giant shrug, like “Let's do this.” He stared at Duke unblinkingly.

“No, no, no! No reason for that, Gales!” Duke backed down speedily. “Why do you always have to go there immediately, man?”

“Why do
I
have to go there immediately?” Jason repeated, blankly amused as he looked at him with an expression that was way past outrage. “Man, do you ever even listen to yourself?”

It was apparent Duke did not.

 

“So, anyway, that was my last hunt. It sucked.”

“Jeez, Beau,” I reply vaguely. “That Duke guy was really a creep.”

“Yeah, I probably made him sound a little worse than necessary. I despised him!”

“Did your dad kick his ass?”

“No. But we did dress and pack out the deer.”

We just sit for a while. I have a bad taste in my mouth. I'm just grossed out by everything.

“Dang, son.” I sigh finally. “If this trip were a blog, we'd have to call it The Book of Dead Deer.”

“Yeah. Sorry if I harshed your buzz. I'm just not a hunter, even though my dad is. It meant something different to him and his dad, back in the day. But it's not for me. And I'm fine with that.” Beau shrugs. “I don't know, it's different if that's your only way to eat, like
Winter's Bone,
or whatever, but I just think we're all a little too okay with all the bloodshed.”

“One thing—if your dad was a hunter, why did he shoot the poor thing in the head? It seems like he would know that whats-hisbutt would want it for a trophy.”

“Are you kidding? He did it to mess with him.” Beau glances over, and his eyes are glinting with approval and remembered rage. “He was furious.”

Beau had been reliving this hunting tale as he leaned against the backrest of the couch, staring up at the ceiling, telling the middle distance. Now he looks over at me and I know he's finished his weird-ass, dreadful hunting story. He adds one more little shred of 411.

“I'm not eating meat these days, by the way. I keep meaning to tell you, but I keep forgetting.”

His admission surprises me and I think back to the only time lately that I've really noticed meat being prepared—GramMer's fried chicken and Shane's cheeseburgers—and I do recall that Beau didn't eat any meat at Shane's, he just had grilled cheese with no burger. I didn't think about it at the time because I was so interested in Shane and Leo.

“Dude!” I say in surprise. He never mentioned it and I never noticed. At our house we don't really cook for each other much. “When did you stop eating meat, Beau?”

“I'm not sure I have, completely.” He shrugs. “I've been thinking about it since we moved into our house. I was thinking about it when I lived with my mom and Matt, but it would have been too hard. I don't like to eat mammals anymore. They feel like cousins.”

“Oh.”

“It's weird, I'm just different now.”

“In that case, no octopus either,” I inform him. “They're way too smart!”

“Not a problem. But I'll probably still eat fish. They don't feel like cousins.”

“Wait—are you saying you don't think fish are as much of an animal as a mammal? Beau, I think that's kind of judgy, don't you?”

Beau snorts. “Yeah, I'm totally judging fish. They aren't good parents.”

“Well, actually . . .” I start and stop and then trail off. I swear, it's like holding my breath.

Beau looks over at me. He sees the expression on my face and starts smiling. He can see that trying not to be a know-it-all might actually kill me.

“Really? There are? Which ones?”

“Zebra fish, Beau.” I blurt immediately, which cracks him up. “They totally co-parent.”

 

Uncle Frankie wanders in the room and plops down. He smiles at us, all flopped against the backrest on the couch. From the kitchen come shrieks and cackles. Something falls on the floor and rolls.

“God knows what they're up to,” Uncle Frankie remarks.

We hear Oscar's voice from the kitchen. “Omg, Princess Diana NEVER looked like a mad raccoon! She will always be MY Queen of Hearts! Those nasty journalists were just being mean!”

Beau cocks his head, baffled.

“What are they talking about?”

Uncle Frank bursts out laughing and shrugs. He shifts to peer into the kitchen entrance behind him. Brief yowling is heard. Then he yells into the kitchen, “What are you guys
doing
in there?”

“We are baking!” Uncle Oscar yells back.

“Because we are
baked!
” yells my grandma, and we hear them go batshit with laughter—squawking and yawping like a couple of macaws.