Christine Grimes
Missing the Mark
* * *
It was clear to me from a very young age that I would bond with my father by hunting. He took no interest in dance recitals or even softball games. I would come home from practice or a game and he’d nod absently with a faint smile while I demonstrated a shuffle step or told him about a caught pop fly. My mother once said that when I was born, my father told her that he had raised the three boys; it was her turn to raise me. She said this matter of fact, without pursing her lips or frowning and without a faint smile to let on that it was a joke because it wasn’t. My brothers were all in high school when I was born and well out of the house and into their own lives by the time I was in grade school. I heard stories about Dad as the scout leader, Dad taking the family on camping trips, even Dad’s larks exploring for gold along the Gulf coast and drilling for his own oil pipeline but those days had all passed by the time they had me, their “happy accident.” My parents had mellowed and aged when I came along. Dad’s thinning hair and growing waist on his short frame had left him a bit hunched and Mom had begun giving up on dying the grays and struggled to keep up with taking me to my scheduled activities. But if Dad wasn’t interested in my world, I was still welcome to enter his.
Growing up in my family meant that we would spend almost every weekend from September into January with my father at the deer lease. For over thirty years, my parents leased hunting rights to a six hundred acre cattle ranch near Cuero, Texas. My family usually used less than a third of it, hunting only a few choice fields, fence lines, and pastures where the cattle weren’t feeding. The land was rugged and filled with mesquite scrub brush, with feathery bunches of leaves hanging from spiny, thorned limbs; bunches of cacti with prickly pear; and scattered cattle with the occasional Brahma bull. Against the back fence line, the hunting cabin sat with a pitched corrugated tin roof, knobby posts holding up a small porch and mismatched white vinyl siding. Before hunting season he made the four hour drive to prep the cabin, fill the deer feeders with corn, and get the stands ready; but once season hit, it was to hunt. Dad always drove a little faster on the highway from October to the end of year. Then he’d patiently wait through the holidays to begin preparations for turkey season in the spring. Summers were brutally hot in central Texas but he still found projects to pull him back to the lease. Mom was a casual hunter. She would go along, read some good books, and let Dad take over the schedule for the weekend. When he would get up at four a.m. to prep for a morning hunt, she’d roll over and snuggle into the covers perfectly happy to walk out around nine to see whatever luck would have it or even to stay in bed and just look out the window from time to time.
I was free to enter Dad’s world but I had to earn it. He would spend hours with me while I trained the end of a bb gun on my mark and tried again and again to hit it. He was patient when he taught me how to line up my shot, safely load and unload my weapon, and spend time with me, teaching me and talking to me. When he thought I was ready, and old enough at ten, he gave me a Winchester .22 mag. It was a lightweight rim-fire rifle, illegal to use for deer hunting because without a strong shot to the heart or head, the deer wouldn’t fall. Since he had given it to me, I never thought I should use a bigger gun or that I was breaking the rules by not using an approved center-fire rifle. I only knew that the bullet was the width of my pinky finger and the small shell that tapered with a tiny copper end was much different than the longer cartridges that my mother and father ejected from their guns. Dad knew that it was light enough that I could steady the thick stock in my fingers and maneuver the rifle easily. I could snug it to my shoulder and handle the recoil without wincing like I did after trying my mother’s .244 bolt action. But he made sure I could make a kill shot over and over before I actually got to try.
Even after a full season of target practice, I knew his eyes followed the clumsy movement of my thumbs when I loaded the small rimfire shells into my .22 mag and listened to them slide until they clinked together, stacked neatly in a row within the chamber. After I loaded my gun, he moved behind me and waited for me to adjust my eye to the scope and locate the target in the field. I leaned against the rusty hood of the Jeep that we used to get around the lease and shifted the small sand bag under the end of the barrel before taking a breath and slowly pulling on the trigger until the echo reverberated against my eardrum and I blinked involuntarily. Then I lowered the hammer and shot again and again until I had used all of my bullets. I straightened and left the gun lying on the hood. Dad was standing behind me and still looking through binoculars at the target.
“Not bad, we’ll go down and look in a second.”
His voice was tinny and muffled through the ringing in my ears and heat flared in my chest for a minute. I knew I had hit the bull’s-eye twice and that two more were still in the red. Only the second and fifth shot had strayed an inch or so from the center. At fifty yards it was not just “not bad” but pretty good. He rarely told me it was good, always leaving me a bit more to work on, and I always kept trying. Target practice was something I had to master on my own. The rest I could learn from going with him as long as I could stay quiet while we were in the stand.
Saturday mornings Dad would have us up by four-thirty, wanting us in the stand and silent by five-thirty. We’d leave the cabin and I’d stumble in my too-large rubber boots, the beam of my flashlight bouncing. The morning was full of rustling trees, twigs breaking, things moving in the brush. I huddled close, trying to keep my .22 mag rifle from swinging on my shoulder. Dad was stocky but he could dance across dried crackling leaves and broken twigs invisible in the dark without a sound while I clomped behind trying to place my feet carefully, rolling heel to toe, walking in cattle ruts, hoping to slip through the darkness quietly. The wind cut through my layers of long johns and sweats. He stopped in front of me, listening. I would try hard to hear a noise, perhaps the sure steps of a buck walking ahead of us. Later, Dad explained that he often stopped not just to listen but to imitate the careful starting and stopping of an animal. When we reached the clearing, I climbed the flimsy ladder into the small stand. I sat down on the hard surface of an upturned bucket, propped my rifle in the corner, and scanned the darkness, waiting for light to help Dad get a buck.
I had earned the right to hunt with him, to sit next to him and wait for my chance to prove myself. In the beginning I could only watch for bucks, then I was allowed to bring my own gun. By the time I was twelve, he had promised me I could take the shot.
At first I was eager but after three weekends of hours sitting on hard plastic in the stiff cold, I was weary of waiting and spent more time reading my book than watching for my chance. Besides, I knew that Dad was alert. Midmorning, chilled and sleepy, I jumped when he nudged me and tilted his head. At the edge of the trees next to the fenceline, a buck slowly picked its way down. Still a couple hundred yards away, it stopped every few feet, sniffing. I was afraid of knocking the gun over and shooting a hole through the stand, but I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the smooth barrel and pointed it through the window, inches at a time, until metal scraped against the ledge. The buck paused facing us.
“Freeze,” Dad whispered. I held still. The buck came closer, now fifty or sixty yards away. I pulled the gun to my shoulder, fingers rigid and tight against the wood stock.
“He’s coming ‘round. Find him.” Dad’s voice was steady and gentle. I slowed my breathing to match his as I looked through the scope. Only black. I adjusted my head and pulled back from the scope. The circle trained on the tree, the feeder. Antlers came into view: eight points.
“Aim for the front shoulder. Just in from the neck, up from the stomach, through the heart.”
I followed a shoulder of brown fur through the scope and fumbled with the safety; it clicked loudly. The buck’s head turned, then it sniffed the dirt.
“Slowly now. Don’t jerk. Slowly pull the trigger.”
I started to squeeze, tense. I carefully curled my finger towards my palm until the gun recoiled against my shoulder. The jolt of the shot jerked my head away from the scope and I focused my eyes on the spot where I had just aimed to see the buck race into a thicket.
“Did I get it?” I asked, excited but anxious I had missed.
“You got him,” he said, taking off his hunting cap and running his fingers across his bald head. “Great shot. Now we wait.”
“Why? Can’t we go and see?” I stood and stared intently at the brush where I had last seen the buck.
“Just sit back down and wait a sec. He could still be running, and we don’t want to chase
him or we might not find him.”
I sat on my hands and rocked a bit on the bucket. I had put meat in the freezer, had my own antlers to put on the wall. Best of all, Dad looked proud. He looked at me with a smile, sitting with his back straight and his shoulders square and nodded once, then chuckled.
“You did good. Let’s get this stuff together and ready to climb down.”
My father’s office at home is covered with trophies. When someone enters there is usually a sharp intake of breath –appalled shock from a nonhunter and awe from someone who appreciates size, variety, and rarity in mounted specimens. There are a series of mounted whitetails of course, the thick necks stretching out from the wall holding up heads with serene looks, wide set antlers stretching up towards the ceiling; nothing that would make the Boone and Crocket record books here, but still solid racks, points, and tines. A fourteen point and a couple twelve points, each large enough to hold a ring, but most points which curl around the buck’s head are thicker than my fingers. There are two plaques of feathers, tom turkeys that my dad got, the frayed, coarse beard of the turkeys protruding the middle of the arranged and shellacked feathers. Three boars’ heads are on the next wall. Two fierce-looking javelinas, their short stocky heads framed by their dangerous tusks, and the third, a huge black Russian boar. The boar mount dwarfs the others, sticking out a solid three feet of all head, tusks, and bared teeth. The coarse hair is jet black and I won’t leave my eyes on it long. It is intimidating even in death. Then there are axis deer, fallow deer, and other exotic mounts he took from special hunts and ranches. It is his display of skill, manhood, and even wealth, as each mount must have cost at least five hundred dollars or more just for the taxidermy, to say nothing of the money for the hunts themselves.
Underneath these imposing mounts and on a shelf, there’s a picture displayed prominently of my first buck. It’s in a faded cardboard frame, never removed from the free gray Kodak outline that it was slid into when it was developed. I am twelve, wearing a bright red shirt and blue jeans, and facing the camera, my left arm extended to my fresh kill. My hand is wrapped around the small rounded horns and I tilt the heavy head towards the lens making sure that the eight points can be seen. My skin is flushed and ruddy and I’m glad the picture was taken when we got back to the cabin and not at the kill site when I almost threw up.
When we climbed down from the deer stand after I had killed my first deer, I rushed over to the tree where the buck had been when I hit it. Small drops of blood spotted the dirt. We followed those tracks thirty yards into the brush to where the buck was tangled in the air, its front hooves hanging from vines where it had kicked and thrashed. Dad pulled out his buckknife, cut it loose, letting it drop to the ground, then motioned for me to step closer. The deer had long lashes and a beautiful face, but its tongue hung from its mouth caked in dirt. The buck’s rack was small and curved, eight points. It was young, only a few years old. I felt guilty, but Dad was beaming, his cheeks screwed up and crinkling his eyes like I imagined a proud papa would look when handed his newborn child for the first time.
“Good shot,” he said. “Most boys don’t even get a buck the first time out, much less an eight point.”
Dad knelt down and handed me the knife, pointing to its neck. “One side to the other. Get the windpipe.”
This was the way it was done. Cutting off any last air, letting it bleed out.
“You do it, Dad. I’ll watch.”
“If you want to be a hunter, you learn how. Next time you might be on your own. You can wait to gut it, but not to cut the pipe.”
I sighed, dropping to the ground. I poked the blade into the skin and missed the windpipe, the blade slicing out of the skin easily.
“Watch that other hand! You’ll take your fingers off.”
I moved and tried again. The blade struck something stiff and I jerked it through. Blood pooled on the ground and clotted with hair on the blade, and I rolled onto my feet, stumbling back.
“Good ‘nough. Come on, let’s drag it out to the road so we can gut it.”
I reached out and grabbed one hind leg while Dad took the other. We hauled the deer towards the road, its head flopping in the grass.
When we stopped, Dad moved to the end of the deer, spread its legs, and deftly split its belly with his knife. He sliced the skin easily, pulled it back, then dug his hands in, emptying the gut. A ripe, sour scent filled the air as the stomach splashed onto the ground. Bile rose in the back of my throat and I swallowed it back down, pulling my coat over my nose and mouth. Dad was working intently, his arms streaked with blood as he dumped the large intestine onto the ground, then reached up into the deer’s throat and ripped out the windpipe. I backed away as the steam rose off of the guts lying on the ground. I stood behind him, out of sight, and stared at the dirt while I focused on the saliva in my mouth, my tongue flat against my teeth and the sudden tightness in my throat. Dad rubbed his upper arm against his face, trying to get the beads of sweat from his eyes. He wiped his hands with a small rag, then stuffed it in his back pocket. Then we loaded the carcass onto the back of the jeep and headed back to the cabin for Mom’s photo op.
I was part of the club now, an official member of the Grimes family, since I finally had a story of my own about my first deer. I had gotten a buck on my first kill, something that I began to proclaim loudly to other hunters after hearing Dad mention it so many times. My friends at school weren’t hunters and I never got the same effect telling the story to anyone but my family. I would bring it up often, then ask Dad to tell it instead so I could enjoy it over and over. It would often lead to other hunting stories; depending on the season, it could turn ugly. Dad and my brothers would taunt each other relentlessly about a bad shot in the gut or even the ass of the deer, which would waste the back strap or the best steaks. When one of my brothers came home with a spike, they called him “baby killer” until he gave them something better to talk about. I only had one story so far but it was a good one and I knew that, in that comparison to my brothers, I had held my own, even one-upped them. Dad mounted my small horns on a plaque and gave it to me. I held it up to the dusty mounts on his wall where it was dwarfed and then hung it above my dresser.
Sometimes we’d take family drives around the lease, always “looking for deer” but effectively road hunting on the lease, something that I later learned that most avid hunters think is unsporting. I can’t actually remember a single time that we took a deer in that manner and we were often lucky if we glimpsed one escaping to the other side of the fenceline. Our deer lease vehicle, the thirty-year-old open jeep with rusted floorboards and folded down windshield ,meant jaunty treks down winding paths, under low branches and sometimes even over small trees while I tightly gripped the roll bar in the back, my feet braced against feedbags of corn. A long drive would take us past the back and front feeders, through several wire and post fences, past the fenceline and hillside stands nicknamed Slaughterhouse and Waldorf for their kill sites and outfitting respectively, and around the small pond. We’d patrol the lease in the jeep with a loaded rifle riding on the front hood within easy reach, held steady by an old rug so it wouldn’t slide around. It was my job to watch for movement as we made the rounds. I was good at spotting animals, a flicker of tan in the brush, a flash of white tail, or just a moving shadow in the trees. Of course, I’m sure there’s many times I led us down a longer way just to extend the ride, enjoying the dust kicked up by the tires and the wild landscape around me, while tossing out kernels of corn behind the jeep to draw animals towards our overgrown roads.
Once, when we reached the bottom of the hill, Dad saw deer tracks following a cow trail. He turned off the rutted path and began following the animal trail instead to see if he could set up a new stand or see where the deer were crossing from one property to another.
He started slowly, squeezing the jeep between mesquite trees and straddling cacti while he and Mom grabbed the front branches and pushed them out until we were past.
“Larry, do we really need to follow this now? Can’t you walk it tomorrow or something?” she asked as she caught another branch just before it whacked her in the face. Dad was stubborn and she had learned that if she posed a question, she got farther than if she just said what she thought.
Dad muscled the wheel as the jeep slid through muddy ruts without responding.
“We’re getting all scratched up,” Mom complained again. “Look,” she pointed to a scratch on her arm.
“You tired of these mesquite trees?” he asked as he gassed it straight towards a small one about three inches in diameter.
I gripped the bar tightly and gasped. “You’re going to hit it,” I told him, secretly thrilled by the thought.
He laughed as we struck the small tree at about fifteen miles an hour, the front grill of the jeep cracking against the wood, breaking the trunk easily thrusting the tree forwards and sideways as we easily cleared it.
“You happy now? No more trees hitting you from the side.” He yelled as we plowed into another small mesquite.
“Ok, Larry, you’ve made your point.” She said. “Watch it!” she yelled as she reached out to grab his arm. I braced my body tightly between the roll bar and seat, my thighs flexed against the jeep’s lurching.
We hit a third mesquite tree, this one much more solid. Its base had sprouted several limbs forming a disjointed but wide trunk supporting three seemingly separate trees, each growing up and outward. The jeep hit the tree with a jolt and slowed as Dad shifted into a different gear and pressed his foot to the floor pedal, refusing to be beaten by a tree. The end of the jeep pitched upward, the front tires losing footing on the ground as the jeep pushed against the side. Mom gripped the tattered edge of her front seat while I held onto the metal seat in the back. Dad stopped, reversed, and we sighed. Then he laid on the horn, laughed, put it in gear, and floored it, ramming the jeep into the tree. We crested the top of the truck and the front of the jeep hung for a moment in the air, tires spinning, before the base of the tree cracked under the weight and the grill pitched downward again, the wheels finding purchase as we raced forward and Dad guided the jeep back between the trees. Mom and I leaned inward, so we wouldn’t be scraped, and she didn’t complain again but Dad, having proved his point, quickly turned us around and headed back to the cabin claiming the tracks had disappeared. I sighed and settled back onto the corn, both relieved and disappointed that it was over.
There was always anticipation on weekends at the deer lease, the suspenseful tightening of belly muscles imagining how many deer or what kind we would find, what type of wildlife would spring from the bushes, what discoveries we would make. From the moment the car turned onto the gravel road, my anticipation would begin building as Dad maneuvered the car’s wide tires in and out of the formed grooves of the rutted road between fence posts and cattle guards on the way to the cabin. When we weren’t out in the jeep exploring or sitting in the deer stand, Mom would take me exploring. We rarely took guns with us, though she might take her camera, and I followed her lead as we wondered behind the cabin and past the first fence to the washed out gully and sand pit. One end of it had been transformed into an old dump. There were the remnants of an old metallic Christmas tree, scattered pieces of wood, and bits of scrap metal, anything too big for a barrel or that couldn’t be burned. Further up the gully, the wash out turned from mud to pure sand dappled with rocks, tracks and discoveries.
As we made our way up the sand pit, she let me collect rocks, petrified wood, and, if we were lucky, sometimes an arrowhead or fossil. I could bring back the things I had found and show Dad once he woke from his nap and before we went out again.
“What do you think that is?” she asked me, pointing to a thin row of scratches close together.
“An animal?”
“What kind?” She motioned me over and we squatted down next to them.
“A bird,” I declared and she nodded
. “Remember the roadrunner we saw on the way in?” she asked with a smile.
This was our guessing game as we walked the sand pit. Armadillos, roadrunners, rabbits, skunks, foxes, deer, cattle, and various birds would leave behind tracks, scuffs, or sign and Mom would help me identify it so I could report back to Dad.
She’d also test my ability to identify deer scat or “sign” as she liked to put it, which always reminded them of a joke they both loved to repeat. Apparently Dad had brought a customer and his wife up to the lease one weekend and the man convinced his wife that deer shit, the tiny bulbous drops scattered around on the ground, were called smart pills and were just little berries and if she ate one, she’d get smarter. Dad swears that she did and then gagged and spit and the man laughed his ass off saying, “Look, you’re smarter already.” I always wondered if it was true, and if it were, how that woman could possibly have stayed married to such a man or how my father could stand there and watch him do that to her but he never talked about that part of it and I never asked.
Mom and I would return from our walks by two-thirty or three when Dad liked to get ready to go out for the evening hunt. Although some hunters, including my brothers, would sit in the stand most of the day, Dad had decided that lunch, an afternoon nap, and a more relaxing schedule would still let him be in the stand at the most promising times of the day – just after sunrise and before sunset.
Dressing for the hunt would later remind me of preparing for a game. The weather in Texas in the fall was unpredictable and one day I might wear a pair of old jeans with a ratty shirt and the next I might be layering long johns under sweats to try to stay warm. Regardless of the clothing, there was a uniform to hunting. Mother insisted on bright clothing over camo for safety. Deer are color blind so blaze orange or even red or pink will stand out against the birch and mesquite to a hunter but not to a doe or a buck. Each layer of clothing, the belt with extra bullets, my flashlight and bucknife, my rifle, brought me one step closer to hunt and excitement would build as I patiently prepared and wondered what I might find, dreaming of walking up to see trophy bucks grazing in the field like someone scratching the thin film of a lotto ticket and hoping for matching symbols.
But I was always scared of the dark. When I hunted with Mom or Dad the fear abated because I had protection but now that I hunted alone, I dreaded the darkness. Mornings alone, I rushed through the woods, carelessly noisy, hoping to scare away any unknown creatures lurking in the woods. I was fine with scaring the deer, boars, or even rabbits away. They could come back in the daylight. In the afternoons I tread quietly, hoping to see wildlife before twilight so I could bleed the deer and be in before nightfall. In the dark, the beam of the flashlight was my only guide, a twig snapping that wasn’t my own would prick the hair on my neck, tense my fingers against my gun, and call up a prayer from deep in my bones that if I heard another sound it was a small rustle moving away from me.
Morning was my favorite. Tucked up in the stand safely, there was nothing to do but wait for the first graying of the impenetrable darkness, the rat-a-tat shudder of the feeder slinging corn, and enough light to see if deer were eating below. Once the glow of the sun crested the trees, I enjoyed the shrill caw of a crow, the coo of doves, or even the noisy antics of an armadillo below the stand. Sunrises and sunsets were appreciated in quiet meditation as I waited with nothing else to do but enjoy the color bursting across the sky, my senses heightened yet calm. A cardinal’s flurry of wings as it alighted on a tree, a squirrel’s chatter, or a raccoon’s bumbling waddle across the dirt were all entertainment that I rarely had the chance to enjoy in the world outside of hunting.
In the kitchen of the cabin Dad had tacked various pictures of hunters in orange on the wall. In one, a hunter’s legs are spread as he pisses behind a tree while a large buck picks its way behind his back. In the second, the hunter is asleep, his head tilted and tucked against his shoulder while the deer walks directly in front of him. I often wondered as I sat on the rickety chairs waiting for dawn to break, fighting the heavy weight of my head and the cold in my fingers and toes, how many times before others had fallen asleep. Often, though, I was awake and alert, excited to see what the day might bring.
When we got back to the cabin after hunting, Dad would go to work on skinning and quartering any deer we had killed or, if we’d all come in empty handed, he’d cook for us. He’d make S.O.B. (or shit on a biscuit) his old army standby for breakfast or stack the grill with downed mesquite and smoke steaks and tin-foiled baking potatoes for dinner and we’d play cards or sit around the table and talk while Mom settled into the battered yellow recliner and read a romance novel, enjoying the rare break from the kitchen that she only got at the lease.
I brought in a couple of does to help fill the freezer over the next few years, each with a solid shot, but I was fifteen before I got another buck and my first trophy. I sat in the hillside deer stand alone staring into the last hour of darkness. When I’d climbed into the stand, I had briefly used my flashlight to set up everything within arm’s reach. My loaded two-twenty-two rifle on the short ledge to the right, my thermos between my feet, and to my left my backpack holding some saltines, a paperback, and a buck knife. The two mile hike from the cabin had stirred my blood; only my hands and feet were cold in the near freezing temperatures. I blew on my fingers, then reached between my feet and quietly unscrewed the thermos. Steam trailed out of the small opening as I poured myself a cup of hot chocolate and took a sip. It was scalding; I ran my tongue against the roof of my mouth, feeling the new raw spot. At least it kept my hands warm. I settled back into my chair as the wind blew against the slats in the stand, whistling and rattling.
Light crept in. The black mass to my right became an oak with long tendrils of Spanish moss blowing in the sharp wind. The clearing in front of me revealed mesquite trees and cacti. I could make out the treetops, then the feeder. Usually, it was a safe bet to see deer down this hill. Tracks and rubs surrounded the feeder, in the brush and by the pond. I scanned shapes in the brush, watching for shadows to move, to change. A few crows and a squirrel scavenged. This was my favorite time of morning. The promise of daylight brought with it the chance of a twelve or fourteen point buck, a suitable trophy for his wall.
The sun was showing on the horizon, and the frost on the ground shimmered. A spider’s web in the corner glistened like a kaleidoscope. I sipped more cocoa and shifted in the ratty swivel chair. I had a novel in my pack, so I could escape into adventure while I sat in the wooden box, high off the cold ground, but it wasn’t light enough to read yet. Twigs snapped, branches swayed. A crow cawed and ventured down when the feeder whined, corn striking its metal legs. The sudden silence after the whirling startled me. I shifted and looked into the clearing. Some doves flew from the brush, drawing my eyes to the left. I waited quietly until a small cottontail hopped from the brush, then shifted my eyes to the open field before pulling out my book.
As long as I stopped every few pages to slowly scan the trees, I didn’t miss anything. Besides, I was always listening. I stopped my book in the fifth chapter and saw a bobcat walking underneath my stand. The cat was the size of a thin cocker spaniel and had a beautiful coat, speckled brown and black with golden undertones. Pointed black fur lined its ears and thin black stripes rippled through its fur.
My breath caught in my throat as I thought of the trophies in Dad’s office. Coyote skins covered the sofas like quilts. Boars, turkeys, and fallow deer lined the walls. I thought of Dad displaying the cat, bragging to his customers about his daughter.
My torso remained still while I stretched my arm out for the rifle, the same .22 mag I had used for three years. The bobcat, now thirty yards away, picked its way through sparse grass. I clicked the safety off and looked through the scope. The cat stopped momentarily, listening; it was still, ears perked, front paw still off the ground in mid-step. I breathed quietly. The bobcat stepped into a half crouch, shoulders tensed, its head scanning the ground. I waited. The cat still faced away from me. Through my scope, I ran the crosshairs from its tiny stubbed tail up to the perked ears, thinking it would turn broadside. A crow flew by the stand, its shrill caw fading. The cat took a hesitant step, then started on its way again.
Ease back on the trigger, keep it steady, snug to shoulder. I couldn’t aim for the heart because it was in line with me. Instead, I aimed for the base of the neck, a tough, narrow shot. At fifty yards, I pulled the trigger slowly. The gun recoiled and the bang reverberated in the tiny stand. The cat fell, clawing with its front paws, tearing the air. A shrill cry punctuated the pain of dying. It writhed on the ground and began convulsing. I chewed on my lip, thinking it would only take seconds for it to stop breathing, stop that noise. The crying went on, piercing, like a baby’s tremoring wail. My chest tightened. I wished I could take it back, let it walk past. I looked through the scope, thought of taking another shot, but all I could do was shoot it in the head. I gathered my rifle and bag, afraid of watching any longer, and made my way down the ladder. My boots clomped across the dirt at an even pace. The cat had stopped crying, but its body shuddered. I stepped closer as its head lifted, and it mewed, eyes wide. Placing the tip of my rifle close to the base of its skull, I fired and it was still.
I reached down and smoothed my hand across the limp body. The cat bled only a little from its back but I found only one exit wound through the chest. My first shot had lodged too low into the spine, making the second necessary. I gathered its legs and hefted it onto my shoulders, surprised by its light weight. It was warm against the cold air, and it buffered my neck and shoulders from the wind. The trail was two miles back to the cabin. I adjusted my sling underneath the cat, the rifle wedging it against me, and started in. My neck and shoulders quickly grew sweaty during the hike and the bobcat’s hair stuck to my skin. After the first mile, I stopped, shifting it from my shoulders into my arms, cradling it like a child. Its fur was coarse, but the coloring was stunning. If it hadn’t walked across a frozen field, I never would have seen it in the autumn leaves cluttering the brush line.
When I got back to the cabin, Mom and Dad were both out hunting. I draped the small body on its side across our picnic table. If I stood a few feet away, it looked as if it were still alive, maybe sleeping. I was shocked at how much it resembled a house cat. I smoothed the hairs on its coat, feeling the muscle and bone underneath. Its paws were callused on the bottom, claws thick and sharp. I sat down on the bench and stared at the tiny hole in its neck. The blood had clotted into thick clumps caking the fur. I rubbed one between my fingers; it left a small smear across my finger and under my nails. This was a true hunter, living off what it killed.
It was still early and I turned and hiked back to the stand to wait for deer, knowing that was what Dad would expect me to do. Thirty minutes after I climbed back up the ladder, a large four point strode out to the feeder and I shot it in the heart. It dropped to the ground and I approached it carefully, then slit its neck and windpipe and walked back in again for help.
He was proud. I think they both were, although perhaps Mom felt bad for the animal that was killed for the sake of killing. Dad immediately called the taxidermist and found out how to preserve it for mounting. I got to pick the shape of the cat. They could fix it in various poses, fighting with teeth bared, perched over a dead bird with claws extended, or leaping through the air. I choose a simple walking pose. It sits on top of a bookshelf at home collecting dust just like any other trophy. Every time I look at it, I imagine it walking by me beneath the stand and picture myself appreciating its grace and movement, savoring a momentary glimpse of the wild, without the shot, without the blood, without this furry shell.
I never asked Dad to put it up in his office and, perhaps because he thought I wanted it for myself, he never asked to have it. Another time, my brother killed two bobcats at once and had them mounted, then loaned them to Dad to display. They are displayed in the middle of a ferocious fight, one frozen in midair leaping onto the other from above. Now it strikes me that perhaps no one wants the cats. Coyotes are still treated as a nuisance; the hides still looked at as a blanket or a drape. Turkeys, deer, even wild pigs are all used for food. But the bobcats are killed for the pleasure of the kill, nothing more, and I think maybe I’m not the only one a little uneasy with having the cat’s dead marble eyes staring back at me.
Of course there are plenty of other reminders of those days scattered about. There is a dark watercolor which Mom painted that has the cabin cast in shadow against the faded light of the sky. To the left is the windmill, fenceline, and oak tree, where I swung from a tire and played countless afternoons. Their photo albums are filled with pictures where deer carcasses are lined up on the ground with my dad and brothers smiling next to them. In another, Dad is standing next to the deer hanging from the tree, ready to be skinned and quartered. Some of the photos have captured memories that aren’t even mine, yet I still look at them with nostalgia. I miss those times with my family; I want to sneak back across property lines and trespass my way in to see the cabin but I know I can’t go back.
Around the time I graduated from high school, the owners of the ranch, Leroy and Lollie Angerstein, were put into a home. As their children took over the ranch, my parents noticed the cattle growing gaunt, their skins stretched taut over protruding hipbones as they’d run at the sound of our car, hoping for more food, some salt or hay. My parents couldn’t stand to see the cattle and the ranch go this way, so they let the lease go and started looking for their own land to hunt.
They settled on 58 acres outside of Nixon, less than an hour or so from the original lease, where it’s still good whitetail and turkey land complete with a small creek. The first year Dad cleared trees, set up a small camper and watched closely for deer. He saw lots of does but few bucks. He decided to let them breed a bit before hunting them out. Within a couple years though, there was a game fence nearby, the creek dried, and after ten years there has still yet to be a deer taken from the land. I was off at college and unwilling to spend Christmas hunting when I could see my old friends. The real reason though is it was never the same. There wasn’t the boundless land that went on and on. I could walk to the fenceline in ten minutes instead of it taking hours. There is still a certain rawness to the new place but it is closer to town, other families, and the call of the land is mysteriously absent to the rest of the family. My parents go alone to hunt or my brothers will stay for the weekend with their friends. At most it is used a few times each season. It is no longer our family place, built out of the old stories and memories.
There are still ways for me to hunt. I could get a license and try public land but I’m too worried about the dangers of drunk hunters I don’t know and even getting lost on the unknown land. In my new home 1500 miles from my parents, I have a few friends with land choked with deer but neither my husband nor I want to skin the deer, chop up the meat or even gut the animal.
My father no longer hunts either. A few years ago he had an accident with a saw and severed three of his fingers from his right hand. The index finger remains but is so badly damaged it is immobile and he’s unable to pull the trigger on a rifle without moving it off sight and making a poor shot. We’ve all tried to give him a variety of tools to help him adjust to his disability but he chooses to go it alone and muscle through what he can with his mangled hand. Now he’s resigned to watching out the window when he goes to hunt and signaling my mother when he sees something. It is rare.
Now that we no longer hunt together, our conversations are framed by Happy Birthday or Happy Father’s Day, a short conversation about the weather or home improvement over a family dinner. He often falls asleep in his chair while watching the news. Sometimes I will buy him Doe in Heat deer urine for Christmas or a new turkey call as a way to bridge the gap, give us something to discuss or to prompt a memory. I still bring him trophies—degrees, new stories, and pictures of my new house—but I’m always met with the old faint smile from the days of dance recitals and softball games and nothing has ever joined or replaced the picture in his office.
Years ago my mother started a painting of me based on a picture taken at the deer lease. In the photo, I am young and in a field of bluebonnets, centered in the frame, bundled flowers clenched in my left hand as I bend over and reach for another with my right. Our beagle, Peppy, stands next to my knee, alert for bugs, squirrels, or armadillos rustling in the field of flowers. The wind is blowing my hair a bit; a few strands sweep across my face and I am caught, frozen, in my quest for a larger bouquet. In the painting, the blues are slightly more muted than the photo; dappled cornflower blue is tapped around the base of the canvas with sprinkles of white as my mother tried to capture the indigo petals swaying around me. Peppy’s brown and white frame is drawn with tight, sure lines. She has rendered my loose cotton pants and t-shirt, my dirty blond hair dusting my shoulders, but my face is a blurry oval. She painted it several times, putting it away for awhile then returning. Once she thought she had it figured out. My nose was crooked in the painting, my head at too odd of an angle. After she discovered this I thought she might return to it, sketch in my features, give me eyes and a determined smile. Instead the painting is stacked with other discards in the attic, with a pale ghost child picking pieces of blue.
Christine grimes has published in Big Tex[t], Harpur Palate, Permafrost, and Passages North. She was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Fiction Contest and in the Association of Professors of Creative Writing Graduate Fiction Contest. Her work is included in From Where You Dream, a collection of lectures by Robert Olen Butler. She received an M.A. in English from Florida State University and an M.F.A. in fiction from Texas State University. She is a doctoral student in Binghamton University’s creative writing program.