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Show Deer Hunt 11 either slowly to my feet or slowly to my mind, I don't know. But a gentle chaos in my heart demanded reconciliation which I seemed incapable of finding. A center had atomized into tiny, random tingling nerves. The earth felt unstable and I on it. The smells of damp ground, deer, and death became infused with suffocating images of knives, and flesh, and eyes. It must have been the sun, the heat. "Hey guys; it's getting late. I think we'd better go." "Yeah." I handed Dog his pocketknife. Three times he plunged it in the earth, wiped it on his pants, bent it over then to half its length, and dropped it in his pocket. We headed down. Usually going down the hill was great. Leaping and running. Today-we were tired, I guess-we sort of plodded. In fact, I felt like it was difficult to keep from falling forward. It was a struggle to keep my feet and legs holding me upright. The dust we kicked up once we reached the junk yard road seemed especially dry and choking. I realized that it was late and that I was very thirsty. A magpie flew up, startled by our intrusion, and flew away squawking. A blue racer darted from my glance the moment he saw me. We plodded. Nearly to the highway, we approached the rock slide. It had begun to nag away at my mind as we left the buck. I tried to force myself not to think of the rock slide, so the thought bore deeper. I knew that with just a few more steps I would have to look up to the top of the rocks. I looked. Near the top, beneath the scrub oak beneath the oliffs, with its legs sprawled stupidly in the air, lay a new dead deer. The deer. |
