I’ve put the sign on the door for a reason: “Day sleeper, don’t ring or knock,” but the doorbell rings anyway, just when I’m dozing off.
“This better be good.” I’m in my t-shirt and boxers. That usually gets an apology when I open the door, but not this time. It’s my brother, Ford, all 350 pounds of him.
“I’m glad you’re up, Clyde.” He pushes past me into the house and unzips his orange camo jacket. “It’s the first day of hunting season.”
“Go on by yourself. I was trying to sleep.” I’m still tired from last night’s shift. But Ford’s gotten a pop from the fridge and has seated himself in front of the TV. So I pull a pair of jeans on and join him.
“You got to come,” he says, clicking through the channels.
I look at the pile of bills on the kitchen table. “No, I got to work tonight.”
He says, “This is your golden opportunity to spend quality time with your little brother. Maybe next year I won’t be here to bring you any venison.”
“You plan on going somewhere?”
“Probably hell,” he says. He shakes his head mournfully. “I could go any day now.”
“If you’d lose some weight…” It’s an old argument, and it’s not worth finishing the sentence.
He snorts. “And give up my pop?”
A commercial comes on, blaring, then a home renovations show, where we watch a demolition team pull a wall down. They’re wrecking a nicer house than mine by a long shot.
Then Ford looks at me expectantly. “Well?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve got to get some sleep before my shift.”
“Just come up the mountain with me for a couple hours. We’ll be back before your kids get out of school, I promise.”
“Sandy will be mad,” I say. Her tightlipped face flashes before my eyes.
“Sandy’s always mad about something,” he replies dismissively.
It’s true enough, but to be fair, with her on swing shift and me on graveyard there hasn’t been enough time to really be a family.
“Still,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “She’s my wife.”
I stare at the TV. They’ve got all the walls down inside the house now.
“I heard about this buck out near Deadman Mountain,” he says. His eyes are lit up. “It’s got the biggest rack you’ve ever seen. I’ve been back up on the BLM roads looking for him.”
It’s tempting. I like the drive. The Bureau of Land Management’s road system winds through the whole mountain range, an endless snarl of dirt roads that wander through fir and cedar forests and across the spines of unnamed mountains all the way east to the high desert. Those roads will take you anywhere you want to go, with better scenery than you’ll find anywhere else in the world.
But the thought of Sandy pulls me back. I want to go, but a glance at the bills pulls me back.
“Why are you asking me to go?” I ask. “You’ve got a bunch of buddies who’ll gladly hunt with you.”
“It’s what brothers are supposed to do, watch each others’ back and stuff,” he says, stretching. “Besides, you’ll get some meat for your freezer.”
What he really means is that he couldn’t get anyone else to go. Nobody goes hunting in the middle of the day.
“What about June?” She’s his ex-wife, and she lives with their four kids in a leaky trailer up in Sutherlin. She’s not talking to him because he’s behind on child support. “Shouldn’t you give her some?”
He snorts. “She’s got a new boyfriend, that bartender at the Elks Club. She’ll be okay, Clyde. Come on.”
The sun peeks through a crack in the curtain, illuminating the dark room. The sliver of light lands on our wedding photo hanging on the wall. Sandy looks hopeful up there. We both do.
I’m tired. I’ve been working graveyard shift since Fourth of July and it feels like a century of backwards living, sleeping in the day and working at night.
If I go with Clyde, I know we won’t be back until well after dark. I’ll miss the kids when they get off the bus, and then there’ll be another fight.
But I could use a day outside, away from the noise and dust of the mill.
Sandy will find something to be upset about even if I don’t go.
“Okay,” I say.
He grins and chugs the rest of the pop as I heave myself off the couch and grab my jacket.
It takes a good hour to drive up to where Ford says the buck was last seen. Clouds scud across the sky, making the light on the slopes change from moment to moment. The rutted road snakes through old growth timber where bushes crowd the road and the branches overhead make a green tunnel.
The change from forest to clear-cut is startling the first time you see it. You drive around a hairpin curve and all of a sudden, there is the mountain, just a mass of stumps and brush, with a wide open view to forever. Around the next corner, the forest closes in again.
Ford parks at one of the clear-cut sections, grabs his rifle and we get out. Half of the slope below us is red mud, dotted with old tree stumps and brush piles. The other half is a thick mix of fir, cedar and red barked madrone. It is perfect for deer to hide in.
You can see wave after wave of mountains, off into a hazy infinity. It’s a million dollar view, and if electricity was ever run out this far it’s where I’d build my dream house.
“Jim Bunch told me he saw that old buck right down there a couple days ago,” Ford says. He’s pointing at a spot about 100 yards down the slope where a fallen fir lies, weathered and gray. Deer paths meander across the mud and into the forest.
“Come on,” Ford says, stepping off the shoulder onto the slick downslope. He grabs at a bush with his free hand to steady himself, his weight half yanking it out of the ground. “If you help me haul him out I’ll give you half the meat.”
“That’s counting your chickens,” I say.
“He’s there, I know it,” Ford says. He grins and takes another step, but he slides, then he goes down on his butt with a crash. He lays there and moans.
“Hell,” he says. “I think I broke my tailbone.”
He knows as well as I do that there’s nothing that can be done about a broken tailbone. He will just have to man up and live with it until it heals.
He pulls himself up and brushes at the mud on his seat, and looks around. The deer trail he pointed out is not far from us now, and he limps down the slope toward it.
“Lookit,” he says, squatting with a groan, “He’s been here.”
There are many deer prints criss-crossing mud. He’s pointing to the biggest ones, which are a good three inches long, big for deer tracks.
He looks up at me triumphantly.
Then he points at a brush pile not fifty feet away. “This is the spot,” he says.
We get to work. This is going to be our cover, the place we wait and watch from. We move some of the branches around to make a rough blind. I imagine the buck is watching us and shaking his head. We’re loud, too clumsy to be real hunters.
Ford leans back against the pile with a groan, lays the rifle across his lap and pulls out a pint of whiskey.
“This’ll help the pain.” He swigs some then offers the bottle to me.
I shake my head. I chew on the fact of the rifle and the whiskey. It’s not a good mix.
We settle in to wait.
The clouds make moving shadows on the mountains. A vee of geese fly over, honking.
“This is the life,” Ford says to me after another pull on the bottle.
“Yep,” I say. “It’s a good day.”
Ford takes another swig, then he says, “I been thinkin.”
That’s all he says for a while. We watch a couple of blue jays poking around our wood pile for bugs. They are a pair, and the male is taking real good care of his wife. He offers her almost all the bugs he finds. Some she takes, and some she rejects. I can’t tell the difference between them but she sure can, and she scolds him for it, too.
“Women,” says Ford, shaking his head.
The wind dies down and the sky overhead is pure blue. Far off to the east the thunderheads are darkening but here the sun pours over me like it’s a pitcher of heat. My shoulder muscles ease up, and I lean back and close my eyes. For once, I’m not thinking about the pile of bills at home or how mad Sandy’s going to be that I wasn’t there when the kids got home.
Ford shifts, making the branches underneath us jiggle. I look over just as the gun falls off his lap. As he goes to catch it, he pulls the trigger.
The boom echoes off the hills for a long second. The two jays fly up from the brush and disappear. Somewhere in the distance a crow protests. Afterward, everything is silent.
“Hell,” he says. “I shot myself in the foot.”
Sure enough, the tip of one of his steel toed boots is crushed in. There’s a hole through the sole, too.
“I can’t take you anywhere,” I joke, holding my hand out for the gun, but he won’t give it to me. “Put the safety on, at least.”
“I can handle it,” he says. He gives me a stubborn look and sets the gun upright against a branch and pulls his shoe off. There is a hole in the toe of his sock.
“Can you walk?” I ask. The last thing I want to do is haul Clyde up this slope.
He’s checking his toes now, and wincing. “tt’s broken. But I’ll be okay.”
Now I’m about as tense as I was back home in bed trying to sleep. It doesn’t help when Ford takes another drink. My mind is back to turning over my problems, worrying them. This time, I have another one to add to the pile. I catch myself grinding my teeth.
Ford speaks again, quietly. I jerk, startled by his voice.
“I been thinking about June,” he says, taking another swig. He doesn’t bother screwing the cap back on now, just holds the pint in one paw. It’s half empty.
The jays are back, poking around the brush pile for bugs again. The male jay looks up interestedly. His eyes follow the sun’s glint on the glass as Ford gestures with it.
“June?” I wonder what June has to do with all this. If I were him, I’d be thinking about how I was going to get myself back up the hill and into the truck.
“Yeah, you know that kid she’s dating, I know he’s not interested in feeding four extra mouths.”
“I thought you hated her.”
He looks earnestly at me. He’s slurring a little. “She’s the mother of my kids.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t paid child support for years. She’s got a good reason to be mad at you.”
“I’m worried about her. I got to get her back, Clyde.” He’s got tears in his eyes. “I want to have a family like you do. I want something to come home to.”
“It’s not all roses and sunshine, Ford,” I say, thinking about how hard it is to get Sandy to smile these days.
“I know, I know,” he says. “But I’m lonely. I need someone to take care of me.”
That’s all he has to say. He takes a swipe at the tear on his cheek and settles back to wait for the buck again. After a while, his breathing evens out into a gentle snore.
I lean over him and flip the safety on the rifle.
It’s a nice day and now that he’s asleep, he’ll keep out of trouble.
I settle back to watch the jays, but no matter how hard I try to turn my thoughts, a picture of Sandy and her angry face intrudes. High overhead, a buzzard circles, then a second and a third join in. We’ve been still so long they think we’re dead. I wave my arms to let them know we’re alive and they laze off, still flying circles.
The sun is already behind the mountains when Ford rouses himself. He takes a last swig and drops the bottle into the brush.
“Welp,” he says, and groans as he unfolds and stumbles out of the nest. He hasn’t complained about his tailbone but he grunts when he stretches and I can tell by the way he limps that walking up the hill is taking some effort.
Before Ford can open the driver’s side door, I say, “Let me drive, bro.”
He frowns. “It’s my truck,” he says belligerently, but he’s swaying. A half pint is too much for anyone.
“I know,” I say, holding out my hand for the keys. I wait for him to give them up.
He opens his mouth, then he stops. I am surprised when he sets the rifle down and fishes for his keys. He is just going to give them to me, no argument. He searches, first in his pants pockets and then in his jacket.
Finally, he throws both hands up in the air. “Guess we’re stuck here, Clyde. I’m going back down to look for them.”
“Naw, I’ll go. You climb in the truck and get some rest,” I open the door and nudge him to get in. I don’t want Ford stumbling around in the dark looking for the keys. He’s gotten himself in enough trouble as it is, and I don’t want to be late for work.
The moon is just rising, big and yellow through the trees, as I slide back and forth on the slope, looking. I picture the keys, a fist full of silver ones along with the black-handled truck key.
The empty bottle, deep in the twigs and branches under where Ford was sitting, glints. In the mud nearby I find the keys.
“Clyde?”
He is awake and standing at the edge of the road calling down to me. I shake my head and hope he doesn’t do anything stupid.
“I’m coming down,” he yells, throwing his arms out.
“I got em,” I yell back. “I’m coming up.”
But he steps off the gravel and lands in the brush below.
“Hell,” he says. He’s laying there motionless. “I broke my tailbone.”
“Yep,” I say. “You did that earlier.” I’m coming up the slope as fast as I can.
“I broke my toe,” he says.
“Yep,” I say. I’m breathing hard now. “You did that, too.”
“I’m drunk,” he giggles. Then he rolls over on his stomach and crawls up to the road. “But it still hurts.”
He lays his head on the gravel, cheek down, and starts to snore.
There is no way I can haul his sorry butt into the truck by myself, and he won’t wake no matter how hard I jiggle him.
I sit on the edge of the road to think. A movement in the brush at the forest’s edge catches my eye. The buck steps out. It is Ford’s buck, I am sure of it.
He stands, smelling the air, head and chest squared like a statement of fact, and a massive rack of antlers rising in a wide crown. He walks out into the open and stares straight up the slope at me. The moonlight outlines him, highlights the paler fur around his muzzle and down his legs like an aura. He steps further out into the open and takes a mouthful of grass, slowly. He knows I’m here. He waited all day until the rifle was put away to make an appearance. The buck is a smart one, all right. The moonlight makes him look phosphorescent as he slowly dips his crown at me. He is a king.
“Hello to you, too,” I whisper. He has an entourage, three well fed does. They follow him across the mud, until he reaches the edge of the forest. He looks back at me and lowers his head slowly. It is a royal salute.
It feels like I have been touched by something good, something without a name, something that pushes back my worries. I let it seep into me as he fades back into the forest.
Finally, the moon slides behind a cloud and the spell is broken.
“Come on, Ford, it’s time to go home.” I only have to punch his arm once to get him moving.
I drive us back down the mountain while Ford sleeps in the passenger seat. He’ll be fine, and I figure he’ll make up with June like he wanted.
The moon hanging low frosts the trees with pale light. A porcupine waddles across the road. Behind him in the forest several pairs of eyes glow in my headlights. More deer.
Paved road is not far ahead, and beyond that, home lies just a few miles further.
No doubt Sandy is there already, waiting for me with her lips pressed tight and her arms crossed. But I feel more hopeful than I have in a long time. Something good happened today and I am ready for another night shift, ready to keep on putting food on the table, ready, even, to try to coax a smile onto Sandy’s face.
Sylvia Cumming reads slush for an alt-reality e-mag, and freelance copy edits. She has been writing since her early years, and most recently has had stories published in The Museum of Americana Online Literary Magazine and Alternate Reality Magazine. She composes comic monologues in her head while in the shower, but as a confirmed introvert, prefers writing them down to performing them.
