The Hunt

I used to walk around in my father’s hunting jacket, rolling an old silver slug under my tongue so I couldn’t quite close my teeth. It was cold, and the frosty grass reached just below my knees, making it hard to trek over the feathered hills. I still remember the first time I went out on my own. Dad told me he would wait for me, but when I turned around he had already left. The sun beat down until my clothes seemed to swallow me, growing heavy as if I had piled sand in my pockets and forgotten. Without Dad, the wide expanse of woods seemed more lonely, more inviting, and more terrifying than it had been before. Swallows’ songs resounded in my ears, making me believe it’d be much better to turn around immediately. Yet I marched on, dragging my weather-stained boots until the branches crunching below my feet swarmed to form trees in the sky.

I was determined to shoot a stag. I’d never done it before. I wanted to feel authority that came with the destruction of life. Sure, I’d killed small animals. Rabbits, squirrels, a beaver or two. But a buck was a badge of honor, showed you’re a man. You’d sport the antlers like a prehistoric god—you’d be infallible, dominating. Dad got his first at fourteen, a year younger than I was on my first solo trip. He wasn’t scared. I’ve seen pictures of him at eleven: broad shouldered, bulging chest, a brick face that made him look like a man before he even hit puberty. I, on the other hand, still had ages to go before I would grow into my feet and hands. I was built like a newborn pup, hands and feet that threatened to topple me over if I didn’t keep them close to my wiry frame.

The soles of my boots were worn and brown, with eyelets that were rusted over from being left in the rain too often. Dad would wear black boots in the winter, and against the white snow he looked like the beginning of a black hole ready to devour the next thing he found vulnerable. Those boots have been sitting in the back of the cedar closet for years, only taken out when I want to see if I’ve grown into them yet. On this day, I was barreling through the brush of the woods, brown boots matching the mud mixed in with the flakes of white snow.

I reached a clearing a few hundred yards into the weathered forest, tree trunks as thick as my father’s fingers, weaving my walk the way I tried to intertwine my hand in my dad’s. My hair was turning white, stringy, and wet so it blurred my vision as I climbed up a knotted oak tree to a fork in the branches. The bare trunk bit through my gloves and snagged on my rifle strap. At the fork of the thickest branch, I sat with my legs dangling on either side. I could see through the trees on the left side, into the thicket, and on the right the woods melted on for miles. The breeze was quiet, containing solitude and sleepiness from nature’s insomnia. All I could do was wait and see if a stag was going to come. That is all I had my eyes set on.

Minutes, hours passed and I started to drift off. I was not a good hunter; I struggled to keep my eyes on one thing without letting my mind float to another. I thought back to my father, how his peppered beard is scratchy and soft at the same time but I never feel it anymore because I am too old to be kissed by my dad. How his kisses are nothing like the girls’ in my history class, but better all the same.

The crackling of twigs, loud against the utter silence, interrupted my thoughts, making me jerk my head so quickly it hurt. Scanning the trees, I didn’t see what caused the noise and grew paranoid. The air was still except for the ragged breathing leaving my throat, tangled in a scarf too tight. My sweater went itchy under the layers of coats ballooning me to a brutish size. Suddenly, the sound of twigs twisting and straining cracked the silence, my breath caught on the knob of the tree. After a few minutes passed, I crept down the tree trunk. Placed left foot below right until my toes grazed the padded ground and I eased my body to rest shakily. Following the prolonged racket into the thicket I stopped, seeing a young deer ensnared and bleeding.

I approached and the deer’s whimpers grew whiny and helpless. Its hide was beautiful, though it was pricked with thorns. I kneeled next to the deer, silent. It dwarfed me in size, and cried as I ran my hand up its back, pulling out the barbed thicket as blood ran into the puddle already forming at my feet. He’d been wounded, sported a hole from a gunshot just above his hip. I doubt he could’ve made it far. As I palmed his shoulder, he squirmed, unable to get away from me. I surprised myself when I began to sob, uncontrollably racking my body until my ribcage felt too small. The deer bled out stoically, only wincing while I cried beside him, grateful to be alone.

I knew I had to go home. The deer had died somewhere between when I began to cry and when I stood up. When I looked back down at the animal its chest did not rise and fall as it should have done. Wiping my reddened hands on my pants, I couldn’t think about dragging the deer home. So I left, staining the snow with the blood from my boots and leaving a trail from the dead deer to home. Though my hands were empty, I was guilty all the same.

Elizabeth Dassow is double majoring in Law, History, and Culture and Art History at the University of Southern California. She was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she taught creative writing and was the editor of her high school’s national award-winning magazine, The Artisan. She writes poetry, short stories, and flash fiction.