His footfalls were softened by the damp bed of pine needles and oak leaves that littered the forest floor. A soft crunch or occasional twig snap interrupted the soundscape of singing warblers, sparrows, and the low humming ebb of a creek. The man’s sure pace came to a sudden halt. He breathed heavily. Sweat ran the length of his nose and beaded at the tip before being sputtered away by his heavy exhale. The man stood a while as his lungs filled with the cool morning air. The forest continued its song. There was no wind. He came to a small clearing where he could see the sky and motionless soft gray clouds.
In the clearing surrounded by pines, firs, and oak trees, he reached back and shook off his pack. The weathered canvas bag was half-filled with snacks, a small box, a few tools, and a water bottle looped from the strap. He withdrew something wrapped in a bandana. He carried it gently in both hands and set it on the ground. Next, he fetched the box. He placed it next to the bandana wrapped item. With a low groan, he stretched his back and rapped his knuckles against his lower right side. He’d just turned 33, far too young to succumb to back pain and the slow decline of mobility. He leaned over and unwrapped the bandana with care. The words Smith and Wesson were faintly visible beneath decades of rubbed away blue steel. Years of use had left an uneven sanding finishing along its cylinder. The wooden handle had been smoothed by years of someone holding the grips tight to stabilize the recoil. The diamond checkered grip lost some prominence over time. It was an old but dependable heirloom. One better suited to be passed down to a son or grandson, not found in the bargain bin of a pawnshop where he picked it up for $150. The person working the counter told him to think of the wear as added character. The man purchased it knowing the looks of the pistol won’t matter. Glued to the four-inch barrel of the wheel gun was a small level. Next, he retrieved the small box and placed it beside the firearm. A rusted brass latch hugged the face of the box. He dug one of his chewed fingernails beneath and pried it open. Inside the little box sat a handful of .38 special cartridges.
He glanced about the forest as if to make sure no one would see him. He was dreadfully alone. He knew that. He knew no one would be on his land. Twenty acres of mixed coniferous forest. All his own. It had long been his dream to own land with “trees and water.” It smelled sweet. The mix of soil, water, and tree bark. A distinctly clean and pure scent that only alchemizes from decades of being undisturbed. If he sat still enough and long enough, perhaps it could smell this way again someday. But he returned to his task. Despite its wear, the second-hand pistol operated with smooth efficiency. He released the cylinder and it swung out without a hitch. Six empty cradles he could see clearly through. He inspected the gun, then peered about his woods. His eyes lingered at each gap between the trees, searching for any semblance of movement to latch themselves to, but nothing shifted. The soundscape of the forest was as it was when he first traced into the clearing. His eyes lingered still but no longer actively searched.
Two years ago, this land was a dream. The romantic notions of a man stuck in the suburbs. The faraway dreams of a life since passed. Three years prior to that, he was jobless. Six months of unemployment is not something one plans or even feels. When he thought it had been one month it had actually been three. When five months hit, his sleep-patterns had long since disappeared into long nights of worry and escapist daydreaming. Each day ended with hopes this last application would be the one to lift him out of this trough. He lay in bed thinking how one-year prior he found his life free falling. What he had built was slipping through his fingers with no one to blame. She said, “I love you.” But she still left, needing to seek out her own woods. He could never get the image of her to leave his memory. Her face was like clay molded smooth by rivers. Her eyes, almond milk lakes with drops of earth-like islands. How her hair naturally rebelled against straightening. Her lips, seashell pink, strained to smile in the later days. She was the sea meeting the shoreline. But his eyes could not find her now, though he strained to see her again.
The azure of a jay’s feathers struck hard against the earth-toned trunks, waking him from his thoughts. The man’s hand sought out a cartridge from the cedarwood box. He turned his eyes back to the gun and aligned the bullet with the empty chamber. He let the round fall into place. He closed the cylinder into the frame with a clean snap.
The man stood with the gun. Took seven paces back. He held the pistol grip in his right hand, and with his left rotated the six capacity cylinder until the lone .38 special cartridge in the 10 o’clock position, ready for the hammer to strike. He aimed the gun straight into the air. The level glued to the side of the barrel showed him that his unsteady hands were still not perpendicular to where he stood. The air bubble tumbled from one end of the tube to the other. He tilted the gun slowly until the bubble slid between the lines of the vial. The firearm was now perpendicular to the ground and directly above his head, his visage like a ritualistic pose for the sky god of an old belief system.
The man had thought of this plan for some time. He’d often questioned whether god was something he believed in. At times he prayed for things, for people, but never knew what he prayed to. Other times he cursed at god, or the universe but was never certain if they were one and the same or two opposing forces. He decided that he couldn’t point the gun to his head. He couldn’t do that, but he could leave it to god, or chance, or the universe. He held his hands steady against the shaking coming from his knees. Breathing heavier still. The air bubble in the vial level stayed within the lines. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The cracking thud of the ballistics reverberated into the woodlands, silencing the symphony. The round will exit the barrel at a velocity of 940 feet per second. It will travel to a height of nearly a mile in under six seconds, then gravity will pull it tumbling back down to Earth until it reaches a terminal velocity of over 330 feet per second. Enough to penetrate the human skull and cause a lethal wound. In twenty seconds he will know whether or not god wants him to live. Twenty seconds was long enough to remember her laugh, his nephew’s smile, beers with his friends, the family camping trip, her face, the trees and water around him. His woods.
His gaze had been turned to face the clouds, scanning as if he’d catch a glimpse of the round at its apex. But soon the man found his chin tucked in his chest with his fingers interlaced in his hair as he huddled away. 2 seconds. Then he heard it. The thud of a bullet hitting flesh.
He’d only heard it once before. On his uncle’s farm.
That summer his family drove 7 hours to visit his aunt and uncle on their farm. The air conditioning was out. To escape the heat of the house the boy sat under a tree and thought about what his friends back home were up to. Then his eyes caught a wild hog gorging itself on the zucchini harvest. Its bristled back hairs emblazoned by the sun. It carved through the field unimpeded by the crops at a lumbered pace. When the animal stopped to rest beneath a large tangle of zucchini shoots, he ran to get his uncle.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It was this big.” The boy scaled the relative size of the hog with his hands.
“Okay. Show me.”
He ran back to the tree. The boy’s uncle followed. He traced the path the animal took, painting its slumbered gait, and finally pointed out its rest spot. The ember bristles of its back highlighted its frame in a sea of green crops.
“Yeah, I see it. The heat got to it too.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll be right back. If it moves, tell me. Don’t lose it.”
“Okay.”
When the boy’s uncle returned, he carried a bolt action rifle and a shotgun. The rifle had a large suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. The shotgun’s wooden buttstock was well worn Cherry wood. Its reddish hue glowed in the afternoon sun. The Uncle handed the shotgun to the boy.
“What’s this for?”
“Those things are really dangerous. If it charges us I need you ready.”
“Uhh”
“Just hold it against your shoulder and grip it with everything. Con fuerza. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Is it still there?”
“Yeah, he is.”
The boy’s Uncle left the shade. He knelt in the sun. The rifle was raised. His eye looked through the scope. He glassed the field until he found the resting hog.
“I’m going to fire. Be ready.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Firing.”
The uncle studied his breathing. The bulk of the hog steadied between the crosshairs. The suppressed rifle rang out with little more than a pop and hiss followed by the near-instantaneous thud of the .308 round landing. The boar fell over. Its legs stretched from its body as rigor mortis took hold.
“That looked like a clean shot. Let’s go make sure though.”
“Why! You said it’s dangerous.”
“You always have to make sure. Es mala onda. You can’t leave it if it’s suffering.”
The Uncle and the boy followed the reckless path the hog had taken but took care to avoid stepping on any more fragile crops. They stopped 10 paces from the carcass. The hog hadn’t moved. The thirsty ground drank most of the spilled blood.
“Clean. You ever have fresh puerco?”
“I’m not hungry.”
In the woods, the thud was followed by a piercing cry coming from somewhere in the thicket. In the man’s ears, the cry was louder than the crack of the revolver. The wheezing cry continued and grew nearer and grew louder.
From the edge of the clearing, a young deer came bounding past a thicket of ferns. One of the deer’s red limbs hung lame at its side as it jolted about the clearing. The deer crashed into the floor kicking and bleeding. Crimson splashed onto the cedar saplings. Its hooved feet kicked and uprooted plants as its chestnut fur became caked with damp soil. The freckled white spots on its coat disappeared behind a mix of earth and blood.
The man’s eyes followed the scene. When it fell he ran over to the injured creature. He held out his hands as if to calm it, but the deer grew louder. Its head thrashed as the rest of its body attempted to right itself. It failed, each time crashing back into the pooling blood. The deer wheezed. Its chest pounded with its attempts to get its legs moving, but it stayed down.
The man stood, clutching the revolver. He stared at the deer. Watched it struggling. He searched around the clearing looking for someone to help him; of course, he found no one. Before he could fully think, his legs carried him back to the blanket and small box of ammunition. Between the welling tears in his eyes, his trembling hands, and the deer’s wheezing cries echoing in his ears, reloading the weapon’s cylinder felt like a cryptex puzzle. The answer kept slipping out of his hands. He was able to align three cartridges before heading back to the deer. It was no longer crying. Its breathing was on pace with his own ragged heartbeat. He met its wide-eyed stare and tried to avert his gaze, but he’d already seen it. Scared. Innocent.
The man raised his gun. He aligned the sights. He looked. After a few breaths, he squeezed the trigger. He still heard the thud through the crack of the revolver pounding in his ears.
The deer lay still now, its chestnut fur indistinguishable from the earth beneath it. The man wrenched the gun from his hands and dropped it into the dirt. He stood and felt raw against the world. The only sound he made was from the air that dared squeeze out of his lungs as his entire body scrunched into itself. He stood, a rigid husk, shaking from the inside outwards until finally he howled and moaned, the sound of a man who’d forgotten how to cry. He let himself onto the ground and lay beside the deer. His cries filled the woods until he gave way to coughing and wheezing. His breathing slowed and allowed him to fill his lungs and rest. He was within arm’s reach of the deer. His fingers stretched and grazed its coat. He scooted over until he could lay his hand on its back. He rested there for a moment.
The man slowly clambered back to his feet. His body felt sore but he paced about the clearing. He found a suitable patch of dirt, enough to bury his deer. He started digging with his hands, but the bits of rock and sand tore at his fingernails. He grabbed a flat rock to tear at the soil tangled with a web of interlaced roots. He dug until his hands were plastered with mud and scraped raw.
The deer lay some twenty yards from the grave. The man tried to lift it as one would a child, gripping it around its middle. He barely budged the animal. His arms and back ached for his efforts. He tried pulling it by its legs. Pushing it. Rolling it. He had moved it less than a quarter of the way, but his entire body was screaming for him to stop. He returned to his pack for water when he remembered the blanket. He crammed his belongings into his bag. He reached the deer, laid out the blanket beside it, and tumbled it onto the cloth. With the remaining strength he could summon, he dragged the blanket to the grave. The man winced as the body dropped into the hole, twisted and mangled. He adjusted the deer, brushed off some of the dirt and mud and stood back, letting it sit in its grave. The man caught his breath before dropping to his knees to push the pile of soil to fill the grave. He muttered “I’m sorry” with every clump of dirt he piled onto the body until there stood a bare mound some six inches higher than its surroundings. He searched the clearing for something to use as a marker.
The man found the bloody cedar sapling the young deer hacked and uprooted from the soil. He scooped out a hole with his hands and placed the mangled kid little tree inside. His hands held it straight while he filled the hole, and packed the soil tight. He watered the freshly planted tree with his water bottle.
He sat on the ground to catch his breath. Every piece of his clothes and boots clung to his body, burdened by the weight of sweat, earth, tears, and blood. The shadows of the trees were beginning to stretch thin and he still had to hike back to his car but the stream whispered to him. Its voice was sweet and offered solace to his ears. He listened for a minute before stripping off his jacket and shirt. The man dipped his arms into the chilled clear stream. The water washed the dirt and gore from his hands, taking the miasma downstream in a cloud that dissipated in the waters. He rubbed his numb arms and fingers in an eager attempt to restore their normal color, but it did not return. He breathed into his hands and firmly rubbed them together hoping to restore some feeling into them. He tried to quickly wash his face and hair but his curling fingers struggled to cup water. He opted to splash himself clean, inhaling deep when the chilly waters touched his skin.
The man got dressed. He hid his face in his hands and spoke softly to himself.
“It’s okay.”
The gun was washed, the unused rounds and expended shells emptied into his backpack. The man’s clothes and gear felt twice as heavy on the walk back. Despite the weight on his aching body, he felt awake. His hike back to the car carried him under logs and past moss-covered rocks where he left markers for his next trip back into the clearing. The sapling needed to be watered and tended to until its roots took hold of the new soil. He had pruners at home he could bring to trim the splintered branches to encourage growth. “That sounds good,” he said aloud. He stopped to set a marker when his woods began to sing again. Now he listened.
