September Song (17 page)

He knew this deer. He had spotted him from time to time, usually out of season and always out of rifle range. He had found his hoofprints in the mud or in the snow and noted their growth like a parent recording a child's height on a wall. It had to be the same one, just as there was only one Mount Everest. Caution out of the common run for his kind had attained for the deer his prodigious size, his size had sharpened his caution. His extraordinariness was like a woman's beauty: a source of vanity and a constant threat. That rack of antlers on his head made it his crown and his crown of thorns.

By now the old deer must know as if he crossed off the days on a calendar when the hunting season was over and he could safely graze. He had come through now once again. He had won another year of life.

And the sight of him had given the old hunter another year of his sport—or had forced it upon him.

He did his homework more thoroughly than ever, for this time it was in preparation for final exams. Daily for two weeks before the opening of the season he was out scouting the territory: the pond, the woods, the fields, the abandoned orchard—his old stamping grounds along with the deer's: searching for clues like a sleuth on the scene of a crime. Deer were at all times wary, elusive, nearly nocturnal in their movements, still they had to eat, drink, sleep, and wherever they did they left their telltale traces. What most clearly gave them away was their reproductive urge, and their cycle brought the does in heat and the bucks in rut just before the hunting season.

The shortening of the days, the chilling of the nights, the hoar-frosts and the crusting of the ground, the rustle of leaves underfoot, the smell of fallen apples, the first light snows, the ice on puddles put geese in flight, squirrels to storing provisions against the siege of winter, and alerted deer to the onset of their yearly period of peril. The same changes in the seasons quickened his perceptions too, tested them, made him feel more keenly alive, a part of his world, which this time of year brought him most closely in touch with. That nip in the air was bracing.

Ordinarily he would have been pleased to discover that this was going to be a season with plenty of game. Among the stand of oaks, which had produced an unusually heavy crop of acorns, in the cornfield where, as part payment for the use of the land, his tenant farmer left standing the rows along the edges for the deer, he found signs in abundance. Now, instead of encouraging, these were a distraction from his single-minded pursuit, almost a nuisance, like pestiferous small fry taking a fisherman's bait.

But amidst all this he found what he was searching for. A track as individual as a fingerprint. Other evidence in plenty as well. The old fellow was really living it up. Here he had lain in the grass. Here he had stamped. Here he had pawed. Here he had rubbed his antlers against a sapling, scraping off its bark, honing them for bouts with his rivals. You knew the sapling was his by its size: big. Here he had left his calling card for the does to scent, a yellow stain of his urine in the snow. The recklessness of his self-exposure almost suggested that after so long he had come to believe in his invulnerability. Or had he flung caution to the winds, sensing that this might be his last season too? Had he grown weary of his long reign, of disputing with the young bucks for his harem?

As D-day (for Deer-day), as he called it, neared the old excitement mounted in him as the rutting urge was doing at this same season in them. This time his was a bit sluggish. Coursing through old vessels the blood was slowed by some constriction. The drive had now to overcome shortness of breath, stiffness in the joints, but it was still there, and this he owed to the buck. The deer had given him another year, whatever the outcome of the contest between the two of them. It would have been wrong to say that he hardly cared what that outcome would be, but it would have been right to say that he did not care overmuch. He remembered reading that Winston Churchill, asked what he liked best of all to do, had replied that he liked best to win at gambling. Asked then what he liked second best to do, Churchill replied, to lose at gambling. So he felt about this high-stake game he was playing.

On the last day of the countdown he sighted in his rifle. His was not just an old one—that it had been when he bought it years ago; it was obsolete, already what was called a “wall-hanger.” But if they didn't make them like that anymore the reason was not that better ones had replaced it. On the contrary; they couldn't make them like that anymore at a cost anybody could afford. Such hand-craftsmanship was long a thing of the past. Even its caliber was obsolete. Cartridges for it could not be had from sporting goods stores, only from one custom handloader out in Iowa. He now had left just six.

Hunters usually expended that many or more on sighting in. He fired one. Not only because he had so few; one was all that was needed for him and the gun to trust each other, to be ready for one last year together. The five that were then left would just fill the magazine.

That night before going to bed he laid out his hunting clothes: long underwear, the thick wool suit of red and black plaid with matching cap, boots, gloves, binoculars, sheath knife. He banked the fire. He noted with satisfaction that the barometer was falling. Who but hunters welcomed bad weather?

He would be up early, still deep in darkness, but he would need no alarm clock. Neither would the buck. Having heard the test-firing in the area all around today, that other old-timer knew as well as he did, if not better, what day tomorrow was.

In the night he needed more bedcovers and in the morning he woke to find the house an igloo. The temperature had plummeted. Even standing before the embers of last night's fire he shivered as he drew on his clothes. Another day and he would have been tempted to crawl back into bed, but today that shiver was electric. His battery was charging. It was as though, on a cold morning, hard to get started, his was attached by a cable to that of the big old buck. The weather was catering to his wishes. This hard frost would open the swamp, impenetrable at other times. Driven by hunting pressure all around, deer would take refuge there, in his own private preserve. And he had another reason for wanting to go now to the swamp. A sentimental reason. It was a fitting end to it all that he should spend his last opening day where he had spent his first.

He was in his tree-stand while still in darkness. He would have a wait of at least half an hour before daybreak. That would give the woods time to quiet down following his passage through them. Meanwhile his thoughts turned to that earlier day. He had been fourteen.

He had stood, not sat, and no cigar store Indian was ever more patient. Being on stand was like holding your breath for hours. Deer were color-blind but otherwise their senses were extra sharp. They were alert to the slightest untoward movement, the least sound, keen of smell. Itching all over, he forbade himself to scratch. Bursting to sneeze, he choked it. Chilled to the bone, he refrained from stamping his feet, flailing his arms. He tensed still further on hearing shots, for that stirred and scattered the deer. He had been warned by his father to be prepared to get buck fever if and when he saw one, and not to be ashamed of it if he did. Many an experienced hunter had frozen at the sight of a deer and been unable to pull the trigger. All the same he would have been mortified. He must make sure that what he was aiming at was a deer and not another hunter, and that it had horns. Should he kill one, his father told him, he would feel both proud and sorry. He must not be ashamed of that either.

All there was to remember of his first hunting season was having passed the test of enduring it, for although he was in the woods for two hours every day before and after school and all weekend he never got a shot. He was not disappointed; he had not expected to. He was not discouraged. It was big game he was after and he was a lowly apprentice. He was grateful for having missed none at least. It would have pleased his father if he had gotten one but it would have embarrassed him, for it would have been beginner's luck and he wanted to feel that he had paid his dues and earned his right to membership in the hunters' guild.

Now this day was dawning. The first light sketched in the woods, the rising sun brushed on the colors. On his spot game trails converged from all points like strands of a web, and at the web's center, motionless and tense as a spider waiting to pounce on prey that strayed into its circle, he sat looking and listening. The cold penetrated to his marrow.

He stayed until mid-morning, hearing shots all around—as many deer were probably killed on opening day as during the remainder of the season—but seeing nothing. With each shot he heard he prayed to Saint Hubert, patron of hunters, that it had not been the death of his buck. Out there were other men every bit as worthy and as dedicated as he. But prizes, as he well knew, did not always go to the deserving. The woods were also teeming today with tyros. What a mockery it would be should that deer, in an uncharacteristic moment of carelessness, fall victim to beginner's luck!

After breakfast he napped. In mid-afternoon he returned to his post and stayed until nightfall. He saw a herd of seven, all does. Silent as shadows, they filed in step across his field of view like a chorus line. Taking aim at each, he added them all to what he called his mental bag. He had long ago lost count of those.

On the third morning he woke to find that overnight four inches of snow had fallen. This called for a change in his tactics. The ground would be a sheet of paper covered with tracks as legible as letters. Everything that moved would leave its signature. The one he would be looking for was the John Hancock of deer. Rather than go on stand, today he would stalk. While waiting for daybreak he fueled himself with a big breakfast, and spiked his tea with brandy.

Deer had gamboled in the snowy fields like children out of school. But the tracks he sought were not among the many he found. No sun shone to tell the time by, but at what he judged to be around noon, weary after miles of trudging, he gave up. He felt somewhat shamefaced. Not because he had failed to find what he was looking for but because he had ever believed he would. He had been thinking about that one deer off and on all year long, planning his campaign against him, anticipating and forestalling his moves. It had become a bit like playing chess by mail. It had taught him respect for his opponent and raised his self-respect for being matched against so worthy a one. Now he had underrated them both. He should have known better than to suppose that that wise old soul would give himself away by cavorting in the snow like some giddy youngster. On nights like the one just past sensible creatures bedded down somewhere and slept late, assuming that even those intent on killing you had some sense too, and an appreciation of yours.

He plodded home, tossed down a jigger of whiskey and went to bed.

Tired as he still was, that inner alarm clock of his went off at the hour to issue forth again. As though covering his head with his pillow, he tried to ignore it. He felt disloyal to the hunter he had been since boyhood but now he had earned his rest. What was more, his inner barometer was forecasting another storm, and if his creaky old joints were right it was going to be a blue norther.

But if he knew that a storm was on the way the deer knew it better than he did. And that one he was after would in his wisdom take shelter from it in the pine grove.

Had that not been his father's aim in planting it? He had found deer inside it seeking relief from the heat and from the deerflies when the family went there to picnic on summer days and again on wintry ones when he was out hunting grouse. He had played peekaboo with them among the trunks. With its regular rows and squares it was like a chessboard and there he would have his opponent checkmated. On days such as this it offered an irresistible haven. The branches high overhead were so closely intertwined that rain, snow or sunshine could hardly come through, a canopy, and the fallen needles made a bed of the floor. He himself had often stretched out on them and dozed.

It was beginning to snow when he left the house. As yet you could count the flakes, but more, much more, was on the way. To the west, beyond the river valley, heavy clouds loomed above the mountaintops. A north wind was blowing, shaking last night's snow from the boughs of the hemlocks along the lane.

By the time he reached the hayfield where the long steep slope to the grove began he was puffing. He rested for a while, then drawing upon his second wind and shifting into low gear he plowed uphill.

He was soon forced to stop again. Panting and surveying the climb before him he wavered. He feared he was pushing himself beyond his strength. Meanwhile the weather was threatening. What he was doing was something for a young man, a voice told him. It was his own voice but it sounded only distantly like him. It sounded like a recording of him, saying nothing more than, “Testing. Testing.” And he was spurred on by the thought that if he was tired, winded, he who had spent last night in a soft warm bed, well fed, he who was threatened by nobody, with nothing to fear, what must the deer's condition be? He felt challenged to a test of both his endurance and his hunting savvy. He slogged on.

Features of the landscape in the distance were growing indistinct, ghostly, those still farther away disappearing behind the advancing curtain of snow. It was as though his eyesight was dimming. Things were closing in. This land of his birth was as familiar as a womb, and the issue from it as assured, yet for a moment, shrouded in a sudden gust, sightless, he felt lost, trapped. To get safely home, he felt, would be like being delivered, swaddled, and put to nurse.

He pushed ahead, yet he would have turned back had he not soon thereafter found the tracks. No mistaking whose they were. They came up out of the swamp and headed toward the grove as straight as twin rails. It was as though he himself had laid them down. Self-satisfaction overrode his fatigue and his fears.

Halfway up the hill as he stood in his own tracks catching his breath there came over him a sense that he was being stalked, his footprints in the snow being followed as he was following the deer's. A sense that he, the hunter, was now the hunted. Irrational as that was, still more so was the notion that the deer had turned the tables and was luring him on.