The Wild Marsh (47 page)

It might not have been that way at all. It might have been just me feeling that—all me. But I don't think so.

 

The relationship doesn't end with death. Anyone who's ever lost someone knows this. The terms of the relationship simply change dramatically—the scale and amplitude, once compressed into the moment of life, are suddenly expanded, as if in a big bang spreading out. A larger cycle of going away and returning is entered, in the relationship. I do believe that we will all see each other again, and that there will always still be, even in the brief compression of life, moments in time as well as places on the landscape—unpredictable, and certainly, ungovernable—at which we the living pass through pockets of time or place where the relationship sparks again in a way that impresses itself upon us; that it can be like ascending or descending into a different place, where it is almost as if the departed has never gone away, or as if the departed has returned.

I hesitate to say this next part, but the feeling I was getting was that Bill wasn't ready for us to get to the top of that mountain; that he had been planning on going up there himself with Travis and the rest of his family for so long that it did not fit the cycle or pattern of—how to say this?—what was
right
for Bill not to be making this trip, not just in spirit, or in the flesh of his son, but in his own physical body.

The snow got deeper and deeper. The powder was so deep and cold and dry that our snowshoes weren't working and Travis's Texas boots weren't working, either—his socks kept filling with snow, which the heat of his feet melted, so that the wet socks were sliding then to the bottom of his boots. At one point we sat down on the mountain (dry snow up to our chests), and Travis pulled off his boots and sopping wet socks—his feet were blue and pained—and put on a new dry pair I had in my pack, and I was struck by the strangeness of the image, this young man from Texas sitting barefooted in four feet of snow high in the mountains of northern Montana, in a blizzard. And while we could have pushed on and gained the peak, I asked him if he would mind overmuch waiting and coming back another time—he had his whole life ahead of him—and though he would have pushed on, blue feet and all, he agreed to descend.

I didn't tell him that I didn't think Bill wanted us to go up there yet, or that I felt like the spirit of Bill was having some mixed feelings, as was I. We just headed back down, frigid and caked with snow, eyebrows rime-crusted and toes and fingers and ears and lips numb: back down to the snow-shrouded truck far below, and then back home, to the warm yellow squares of light and the fire burning in the wood stove.

 

The next day was Thanksgiving. Travis and I were up early, making our breakfast and getting a fire going in the wood stove, while the
rest of the house slept. It was still snowing hard. We dressed warmly and then went out the back door and walked off into the woods, heavy flakes falling wet against our faces. For a couple of years, I'd been seeing the tracks and scrapes and rubs of a big whitetail down at the bottom of the hill, in another series of marshes similar to the one next to my writing cabin; and not far into our journey, we cut the big buck's tracks and caught the dense, rank smell that told us he was in full rut.

It wasn't even daylight yet—we were still using our flashlights through the woods—and as we passed through the vertical bars of the old lodgepole forest, following that wandering buck's path, our lights illuminated vertical columns of spinning snowflakes.

So fresh were the tracks, and so heavy the falling snow, which had not filled or even yet obscured his tracks, that we knew we were right upon him. We hunkered down under the spreading branches of a big spruce tree and waited for the woods to grow light enough to see without a flashlight, and then we started out after him again. The tracking conditions were perfect: we were able to walk quickly but silently.

For a while, the buck's tracks had snow in them—representing those five or ten minutes we'd sat quietly, waiting for dawn—but then they grew sharp and distinct again and we knew that we were right behind him once more. The slight breeze was in our face, and because we were being silent, and because his tracks were still wandering and unhurried, we were certain that he had no idea we were behind him.

We were certain that while he was out lollygagging around, wandering through the forest, wearing his great crown of antlers, looking around in the snowstorm for a doe to breed, we would be able to slip right in behind him and take a nice clean shot, and have a big fat buck to drag home on Thanksgiving Day, with the end of the hunting season only a few days away.

It was incredibly exciting, believing that with each next, silent step we would see him just ahead of us, either paused and looking around, or perhaps simply wandering unaware; and as we followed him farther and deeper into the forest, the tension continued to build and I was very glad that Travis was getting to experience this.

We followed the deer for nearly two hours and were beginning to learn, even if only subconsciously, the shape and rhythm of him—ducking under the same branches he ducked under, and picking the exact same routes, the same paths and passages that he had chosen—our steps in his steps, like a stream following the valley grooves cut by a glacier, our bodies and our movements adapting to the forest as had his, always following his lead, and in that manner, perhaps, beginning to assume or understand likewise some of his thoughts, or at least his general mood and disposition. And thus it was sometime early into our third hour of trailing him, still only and always but a few moments behind him, that we finally came to understand that which we had heretofore been denying: that he knew we were back there and that we were after him.

It's one of the oldest lessons in the world: just because a thing cannot be seen, or even heard or smelled or touched or tasted, does not mean it does not exist.

Gradually we came to understand in following that buck (he was beginning to lead us in wide circles now) that it was a game of cat and mouse; that although he was still out cruising, still looking for does, he was leading us through small open areas so that once he was safely into the woods on the other side he could look back and glimpse us. We began to see from his tracks where he had sometimes ascended a small knoll and paused to look down on us before whirling and bounding off. There would be a telltale divot of snow, or even black earth, in each of these places; but still we pushed on, despite having our cover blown—and again and again, he would eventually slow to a walk, almost a saunter.

The snow was beautiful. I very much wanted to catch up with this buck. I very much wanted Travis to see this magnificent buck taken, wanted Travis to participate in that.

I had followed such bucks before and knew that what they often eventually did under such pressure was the not-very-nice thing of searching out another of their kind—a younger buck, usually—and crossing paths with that deer so that the pursuer might then become confused, or even tempted, and follow the new tracks rather than the initial tracks. Bull elk do the same thing, under the same kind of pressure. I whispered to Travis that we might see that
happen soon—he looked at me dubiously—but five minutes later, that was what happened, and the realization by Travis of this animal's intelligence, as well as its cool cunning, and its supreme predisposition to keep on living, astounded him.

We followed him as long as we had time for—another hour, still only moments behind him, but never seeing him—and with a growing sense of frustration, I began to beseech Bill above, whom I was certain was looking down and watching this hunt with extreme interest, for help. I asked him, silently and repeatedly, to use any new intercelestial clout he might have obtained in the afterlife to help deliver this deer to us, for Travis's benefit—for Travis, for Travis—and as we continued on through the snowy forest, hot on the trail of that buck, I felt certain that that wish would be delivered; that as the suspense of this wonderful hunt continued to build, with the smart old buck turning us inside out, our endurance would eventually be rewarded and the hunt would culminate with our being granted an opportunity to take the animal—that the animal himself, under some understanding with Bill, might even finally present himself, or at least the opportunity, to ourselves.

That was not how it happened. Sometimes it happens in that manner, but not this time. We ran out of time—we had pushed the buck a couple of miles south—and we finally had to turn around and head back through the falling snow to our Thanksgiving feast. I was a little bummed that we had not even
seen
the deer—toward the end, I had negotiated downward so that all I'd been beseeching Bill for was just a glimpse, so we could see what kind of antlers the big deer was carrying—but still, it had been one of the most rewarding and satisfying hunts I'd been on, and I knew the same was true for Travis; and I supposed it was a great lesson for him, as well, that even when everything seems to be in your favor, you don't always get the deer. That, in fact, you rarely get the deer.

We took a shortcut through the woods, triangulating toward home, and got there shortly before the meal was ready. We had other friends staying with us too, and had a big feast, and afterward whiled away the dusk and then the evening lying in front of the fire reading and playing board games while the snow continued to fall. Was it wrong to ask so fervently for that deer when we already had
so much—a turkey in the oven, biscuits and sweet potatoes baking, and a chocolate pie on the counter? Perhaps not
wrong;
but I could see, even then, that the hunt itself rather than the animal had been the great blessing. And that Travis was going to do what his father, his parents, most wanted him to do: to continue living a full and engaged life. The deer didn't matter in the least. Even I could see that.

 

We saw the deer the next day. We had packed up and I was driving Travis to the airport in Kalispell. I might be plain wrong about this, but what it felt like to me—and I still believe this—is that it was an echo of my prayer, my beseechment, and that the delivery of it was filled with irony, and something else, not quite prankster-ish, but something along those lines. Something I don't think there's a word for, but it certainly got my attention, and reminded me—not that I had ever doubted it—that Bill still had an eye on his boy, would always have an eye on his boy.

Travis had witnessed a good way to hunt, a fair and honest way—an engaged way—the way Bill liked to hunt, and the way Bill liked to do everything, with muscular force and passion, and now he, Travis, got to see the other way too: the lesser way.

I'd been asking for even a glimpse of that big old deer, asking for it fervently, and when we came around a bend in the road not two miles into our journey, crossing the bridge that spanned the creek where we'd turned back the day before, we got to see him.

He was in the air when we saw him, as if flying. His antlers were huge, almost supernaturally so—dark and long-tined—and his body likewise was dark and long. And so spectacular a deer was he that the strange sight of it almost made sense, for a moment; of course such an amazing animal should be flying, just like Pegasus.

He was huge and graceful and flying through the air, right in front of us. He landed awkwardly, however, slipping on the icy road, and then lay there on his side, kicking, slipping each time that he tried to rise, as if the ice was getting the better of him: as if there existed, within his great power, some sort of Achilles' heel whereby the force generated by his body was too great to focus itself upon the ice, constrained as he was by his delicate black hoofs, which
seemed so useless now, failing him each time he tried to stand. As if there was simply too much torque for the ice.

I stopped the truck and we sat there, staring in amazement. The deer was only thirty feet in front of us, and like the deer itself perhaps, I felt strangely off-balance: as if I had run into some fracture of time, some disynchronous chasm where yesterday's hunt had not ended but had only been paused, and was now continuing. There seemed also to be a similar break in space, so that it was as if our truck had struck the deer and knocked him to the ground, even though we had stopped thirty feet short. As if we had run into a glass wall and stopped, but as if something else—the motion, through time and space, of how things might have been—had carried on through that glass wall.

The deer lay his head down on the ice as best as he could, encumbered as he was by his antlers, and lay there, gasping; and it was only then that I focused beyond the deer and saw at the bottom of the icy hill, about sixty yards distant, the tilted skew of a hastily stopped truck, with its doors flung wide open, and two hunters—excuse me, two shooters—crouched out in the middle of the icy road, rifles in hand, out-of-state license plates.

Such were the slightly-behind-real-time synapses of my mind that I perceived the wide-eyed, quick-stopped crouching shooters to be only now spying the fallen, ice-slipping deer, as were Travis and I, but that unlike Travis and I, they intended to try to shoot it, right there in the middle of the road. And realizing this, or believing it, Travis and I were severely discomfited, with that deer (which was growing strangely, slowly becalmed) directly in front of us, and us directly in the line of fire.

One of the hunters had his rifle raised and was watching the deer through the scope—watching us through the scope, is what it seemed like—and angrily, we waved him off, and it was only as he, an Elmer Fudd-looking character, lowered his gun that I understood which side of the glass wall we were on and which side the deer was on.

The deer lay there dying, already shot—"Pigs," I said—and we drove around him slowly, sadly, as if around the scene of an accident, and on past the road hunters without looking at them or stopping, with the unspoken obvious: that if they had missed that leaping, running deer, the bullet would quite likely have gone into our windshield just as we came around the corner. That although it was not quite this way, it might as well have been, and in one sense, was true: that that deer had leapt in front of us and blocked, with its body, the bullet that might otherwise have struck us.