Theft (17 page)

Dad tries to eat his dinner. “Now I don't want anything ruining our Thanksgiving dinner,” Dad says. “Who knows how many Thanksgivings we'll have when we can all be together.” He tries to smile again, but it weakens every time. He takes a deep breath. “Seems Chet had some trouble up at the cabin,” he says. “Dolly's fine. We need to look after her, but she's fine. But Chet, he took his own life.”

Mom gasps, and Zeb keeps eating, doesn't look up at all until Dad says, “The gun he used was stolen. They're looking into that.”

Dad repeats what he said before, says we're not going to let this ruin our Thanksgiving. He starts eating again, like nothing has changed. But everything has changed. I can see his hands shaking as he eats. I look at Zeb, and I swear I see water coming to his eyes. But he keeps eating, trying hard not to look at me. Mom sits motionless. Along with everything else, I can't stop thinking about what she asked me to do. I am not hungry.

T
HAT NIGHT, MOONLIGHT TURNS the snow bright, almost like daylight. I look out my window at Zeb's deer before I go to sleep. Blood drips from the head of the deer onto the snow, a
dark outline. It looks like a map drawn in the snow by a finger I can't see. It looks like the deer is dreaming and its dreams are spilling red out onto the snow.

My dreams are like that sometimes. They're bigger than anything my head can hold. They spill out of me and outline a map of a place I've never seen, my secrets at last as visible as blood on snow.

ON THE DAY OF the hunting trip, before light, he wakes up but keeps his eyes closed, stays perfectly still and listens to the house breathing. His bed folds around him like mountains, the way they embrace him and lock him in all at once. He wants to see what's on the other side of them. He tries to imagine a landscape that does not hem him in. He wants his mother to get better. This morning he's half afraid to head into the mountains and hunt, something he loves, but he fears that, this time, he may not come back. The jaws of that ragged skyline might clamp down on him once and for all, keep him there, in the woods, where he knows he belongs, away from people, away from family, away from anything he calls
home
.

But soon as he feels his sister's feet kicking his back, he comes out of it. He knows he could never really live alone. His kid sister sits on the floor and kicks at him to wake him.

“Morning, Willa,” he says. He thinks,
Jesus, she's a kid. She's such a kid, and she has no idea about anything.
He lets one eye open just a little, gives her the exasperated brother look. She smiles that giddy smile, and his exasperation falls away. Before he can get out of bed, she's got his tent out, his bags half packed for him, and she's already prepping the eggs and stuff for breakfast. She's such a kid.

When he meets his father in the kitchen, it strikes him how much he, himself, is not a kid. Not anymore. He feels like a man now, like this trip will be the first one where he's in charge and
his father's not coming along to make sure he stays out of trouble, but coming along because the two of them need time together. Like maybe he is there for his dad this time, and not the other way around. His mother is dying. He and his father both know this, and his little sister will never really understand it. If she did, it would gnaw at her the same way it gnaws at him, his edges frayed with doubt constantly, when Willa is always so certain and content.

He wants to go hunting, wants it more than anything right now. But it takes all the determination he can muster to get him to walk out that door, leaving Willa and his mother alone in the house. “You take care of your mother,” he says to Willa, and she says yes, she will, and he believes her, but it does nothing to make him feel better. Only thing that takes his mind off it all is the headlights out the window, Chet's headlights, because that asshole is heading out for the Thanksgiving weekend, too.

“Thatchers are going up to the mountains, I'll bet,” Dad says. Zeb says “Yeah,” and he watches them pull away, and already his mind is relieved of thinking about his mom and kid sister, and his brain clicks into scheming a way to get his favorite gun back. He's broken into Chet's house a couple of times now looking for it, but it's never there. He's seen Chet target practicing with it in the field, knows Chet still has it, but that gun is never in the house when Chet is gone. Must take it with him everywhere, he thinks. Until he gets that gun back, Zeb's mind won't rest. He knows where Chet's cabin is, has been there himself once, a long time ago, before his mother was sick and before the whole family knew what an asshole Chet was, when everyone was still friends with Chet and Dolly.

He's the hunter here, not his dad. So he leads the car to a hunting place not too far from where the Thatcher cabin is. “I worry about Mom,” his father says.

“Yeah,” Zeb says, and it feels sharp in him, and he quits thinking about Chet and the gun for a little bit. But two seconds later it pisses him off that his dad brought up his dying Mom in the first place, out here in the woods, of all places. “They'll be fine, Dad,” he says. “Willa's a good kid. She can look after Mom.”

“You're right,” his dad says, and he hates his dad for saying it because Willa is twelve years old and she can't take care of his mom. No one can. He doesn't bring it up again. He never stops thinking about his mother and his sister, and his thoughts agitate him, keep him constantly on edge. But his dad makes like he's okay with it all. He sits back and starts asking Zeb silly questions about hunting.

“What's it feel like, Son?”

“No way to explain it. Just something I like to do,” Zeb says.

“Beautiful animal,” his dad says.

“That's part of it. Yeah.”

“Well, you're very good at it,” his Dad says, finally.

Zeb thinks the word
thanks
to himself, but he doesn't say it out loud to his father. Most of what he wants to say coils up tight inside of him, no reason to uncoil it. He knows his father knows he's grateful. The words are extra. His sister talks a lot. Zeb doesn't.

When they get to the mountains, Zeb directs his father. “Turn left here. Take this dirt road. Head back into the woods.” His father follows his directions. Zeb takes them to a camping spot that is less than a mile from the cabin where Chet and Dolly will spend the Thanksgiving vacation while their dog sits in its pen in their backyard, shivering and hoping for food.

Zeb and his dad set the canvas tent up together, neither one of them saying anything more than they need to say to get the thing to a standing position. But it's that small amount of talk that makes Zeb start to feel good. He's camping and hunting with his father, and everything starts to feels okay.

With the tent ready, Zeb lights the Coleman stove, and he cooks dinner by the light of two lanterns. He likes the glow of the mantles that keep the light burning. They look like little fishing nets set afire, burning bright. He sets one on either side of the stove and gets water boiling for one of the newfangled meals-ina-bag he's not too fond of. But they make it easier on his father, and that makes it easier on Zeb. He opens a can of pork-and-beans and heats that, too. Real food.

When dinner is ready, his father joins him. They sit under the stars, and their breath makes little clouds of fog as they eat the hot food. “Not bad,” his father says.

“Wait till morning,” Zeb says.

His father looks at him.

“Tastes even better in the morning,” Zeb explains. “Longer you're out, the better the food tastes.” The stars milk the sky with light like they never do in town. There's more light than darkness in the wilderness night sky, something Zeb longs for in the lowlands, something that eases him here, in the mountains. There are sounds in the trees behind them. Rustling leaves. Hoot owls. Zeb and his dad keep eating. “If we could stay out here for a week, like my Boy Scout troop, a can of beans would taste like a steak!” Zeb says.

His father laughs. “If we stayed out here for a week, I'd be hankering for a
real
steak, I'm afraid.”

“That, too,” Zeb says. Then he realizes they've never had a beef steak, not even once. It's just a figment of their imaginations. It makes him laugh even harder, and his dad chuckles right along with him—no reason—and the no-reason part of it makes them both laugh even more, when laughing is not something common to either one of them.

Eventually, his father asks him if he has a plan for the next few days. Zeb nods. “I know this area. We'll get a deer.”

“All right, then,” his father says, and they both stand up.

“You waking me up, or am I waking you?” his father asks.

“Me, you.”

The two of them crawl into the tent and sleep soundly. Zeb doesn't think about his mother, about Willa, about stealing. He just sleeps. He wakes up in what seems the middle of the night but is morning, and he tries to remember what hooked him yesterday and made him feel so pissed off. Right now, nothing could trouble him. His father sleeps, and he crawls out of the tent and lights the lanterns. The glow of them does not diminish the thickness of the stars. By the time breakfast is ready, his father is squatting next to the campfire with him. They don't need to talk to know what to do next. Everything falls into place naturally.

When the time is right, they both start gathering gear. Zeb carries his .30-30 in the event his shot comes to him in thick brush, and he lets his father carry his .30-06 for any deer that show up in open fields. Two guns, two different shooting circumstances. “You okay with that?” he asks his dad.

His father nods, and they take off walking into the woods.

It's not long after sunrise when he remembers why he came to this spot for hunting. He remembers Chet's cabin and the gun and it bothers him a little, but what he really wants right now is just to be here, in this place he loves. The anger that hums in his brain, the desire for that gun, that asshole Chet, they still bother him, but he can put them all out of his mind here. When he doesn't want to think about them, he doesn't have to. This morning, all he is thinking is
deer
. He starts following animal signs, doesn't give a shit about Chet in his cabin. He sees deer scat followed by fresh morning tracks, and his mind clears. He bends down, points to the signs, and his father leans over to see. “There's a resident herd here,” Zeb says. “We picked a good spot.”

His father nods and follows his son.

They walk together into the woods, their feet sinking soundlessly into beds of soft greyish-blue fir needles. Just as the sun tips over the bony backed mountains, they duck into a copse of aspen trees. In that light, the gold leaves, like sharp dots of light in the lifting fog, turn bright enough to hurt Zeb's eyes.

Zeb sits with his back against the trunk of a tree. His father sits next to him, and
this is it,
Zeb thinks;
this
is the life. They talk now and again, neither one saying more than, “Hear that?” or “Deer are taking their time this morning.” Time passes like time should pass—rich and quiet and all their own. It's cold, and the woods smell nutty and sweet and dusty, the way hunting-season woods always smell.

About noon, Zeb notices the fall leaves rustling in a particular way, not wind. His posture changes. His back straightens against the tree he's been leaning against, and he lowers his eyes. He listens. His father hands him the .30-06. Seconds later, seven does and one buck spill from the aspen, into the meadow. He can feel
his blood rushing through his ears like little rivers, and then the sound pours over and out of him, and the woods throb all around him, and he can't hear a damn thing except a
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
moving through him.

He offers the first shot to his father. “No. It's all you,” his father says.

“I'll teach you how to shoot,” Zeb says.

His father shakes his head no, and Zeb knows this is his job in the family. He is the only one who can shoot. He waits perfectly still for that magical moment when the deer stop grazing. It happens every time. They suddenly sense him, and he sees them sense him. They become as still as Zeb. Right then, Zeb smoothly raises the rifle and shoots. The deer scatter like seeds across the land, and the buck falls to his knees. Then to his neck. Then to his side.

The click of the gun cocking, the blast, the sound of the buck falling, and the crash of the rest of the herd taking off are all one sound. Time layered, no sequence.

After the deer is dead, Zeb snaps back to this world. He feels as if he's been gone, as if where he's been is not “better” than here, but it's more real. His father helps him field dress the deer. They leave the entrails there, steaming on the frozen earth.