The first sign of the deer was her scat. A pile still-warm, berries visible through the muck.
A few feet later, a nibbled branch, the end left rough and torn from her bottom incisors, frayed. Rabbits make a bite that looks like a knife’s cut from their sharp teeth. But deer munching leaves a ragged edge.
My father touched the frayed branch and gave me a slow nod, raising his fingers to his lips.
Soon enough, there she was. A doe, peacefully crunching on viburnum leaves. Her tawny fur and shining black eyes punching a contrast against the verdant green of the leaves. I watched her, overcome with a sense of peace—the wind, the birdsong, the quiet whisper of her eating.
My father’s eyes stayed on me as I took the crossbow from my back. I’d been practicing for months, and the weight of it was familiar. I slipped an arrow from my quiver. I had grown practiced at loading, took it to the ground put my foot on the bow and drew back the rack, slid the arrow down the flight track. He didn’t move to help me.
I lifted the bow to peer through the sight.
Jay had already refused to hunt. I’m not killing for you, he told my father.
Then don’t eat, my father had answered. It was the rare argument that didn’t end with violence.
I’m a vegetarian.
My father scowled. Since when?
Since now.
I was my father’s last hope if we were going to survive the end days, which no one but my father believed were coming. Meanwhile, the freezer was full of hot dogs. We could probably live on those for a year if we had to. My mother brought fresh groceries from town every week; personally, I could live on boxed macaroni and cheese and toaster waffles. So, we didn’t actually need to kill to survive. Were we still acting within the contract we had with the planet?
I watched the doe, nibbling. She had not detected our presence.
All I would have to do was step on a branch and crack it to send her running.
But I felt the tension of that cocked bow, the pressure of my father’s expectation. My arms had grown strong, my aim steady. I had her in my site. My breath was so slow and measured. It almost happened without me. The arrow released, slicing the air, and found its mark solid and sure, sinking deep into her flesh. Her body jerked, eyes wild with fear and pain.
The doe went down, silent.
My father turned to me; his eyes filled with proud amazement.
It was both the worst and the best moment of my life.
Something inside me shifted and changed. There was a powerful rush of despair. I had taken the life of an innocent creature, a thing that could never be undone. I could never go back to the person I was before that action. Once the arrow left the bow and found its mark, I was forever altered.
But, deeper, there was also a calm that came with a new knowledge of the world, the way of it. That life and death existed together in one inextricable tangle. The scope and depth of that understanding came with a terrified awe. I sank to my knees, silently weeping.
My father stood beside me, his hand on my head, kept it there until I looked up at him. His face was drawn, haunted.
“I know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
twenty-nine
Now
I leave the inn and head into town. The sky is sullen gray, threatening weather.
After a short drive, winding through the picture-postcard square, a few turns on pretty tree-lined streets, I pull in front of a carefully maintained house with white shingles, maroon shutters, and a matching front door with brass knocker. The shrubs are neat, the flower beds empty for winter. Some poinsettias sit on the stoop, a vibrant red and snowy white. It’s as I remember it, warm, welcoming. A safe house.
I’m triggered, as they say in modern trauma speak, heart racing, anxiety mounting, that familiar feeling that the world is unsafe and I am not in control of what’s happening to me. I breathe—years of therapy and it really is that simple. Breathe. Ground yourself in the moment. Be here now. After a few deep inhales and exhales, my nervous system settles.
I park and pick up the article from the box of your belongings, hold it and peer into the past, force myself to read the headline:
Local Police Discover Cache of Arms on Doomsday Prepper Compound
The faded black-and-white pictures bring back visceral sense memories. The sound of gunfire. My mother, so still and bleeding, on the floor. My brother screaming. My father’s enraged roaring of my name. Running, terrified through the woods, branches whipping at my face.
That cop in the article is a man named Jones Cooper. He stands grimly beside a row of assault rifles.
As I step out of the car, the air seems to be growing colder, a biting northern winter chill. That burger from last night is sitting in my gut like a concrete block, and my terrible sleep has me jumpy, edgy.