The Call

ACTION: Drove to farm during snow flurries. Directions from owner were to keep driving down a dirt road, and when you feel as if you’ve missed it and that you’re in the middle of nowhere, then keep driving. Finally found the farm. Gave horse Buscopan, a new tranquilizer I had just ordered, to ease his pain. Decided to oil horse to relieve colic. Inserted tube inside his nostril and pumped the oil in. Stood talking to owner. She told me to guess what she had seen on her front lawn. I thought she would say the flying object with the bright lights. I thought I had found someone else who had seen what I had seen. Instead she said that one day her husband and her sons took their rifles and went hunting up on the hill behind the house. She could see them hiking up the hill through the window. But in the front yard, through the picture window, she noticed a huge twelve-point buck just standing and nibbling grass in the yard. She knew that if she opened a window to yell at her husband and her two sons to come back down the hill and shoot the buck, then the buck would take off and bound through the woods. She just sat in her chair in the living room and watched him through the picture window. He had a broad chest and a handsome head and when he lifted it every once in a while it seemed to her as if he could see her watching him from her easy chair.

It was then that the owner stopped talking and pointed to the floor of the barn by the horse’s feet and said, Look at all that oil on the floor.

RESULT: A cold shiver ran up my spine. This is a horse doctor’s worst nightmare, that you have inserted the stomach tube through his nose but you put it into his lungs instead of his stomach and now it’s coming back out and you have just drowned the horse. You have just bought the horse. I was content listening to the owner talk about the big handsome buck in her front yard. I wanted to keep listening to her telling the story. For a moment, I was her in the nice easy chair positioned in front of the window with a view of the beautiful twelve- pointer lifting his head and looking me in the eyes and her husband and sons far away by now, up over the back of the hill and into the woods. But no, there was now this oil pooled at our feet and the horse with his head down so low it looked as if he would drink up the oil beneath him.

I checked the tube. I blew into it. There was no buildup of pressure. I was able to blow air through it. This was a relief. I knew then that I had not put the tube down the lungs instead of the stomach. It was the new tranquilizer, the Buscopan, that had relaxed the smooth muscles of the esophagus so much that when the horse lowered its head, the oil came out its nose. After a while, the horse seemed better. The symptoms of his colic subsided. I put my stethoscope to him and I could hear the sloshing sounds of his moving gut. He was breathing easier now. The owner wiped up the oil with a towel, and the place on the floor where the oil had been was now clean.

THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: That was scary. That was not good for my levels. Calm your levels, I said to myself. Look how the sun is over the fading green lawns now, raked clean of October’s falling leaves, and the sky is blue with passing clouds. The snow flurries are over.

WHAT SAM SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Pop, they have given deer eye tests and they have found out what deer can and cannot see. They can see the camo that hunters wear. They roll their eyes at camo. They’ve invented a new kind of camo, it’s not shaped like leaves or branches, it’s like computer dots! The tiny pattern matches the colors of the woods, it looks the way the woods would feel to a deer. They learned how to do it from leopards and tigers. Leopards and tigers don’t look like leaves or trees, they have spots and stripes, but when the leopard runs or the tiger runs, their spots and stripes blend into the background.

WHAT I SAID: Deer have entered the computer age? I myself have not mastered email.

WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Falafel.

WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID: Fal-awful.

WHAT THE MORNING SAID: The deer have already walked through here and you have missed them and next time you should wake up earlier. You should be out here before morning, before my fog has lifted, before the birds have sung.

NUMBER OF DEER I SAW WHILE DEER HUNTING: 0.

NUMBER OF SQUIRRELS I SAW WHILE DEER HUNTING: 6.

NUMBER OF TIMES I WIPED MY HAND ON MY SLEEVE BECAUSE I WAS COLD AND MY NOSE WAS RUNNING: 10.

NUMBER OF THINGS I CAN TAKE TO HELP MY LEVELS GO DOWN: 0. No vitamin A, B, C, D, or E can bring them back down.

WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Hi, in German.

WHAT I SAID: Oh, my lieblings, you have been paying attention to your Poppy! German is a great language.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: They should speak Spanish instead. So much of the world does.

WHAT I SAID: Do you really want to know what the Mexicans are saying? I’d rather know what the Germans are saying.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: To the showers, mach schnell. That’s what they said.

WHAT I SAID: No, no, they said that only during a fascist regime, but they also strived to do the best. Do the very best, they said. Make the very best, they said. That’s what I want my children to learn, I said.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Maybe they should learn a little Buddhism. A little maybe it doesn’t matter to be the best.

WHAT I SAID: Listen to the children. Hear them say let’s race to the car. Let’s race up the stairs. Let’s race to the end of the field. Who can be the first to finish this book, that meal, brushing their teeth. This is what the children want, I said to my wife. They want to be the best.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Dinner? You and the children make your own. I’m sure it’ll be the best.

WHAT I COOKED: Tomato soup and grilled cheese.

CALL: No call again, just the caller who hangs up. Bist du krank? I said to the caller, practicing my German. “Der Ozean ist blau. Die Maus ist grau.” Who are you talking to? the wife and children said. I put my hand on the mouthpiece, shhh, it is Merkel, she wants to know how I feel about health care. Then I took my hand off the mouthpiece and continued talking into the phone. “Ja, die Banane ist gelb.”

WHAT THE HOUSE SAID: The house creaks and groans. The house of hemlock, pegged together, framed like a barn so our children can say they grew up in a barn. So they can say they grew up in a house that always sounded like it was coming apart.

WHAT WE HEARD AT NIGHT: Rifle shots.

WHAT SAM DID: He ran into our room and turned our light on. Pop, he said, I can see from my window, they are jacking deer up the road. They are turning their cars into the field and catching deer in the headlights. They should be stopped, Sam said. It’s unethical, he said.

WHAT I SAID: When did you learn that word? sitting up on my elbows and rubbing my eyes, “unethical”?

WHAT SAM SAID WHILE STANDING IN THE DOORWAY IN HIS PLAID BOXERS: Pop, I didn’t take hours of hunter safety not to know what unethical means.

WHAT I SAID: Yes, I forgot. I am living with a walking talking hunter safety manual.

WHAT I FELT: Sad for the deer. They had no chance frozen in the headlights. All right to kill them by day, I mused. But it wasn’t yet rifle season. Just coming on bow. What right have they got? I ranted. I shook my wife’s shoulder.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Call the police.

WHAT I DID: I called the police. Not an emergency, I said right away. The warden came. He went on his hunt for the men who were probably crouching by their dead deer in the woods, slitting it open. The warden would find them. He would arrest them. Go back to bed, I told Sam. I hope they didn’t shoot the buck I am going to shoot when it’s rifle season, that wouldn’t be fair, he said, and then he stomped back to his room and slammed the door shut, only be cause every door he shut was slammed and every floor he walked across was stomped across because he did not know the meaning of quiet and I wondered if he would really be able to be quiet enough this year in the woods to shoot a deer or if I should wait to take him out next year when maybe he would be