The Call

knowing how to say Scheisse.

WHAT I DID WHEN I GOT HOME: Went to my tree stand. I checked the straps to make sure they were secure. I attached my bow to a long string and I set the bow on the ground and then I climbed up the deer stand with the end of the rope attached to my harness. When I was in my stand I pulled up my bow. I loaded my arrow. Then I stood. My ears turned on. The first thing I heard was my stomach gurgling. The second thing I heard was the wind blowing through what few leaves were left in the tops of the trees. I heard small birds, nuthatches, flitting under the fallen leaves, covered in light snow. I heard cars, far off, driving on the road. But I couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. I heard a dog barking that did not sound like any dog I knew. Then it was quiet. Now was the time for a deer to walk past me. No deer did.

THOUGHTS WHILE DEER HUNTING: You may have to be really smart to kill a deer. Where are my antlers to clatter and call the deer in? Where is my doe urine? My grunt call made of plastic in the shape of a tube? My scent-lock coat? My milk jug to piss in so my own urine smell won’t be carried in the wind? My camo made of millions of tiny computer dots?

WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID WHEN I GOT HOME: Did you shoot any deer?

WHAT I SAID: Deer is not for dinner.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Good, I could really go for some stir-fry anyway.

WHAT I TOLD THE WIFE THAT NIGHT IN BED BECAUSE SHE WAS CRYING: I love you.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID, STOPPING HER CRYING: What’s the matter? What hurts? We laughed. Hers is not a tinkly one, nor is it heavy or gravelly or deep. It is more like a grunt, first an inhalation, then an exhalation along with the sound of her voice, not high or low. What would the deer think of it? Could her laugh call them in? Could we both fit standing on the tree stand? Maybe if we were entwined. Her laugh my call that bags a prize buck?

WHAT THE WIFE DOES: Moves Sam herself so that he is facing the window, but she needs help. It is not easy. There are tubes to contend with. There is the slit in the back of his hospital gown now open, now exposing him to whoever walks in the door. We do it together, moving him, and he feels so much lighter than the last time I carried him, which was after he was shot and I held him in a fireman’s carry down the hill. Sarah and Mia, seeing him exposed, dismantle their fort themselves and give back his blankets. Sarah tucks the blanket around his feet and underneath his body so that now he looks like a pale blue cocoon.

CALL: A horse with a lameness.

ACTION: Drove to farm. The poorest farm I have seen so far. Looked at horse. Spoke to owner. There was nowhere to sit outside. There were no lawn chairs, no typical rock walls. The owner’s boy sat on the rusted seat of a tractor that did not look like it could move but grew up from the ground where it was, pushing itself through the dirt, and had come to rest. Tall grass grew up high alongside its tires, past the height of the wheel wells. The woman owner sat, too, she sat in the driver’s seat of a compact car. She sat sideways in the seat with her legs and knees facing me and the door open. One of the tires of the car was a spare, not meant to be driven on for long, but of course it had been, and it looked bald. These were the only places to sit. Maybe there were places to sit inside the house, but I could not see through the windows. The panes of the windows were missing and in their places were sheets of milky colored plastic stapled to the frames.

RESULT: After I felt the horse’s leg, I told the owner about the heat. I told her she would do well to stand the horse’s leg in a bucket of ice water. The woman shook her head. “No ice,” she said. “Isn’t that right?” she said to her son. Her son shook his head, one hand on the steering wheel of the tractor, his sweater sleeves pulled up to his elbows, his arms streaked with dirt, as if he were the one who had driven the tractor up from the center of the earth, as if he did it every day and in a minute he would tunnel back down in his tractor and he would come back holding up a bag of ice, the outside of the bag covered in dirt, but nonetheless ice, because he seemed like the Artful Dodger out of Oliver Twist. He could obtain anything his heart desired, and it didn’t matter what methods he used to get it. He was easily bought and easily sold. His wide nose was slightly bent to one side, as if the weight of the dirt he had pushed up through had made it bend that way and it could never be bent back. I looked at him and wondered why it was not this son who was in a coma. This son was not lucky enough to have a nose that was straight and thin like my son’s and that I thought made my son look smart, even when my son was being stupid, leaving front doors open in the freezing cold, staring at numbers on homework pages for so long it was as if he expected them to rearrange themselves and form the answer when he could not. It was possible that they knew, this son and this mother, the man who shot my son, because it’s such a small town, but if I asked them if they knew they would not answer me. Maybe if I paid the son, he would tell me, I thought, but then I just said to the mother, Any hose would do to spray on his leg, to keep the heat down, a constant stream of cold water.

THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME: With all the leaves off the trees I’m noticing more houses. When did all these houses appear?

WHAT SARAH AND MIA SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME: Poppy, you look tired.

WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER: Chicken artichoke casserole.

WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE IN BED: Am I getting grayer? The children told me I have more gray here. (I touched the side of my head to show her where the children had pointed.)

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: No, you don’t have more gray than usual. It’s just that the children are taller. They can see the gray they have never been able to see before.

WHAT THE NIGHT SAID: Coyotes rule.

WHAT I THOUGHT THE COYOTES WERE HOWLING AT: The spacecraft. I saw it again, this time hovering over our pond, its reflection shining on the dark water rippling in the wind. Was the pilot able to land it on water the way the geese at Arthur’s could land themselves? Would the spacecraft submerge and rest on the bottom, the salamanders scooting over to make room for its alien hull?

WHAT I SAID TO THE WIFE: When you drove my truck to visit Sam, you drove too fast. You stop short and all my drugs get tossed around in the back.

WHAT SHE SAID: I don’t drive too fast. I’ve never had a speeding ticket in my life. You, on the other hand, have had speeding tickets. Wasn’t it just the other day you were doing 39 in a 25?

WHAT I SAID: Yes, but I did not get a ticket for it. The cop pulled me over and saw I was an animal doctor. He asked if I was going on an emergency call. I told him yes, and he let me go.

WHAT SHE SAID: You lied to him.

WHAT I SAID: I forgot to tell you. This morning, after I drove the kids to school, I saw the same cop in my rearview. His lights were flashing. Schei?e, I thought. I pulled over. The cop got out of his cruiser and said, Do you know what I’m pulling you over for? My expired inspection sticker? I said. No, he said, get that taken care of anytime. I just want to know if that horse you were going to see the other night is all right, he said.

WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Our town cop’s a comedian.

WHAT I ALMOST RAN OVER THE OTHER NIGHT ON THE ROAD: A deer, a doe. She changed her mind halfway across and turned back into the field she had come from.

WHAT THE WIFE WANTS: I don’t know. Haven’t I given her all she should ask for?

WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: You’re a prick.

WHAT I FEEL LIKE: Not a prick.

WHAT I TURN THE RADIO UP FOR: Celebration time, come on.

WHAT SHE TURNS IT DOWN FOR: Celebration time, come on.

WHAT SARAH AND MIA FIGHT OVER WHEN WE DRIVE TO VISIT SAM: Sitting shotgun, sharing gum, who punched whom too hard after a punch buggy sighting.

WHAT I TELL THE WIFE WHILE WE’RE IN THE HOSPITAL LOOKING AT SAM IN THE HARSH WHITE LIGHT: We could sell our place. We could live in Ecuador. We could surf every day. We could eat fresh fish.

WHAT THE WIFE SAYS: This is your levels talking. But I like the idea, change is good.

WHAT I SAY: I don’t really want to live in Ecuador. I just want to live in a smaller house way up in the woods.

WHAT I THINK: My levels don’t talk. They just go up and down. Why is my wife personifying my levels?