I knew I had lived an unpredictable zigzag life and had come here as damaged merchandise, but my unpredictability had dimensions yet to reveal themselves.
I kept plastic contractor’s demolition bags in my supply chest, big heavy black ones that could hold a couple of weeks’ worth of recyclables or be used as raincoats in a pinch. I took two of them and put one inside the other and then brought my shovel up the hill to the sprawling pyramid of guts. It was definitely a larger pile than the one I’d seen last fall. More bear-size, I thought. My grief and rage swelled, bulged to bursting.
The guts were heavy and slippery and difficult to shovel, but I got them into the bag. I carried the bag down the hill and saw nobody in the farmyard and got into my Toyota and drove up to the Goslants’ place. I had put the bag in the trunk, but the scent of blood and the fecal stink of entrails filled the car. I had gotten some blood on my hands and they were sticky on the steering wheel.
I had entered an alternate state. Adrenaline had washed away an overlay of civilized behavior and by doing so conjured, revealed, another part of what it is to be me or to be human.
In the Goslants’ driveway, I pulled up next to Johnnie’s tricked-out pickup and yanked the parking brake lever before the car had even stopped. I popped the trunk, hoisted the bag, carried it up the three steps, and laid it on the stoop. I hammered on the rickety aluminum door.
The twentysomething I’d seen when passing the place answered. A muffled yammer came from inside and I could just see images flickering on a big wall-mounted television screen.
“Johnnie.”
“Yeah. What?”
“I live on the land just below yours.”
“Yeah? And what?”
“You just poached an animal off my land. Which I spent a lot of time posting. The land is posted up the ass.”
“Me? It’s not season. No way.” When I lifted a blood-glazed hand and held his gaze, he switched to feigned remorse: “Sorry! Really. It was an accident.” Now he thought he was being funny.
I had not scripted this encounter, so I could only resort to an insane form of honesty. “Johnnie, do you know what PTSD is?”
“What the—”
“PTSD. You know what it is.”
“Yeah. It’s when vets come back and they’re all fucked up.”
“What do PTSD vets do?”
An impatient voice called from inside the house, and Johnnie turned and yelled, “Shut up!” Then back to me: “Fuck you talking about? What is this?”
“What do they do? PTSD guys.”
“They act nuts. Some of them. They flip out. I don’t know. Beat up their wives? There was that one that killed some people. What’s this have to do with the deer? I’ll pay you for the fucking venison. Or you take it. Now, get off our step.”
The deer. I felt a wash of relief, but the outrage didn’t ebb. I’d gotten too cranked up, my motor too revved; I had too much momentum to stop.
“Why would a woman go live out in a tent in the woods a mile from nowhere?” I asked.
“How should I know? This is shit. I got other things to do and you gotta get the fuck off the step.”
“Because I’ve got PTSD. And I act nuts.”
“I can believe that,” he said, laughing.
“And when I see this …” I picked up the bag of guts, which he hadn’t noticed. I had planned to dump it on the stoop, but I flung that bag empty so that its contents ended up on the doorsill and in the entryway. I balled up the bag and threw it against his chest. “… it brings it back to me and I go nuts big-time.”
He pulled back. There was a speckling of blood on his Metallica T-shirt, and some had splashed onto his shoes. “You are fuckin—”
“Nuts! What’ve I been telling you? So if I see this again on my land—a footprint, a twig broken—this is you.” I kicked some of the guts farther into the house.
He still played it cool, but I was in an alien-strange groove. I believed what I was saying, and he did, too.
“Okay, I got it. You’re fucked in the head. Got that. No problem. I got enough screwballs around already, I don’t need another one.”
Another call from inside the house: “Johnnie, who the hell are you talking to?”
“Shut up! It’s nobody.” He turned back to me again and said, “Brassard never gave a shit if we hunted there.”
“I’m not Brassard. It’s mine now.”
“Okay. Your land is posted. You’re fucked in the head. It’s your land. It’s posted. It’s all yours. Take the goddamn deer, it’s behind the garage. Have a ball, fruitcake.”
He had to kick a coil of intestine out of the way so he could slam the door.
I got back into my car with so much adrenaline in my body, I felt as if I could squeeze the steering wheel into a strand of spaghetti.
If you are reading this and you are a war veteran and have seen combat, please understand that I know the difference. I never claimed, I would never claim, that I had served in the armed forces and seen and done what you have. But at that moment, I realized that yes, I really had come up to the land with some injuries inside. Maybe a lot of the wounds were self-inflicted, but they were real all the same. And the hour
