…
What I did with that first deer—the one that fell through the ice in January—was run back to my cabin and dig my canoe out from under the snowdrifts.
Drenching wet, but with my clothes starting to freeze in that clanking wind, I dragged the canoe down to the lake and slid it onto the ice. I sledded it out to where the ice began to crack and splinter, and then I got in the canoe, and began to smash the ice with my paddle.
The deer’s eyes rolled wild as I broke that ice, and I sledged my canoe, a foot at a time, closer.
Finally, I had the canoe off of the ice and out into the open water, the cold black water. I canoed right up to the swimming deer—the deer so cold, and tired—and slipped the noose over its head. I hauled it up out of the water and managed to haul it into the canoe with me. It scrambled, trying to leap free, but I gripped the rope tight and held on.
With my free arm I paddled us back in the ice-breaking lane I’d plowed on my way out—a lane just wide enough to slip a canoe through.
Once on shore, I pulled the deer out of the canoe and put it over my shoulders. I carried it up the mountain and then turned it loose deep in the woods, in a cedar jungle where I knew there were neither wolves nor coyotes—too thick and tangley for them. I watched the deer run off. The ice had frozen into a glass coat around the deer, and as the deer ran, the ice shattered and tinkled. It was like a kind of miracle.
…
I remember us driving through town one day, the whole family—Martha and me and the baby—on a shopping trip and to see a movie. It was in the winter, and too far to drive all the way back that night; we’d gotten a hotel room in town and would head back the next day, up over the snowy pass.
It was right around Christmas. The lights were twinkling, and streamers and banners were draped across Main Street. There were snow-flecked wreaths on the doors of all the businesses. We were coming back from the movie theater when we saw a hunter driving home with a deer strapped to the hood of his car. He was doing it mostly to show off: just cruising the main drag. The clank of tire chains on the snowy road. Smoke rising from everyone’s chimney.
There was no need to be parading that thing around. The guy was just being an asshole.
Still, it was a big deer. It’s possible it was some kind of record deer—some kind of trophy.
The guy pulled over in front of the Chevrolet dealership and got out and stretched: an excuse for people to stop and ask him about that big deer, to comment on his prowess, etc.
We walked over to look. Snow was falling. Everything was real nice and quiet. There was that nice hush, the sense of community, of seasons and change and closure, that always comes near the end of deer season, in the West, in the mountains: the way autumn gives itself up to winter.
But this deer wasn’t ready for any of that. No spirit mumbo-jumbo, no ghostly wraith-of-the-forest relinquishing itself back to the spirit of the wild; nor was there to be any edification of the sense of the rural community and its place in the hunting-and-gathering cycle of things on the account of this deer, this snowy night, because this deer wasn’t dead. It was just knocked out.
The hunter had knocked him down, aiming for a heart-and-lung shot to keep from spoiling the trophy head, but out in the woods (he was telling us all this) the deer had jumped up again and charged him. The hunter had fired a second shot from the hip, striking the deer in the skull, dropping it instantly. Miraculously, the second shot didn’t even break the skull or shatter the antlers.
That had been at dusk. The hunter had started to clean the deer, but it had gotten dark, and the hunter had decided to do that in town. Wanted to get his picture taken with a whole deer, not some diminished bloodstained gutted thing.
The cold ride off the mountain had revived the deer, however. The concussion wore off as we were all standing around admiring it. The great buck lifted his head like some European stag, and started kicking and thrashing. It slipped out of the ropes that had it fastened to the hood. It slid off the hood and bounded down the street. It ran down the sidewalk and past the bank. The electronic sign on the bank building said 7:03, and eight degrees.
The hunter looked as if he’d just had his own guts pulled out. I thought he was going to howl. The baby started laughing and pointing in the direction the deer had gone.
The tracks were easy to follow in the new snow. The hunter grabbed his rifle and started after the deer. The hole in the deer’s side had opened again and was leaving glittering drops of crystalline blood, crimson as berries, which were already starting to freeze. It was just a little blood that the deer was leaking, but the wound would open up and bleed more as he kept running.
I knew this. The hunter knew this. We all knew it. Sometimes we know the language of deer perhaps as well as we know each other.
We all followed the hunter at a trot—the crowd of us, like a posse: men, women, and children.
It was as if the deer belonged to the whole community. It was a sense of loss
