My First and Only Deer: A Confession David Schaafsma The milk mingles with the blood And both drip from my father’s knife That’s what you take with you, forever I was thirteen, just legal to hunt with the thirty ought six my Uncle Lee who died that summer, willed me She was coming out of a clearing, following her buck Three other does, a couple fawns I had her in my scope, lost her, there she is again Last Saturday in camp, sun just rising Two days after Thanksgiving Shaking hard, I was just 13, gun raised, now steady Thumb the trigger, gut shot strike, and there she comes Flying right toward me, terrified Not knowing where the shot has come from Wheel the gun to shoot again and she flops down Maybe twenty five feet from where I stand My chest and her chest heaving, steam rising I stand and watch the light leave her eyes Dad yells did you get him? I whisper yes And she is still, and we drag her carcass To the road, tie her to the truck’s bumper, Dad hauls her to camp, skidding her along the snowy two track My brother Jim, hoisting me on his shoulders, walks me in I can’t help my Dad gut her out, sick with shock So he with his emphysema, wheezing, cuts her open, pointing With the tip of the knife to milk threading through her blood She was nursing, he says, let’s not tell your mother No one needs to hear about this, it’ll be our secret Hoisting her to the buck pole next to Jim’s and Uncle Joe’s and his own I couldn’t eat the venison when Mom served it up Dad seemed okay with that; years later he confessed to me He never liked to kill them, only liked to see them fly I made a decision that fall to never hunt again But I every year went north with them all And carried the gun as I walked in the woods And leaned it on my knee as I sat against a pine Breathing, each year, the fresh air, so alive But usually didn’t load it and never shot again, well once More I shot, seventeen, as a towering buck passed A hundred yards below me, base of a hill, edge of a swamp Dusk closing in on me, up in Michigan, at the end of my youth Pulled the trigger, blast booming back to camp Missed it, I told them, can’t believe it, went to look And saw the track, no blood, come and gone In the Polaroid we stand together, brothers and brothers, Red wool coats, hats, shouldered guns, big warm boots Men all, all men, laced with milk and blood
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 15:28:13 +0000
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