no deer near the house, and rarely bucks. Bucks were killed for their “points” and their handsome antlered heads stuffed as trophies. Ugly glass eyes in the sockets where living eyes had been. Mom wept angrily seeing killed deer slung as dead meat across the fenders of hunters’ vehicles and sometimes she spoke to the hunters, bravely, you might say recklessly. To kill for sport Mom said was unconscionable. She was of a farm family where all men and boys hunted, out in Ransomville, and she could not abide it—none of the women could, she said. Once, long ago, Dad himself had hunted—but no longer. There were bad memories (though I did not know what these were) having to do with Dad’s hunting and the men he went hunting with, in the area of Wolf’s Head Lake. Now, Dad belonged to the Chautauqua Sportsmen’s Club—for “business” reasons—but he didn’t hunt or fish. It was Dad’s position he called “neutral” that since human beings had driven away the wolves and coyotes that were natural predators of deer in this part of the state there was an imbalance of nature and the deer population had swollen so that they were malnourished, always on the verge of starvation, not to mention what predators they’d become, themselves—what damage they caused to crops. (Including ours.) Yet, Dad did not believe in hunting—animals hunted animals, Dad said, but mankind is superior to Nature. Mankind is made in the image of God, not Nature. Yet he didn’t seriously object when Mike wanted to buy a .22-caliber rifle at the age of fifteen, for “target practice,” and he still had his old guns, untouched now for years.
The doe was staring toward me across the pond. Forelegs bent, head lowered.
Then I heard what she must have been hearing—something trotting, trampling through the meadow. I heard the dogs’ panting before I saw them. A pack of dogs! In an instant the doe turned, leapt, and was running, her tail, white beneath, lifted like a flag of distress. Why do deer lift their tails, running for their lives? A signal to predators, glimmering white in the dark? The dogs rushed into the pond, splashing through it, growling deep inside their throats, not yet barking. If they were aware of me they gave no sign, they had no interest in me but only in the doe, five or six of them, ferocious in the chase, ears laid back and hackles raised. I thought I recognized one or two of our neighbor’s dogs. I shouted after them, sick with horror, but they were already gone. There was the sound of panicked flight and pursuit, growing fainter with distance. I’d stumbled into the pond and something stabbed into my foot. I was panting, half sobbing. I could not believe what had happened—it had happened so quickly.
If only I’d had a gun.
The does, fawns, their carcasses we found sometimes in the woods, in our cornfields and sometimes as close as the orchard. Once, a part-devoured doe, near Mom’s antique sleigh. Throats and bellies ripped out where they’d fallen. Usually they were only partly devoured.
If only I had a gun. One of Dad’s guns, locked in a closet, or a cabinet, in a back room somewhere. The Browning shotgun, the two rifles. There was Mike’s rifle, too. Mike had lost interest in target shooting pretty quickly and Patrick hated guns and Dad hadn’t taught me to use either the shotgun or the rifles, hadn’t allowed me even to touch them. (Though I’m not sure, maybe I never asked.) Still, I believed I would know how to use the guns.
How to aim, pull the trigger, and kill.
Instead, I ran back to the house crying.
Helpless little kid! eleven years old! Babyface, Dimple!
Ranger, roaming the night. Wiping tears, snot from his face.
In the downstairs bathroom, trembling, I ran hot water in the sink. I was trying not to think what had happened to the doe—what the dogs might be doing to her—what I couldn’t see happening, and couldn’t hear. Back in the woods it would be happening if she had not escaped (but I did not think she had escaped) but maybe I would never know. Don’t think about it Mom would say. Sometimes even with a smile, a caress. Don’t think about it, Mom will take care of it. And if Mom can’t, Dad will. Promise!
I was terrified the hot-water pipe would make its high-shrieking noise and wake my parents. What the hell are you doing downstairs, Judd?—I could hear Dad’s voice, not angry so much as baffled. Going on four in the morning?
My damned foot, my right foot, was bleeding from a short, deep gash. Both my feet were covered in scratches. For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you put on shoes? I had no answer, there was no answer. I sat on the lowered toilet seat staring at the underside of my feet, the smeary blood, the dirt. I lathered soap in my hands and tried to wash my feet and there was this uh-uh-uh sound in my throat like choking. It came over me, I’d trailed blood into the house! For sure. Into the back hall. Oh God I’d have to clean it up before somebody saw.
Before Mom saw, coming downstairs at 6 A.M. Whistling, singing to herself.
There were some Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet, I tried to put on my feet. Tetanus! What if I got tetanus? Mom was always warning us not to go barefoot. It would serve me right, I thought. If my last tetanus shot was worn out, if I died a slow terrible death by blood poisoning.
Don’t think about it: back in the woods, what’s happening. Or not happening. Or has happened already. Or a thousand thousand times before even you were born, to know of it.
Outside, Mike pulled up, parked. Quiet as he could manage. He’d driven up our driveway with only his parking lights on, slowly. Getting out of his car, he hadn’t slammed the door shut.
I couldn’t get away in time, there was my older brother in the doorway, blinking at me. Face flushed and eyes mildly bloodshot and I smelled beer on his breath. Blackberry-color smeared around his mouth, down onto his neck—a girl’s lipstick. And a sweet smell of sweat, and perfume. Good-looking guy girls stared after in the street, Mule Mulvaney himself, the one of us who most resembled our father, and with Dad’s grin, slightly lopsided, teasing-reproachful-affectionate. Mike hadn’t shaved since morning so his beard was pushing out, his jaws shadowy. His new suede jacket was open and his velvety-velour gold shirt was partly unbuttoned, showing matted-frizzed red-brown hair at the V. A zipper glinted coppery in the crotch of my brother’s snug-fitting jeans and my eye dropped there, I couldn’t help it.
Mike said quizzically, “Hey kid what the hell: what’s going on? You cut yourself?” There were splotches of blood on the floor, blood-soaked wadded tissues, I couldn’t hide.
I had to tell Mike I’d been outside, just looking around—“For the hell of it.”
Mike shook his head, disapproving. “You’ve been outside, this time of night? Cutting up your feet? Are you crazy?”
My big brother, who loved me. Mikey-Junior who was the oldest of the Mulvaney kids, Ranger who was the youngest. Always there’d been a kind of alliance between us—hadn’t there?
Mike, who was slightly drunk, like Dad good-natured, funny and warm when he’d been drinking in an essentially good mood, and nobody was crossing him, and he was in a position to be generous, crouched down and examined my feet. “If they know you’re running around outside, barefoot, like some kind of weird, asshole Indian, there’ll be hell to pay. You know how Mom worries about damn ol’ tetanus.” He gave the word “tetanus” a female trill, so already he was treating this as some kind of joke. Weird, but some kind of joke. Nothing for him to get involved in, anyway.
Of course, Mike wouldn’t tell on me, that went without saying. Any more than I was likely to tell on him, mentioning to Mom what time he’d come home tonight.
Lifting me beneath the arms like a bundle of laundry, Mike removed me from the toilet seat, suppressing a belch. Lifted the seat, unzipped and urinated into the bowl
