Tye crept to the edge of the clearing. The elk had been eating the bushes recently. The torn ends were still green. He crushed a pile of elk scat with his boot. It was fresh.
Tye checked his watch. It was an hour and a half until sunset and growing dim. If he wanted meat in the freezer it had to happen now.
He wasn’t relishing walking back up the hill after dark, but Tye tried a little longer. Fifty yards from the clearing, he found a big tree stump. Sitting in front of it would hide his outline, and there was a low brush in front, enough to mask his movements, but not high enough to block a shot. Perfect.
He settled against the tree and made sure he was comfortable enough to sit without moving. He started waiting.
He scanned the forest, looking for the slightest flicker of movement. It was a mistake to look for a whole animal. Instead, Tye looked for the flick of an ear, or the twitch of a tail.
As he waited, Tye’s mind was busy. He still didn’t know what to make of Gilford. The old guy had seemed confused, but there was no denying he’d steered Tye to a place with plenty of fresh elk sign.
The forest was still. He hadn’t heard a squirrel chatter, or the song of a bird. There was no wind.
From his right, he heard a thud that made him jump. The deep, primal part of his brain identified it as a hoof brushing against one of the downed logs that littered the forest floor.
He knew an animal was coming. Slowly, he sat up straighter and raised the gun to a low ready position. There was already a round in the chamber.
He heard another thud and a slight thud of hooves on the duff.
Tye saw what he thought was a tree branch swaying. He realized with a start that he was looking at a set of elk antlers. Like a picture coming into focus, he saw a bull elk, ambling along the game trail. It stopped every few feet to browse on the bushes. The wind was right, blowing from the animal towards Tye.
He raised the rifle, trying to get a bead while not making any sudden moves. The bull slipped behind trees as Tye tracked him. Finally, it moved into an open spot downhill from him and stopped.
Tye had never been prone to buck fever, but he needed to take a low, slow, quiet breath to get his heart rate to settle. The elk stood still, broadside to him, the best of all shots.
Expecting the elk to bolt away at any second, Tye settled the crosshairs on the elk’s chest. He took a breath, let half out, and squeezed the trigger.
The elk arched his back on impact, and instead of exploding into a run as Tye expected, it took a few faltering steps, then broke into a slow trot. Tye worked the rifle’s bolt, racking a fresh shell into the chamber. He shouldered the gun and tried to get a bead on the elk again. For a second, he had a clear view between two trees. He almost pulled the trigger again, but held his fire. He didn’t want to risk a bad hit into the guts.
Tye lowered the gun and listened. The elk barreled through the forest, flattening undergrowth. The crashing sounds grew fainter, and farther apart. Tye heard a final, loud thud and there was silence.
His heart was hammering. He gulped, took several deep breaths. His hands were shaking as he removed the cartridge from the rifle’s chamber.
He’d been excited when he’d killed his first deer as a kid, but over the years hunting became routine. Something was different about today. In the past he’d relied on his skills to feed himself, but now there were two other people counting on him.
A glance at his watch told him sunset was only a few minutes away. Conventional wisdom said to wait before following a wounded animal. If the elk wasn’t pursued, it would settle somewhere and slip into unconsciousness. The risk of following too soon was that the animal would get up and run again.
The crosshairs had been right over the bull's chest when he pulled the trigger. Over confidence was risky, but Tye was certain the bull was dead.
He resolved to wait fifteen minutes. He spent the entire time reliving the shot, second guessing himself and wondering if he’d screwed up. He envisioned himself wandering around the mountain all night long with a flashlight, fruitlessly searching.
In his gut, he knew it had been a good hit, but he wouldn’t relax until he found the animal.
Finally, it was time. He strapped on a headlamp and started towards the spot where he’d shot the elk.
The tracks were easy to find. The elk’s hooves had churned up big clots of dirt. Tye didn’t find any blood, but there was a handful of elk hair.
He followed the tracks. When he shined the light just right, he realized there was a spot of blood as big as his palm. It was hard to see because the forest floor was a deep brown, covered in duff and decaying fir needles, but once he knew what to look for, he realized there were puddles every few feet.
His spirits buoyed, Tye walked faster. In a patch of waist high berry bushes, he found bright splashes of blood on the leaves. The tracks were getting closer together and Tye could see drag marks in the duff. The elk had been taking shorter steps and hadn’t been picking up his feet.
He pushed through the patch of berry bushes into the clearing and then stopped short. In the beam of his headlamp he could see the white rump patch of the elk. He was lying on his side, still.
As Tye got closer, he could smell the barnyard odor of the big animal. The elk was huge. Tye stood there for a minute, watching for the slightest twitch of a leg, or any sign that the massive chest was moving up and down.
He took a few more steps, reached out and ran his hand along one wrist thick antler, and stroked the coarse fur of the elk's neck. There was a lump in his throat. He felt an equal mixture of triumph, gratitude, and remorse. In some ways he was sorry he had killed the elk. An hour ago, it had been striding through the forest, worried about nothing, and harming no one. But he was looking at a year's worth of meat.
He put down the rifle and took off his backpack.
Now it was time for the work to start. He spread a clean tarp on the ground and organized his tools and mesh cotton sacks for the meat.
He did a neat job of gutting. Skinning took hours in the headlamp’s light. Tye worked non-stop, knowing he should take a break, but he kept going because he wanted the job done.
When he finished, there were four bags of meat. Each weighed eighty pounds and held a front or rear quarter of the elk, and meat trimmed off the ribs and neck. The rest of the skeleton didn’t have enough meat left on it to make a sandwich.
Tye stretched his aching back. It was odd to see an elk disassembled and bagged. Only hours before, it had been a live, breathing animal. A heavy odor of blood hung in the air.
Tye strapped a meat bag to his small backpack and hoisted it onto his shoulders, groaning at the weight. He gave a few experimental bounces. The seams on the backpack held, so he set forth.
Tye was out of breath in minutes. The climb was steep, and he was already exhausted. After double checking to make sure the rifle was unloaded, he started using it as a walking stick, grasping it by the barrel and digging the butt into the soft ground.
After what seemed like forever, he was back at the truck. He didn’t let himself rest, just plopped the bag on the tailgate. From the bed he pulled out another backpack, a giant hauler designed for long distance, multi-day trips, and a pair of trekking poles. Leaving the rifle locked up in the truck’s cab, he turned around for another load.
He developed a routine. He’d walk down the hill, picking his way carefully but quickly on the steep slope. The trekking poles kept him from falling down the hill. At the kill site, he’d load another bag of meat into his pack, and head back up the slope. On the way up, he’d take twenty steps, rest for four breaths, then take twenty more steps.
Despite the chill, sweat soaked his clothes. He knew if he stopped moving, he’d become hypothermic in minutes. He was also afraid if he stopped moving he wouldn’t be able to get started again. Three months of starvation rations while filming the TV show had left him dangerously thin, with no energy reserves. Spending the day in the cold rain left him exhausted. Despite swit
ching to the better pack, his back, knees, and hips were killing him.
He wanted to quit, but he kept going. There was a small, but real chance a bear would follow the smell of blood, and steal his kill. The cold temperatures would help cool the meat, but the thick slabs needed to lifted off the ground and hung where air could circulate around them.
Despite the pain, despite the fatigue, he kept moving. More than once, he thought he saw a figure leading him up the hill, right at the edge of light cast by his headlamp. He just shook his head and kept moving. It wasn’t the first time Tye had seen something that wasn’t there out in the woods.
Finally, Tye had four bags of meat in the back of the truck. He blinked, not remembering the last trip up the hill. Tye stood there, leaning with his hands braced on the tailgate. He looked at the meat and remembered the head and hide. It would mean another trip down the mountain.
Maybe he could leave the hide and head and come back tomorrow. It would be cold overnight.
Tye was sorely tempted to get in the truck, crank up the heater and drive away. He thought about Gilford, and his gloves, and about how he’d cautioned Tye against waste. Tye’s back ached, and he knew he wasn’t coming back. He’d spend tomorrow on the couch accompanied by a bottle of ibuprofen.
A flake of snow fell and landed on the tailgate, followed by several more.
“Well,” Tye said. “What’s one more?”
More snow fell. Soon, all Tye could hear was the continuous, soft hiss of the flakes. By the time he made it to the bottom, a thin layer of snow covered the rolled up elk hide. He put the hide inside the pack and contrived a way to lash the head to the outside with the antlers pointing down.
He took one last look around, wanting to remember this spot.
On the trip back up, he felt like he was floating outside his body. The fatigue and pain had passed, leaving a quiet euphoria. He was hyper aware of every sight and sound around him. The woods were still.
Tye powered up the hill, taking advantage of his second wind while it lasted. He wanted to get back to the truck before his energy crashed out and he couldn’t move anymore.
It was well past midnight. He’d found the most efficient route to zigzag up the hillside without falling. As he negotiated one particularly tricky switch back, the beam from his head lamp flashed past something shiny, right at the edge of the cone of light.
Tye paused, squinting. At first, he thought it was someone sitting there, but now he could tell it was just green plastic, trash dumped in the woods. Something tickled at his memory and compelled him to walk over and check it out, but he shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. He dismissed it and kept trudging up the hill.
Soon he was back at the truck. It was amazing how light he felt without the backpack.
He was coming home with meat, instead of excuses. Tye knew he should feel some triumph, but right now he just wanted in the truck before his legs gave out.
Halfway home, he caught himself nodding off. The warm heat inside the cab was lulling him to sleep. He rolled the window down so the blast of cold air blew right in his face. It woke him up for the rest of the trip. Soon, he was sitting in his driveway. It seemed like years since he had been home. His body screamed in pain as he levered himself out of the truck. He carried each meat bag under the ramshackle covered porch that had been inexpertly added to the single wide trailer. There were hooks screwed into the ceiling beams, stout enough to hold the meat up where it would cool in the night air, safe from the various critters that roamed at night.
He let himself in and started making a pot of coffee. With a thump and shuffle, Gary appeared from the back bedroom, leaning heavily on his cane. He’d broken a leg patching the porch roof. He’d progressed from crutches to a walking boot and a cane, but it would still be weeks before he could walk normally.
“You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” Gary said. He was tall and lean, with a trim beard and dark hair that hung past his shoulders.
“Got an elk,” Tye croaked. He realized his mouth was dry. Despite the cool dampness, he was dehydrated.
“Where is it?”
“Hanging on the porch.” Tye poured himself a drink of water, then realized he was leaving bloody smudges all over the kitchen. Scrubbing his hands in the snow up on the mountain apparently hadn’t been enough.
Gary pulled the door open and flipped on the porch light.
“Hot damn!” he said. “Buddy, that’s a load off our minds.”
He clapped Tye on the back, and Tye nearly fell.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “We still gotta cut it up though.”
He heard soft footfalls from the hallway. May appeared from the bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She wore only in a long shirt of Gary’s, and her halo of curly auburn hair stuck out at all angles.
Tye hadn’t come to terms with May. He and Gary had grown up together, traveled together, lived together more often than not for the last fifteen years. Gary and May met in the weeks leading up to Tye’s departure for the television show, when he’d been busy and distracted. Tye had returned to find them deeply involved, and in the middle of closing the deal on the property.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. He did. It was just that he was still trying to sort out how his relationship with Gary worked now.
“That’s a bunch of meat,” May said as she looked through the open front door. “What now?”
“We’ve got it from here,” Gary said. “Go to bed, Tye.”
“I can’t leave you with this. Your leg’s broke.”
“I can take breaks,” Gary said. “We have plenty of time. It’s barely above freezing out there.”
“I’ll help,” May said. “I need to learn how to do this.”
May had grown up in suburbia, and after nursing school realized her real calling lay in being a midwife, herbalist, and homesteader. She’d thrown herself into learning how to live off this land with gusto. Tye admired her willingness to get her hands dirty.
Part of him wanted to argue, but most of him just wanted to crawl into bed.
After showering, he was asleep in minutes. Tye dreamed he was back on the mountain, packing out an unending stream of elk quarters. Gilford walked ahead of him. Tye called his name over and over, hoping to catch up and thank him, but Gilford never turned around to look. He just pointed off into the woods, without turning around.
Getting the elk marked a turning point for them. They had a full freezer, and using the connections they’d made in the local homesteader group, Gary and May traded meat for things they needed: root vegetables for the winter, a promise of plant starts in the spring, and bottles of excellent home brew cider.
Finally, Tye received some money, but not all of it. The check came with a letter he could barely understand, citing “unanticipated production costs” and referring to various paragraphs of the dense legal contract he’d signed.
Still, it kept them afloat. They paid the mortgage and had enough to eat. Tye had enough left over to either fix his transmission, or buy another used truck, and spent hours debating between the two.
As November turned into December, Tye, Gary and May worked out a way to share space in the little single wide trailer. Tye felt less like a third wheel, but it was still awkward at times. He worked on the elk hide and put his inept carpentry skills to work on the porch, under Gary’s supervision.
Mostly he rested. He slept ten, sometimes twelve hours, rebuilding the stores of energy depleted during the survival challenge. He put on weight, thanks to the plentiful elk meat.
One morning he woke and realized it was Christmas Eve. The holidays were a tense time for him. They hadn’t always been the source of happy memories in childhood, and he wanted to stay busy instead of sit around the trailer and mope.
More than once, his thoughts turned to Gilford. He owed the man. Also, Tye had liked him.
He wasn’t sure if Gilford was his first name or his last name, but luckily the town was old-fashioned enoug
h that they got a phone book. Tye rooted around the trailer until he found it next to the stack of kindling for the wood stove.
He found an “M. Gilford,” and filled a small cooler with good cuts, mostly tenderloins and back strap.
Gilford lived on the outskirts of town. The trim little house sat on two acres, well back from the road and shaded by mature Douglas fir trees. Tye saw Gilford’s truck under an awning attached to a shed behind the house.
Ever since he had a bought land, Tye unconsciously cataloged things that needed done on a piece of property. The split-rail fence was rotten in several places. In one spot a blackberry bramble threatened to grow over the driveway.
Tye parked behind a subcompact car. The house needed paint. He pulled the cooler out and did a double take when he saw Gilford’s truck. A thick layer of dust covered it. A crack ran across the windshield and the right front tire was low.
Tye knocked on the door and stood there, shuffling from foot to foot in the cold, long enough to wonder if he should knock again or just give up and get back in his truck. Finally, he heard a rustle from inside and the door opened a crack.
“Hello?” It was an old woman’s voice, shaky and maybe even a little scared.
“Hi. I’m Tye. I’m looking for Mr. Gilford. Is he here?”
She didn’t reply, and Tye wondered if the woman hadn’t heard him.
Finally, she said, “Mr. Gilford isn’t here. Can I take a message?”
The door swung a quarter inch closer to being shut. Tye decided to talk fast, before the door shut in his face.
“Well, I ran into Mr. Gilford elk hunting, and he gave me advice that helped me get an elk. I thought I’d repay the favor and bring him this meat.”
After another long pause, the door opened wider. She was short, with the no-nonsense haircut that older women adopted. She looked to be at least eighty, but stood without hunching. She wore a thick apron and the smell of baking wafted out of the open door.
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