The Old Weird South

by Tim Westover

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  The morning air tingled with the promise of fresh venison. He rode his ATV to the deer stand predawn, the engine puttering, one headlight searching in the silhouettes of trees. Bats ravaged insects above the canopy, and a flying squirrel made its last stunt before light, chortling as it glided. Billowing mist swallowed the forest, masking the trunks of older trees and obscuring the young spruce. Jansen listened to the woods, the pileated woodpecker hammering for grubs, the ruffed grouse thumping its wings. To the west, a portentous black sky. Lightning flashed sideways from a monstrous thunderhead. Seventy yards behind him, chunks of hail rattled against branches and leaves, inching closer. The Birth-Mother. Sustenance. Falling thousands of times before and a thousand times to come, falling on the stone houses of generations and the old-growth forest that man would not or could not cut. For as long as rain falls, man will walk the earth or nurture the soil with his bones. And those bones will rise up from the rain, the Birth-Mother. The Dream-Maker. All that is possible and all that will ever be, shifting shadows deep in moist glades bespeckled with fireflies. Wood anemones and lady fern framing an aqua creek pool, the black rock slick. All that is possible. All that came to be. There, there, in the woods.

  Jansen heard the running deer.

  It came from the direction of the storm, panting and leaping. Another doe. She stopped, glanced back to the storm, puttered forward, and settled behind a maple tree.

  Jansen aimed the rifle and squeezed the trigger. The deer bolted, running forty yards and then collapsing into a pile of yellow and crimson leaves. Jansen climbed down from the stand. His bad knee twitched as he ran, sending shards of discomfort through his upper leg. The hail pelted his rain gear and stung the exposed skin on his wrists. Jansen reached the deer, aimed his rifle at her head, and fired. The doe fell still. He stood and stared, his chest heaving. The hail salted both of them, the soft patter of tiny water cubes on the taut deer carcass and soaked leaves. As he went to gut the deer, the hail stopped. A cold wind sighed through the forest, scattering vibrant leaves in unpredictable patterns. A whiff of ozone washed across his face. Lightning flashed, and Jansen felt a tinge of nausea, followed by guilt. He’d never felt guilty, not even when he ran out of the mine shaft, leaving four men behind. If he hadn’t, he would’ve been yellow bones in a cave too. Jansen wiped the rain from his face and gutted the animal, his enthusiasm waning.

  Jansen transported the deer home and hung it on one of the garage hooks. He was admiring the animal when he noticed another white mark on the right side—two white lines crossed at the center.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said to the hanging deer. “I think I shot you yesterday.”

  Jansen ran two fingers along the mark, pushing back the coarse hairs. He quartered the deer and placed the chunks inside the freezer. He stepped back and shut the lid as his mind offered an incomplete thought. Something inside him twitched as if his world was out of alignment. You’re going senile, he thought.