The Ancient Minstrel

by Jim Harrison

  “She’s lying,” Sunderson said impulsively.

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” the prosecutor said. “You got your ass in a sling. Come in to see me this morning.” He knew the prosecutor was bending the rules in that he hadn’t yet been arrested.

  “I can’t. I’m at my cabin deer hunting.”

  “I’ll give you until Friday. That’s four days. Be here. I don’t want to have to get a warrant and have you picked up.”

  “Thank you,” Sunderson said. He hung up, then went into the toilet and puked up breakfast. Except for drinking, he hadn’t vomited since a bad case of Asian flu twenty years before. This was a special occasion.

  He drove off for the cabin feeling as if he weighed nothing in the front seat of the car. He pulled off in an empty restaurant parking lot on the way west of town and called the bartender near the cabin, who looked after the place for him, to warn of his arrival. His mind was naturally jumbled and totally out of focus. He thought of Brazil but was not sure he was ready for such a foreign lifestyle. His other option was Nogales, Mexico, right across the border which he knew only required a driver’s license though they were becoming stricter. But then again there was no real fishing around Nogales except pond catfish. Brazil would be the safest place as they wouldn’t extradite him but whoever heard of jungle trout. The poignant fear was that if he went to prison at sixty-six years of age he likely wouldn’t get out until age seventy-six and by then he’d probably be too weak to fish and wade swift rivers. This put both stomach and brain in an ugly turmoil. What did he have in mind whazzing mere girls? Simple dumb lust whatever that was. He couldn’t pin it down. It was like a stomachache you never get rid of from age twelve to seventy-plus possibly.

  There was a dusting of powder snow on the long two track from the main road back to the cabin. He wasn’t worried if it really came down, as they had instructions at the tavern to come tow him out if necessary. He had fenced about five acres around the cabin with barbed wire and watered the ground well from a pump next to the river. Despite the fence there were deer prints everywhere and evidence they’d dug down to green grass. It was beautiful to watch deer jump fences. They rarely failed and would right themselves with a somersault if their back legs didn’t quite make it.

  The cabin was warm and cozy with a small fire in the fireplace started by the bartender and a nice stack of dry wood. He noticed that the television was missing, either thieved or borrowed, but he wasn’t concerned. Occasionally a local hermit, or so he thought, would break in and heat up a can of beans but would clean up after himself.

  He poured a modest drink and sat in an easy chair staring at his beloved river. He had vowed to drink moderately in order to get up early and hunt if he so chose. Despite his happiness over where he was he could not lessen the knot in his stomach over fear of prison and missing ten years of trout fishing. It was unacceptable in his last years but what were the options? Facing the music, they called it. He would also miss the spring bird chatter he prized. If Barbara had told the counselor everything the woman was obliged to go to the prosecutor with this crime. The sex had certainly been consensual but that was irrelevant given her age. He was plainly and fatally cornered. He didn’t much care about the public shame though he was relieved that at least his mother was dead and wouldn’t endure the humiliation.

  He grieved over the fact that Diane would have to see how low he had stooped. Also his only real friend Marion who had warned him to “grow up” and “pick on women his own age.”

  The bartender, Eddie, came out with the television saying his own was on the blink and his kids howled over missing it. Sunderson said that he only needed it for two more days and then Eddie could have it. Eddie was delighted and Sunderson added that he was going to buy himself a small television that he had to squint at to discourage watching so much news. This was beyond Eddie’s comprehension but his thanks were profuse. Eddie said he rarely got more than a quarter tip at the bar.

  Sunderson fried up a good rare rib steak with a glass of mediocre red that hadn’t survived very well after six weeks in the refrigerator though he judged it drinkable if barely. He stoked up the fireplace with two good-sized maple logs knowing he’d be up by 4:00 a.m. to add wood.

  He had a horrid and exhausting night with only intermittent dozing. He remembered his youth when it was impossible to sleep the night before deer opening. That wasn’t it this time. It was the prospective prison sentence, if not ten then at least seven years. He kept waking from vivid dreams of trying to fly-cast in the bone dry Jackson prison yard. His stomach knotted and he got up several times for a shot of whiskey. He thought that most people sent to prison had nothing to do except commit more crimes. He had to think he was different, but maybe that was just false hope. How could the law consign his final years to prison when he needed trout fishing to live? The local judge was a hanging judge in sex cases, a devout Baptist who thought sexuality was verminous. He could expect no mercy from that quarter. Diane might offer to help pay for a lawyer, but he viewed it as a waste of her money. Deep in the night watching the fireplace flicker he knew very well he was doomed. An open-and-shut case. Goodbye river. Maybe he would die on a prison cot as if it mattered. They had a special section for felonious lawmen but what did that matter? It saved you from being murdered by other inmates when you probably no longer much cared.

  He gave up trying to sleep at 5:00 a.m. It was hopeless now that he had seen his future totally disappear. He got up, stirred the fire into a warm blaze. He was taking part in the ancient but senseless art of deer hunting. On opening day you got up and breakfasted very early and then sat around a couple of hours talking and waiting for daylight. He could remember dozing at the table while his father and friends talked relentlessly about the hunts of the past.

  Sunderson made a pan of fried spuds, a pan of sausage, and four scrambled eggs wishing he had a dog to share the bounty. In the first pale light he saw a large buck near the edge of the fence and the river. He could have tilted a window open and shot it but he felt pretty good and didn’t want to start the day with a cheap move. That could come later if necessary. He ate most of his breakfast and left the rest out for visiting coyotes along with last night’s steak bone.

  He heard shots from not that far north on the river. He could see clearly now because the light was growing stronger. A small button buck, so called because its horns were mere nubbins and had not yet grown into a spike horn, failed to clear the fence, three strands of barbed wire where it was loose near the cabin. The button buck failed the jump and became horribly entangled in the barbed wire. Sunderson cussed and took his combination pliers and wire cutters out with him in his flimsy summer robe. According to the thermometer it was near zero and his feet were cold. The deer was a mere boy but lashed out at him furiously with its sharp hooves so that he couldn’t get close enough to cut it out of the entanglement. It was hopeless indeed and the little deer was cutting itself witlessly on the sharp barbs. Sunderson cursed and vowed to cut down the meaningless fence that day. Why give a fuck about his yard at the cabin when he didn’t care at home? The deer got more entangled and Sunderson went inside and got his rifle, the only possible solution. He shot the boy in the heart but hated it to be the deer’s last memory of earth. He spontaneously turned the rifle barrel on himself, feeling the coldness against his forehead. He moved the barrel upward a ways because he didn’t want to make a mess but not so far upward it would only be a grazing shot. He pulled the trigger and fell beside the dead deer. In his mind he was fishing a river and his lovely ex-wife was sitting on the bank with their picnic basket reading a book as usual.

 

 

 
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