“I never will forget the day,” old Zebulon continued. “It was comen long toward fall of the year and I was out on the mountain cutten some wood against the cold weather. Had my gun along just in case any game come by. Around the middle of the day I took a little rest and was eaten a little lunch the old woman had put up in a paper bag, and all of a sudden somethen moved through them woods like a winter wind. Never made no noise, mind, just wind. Well sir, it was that big white deer and I’ll tell you the God’s truth if I hadn’t of reared up right that minute he’d of run over me. I got in two good shots at him. I was a young man in them days, before my eyes turned to water, and I was the best shot in the country. Maybe I missed that deer, maybe he was travelen too fast. Maybe it was like some used to claim, maybe he was a real ghost and buckshot couldn’t of done no good even if it went straight through his heart.”
“What ever happened to that old buck?” asked Clay, knowing that unless the old man were forced to end the story he might start it somewhere near the beginning and tell the whole thing all over again.
“Nobody killed him yet,” the old man said. “The way I figure it he ain’t met his match. The way it is, that deer bein’ white and all, he stand out where a regular deer don’t. He has fought just about ever’thing there is to fight from man to bear and done whopped ’em all. He knows all the tricks there is to know, that deer do.”
“Papa,” said Virgil, “sometimes I think you made that old white deer up. If he really roams these parts, how come nobody but you ever laid eyes on him?”
“Oh, he’s there all right,” said the old man. “Maybe the eye sharp enough to see him just ain’t come along yet. I’ve even heard it told that if that deer dies by human hand his spirit will pass into the man that kills him. From that day on that man will be different, marked to follow a path unknown, a man marked for glory!”
The old man’s voice had risen so that it could be heard throughout the house, and for a moment after he had uttered his prophecy there was a sober silence.
“That old man is drunk,” said Elizabeth from the kitchen. “Them boys is feeden him whiskey just as sure as you’re born.”
“Clay-Boy!” called Olivia.
“Yes ma’am,” the boy answered.
“Bedtime.”
“I’m goen, Mama.”
Upstairs in the boys’ room, Clay-Boy undressed in the darkness so as not to wake his sleeping brothers. As he took off each article of clothing he placed it with care so that he might find it all the easier in the morning. It would still be dark when he dressed again to go on the hunt.
In his bed Clay-Boy sought sleep but it would not come. He was so keyed up that his mind could not hold onto any subject, but kept leaping from one exciting fact to another. Tomorrow he would join the hunters. He owned a knife which was not a secondhand hand-me-down, but a brand-new shining thing that was entirely his own and had come all the way from Richmond. His mother would be angry when she found that he had gone on the hunt, but by then it would be too late. Tomorrow he would become a hunter. So went the thoughts of the boy as he hovered on the brink of sleep.
Finally sleep did overtake him, and as he slept visions of the great white deer came again and again across the fields of his dreams, sometimes distant, a white and marble sculptured ghost at the edge of the forest; another time so close he could hear the swift encounter of its hoofs against the frozen earth before it leapt into the dream sky, so high it would be silhouetted against the moon, white on white; and again so close he could hear the bellowings of its lungs sucking in great gusts of air and exhaling so powerfully that the wind itself changed direction, always its antlers held delicately high above the ensnaring branches of the trees and the bushes. And every time Clay-Boy pulled the trigger he would feel the harsh recoil of the gun against the muscle of his shoulder and wake with the sound of the explosion ringing like a diminishing echo in his ears.
After a while he drifted into a sleep like some gently rocking unguided craft that flowing with the current will drift from shallow into deeper and deeper water, his final coherent thought: Tomorrow it will happen. Finally he drifted so deep into oceans of sleep that not even the dream of the great white deer could reach him, and he rested.
Chapter 2
It was not yet dawn when Clay-Boy woke to the rich and furtive voices of his father and his uncles that floated up to him from the kitchen. The hours during which he had slept might have been seconds, for he was awake immediately with all the intoxicating thoughts that had been there the moment he had gone to sleep.
He dressed in the darkness. It was no great chore except that he was trembling from the cold and the anticipation of whatever unknown thing lay ahead.
Going down the hall he was careful to tiptoe past the room his mother and father shared. He knew his mother would be awake on account of the noise. Over the years it had become a custom that the men would prepare their own breakfast, and he knew that if he could get safely past his mother’s door he would be free to join the men.
“Clay-Boy!” Her voice sounded distant behind the closed door and he pretended not to hear. He kept on tiptoeing down the entire stairway until he was at last on the ground floor. He felt his way along the dark downstairs hallway and came suddenly into the light of the kitchen.
Some somber thing had come over the Spencer men during the night. Perhaps it was that they had wakened too soon from sleep or perhaps they felt the effects of the whiskey they had drunk. More probably it was a foreboding about the hunt itself, for no matter who faced the deer that day would be put to a test. Before he came out of the forest, something of his character, his reputation as a marksman, his courage, his stealth, or even his very manhood would be challenged and he would either maintain his position among the men of his clan or he would lose something of himself. There was the feeling that anything could happen and each of the hunters had his own secret intention, hope, and desire that it would be he who would bring back the deer which, even as they gathered to kill it, was waiting somewhere in the darkness on Spencer’s Mountain.
At the old cooking range Clay was preparing breakfast. Already there was a huge pile of bacon, and into the bacon grease Clay poured a bowl of eggs for scrambling. Two pots of strong coffee were perking on the back of the stove; the aroma of the coffee and the bacon had a restorative effect on the boy.
“Grab yourself a plate there, son,” said Matt.
Clay-Boy went to the kitchen cabinet and took down a plate for himself and placed it with the others heating on the back of the stove.
Before the food was placed on the table and all during breakfast the bottle of bourbon was passed from one man to another. The first time the bottle was passed, Rome automatically handed the bottle around to Clay-Boy’s father’s place, but since Clay was still at the stove, Clay-Boy took the bottle. Since he had recently wakened from sleep and since in his haste he had not brushed his teeth, the whiskey was the first thing to pass through his throat that morning, and as he swallowed a good slug of the stuff, his first impulse was to vomit it back again. Mercifully, for it would have been unmanly in the eyes of the other men, Clay-Boy was able to hold it down and passed the bottle on to the uncle seated to his right.
“Eat hearty, men,” said Clay, placing the platter of scrambled eggs on the table. Clay-Boy, too excited to eat, was glad when the men rose from the table, put on their hunting coats and began gathering their guns.
The old grandfather was not going on the hunt, but as each of his sons filed out of the kitchen door he offered advice and admonitions.
“I’d try that ridge over there right above where the minnow creek goes under the footbridge. Best place in the world for deer.”
Or:
“A deer is a heap smarter than a human man so don’t go thinken you can outsmart him.”
To Clay-Boy, who was last out of the door, he said, “You know what they’ll do to you if you shoot and miss one, don’t you, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Clay-Boy. �
��They’ll cut off my shirt-tail.”
And finally, when his sons had reached the back gate, the old man called to them, “Don’t nobody shoot each other,” but they were gone beyond the hearing of his voice. He closed the door and sat alone in the kitchen and watched through the window as the silhouette of the mountain began to take form out of the darkness.
***
A light snow had fallen during the night. As Clay-Boy followed along after his father and his uncles, he saw that each of them had stepped in the other’s footsteps so that someone coming after them might guess that only one person had made the tracks. Carefully the boy lengthened his stride so that his footsteps coincided with those made by the men he followed.
Ahead of him Spencer’s Mountain loomed snow-white, pine-green, arched with the blue of a cold winter morning. The mountain itself housed all those things mysterious to the boy. There were caves there where, long ago, boys had been lost and never found again. One of the caves had a lake in it, so deep and so hidden that if you dropped a stone from the rim you could count to five before the sound of the splash would travel back to you. The mountain itself he had never explored, being forbidden by his mother; it was said to be the home of the largest rattlesnake ever seen, a snake so outsized and savage that its fame had been carried through several counties by woodsmen who had seen it and had never been able to kill it. The mountain held all that was unexplored for Clay-Boy, but most of all its fascination for him lay in the fact that it was the range of the great white deer imbedded in his memory from the earliest tales he had heard from his grandfather.
The hunting party was about a quarter of the way up the mountain when one of the men called out, “There’s a good stand right here.”
“Let’s give this one to Clay-Boy,” Clay suggested, and the other men agreed.
“I’ll be right up there where the road turns, son,” said Clay. “If one comes ’long I’ll let you have first crack at him.”
Clay-Boy took up his station just off the roadway. He found an old tree stump, brushed it clear of snow and sat down. For a little while he could hear the distant conversations of the other men as each took his stand, but finally he could hear them no longer and a great stillness settled over the woods.
He was not as cold as he had expected to be. Actually he might have done without one of the extra sweaters he was wearing. After a while he began to feel drowsy. He nodded, catching himself each time before his gradually lowering chin reached his chest. Each time on opening his eyes he would scan all that he could see for deer and, finding none, would begin to nod again.
Something quite suddenly brought him fully awake. It was not a noise, for no sound had come. It was something the boy felt, a presence he sensed, and in the instant his eyes opened he saw standing not more than thirty feet away an enormous deer.
What he saw was fixed forever in his mind, the dull gray sky of the winter morning, the barren limbs of the sleeping trees, the virgin snow and the great deer which stood silent, immobile, and enduring through all of memory.
The deer either did not see him or it had no fear. It stood nearly rigid; only its sides moved as it inhaled gulps of air and exhaled them in small clouds of fog on the frosty air. The animal was a majestic thing. It stood with its proud head high and erect, its many-pointed antlers regally aloft. Its coat was white, and even across the distance that separated him and the deer, Clay-Boy could see that its eyes were pink.
A shocking thing came then into the boy’s mind. He had thought so much about the hunt that the whole adventure had been contained in the idea. He had pictured himself coming home triumphantly carrying the greatest deer in the forest, but the actual killing of the deer he had not even imagined. Now it came to him with a terrible knowing that the whole purpose of his being there was that he should kill the live thing that stood before him.
Clay-Boy hesitated. He could feel the small beads of cold perspiration breaking out on his forehead and down his back. He did not want to kill the beast. For one brief moment he wished the deer would leap away and lose itself in the forest, but it stood silent, quivering, waiting.
When Clay-Boy raised his rifle his hands were trembling. Carefully he steadied his aim by laying his head against the butt of the rifle and when he found the heart of the deer he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The recoil sent the boy tumbling backward and when he scrambled to his feet he thought for a second the shot had missed its mark. But in that same instant the forelegs gave way and the deer collapsed into a kneeling position. Even when the hind legs folded and the deer’s body was entirely on the ground it held its head aloft, as if reluctant to surrender its antlers to the ground.
Clay-Boy had heard enough hunting stories that he knew now what must be done. He ran headlong toward the stricken deer, grasped the antlers, and with all his force twisted them over and rammed them into the ground, thus protecting himself and exposing the deer’s throat at the same time.
He reached for the knife, fumbling over the snap at the sheath for a second, and then when he had the knife firmly grasped he plunged the blade into the fur and leather of the animal’s throat. A shudder wrenched through the dying deer and when the boy felt the quiver of final strength wane from the antler he held, something seared through his body that filled him with awe and terror.
Clay-Boy turned away, reeled back toward the stump where he had been sitting, and vomited. When his retching stopped he looked up and saw his father crashing through the underbrush.
“I heard a shot,” called Clay. “You all right, boy?”
Clay-Boy nodded, and pointed to the body of the deer.
“Oh my God, son,” exclaimed Clay. He pointed his gun into the sky and fired three shots, a signal to the other brothers to come in from their positions.
Clay examined the deer wonderingly, and then he looked again to his son.
“You’re tremblen,” said Clay.
“I was thinking about what Grandpa said,” answered Clay-Boy, “about whoever killed the white deer would be marked someway.”
“Whatever you’re marked for, boy, you’ll stand up to it,” said Clay.
Someone was approaching down the snowy wood trail; when he turned the bend they saw that it was Virgil. He walked over to the deer, and when he saw that it was the white deer, he turned to Clay and said, “I’m kind of sorry you got him, Clay. It’s a burden on a man to be marked.”
“The boy got him,” said Clay. “Not me.”
Virgil went to where Clay-Boy, to hide his trembling, had knelt and was cleaning his knife in the earth and snow. Virgil knelt beside Clay-Boy, and though he spoke to Clay, his eyes were on Clay-Boy’s eyes. “It wasn’t no boy killed that deer, Clay,” he said. “It took a man to do it.”
It was a gracious thing for Virgil to say, and the remark had a calming effect on the boy. The trembling began to leave him and he was able now to squat alongside the carcass with his other uncles as they arrived, each one expressing his astonishment and admiration at what he had done, making guesses as to the deer’s weight and counting the antlers.
When all the men were gathered they began to prepare the deer for the triumphant march home. Slits were made in the fore and hind legs and then the strong tendon pried through so the carrying pole might be inserted.
Anse, the eldest, and Clay, the strongest, shouldered the carrying pole and led the way out of the forest. When the men had come up the mountain, Clay-Boy had trailed at the end of the line, but now when Clay stepped forward, his uncles motioned for Clay-Boy to step in the line behind his father.
Snow had begun to fall again on Spencer’s Mountain, and as it settled thickly over the place where the deer had received its death, the stain of the blood changed from vermilion to red to pink to white, and there was only the white stillness, the falling snow and the quickly vanishing outlines of the steps of men.
Chapter 3
After Thanksgiving the winter turned severe. Snow fell all through Christmas and New Year, blotting out the
horizon from the boy who at odd times during the day would stop in his chores and gaze absently off toward the barn where the antlers of the great deer were mounted over the door. As the months passed and nothing extraordinary happened, he became less of a curiosity in the community, and this was a relief to him. But in his own mind he would reconstruct what had happened on the mountain, marvel at the event, and wonder what it could mean.
One day the icicles which had grown on the eaves of the barn began to glisten in the sunlight and melt. Each following day brought some new sign of spring. Olivia’s crocuses along the front walk seemed to burst into blossom overnight. The earth began to dry and the only sign of winter that remained was the crusted patches of snow that lingered in shady corners beside the house. Soon, along every path through the hills the redbud and dogwood were in blossom, and the edge of every wood was filigreed with redbud pink and dogwood white.
One Saturday morning Clay-Boy woke at dawn and listened to the sounds of the house as it awakened to morning. The morning was quiet, still bathed in the pale light of dawn, broken only by the abrasive cry of some wakeful rooster. The only sound from inside the house was the regular, terrible rise and fall of his grandfather’s snore. It came from the room downstairs which the two old people shared. Clay-Boy wondered if his grandmother was awake; she frequently complained that she had not slept a wink all night on account of the old man’s snoring.
At five o’clock, Clay-Boy heard the alarm from the clock his father kept beside his bed. It sounded for a moment, then was silent as Clay wakened and turned it off. Clay-Boy listened now to his father’s long deep yawn, smothered so as not to wake the children, and then after a moment the torturous screech of bedsprings as his father raised himself in the bed and put his feet on the floor. Clay usually muttered to no one in particular a four-or-five-word weather forecast. This morning he said, “Goen to be a beaut.”
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