by Wingshooters
And so I live by myself, in the city, with its noises and traffic, its unending procession of people. The asphalt landscape of Los Angeles could not be more different from the open fields of Central Wisconsin. Every day my eyes and ears are assailed by the signs of urban life—the gaudy billboards, blaring car alarms, ringing cell phones; the intensity and rush of the city. And maybe this is what I wanted: to live in a place where there is always so much coming at me that it’s impossible to think. But sometimes, on spring nights—it is always on spring nights—I lay awake in my bed with the windows open, and sleep will not find me, and there is something about the quality of the late-night air that takes me back to Deerhorn. It could be that the warmth of April and May holds the suggestion of the greater heat to come. It could be that the wind stirs the trees in a way that reminds me of the trees in the country. It could be that the birds, which sing here through the night, remind me of what it’s like to live in a place where their voices, and not the voices of people or cars, are the music of the world.
Whatever the reason, there are nights when I leave my bed at two or three in the morning and step out onto the patio. And then suddenly I am there again, I see it all again—the yard where Charlie and I played catch, the baseball fields in autumn, the trails where Brett and I wandered for miles, his feet silent on the carpet of leaves. I see the cornstalks high and green in the heat of late summer, the geese arcing in jagged V’s across the sky, the deer stomping in irritation before they take off in their compact bursts of flight. I see how the landscape reinvented itself with the changing of the seasons—spare brown to lush green to blanketing white. I remember the quiet of Deerhorn, the deliberate slowness of days in which every moment could be felt and appreciated. And I want it back then, I want it all back, the silence and the beauty, that faded world.
But then I remember what happened there and I know I can never return. Deerhorn has changed now, it’s a different place, and even if it looks exactly the same, it can never be what it was for me when I was a child, what it was in 1974. It can never be that because of what happened, and because I chose to leave. And when you leave something you love you can never go back, for you have so damaged and altered both that thing and yourself that what you had before can never be recovered. And the child who lived in Deerhorn and was once a version of me is dead, or must be dead, in order for the grown-up to survive. In order for the grown-up to tolerate the life that her decisions have forever confined her to.
And yet that child isn’t dead, not really. For while I will not, cannot return to that town, no city will ever contain me. I walk now in a different place, the Sierra Nevada, with another dog—a young liver-and-white springer spaniel named Netty. Netty and I hike for days between the high alpine lakes, living off the trout that I catch, and it’s so quiet up there it almost stills the roaring in my heart.
But no matter how beautiful the Sierra lakes are, I can never forget about Deerhorn. I can never forget that quiet place that has made quiet places so necessary. Still, being up there in the mountains with my sweet, hardworking dog (she, like Brett, flushes grouse I don’t shoot) is the only time I feel anything that’s even close to peace. The high, pine-scented mountains of California aren’t the lush countryside of Wisconsin; Netty’s not Brett, and fishing trout by myself is not the same as fishing bluegill with my grandfather. But it’s the closest I can get with the way my life is now. It’s enough; I have to make it be enough.
My grandfather was buried in the Deerhorn Cemetery on a small rise under a cedar tree. He did not leave much by way of earthly possessions—just the house, which went to my grandmother, who eventually sold it. But he left other things. He left me his love of dogs and of the natural world. He left me his impatience with pretense of any kind, with immodesty or self-importance. He left me with the knowledge of what it is to be loved, to be chosen first among other people. (At his funeral, Uncle Pete came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “You were his child, Mike. You were.”) And he left me with the harder knowledge that love is not enough; that it’s those you love the most who are most likely to hurt you, and whom you are most likely to betray.
I still own the gun that killed Earl Watson. I keep it in a box on a shelf in my living room, across from the picture of my grandfather’s baseball team. Sometimes I take it out and hold it to feel the weight of its history. I don’t really know why I do this, or why I keep it at all—the gun’s not loaded and I have no ammunition. But it’s important for me to keep it close, close enough to see and touch. Because that gun ended more than the life of a man who deserved his punishment. That gun put an end to my childhood, and broke apart what was left of my family.
About five years after I moved out to California, I got a phone call from my father. It took me several minutes to get over the shock of hearing his voice, and only then could I make sense of his words. He was sorry, he said, for not being in touch for so long. He was in New Or-leans now, with a different woman, and he hadn’t seen my mother in years. Then his voice got low and awkward and he managed to say that he’d heard about what happened with Charlie.
“He harassed that poor couple and then shot somebody, right? He always was a stubborn old bigot.”
My face flushed and I said before I slammed down the phone, “You don’t know a fucking thing about him.”
Sometimes I dream of Charlie and it is always the same. We are driving in a car on a two-lane highway somewhere in Central Wisconsin. The windows are all open and Brett is in back, holding his head up to catch the wind. My grandfather sits easily with one hand on the wheel, his elbow slung out of the window. He looks at me and grins and says, “Should we push it faster, Mike?” And I say yes, yes, and feel the wind on my face and I know he will be with me forever.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the following people for their help with this book:
Jennifer Gilmore and Kyoko Uchida, my wonderful readers, for their thoughtful comments on an early draft. Ron Hicks, who shared his knowledge about hunting and guns. Kate Nintzel, who pushed me at just the right time. Richard Parks, my agent, for his kindness, effort, and unflagging support.
Thank you to Johnny Temple, Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, Aaron Petrovich, and the entire crew at Akashic Books, who have believed so deeply and worked so hard not just for this book, but for three of them now. It’s impossible to overstate how committed and amazing they have been. I’m truly blessed to be a part of the Akashic family.
I’m grateful to my friends and the faculty at Cornell, who brought me to Ithaca for a pivotal season in the life of this story; and to my colleagues at Children’s Institute, who continue to provide me with great understanding and flexibility. Thanks also to Elizabeth Bailey and Betsey Binet, for their feedback on the many things I put in front of them.
Love and belly rubs to the English springer spaniels whose spirits run through this book: Maddie Gilmore, the original; Georgia Harris, the explorer; Brett Roy, the majestic; and my own beloved Russell.
And finally, my love and gratitude to Felicia Luna Lemus. It’s because of her that I know, in my own life, about falling into grace.
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