The Night of Trees

by Thomas Williams

  “Yes, that season.”

  “That was a nice doe. I sure was proud of it,” Murray said.

  “So was I!”

  “That was the year you shot the bobcat,” Murray said.

  “Yup, that was the same year.” What had happened to the years when his son was his—those few short seasons when he had first really wanted the boy to be with him because he was old enough to be trusted, and when the boy had wanted nothing more in the world than to be with his father? Three or four seasons out of their lifetimes, that was all, and now that those seasons were over no amount of love could bring back anything but absurd imitations of them.

  “I wish,” he said, and then stopped.

  “What, O.M.?” Murray said.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Murray. I wish it was that deer season again.” A silly thing to say.

  “I didn’t sleep a wink all that night, I was so excited,” Murray said.

  “God, was I glad when you shot that big doe! Wasn’t she a beauty?”

  “She was to me, I’ll tell you!” Murray said.

  “Maybe tomorrow…” Richard began to say, and he was still full of delightful, irrational hope. But then Shim called them in.

  Murray changed his mind, and they all sat at the table, hunters all, Richard thought, in their good strong clothes (all except his), all sharp of eye and tooth! But they didn’t have to be sharp of tooth for this steak. Blood rare, it flaked apart at the touch of a fork; the kind of meat you were not conscious of swallowing. It diminished in the mouth, and yet gave the impression of firmness; close-grained, it was just touched with the tallowy, dark flavor of venison.

  It was late, and they finished quickly, then took one more hunters’ look at the snow. Smooth white, now, and silent, the flakes had begun to cover everything; it was still cold, and whether or not it continued to snow, it would be a perfect day tomorrow. They smiled at the weather and said good night, each having cast a glance at his rifle and gear. Richard plucked his stag-handled knife from its sheath on his cartridged belt and hoped like a kid that it would gut his own big deer before the next day was over. It was sharp, but he stropped it twice on his oiled rifle sling, and then it cut a paper kitchen towel like a razor blade, snip, from top to bottom.

  Shim nodded in appreciation. “You keep a sharp knife,” he said.

  They all went to bed, then. Before he got into bed he stood still, feeling as happy as if this time were years ago, feeling too that he and Murray had, if not recaptured their past closeness, at least recognized together, with words and the touch of hands, that it had once existed. Perhaps it would again. Just as it had separated them, time might bring them together again.

  He took the twisted blankets and sheets and pulled them back. It was then that he saw, bright as a wound on the snow-white sheet, a spot of blood.

  PART THREE

  Guess, friend, what I am and how I am wrought, Monster of sea, or of land, or of elsewhere? Know me, and use me, and I may thee defend, And if I be thine enemy, I may thy life end.

  —SIR THOMAS WYATT

  19

  SHIM WAS in the hall, yelling them up: “Grab your socks, you hunters! Bacon’s on, eggs next! Get the hell up!”

  Richard’s eyes were wide open at once. Outside, it was still cold; the frosty air had filled his room. It had come in through the three-inch opening below the sash, and now he felt it against his eyes. It was as if this new air were so pure it could not mix with the odors of house and people, and had totally replaced the old. He went to the window, and the floor numbed his feet; it was like walking on thin sandals made of flesh. Outside, there was the soft, muffled darkness of new snow, and he wondered how the snow could make him so happy. When light came, it would seem to come out of the snow itself, the whole world would light softly from within, as the moon seemed to do, and the black trees would hover above a whiteness too delicate to support them.

  The cold air made his pajamas feel as thin as gauze, and as he took a breath his nostrils felt as though they had been seared clean; he had a vision of them as smooth, glassy pipes leading straight to his warm lungs. He shut the window and began to dress quickly. Long wool underwear, extra socks. Shoepacs, now, instead of leather boots; these were rubber over the foot, with twelve-inch leather tops to breathe out moisture and keep the felt innersoles and stockings dry.

  These were the clothes he liked best, the strong, plain clothes that without decoration or apology did what clothes should have done, kept out the harsh weather and still let the man be out in the weather, part of the real world. Yes, he thought as he straightened out the tough sailcloth pockets of his hunting pants, he was an outdoor man; but what a peculiar word to use for infinite space—outdoors—when, really, the tiny places man closed in with doors were so scattered and insignificant compared to the world of trees.

  Shim looked a little more rested, now that his activities of the night had been curtailed. Murray was already down, and that looked like a good sign; he’d always been the first one to get up when they’d hunted together before. Maybe the snow had given him back some of his old excitement. He sat near the window squeezing powdered graphite from a plastic cylinder onto the turned bolt of his Mauser. It would be cold this morning, and oil would have turned gummy on the freezing metal. Richard looked over his own gear, and again was joyful at the precision and spareness of it all. His Westley Richards rifle in 300 magnum—the honest English strength of the long bolt, the careful matching of stock and action—he could follow the magazine plate’s edge all the way around, and the metal fit the wood as if the walnut had grown around the steel. And the Lyman receiver sight he’d had fitted to the rifle—though it was American-made it went perfectly with the rest of the mechanism; it had been conceived in the same hunting spirit, and for that clean, craftsman’s world he felt great kinship.

  The smell of bacon and eggs, and of the old kitchen which had never managed to lose, and never would, the peculiar farm smell of old potatoes and turnips, of years of much good food prepared and eaten in it—those odors had entered the walls and moldings and would never come out—these meant guns and hunting to him, too. After his father and mother died he’d spent all his time away from school at his uncle’s farm in Iowa, and there too the kitchen had been the jumping-off place for excitement: down to the blinds on the Iowa River at Lone Tree, when an ice shelf extended out a foot from shore, and the huge sky might suddenly be full of the whistle and wind of mallard wings; or the gentle flush of quail in a fallow pasture, and his first double with a shotgun, when he was sixteen; or a long walk through the yellow stalks of corn still too moist to harvest, the mud heavy on his boots, everything drab and mucky—and then a cock pheasant, gawky and slow but out of the earth itself, it would seem, all his unbelievable color, green and red and polished golds and umbers fresh and clean, would fly straightaway and at the shot fall spinning, totally disorganized, and there he would be against the black mud, a treasure trove. From warm, aromatic kitchens, before dawn, the times of his life that he remembered best for their pure excitement and uncomplicated resolutions had begun.

  He went to the door and opened it. Again out in the dark he felt the presence of the snow, and he hadn’t needed the white straightedge along the doorsill to tell him of it. Sounds were different, smells were different, and his senses, enlivened by nostalgia, told him all about the coming day.

  Their plans, of course, had changed. They would all go up to the ridge until they found tracks, then plan some concerted effort. On snow it was more important that they hunt together; while one might push the deer on, the others would try to get around ahead, and try to guess their patterns of escape.

  They ate quickly. Because of the snow and a clear sky, now full of stars, light would come very quickly once dawn began. They decided not to have a second cup of coffee. Murray finished first, and made them some cheese and salami sandwiches, and then they buckled on their gear, making the last happy decisions about where to wear knives, ammunition, where to put the le
ngths of rope they hopefully carried in case they got a deer. Richard decided not to take his cartridge belt—a matter of superstition, for once on a similar day he had left it home by mistake and got a deer. He hung his knife on his regular belt and put his small cartridge case, which held just an extra six of the pretty, deadly things, in his jacket pocket. Such changes often were the result of superstition, and though he smiled at himself and didn’t tell Shim or Murray why he had done it, it was a gesture toward past happiness and success.

  Neither Zach nor Opal had appeared, and he was glad of it—Opal because of the embarrassment inherent in a change of desire, both because only hunters should be up before dawn, helping each other’s enthusiasm, buckling on weapons, making the standard remarks that were suddenly in the early morning fresh and exciting again.

  “Who’s going to git that big buck?” Shim said. He was ready, his Arisaka over his arm, bolt open. He put on his green cap and adjusted the visor.

  “The one I saw on the road,” Richard said. “Wouldn’t I like to get a shot at him!” And he could see the huge animal leaping across the white, and the gold bead of his rifle’s front sight following.

  “How about a bear? How’d you like that?” Murray asked.

  “Git a young one, boy. I love that bear bacon!” Shim said.

  They were ready, and as they left the kitchen they held their empty rifles, it seemed to Richard, carefully, lovingly—or maybe that impression came from the profound respect they all had for them. There was another bit of superstition: even an empty rifle must never be pointed at a man, as though there were some magic in the weapon, and even out of an empty chamber the ghost of a bullet might come, and kill.

  They stepped off the sill into the snow, about eight inches of it. Richard almost expected to feel the coldness of it through his boots and stockings; of course he didn’t, but he was made aware of the warmth and snugness of his feet. With his toes he felt the rough grain of his stockings, and as he stepped away from the door and Shim turned off the light, he walked upon the earth made unfamiliar again. The snow was light, and though it was there—he could hear it sift past his boots—the ground he could not see was not quite so firm as it should have been; in between came this invisible, diaphanous stuff, and the earth had lost some of its substantiality. Later, as the light came, it seemed to him that the snow was more a kind of atmospheric layer, one of invisibility rather than of substance, and yet just before it bore his full weight it did make itself felt, even heard; there was a faint sound as it was crushed, like that of a nail being pulled out of wood—half squeak, half the noise of prying.

  They climbed west, away from the sunrise yet up into it, for the light came down across the mountain and met them on the first ridge. There were many tracks, all fresh and powdery, all leading up toward the round knob of Cascom, out of the hardwood and up into the spruce and hemlock. Richard volunteered to push the deer while Shim and Murray climbed around to the ridge between Cascom and Gilman mountains, where the deer might cross over onto the western slope that led back down toward Leah. There would be many hunters out on such a perfect day, and there was a chance that other deer might come over from that side. It was a high ridge, for this country—about 2,500 feet, and if a deer were shot up there it would be a long drag out, but all the tracks seemed to lead up and up.

  “Give us three-quarters of an hour,” Shim said, “and we’ll be set in a couple of good places I know where they cross over, then you follow the tracks.”

  Already they had heard shots from the distant valleys. “Scratch one porcupine!” Shim would say each time they heard a shot, or “Got that mammoth jackrabbit!” His contempt for other hunters was always evident; he hated to meet one in the woods, and this was one reason for his delight in the deer having gone high. They would see few other hunters as far up as the ridge.

  Richard watched them go, faster now that they had a certain destination, then dusted off a stump and sat down with his back to a large hemlock. The wind sifted a sparkling mist of tiny, turning particles past his face, and the touch of them was cool and welcome. He was warm, and the air was very cold. Even in direct sunlight there was no sign of melting, and the snow slipped dryly off his boots. There were many tracks—the snow must have stopped quite early in the morning. Here a mouse had plunged along a blowdown branch, grooving its white sleeve. A jackrabbit had passed this tree, leaving its long, paired exclamation marks softly pressed, as if something as porous as new bread had been shaped and lightly pushed against the snow. He had seen earlier the deep channel a porcupine had doggedly bored—blind, it must have been in the deep fluff—to a pile of brush. The partridge were still sleeping beneath the snow, as far as he could tell; once he had almost stepped on one, when the snow one day was deeper but just as dry, and the bird had burst up between his legs in an explosion of snow and whicking wings, startling him so that he shook for five minutes afterward.

  He sat very still. It was the best time in the cold woods to sit as still as he wanted to, because the climb had warmed his body through. That warmth would soon seep away into the air, but for a time he was wonderfully comfortable, conscious of the cooling process only as pleasure. Later the balance would change, if he sat long enough, to shuddering cold, and he would have to move again.

  Below him, through a chance break in the trees, he could see the gentler hills convoluting off to the east and over the other side of the earth—all of them dark with forest, marked here and there, but very seldom, with the white patches of fields or lakes. The fields were so small, so insignificant from here they seemed heroic efforts against the wilderness, and he was glad to see them that way. He wanted nothing but to be where he was, small among the trees, a hunter who must be forced to realize how wild the trees and mountains were, and how the odds were always with the real natives of the place. He wanted nothing but the meaning of the hunt, and to hell with civilization and all of its excruciating, impenetrable judgments, compromises, emotional storms and dialectical confusions. Here it was a matter of hand and eye, and the issue was the only clean and satisfying one, for there could be no argument: life or death. It was up to him to keep it so, definite and quick, and he knew his eyes were excellent, and that he was a good rifle shot. Not only that, but a man who had shot men did not get buck fever.

  He raised his rifle and fitted it snug against his shoulder, the stock cold against his cheek, then took the safety off and looked down across the action, down the slim barrel at one of the little black triangles on the trunk of a white birch. A squeeze of his right hand, and in the chamber of the rifle, a few inches away from his eye, thousands of pounds of pressure would grow, and the bright bullet would begin its twist through the bore, which it would leave at a velocity of 2,920 feet per second. Over the distance of one hundred yards it would rise and fall just 0.6 of an inch. It would then be traveling at a velocity of 2,670 feet per second, and it would deliver to its doomed target 2,850 foot-pounds of energy. This at the signal of his hunter’s reflex, all this dependable, irrevocable power, all his to use. He put the safety back on and lowered the rifle, running his gloved hand down the side of it past forearm, receiver, and stock. The sling was stiff from the cold, but no matter how cold it was, the machine would function exactly when he asked it to, and what fire and heat it would then create for him!

  The heat of his body was fast leaving him, now, and as the first shiver came upon him it was the return to the reality of the woods; it was cold, and he was, after all, a tender-skinned man. He had a while to wait, but soon he would have to move. His toes were just at the point where they felt cool, and soon they would begin to numb. Already his fingertips were just a little insensitive about the inner texture of his gloves. He rebuttoned his red wool jacket—he should have done that as soon as he’d sat down, but that strange euphoric warmth had tricked him. As the cold penetrated—now it seemed the positive quantity—his clothes seemed thinner and thinner upon his body, and even though he counted the layers of good wool that covered his back
he could hardly believe that they were there: thick woolen underwear made in two layers so that it would trap insulating air and not mat down, then a fine wool shirt, new and fresh, then a wool sweater made of yarn as thick as twine, long-sleeved, and finally his insulated wool jacket. And yet the cold pierced through all these layers and made them seem as insubstantial as a cotton T-shirt. He had always wondered how the deer could stand the cold. Granted, their faster metabolism and their coats of thick hair, each one of which was hollow for insulation, but their delicate legs! How could blood continue to flow through a foot upon which there didn’t seem to be a lick of flesh, only the brittle bone and silver tendon?

  All these were thoughts against the cold, the usual device, for he knew that a man was also an incredible animal, and could stand three times as much as he thought he could. Chances were that the deer, and other animals too, got good and God-damned cold in the hostile winter, and they shivered and stood it or else they died, and summer found their curiously flattened hair and bones.

  He sat a while longer, as still as he could, for he was hunting, but finally the heel of his left foot refused to respond at all; it might have been the very heel of his boot. As he stood up he shivered violently. Unpleasant, but he knew that it was the body’s way to shake new blood along beneath the skin, and he was aware of his body’s health and wisdom in such matters.

  The shiver passed—he had waited for it; the important thing was that his only movements so far had been a simple leaning forward in order to put his weight evenly upon his feet, then a straightening of his body. To the three deer that at that moment appeared before him either no motion had been perceived, because of odd arrangements of the hemlock’s branches, or else, in the completely unpredictable way of the hunted, the motions Richard had made had somehow not suggested danger. He did not move; neither did they. They stood twenty yards away, and he thanked God, even as he avidly examined them, that his weight was evenly and comfortably upon both feet, and that the ground that he stood on was level. One was a skipper, about sixty pounds; one was a little buck with nubbins for horns; and the other was from that point until a few seconds later all he looked at. It might have been the buck he’d seen on the road. No, probably it was not that large. This one had the thick buck’s neck, like a gigantic biceps, it seemed, all pure muscle, and perfect antlers—yellow, gleaming, they left his gray skull on thick pedestals, then turned forward above the brow tines, perfectly symmetrical and thick, and on each curve there were three tines. He moved his head as if he were deliberately showing Richard the majesty and perfection of his armor. From his black nostrils breath shot out in narrow streams like those of dragons in storybooks. His eyes were black, but delicately lashed. His brisket was bushy and edged with dark. For a whitetail he wasn’t awfully big, but the word that came to Richard was strong: he was a regular weightlifter of a buck, and would weigh more than his actual size at first suggested.