by Rick Bass
Jim, as sober as a judge, climbed up the crude plank ladder to the favorite tree and nestled in, pleased with the world and the time of day, and feeling like a boy again, a boy in a tree fort watching the horizon for pirates or dragons.
Jim Ed walked quietly along the ridge that led to the next tree stand, passing through shafts of copper light. He could sense he was a little late, that already the deer were moving, but he could tell also that everything would turn out all right: that things were just as they were meant to be. Some days were like that, and when they were, they resonated within him so deeply that it was as if he heard a voice speaking to him, assuring him of how things would turn out: that his wish, his desire, would be granted.
He found the tree he was searching for and, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, climbed carefully up the board ladder, each step a single slat nailed to the trunk. The steps had grown slick with moss since the last hunting season, and he had not had time to check any of the boards for rot or mildew. Even as he was ascending, one board pulled free in his hand, leaving a gap in his climb that made his reliance on the next board all the more critical. When he finally reached the security of the platform above, his heart was beating quickly, and he sat there, still and silent, for some time before it finally slowed.
He looked over and saw some hundred yards distant the hunched shape of Jim up in his tree, as motionless as a gargoyle.
Jim Ed looked farther out then and saw the buck long before Jim noticed it, even though it was coming straight at Jim. It was as large a buck as Jim Ed had ever seen. Its antlers were dark brown, burnished by polishing them against saplings, sharpening their tips for battle, though one of the tips was broken off from such battles. The buck's coat was already winter dark, and he was fat from eating acorns. His face was streaked with gray and latticed with scars, and yet he was still muscular. There was a white patch around each of his eyes, a perfect O of snow whiteness, giving him a look of permanent startlement.
The deer's neck was swollen thick with November rut, and when he stopped from time to time and looked around, searching for a doe to breed, his breath came in puffs of vapor cloud if he paused in the shadows, though when he was in the mild slants of sunlight, no such breath-clouds arose.
It was Jim's deer, coming straight at him, but Jim did not see it; to Jim Ed, it appeared that Jim might be asleep.
Now the deer paused again, as if it had been seeking a rendezvous with some mysterious stranger in this approximate place and at this approximate time, and, finding no such appointment—looking carefully everywhere—decided to abandon that interior directive, and turned and began drifting instead toward Jim Ed's tree stand; and still Jim gave no sign of seeing the great deer, or of even being awake.
The deer was close enough now that Jim Ed could hear the rustling of dry leaves as it strode through them, coming like a gift, and still Jim Ed waited and watched, from the corner of his eye, to see if his guest might stir and yet take this deer.
The deer was almost too close—only thirty yards out, so that any small movement by Jim Ed might be seen or sensed—and now the deer stopped again, as if dumbfounded that here, too, the appointment toward which he had been summoned had failed to materialize. The deer stood there waiting, and Jim Ed understood that the gift was his, not Jim's, and that, as he had come hunting in search of a deer, to scorn or reject such a gift now would be disrespectful.
Jim Ed lifted the rifle carefully and put the crosshairs of the scope just behind the deer's left shoulder. The deer was so close that it filled the scope. Jim Ed waited for a moment, and then squeezed the trigger as he had on so many deer before.
In the echo of the blast, the deer hunched its back and hopped as if bee-stung, then whirled and galloped off like a racehorse, its tight-tucked tail the only indication that it was injured.
Jim awoke with a shout and watched the deer sprint past, its wide tall antlers bobbing. To him, in his grogginess, it looked like a deer running through the woods with a chair tied upside down above his head. If he had been able to fire a shot at the sprinting-away deer, he would have, but he was too disoriented; he could only watch the strange dream, then the half-dream, and then the deer was gone.
Figuring that the hunt was over—dusk was but an hour or so away, and he could not imagine any more deer coming through after the uproar of the shot—Jim climbed down from his ladder and began shuffling through the leaves toward Jim Ed's tree stand. Jim Ed frowned—it was his habit after shooting a deer to sit quietly for half an hour, so that the wounded deer—confused and not knowing exactly where the shot had come from—would, if unpursued, run only a very short distance and then lie down to bleed out and die. Left untended, a hole in the heart would not heal itself, and the deer would die quietly, sinking back down toward the same soil that had briefly animated it.
Even now, Jim Ed heard a faint crashing in the distance, and knew that his deer had already bedded down and was looking back, watching to see if the hunter might be stirring. And upon seeing Jim sauntering through the forest, the deer had leapt back up and plunged down into the ravine.
They set off to look for the deer. Jim Ed searched a long time for the first drop of blood and the first sprinklings of hair.
It was slow going, reading the deer's last history drop by drop, and grew harder still once they entered the ravine. They soon ran out of light, but Jim Ed had brought a flashlight, and they continued on. Jim Ed could not help but think that if Jim had stayed in his tree stand they would already have the deer cleaned and hauled out and would be back home, maybe nursing one of Jim's beloved whiskeys, but he was too polite to let Jim know of his mistake. He wanted to build an enthusiasm for the hunt in Jim, and so he pushed through the brush without comment or criticism, intent instead only on finding the tiny drops that would lead them to their trophy.
In older times Jim Ed had carried a lantern, the dull but democratic glow of which was ideal for casting an equal light that served well the search for the anomalous spatterings, the red drops drying to brown and splintering already into little fissures and fractures, like mud cracks in a dried-out pond—each speck of blood on each random leaf but a single drop, and nothing that seemed capable of killing the deer—but he had no lantern this evening, only the flashlight with its narrow beam, and with so much darkness on either side of that beam. It was slower hunting, and they walked carefully. It was always Jim Ed who noticed the next drop, and the next. Jim was just out for a walk.
When they finally came to the end of the blood trail, the giant deer was piled up like an accordion at the very bottom of the ravine, and somehow not looking like quite the same animal. Huge, and powerful, but not quite as vital.
Jim Ed cleaned the deer, fastidious as ever—when he was done, he washed his hands in the trickling creek beside which the deer had died—and then the two men took turns pulling the heavy animal up the long hill. Jim congratulated Jim Ed on the size of the animal, and how strange it was that the deer had almost walked right up to Jim Ed.
"I've always been lucky that way," Jim Ed said, panting. He knew of no harder work in the world than dragging a big deer uphill.
Eventually they reached the clay road and left the deer there—its antlers seeming even larger in the scan of the flashlight than they had in the daylight—and they walked to Floyd and Birdie's house in high spirits. Back at the house, everyone was excited to hear that Jim Ed had shot a big deer, and they all climbed into Floyd's truck to go see. A Saturday-night outing, an event of great festivity.
All the time in the world was theirs, suddenly; the world slowed to a creep, in hunting season. Timelessness—after having been gone all the preceding year—returned.
Hanging the deer from the ancient pole between the two oaks, beneath which they had always cleaned their deer. Butchering the deer the next day in the autumn sunlight, perfect temperature, cool enough to keep insects away, but with the workers able to feel the warmth of leisurely, attentive work to a task. It would be hard to call it work;
it was just a life.
Bonnie and Maxine played guitars on the porch and sang, as did Norma, still just a child. The girls baked pies with Birdie, put them on the windowsill to cool. It could easily be said these were the happiest times of their lives. That week, Jim Ed and Jim did not stop with hunting deer but went after ducks, too, walking along the banks and bluffs of Poplar Creek, jumping the flamboyantly colored little wood ducks, which were the best-eating duck—the birds' breasts swollen from a diet of acorns—and later in the day walking back home with a burlap bag of the iridescent birds, each as fantastically colored as a parrot.
They would lay the birds out on the porch for everyone to admire, and then they would all pluck the ducks—the beautiful, brilliant feathers swirling, the miracle disassembling—and when they had the birds all cleaned, they would cook them that night on a grill outside, roasting them slowly over hickory coals, with an onion slice and strip of bacon laid over them.
Afterward, they would play canasta or hearts or bridge, and then, further into the night, they might or might not play their guitars; it did not matter—the days and nights were unending, and they did only as they wanted. They still talked about fame, a little bit, but mostly in those times between tours they simply hung out at home and prospered, and remembered that there was so much more to life than work. That almost everything—including their own brief popularity—was vastly overrated. There on Poplar Creek, in the midst of their family, they could not say why such a realization, a remembrance, brought them such happiness, only that it did.
Perhaps that was their second chance, and Bonnie and Jim Ed eventually took it. Everyone gets a second chance, but perhaps Maxine never saw hers.
Jim and Mary went home then, back to Nashville. All were invigorated by the return of sweetness—the recalibration of their lives—and each felt rejuvenated by the time spent with old friends: the Browns by their long visit with their mentors, one of their initial touchstones in the business, and Jim and Mary by the elemental isolation of the Browns. There was no name for it, but there was no denying that whatever they had was something that could be tapped into, something that rubbed off on a person, and helped.
But then they left, went back to work, and back out on the road: partly as if pushed once again by some larger destiny, and yet, were they not already also inhabiting an existing destiny?
As if two or maybe three destinies exist for all travelers, a twisted helix, with one path shining more at different times in the traveler's life—better illuminated and more attractive to the traveler, though not always the smoothest or most seamless path; and from those two or three different destinies, over the course of a traveler's life, a sound is created, if not always a harmony, which, while not audible to the travelers themselves, might possibly be heard by others who follow close enough behind them.
The harmony falling away, after that, the sound waves dissolving back into nothing, as if they had never been.
BOAT RIDE ON POPLAR CREEK
IT WAS AN OLD metal flatbottom boat that Jim Ed and Floyd had used for duck hunting and for checking trotlines. Elvis knew nothing about paddling, or rivers, or nature, but plenty, already, about romance. He volunteered to take Bonnie on a picnic. Despite his touring schedule, he was still finding ways to get back to Poplar Creek, even if for but a day or two. He was drawn primarily to Bonnie, but he received sustenance from all of them. They never quite knew when he would appear, or exactly when he would have to go away.
It was Maxine's belief, whenever she thought about it, which wasn't often—by that time she was pretty much all business, all ambition—that Elvis was a little frightened of her. And she could understand that. There were times when even she was a little frightened of herself. A temper—Floyd's temper—was emerging in her, whereas Bonnie had been gifted with Birdie's sweet temperament, and only Birdie's; there had been no twining of the two, no crossing over.
Maxine and Elvis were friends, nothing more. She was older, and as fierce about her music as he was. They were both going places. They weren't competitors—there was too much of a strange allegiance between them for that—and in those years, they moved in smooth and seamless parallel, with no electricity between Maxine and Elvis, only concerted striving from both of them.
When Maxine thought about it, it made sense. She was almost all work, while Bonnie was more play. Certainly, Maxine had plenty of suitors; there were many who didn't mind her drive. But Elvis didn't need anything she had; when he looked in her eyes, he could very well have been looking in the mirror.
Birdie packed Bonnie and Elvis a lunch that first time they went down the river. Jim Ed and Elvis drove Floyd's old logging truck several miles downstream, to leave at the take-out at Taylor Branch, then came back up to the house in Jim Ed's truck, so that Elvis and Bonnie would have a ride waiting for them at the end of their journey.
There was enough food to last them three or four days, and a picnic blanket, a straw hamper, and canning jars of lemonade. It was springtime, and Bonnie rode in the bow and paddled a little while Elvis stroked clumsily in the stern, banging the paddle against the gunwales, pinching his fingers and getting annoyed with the boat when it swirled and drifted sideways, not going where he wanted it to—bouncing slowly off the sides of logs along the shore—until he figured it out and found the creek's invisible but powerful centerline.
They rounded the bend, the river murmuring, the birdsong riotous, even in midday.
Elvis noted the faint sheen on Bonnie's neck, the top button of her shirt unfastened in the warmth. Elvis was excited, hopeful, and, for a little while, not thinking about music or fame, but only the joy of life—though they did have their guitars packed in burlap bags, to pick a little when they stopped for lunch.
On the river, it was easier for him to open up. The current seemed to pull from him all tensions and worries, all fears and doubts. On the river, it seemed he could say things he wasn't even sure he believed, though why else would he have been opening up, confessing them?
Telling her he never felt like he belonged to the world. How he never felt connected or attached. How he always felt as if he were falling, drifting. Except when he was up onstage and holding the guitar. That was the only time he felt in control, he said, the only time he felt like the world stopped long enough to keep from shoving him through it.
Bonnie listened. There were times when she wondered why Elvis was drawn to her instead of Maxine. She pointed out a patch of blackberries on the bank, and the two of them maneuvered the boat over to shore.
They tied the boat off and took one of the now empty jars into the blackberry patch. Once off the river, Elvis tried to hedge his earlier outpouring, tried to disown it. He asked her if she had any worries, any fears of her own, and he laughed at her when she thought about it and then said no, and he felt better, laughed again.
Train tracks ran parallel to the creek, and Bonnie and Elvis followed the berry patch out to that slash of light through the woods. It was even hotter there in the berries than it was on the creek. They walked along the tracks for a while, the jar quickly full and the two of them dropping the berries into his old shirt, which he had taken off to use for the berry gathering, his skin as pale as the cream Birdie would ladle over the berries later that evening.
The scent of creosote in the sunlight, and the heat and brilliance reflecting off the steel rails. They moved down the tracks steadily, heads down, intent, neither of them like anyone who would change the world, but like laborers. Getting scratches on their hands reaching for the biggest, juiciest berries. Laughing, racing to get to the biggest and best berries ahead of each other, whenever they saw them.
Wait, anyone who saw them might have said—an observer in the future, gifted, or cursed, with the ability to look back. You don't have to leave yet. You don't have to leave at all.
THE RESTAURANT
IT'S HARD FOR Bonnie to get away now, particularly in the springtime, when her garden is in full roar. She can't drive anymore—something is wro
ng with her inner ear so that she gets unpredictable spells of vertigo and has to lie down immediately—but she tries to get over to West Memphis to see Maxine once every month or two. Brownie has to drive her, and his hearing is shot, worse even than Maxine's, and he's still recovering from his open heart surgery of less than six months ago—but what else is there but family? It's all Bonnie knows how to do—to stay attached, connected, even if with the faintest tendrils of her visits, with the two of them, Bonnie and loyal Brownie, braving the elements to go see Maxine.
Usually, once Bonnie arrives, the three of them go to a catfish parlor out in the country: Maxine's big outing. Brownie, a physician, is retired, but is still able to dispense medication, and he brings Maxine whatever pills or shots she needs.
They dress like royalty for the occasion; they bustle in Maxine's downstairs bathroom, applying makeup, adjusting their jewelry just so, and plucking silver hairs from each other's black sweaters. It's springtime, but sometimes the air conditioner at the catfish house runs cold. In their career, they hardly ever knew elegance. Once a year, at the Grammys. The two years in a row they beat Elvis, then the two years they finished second. The year they lost narrowly to the Beatles. The time they won in country one year, then rock the next. Everyone's gone now, dust; it no longer matters to anyone but them, and among the three of them, really, it only matters to Maxine.
They enter the restaurant slowly, regally, looking around as if expecting to be recognized—if not by fans, then at least by the waiters and waitresses remembering them from their last visit a couple of months ago—but there is no such recognition, only the busy workaday comings and goings of food tray-bussing. A young woman at the front asks if they're here to see someone, and when they say no, she leads them to one of the long picnic tables at which the diners eat in family-style seating. She places them at the far end, in a corner, but that's all right: it allows Maxine to look out at all that is going on.