by Gregory Kay
Jake interrupted him.
“It wasn’t just while I was dating her.”
Feeling both their eyes on him in shock at the deliberate emphasis on his words, Jake tried to explain.
“I'm sorry, man. It was a month ago, right after the homecoming game. You were grounded, and she asked me if I could give her a ride home. We'd both been drinking a little bit, and next thing I knew, we were parked out by Cumberland Run. It just...happened.”
Scott could only blink for a moment, trying to grasp the enormity of what he had just been told. Finally, he seized on the only explanation he could think of that might exonerate Becky. Pointing his finger, he accused, “You raped her!”
Ignoring Joe Bob’s angry exclamation of “Bullshit! You dumb son of a bitch, you can't rape the willing!” Jake shouted back at Scott, “I didn’t rape her! She was willing! In fact, she was more than willing; she was the one who asked me to take her up there in the first place, 'just like we used to,' she said, and I didn’t have the strength to say no.” Raising his hands for a moment as if trying to seize hold of something that would make it all better, he was finally left to lamely repeat, “I’m sorry, man.”
“I can’t believe this,” Scott finally managed, “especially out of you, of all people! I thought you were my friend!”
Jake was saved from having to answer that one when Joe Bob stepped forward and pointed his own finger at Scott, who was just rising from the ground.
“Don't you even start that shit, not over her! He is your friend! He's the one who's stood by you your whole life! As a matter of fact, he's the one who jumped in and saved your sorry ass when you fell in the river that time, and he damned near drowned himself doing it! He admitted what he did because he was your friend; if he wasn't, he never would have said anything. Ain't a friend allowed one screw-up?”
“Not with my Becky!”
“Oh yeah? Then what about my Teresa last year? Remember her? Me and her were going together too, but that didn't stop you from pouring the meat to her when Mom packed my ass off to church camp for two weeks! I notice you never admitted to it, either!” Scott opened his mouth to speak, but Joe Bob cut him off. “And don’t you even try to deny it, you sanctimonious little shit! She told me all about it the day we broke up!”
“But...but...why didn’t you say something?”
What the hell was I supposed to say? Congratulations on screwing my girlfriend, Scott; was she any good?” Flicking his hand aside as if tossing something unpleasant but inconsequential away, he said, “What’s done is done. Besides, I reckon I would have probably done the same thing if I had gotten the chance, so what the hell? At least, I ain’t gonna be a hypocrite like some people.”
“But...weren’t you mad?”
“Hell yeah I was mad; I was mad at Teresa. She was the one I was going with, not you, and as far as I'm concerned, she's the one who messed up. She was the one with the commitment; you were just like the rest of us: some horny guy with a hard-on looking for a piece of ass to stick it into. We are what we are, I reckon; it don't mean nothing.”
Jake was shocked; he had known Joe Bob for a long time; they had been virtually inseparable, and yet he had just discovered a new depth to his friend that he had never suspected.
“Sorry,” Scott mumbled, shamefaced.
“It’s alright, man; shit happens.” He grinned. “The bitch was too damned mouthy anyway.”
“Thanks,” Scott mumbled before turning to Jake. “Just don’t do it again, alright?”
“I won’t,” Jake assured him. “I didn’t intend to do it that time. It just...happened.”
“Alright then,” Scott said, resuming his seat on the log beside Jake, followed by Joe Bob. Reaching down, he recovered what he could of the remains of his food and drink. “I reckon I’ll forgive her, and just not say anything about it,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to either of them. “I mean, she was drunk and all...”
Jake looked over Scott’s head to Joe Bob, who half-shrugged and turned both palms up in defeat. They had done what they could, but their friend was determined to hang on.
“Yeah, man,” Jake sighed, “she was drunk.”
Scott nodded, satisfied, and proceeded to pick all the bits of forest litter he could off his sandwich.
Jake had just taken another drink, and found it strangely tasteless, when Joe Bob grinned and nonchalantly said, “I always said it was those quiet, responsible ones you had to watch out for.”
Jake glared at him.
“Shut the hell up, Joe Bob!”
Scott didn’t raise his head or look at either one of them, and his voice sounded very tired.
“Let’s just change the subject, alright?”
“That sounds like a damned good idea to me!” Jake said with some heat.
Joe Bob, aren't you coming? I need you!
Joe Bob started at the sultry, pleading voice ringing inside his head, visibly struggled with what he was about to say for just a moment, and then went with it.
“Alright, then; I’ve got a subject for you. Why don’t you tell us how come you dragged us all way the hell up to Little Back anyway? We've never hunted this area before.” He paused, thinking. “Come to think of it, I don't know anybody who has.”
Jake shrugged unconvincingly, and his answer sounded insincere, even in his own ears.
“No reason; I just felt like coming over here.”
“Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter, buddy; you had a reason.”
“Yeah,” Scott broke in, livening up a little and showing real interest. “Why did you insist we come clear over here today?”
Jake’s eyes turned toward the forest floor, refusing to look at them. He was even more embarrassed by this than by his revelation of a moment ago.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“I think I just might,” he heard Scott say.
“Yeah, come on, Jake,” Joe Bob encouraged, “Tell us.” He looked at Scott. “We’ve all been keeping way too many secrets from each other lately, and we’ve been friends too long for that crap.”
Finally, Jake raised his head and looked at them defiantly
“I dreamed about it, alright? I've had dreams about Little Back Mountain for better than two weeks now, and I thought maybe it was an omen or something, you know?” Still unable to force himself to reveal everything, he added, “I thought we might find some deer here.”
“Or the girl, maybe?”
Joe Bob’s expression when he spoke was dead serious for once, and Scott actually looked frightened when Jake asked, “How did you know that?”
“Because I’ve been having the same dream.”
Scott swallowed hard before admitting, “Yeah, me too. I’ve been dreaming about her for awhile now.”
Jake scanned their faces, waiting for the punch line, only to see no sign of it.
“Look, guys, don’t mess with me!”
“Ain’t nobody messing,” Joe Bob told him firmly. “I ain't never seen more than the outline of her in the dark, but she keeps calling me, asking me to come to her. She’s got the most beautiful voice...and...” his voice turned dreamy, “she wants me.”
Scott nodded his agreement.
“That's the same thing that happened to me in my dream. I couldn't see her, but was really intense. And...it’s not just the dreams.”
“You’ve heard her too, haven’t you? Today, I mean?” Jake asked.
“Yeah.”
“Me too,” Joe Bob said. “I can't get her voice out of my head; I’ve heard her at least a dozen times already since we left the truck. In fact, she was calling out to me just a second ago.”
Scott stroked his chin nervously.
“That’s funny; I didn’t hear calling to you, but I heard my name. It's like she's right beside me, whispering in my ear.”
“Same here,” Jake told them, “but the only name I’ve heard is mine.” Shaking his head, he said, “Man, this is just too weird!”
&n
bsp; Joe Bob looked at him steadily.
“What do you think it means, Jake? You're supposed to be the brains of this sorry-ass outfit.”
“I don’t know. I just know we’re meant to be here for some reason; hell, we’ve been called here, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Maybe we ought to be heading back,” Scott suggested, nervously licking his lips, his voice tight, but Jake shook his head.
“No way, not now. We’ve come this far, so lets take it all the way, at least to this side of Little Back. I want to know why this is happening.”
“Me too,” Joe Bob said.
“Yeah, but...” he began, but Jake cut him off.
“But nothing. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering about it, not sleeping, and hearing voices in my head, and I’ve got the feeling that’s just what we’ll do if we don’t stick this out.”
“Yeah, but it’s just so weird!”
“Hey, we’re together, and you know what that means: The Three Musketeers. Remember what we used to say when we were kids?”
Scott managed a nervous grin.
“All for one...”
“And one for freaking all!” Joe Bob finished with an exuberant shout, bringing a smile to Jake’s face as he rose to his feet.
“Rock and roll! Now come on!” He slapped Scott on the shoulder. “The day's still young, and we haven't even reached the foot of Little Back yet.”
“Besides,” Joe Bob put in, “if there's a girl out here somewhere good enough for me to dream about for weeks, I damned sure want to meet her!”
Both his friends laughed at that, and Jake shook his head in mock astonishment.
“Don’t you ever think about anything besides pussy?”
“Not when I can help it! Now lets go; time's a-wasting.” Suddenly inspired, he began singing, and gyrating to the beat. “I want a dream lover, so I don’t have to dream alone.” The attempt may have been of Elvis Presley covering the old Bobby Darin tune, but the vocals and the wildly exaggerated hip movements could only have resembled the King if he had been drunk and in the middle of an epileptic seizure brought on by an overdose of Viagra. Jake slapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t quit your day job there, Elvis.”
The laughter finally broke their dark mood, but perhaps their decision deserved as much credit. All of them knew their time together was short, but once more, maybe for one last time, they were The Three Musketeers of Morgan’s Knob in West-by-God-Virginia, and it was all for one and one for all again. They had made their decision together, and there was no more point in worrying about it; they’d stick this one out come hell or high water. They also felt a strong sense of satisfaction that emanated from somewhere other than them.
Leaving their food scraps behind for the animals, they stuffed their trash in their pockets, picked up their rifles, and resumed their hunt.
Chapter 9
The voices that had been calling them maintained their silence now, allowing them to concentrate on their hunting, and the boys found the buck not fifteen minutes later. Jake spotted the deer first, or rather pieces of it, moving through the thick underbrush: a bit of gray here, a flash of white there, patches as small as a man’s palm when seen through the gaps in the leaves, yet belonging to an animal weighing well over three hundred pounds. The most impressive part of him was his rack, the only part that could be clearly seen over top of a stand of laurel. The whitetail was atypical, his fighting antlers thick at the base and coming to more points than Jake could count from where he stood, each one polished and honed on handy trees. There was no question; this was the buck of anybody's lifetime. It was upwind from them, close enough that Jake could smell of his thick rutting musk on the breeze.
When Jake froze, he held his open hand out low to one side, fingers spread, bringing his fiends to an instant halt. Joe Bob slowly craned his neck to look over Jake’s shoulder, and his mouth dropped open at the size of the beast. It took Scott several seconds, but he finally spotted it too, and his reaction was same.
Carefully, their motions slow like thick sorghum, they raised their rifles, waiting for a target. The brush was too thick to shoot through with any hope of accuracy, leaving their quarry’s body protected for the moment. All that was exposed was his massive head, and none of them was about to attempt a shot that might ruin such a magnificent trophy. They waited, hoping the animal’s movements would bring him out in the clear for just long enough to squeeze the trigger.
The buck ducked his head back down to graze, disappearing except for the faint sounds of his hooves, and his antlers pushing through the brush as he moved off to the left, quartering away from them to their left, still unaware of their presence.
Jake turned to look at his friends, his eyes intense, the voices that had led them there momentarily forgotten in the consuming, atavistic spirit of the hunt. He naturally took the lead; he always had, without thinking about it, and the others had come to expect it and had always followed that lead. With hand gestures and silent movements of his lips, exaggerated to make their unspoken words easy to read.
Scott, you stay here. Joe Bob, move as far as you can to the left, but make sure you can still see Scott. I’ll go farther left, just where I have you in sight, then we’ll all start forward, slow and quiet, and head towards him. Keep each other in sight, so nobody gets shot by accident. First one sees the chance tags him; just make damned sure you’ve got a clear shot, because we’ll only get one chance. If you see him running, sing out to the one he’s heading towards.
Scott nodded his understanding, his eyes bright with excitement, and Joe Bob’s teeth were bared with intensity. Jake tightly grinned his approval. This was more than a once in a lifetime thing – ninety-nine percent of hunters would never even see one like this in their lives – and there was no room for error. All of them wanted it so bad it hurt, but which one of them got it wasn’t nearly important as one of them doing it. They were The Three Musketeers, and it would be their victory, belonging to all of them, not just to the one who got the shot. All for one and one for all; if this was their last hunt together, then by God, this would be a fitting end to it, and one none of them would ever forget as long as they lived.
All three were experienced hunters, and knew how to move in the woods. Every boot was set down lightly, feeling through the sole for the twig that could snap and give them away; every branch carefully moved out of the way rather than allowed to slide noisily across cloth, and every movement timed whenever possible with the increasingly strong and frequent gusts of wind that whooshed and rustled through the rhododendron leaves and hemlock boughs, masking their steps. Now and then they paused, and could hear the occasional sound of the deer moving ahead of them: sounds that got closer and closer as they narrowed the distance.
Without warning, the wind abruptly shifted, blowing their scent directly at the buck. In an instant, his head popped up, and he was looking at Jake from only thirty feet away. The antlers tossed, nostrils flared and snorted, and muscles instantly tensed as the deer dropped into a crouch before springing into the heavy brush just as the boy shouldered his rifle. Jake couldn’t get a shot, but heard the noise of the plunging animal turning and cutting back toward his right.
“Look out, Joe Bob!” He shouted, “He’s coming your way!”
Joe Bob already had his rifle on the way up, but could see no more than a brief flash of brown between the leaves and branches of the undergrowth, and he yelled for his buddy.
“Get him, Scott! Here he comes!”
Scott aimed at a clear patch just as the deer came crashing through it. Like all of them, he knew how to shoot, and led the animal slightly, and his finger was tightening on the trigger when the girl’s voice screamed shrilly, almost painfully, in his ear.
Scott!
He flinched slightly, twitching the muzzle as the .30-30 went off with a sharp crack. Sick with certainty he had missed, he was surprised when the buck’s legs splayed and tangled with one another, and he
fell, disappearing into the brush.
“I got him! I got him!”
Heedless of the noise now, Jake and Joe Bob came on the run.
“Where is he?”
In answer to Jake’s question, Scott excitedly pointed.
“There! He fell right in that patch of laurel by that big hemlock!”
All of them looked carefully, but failed to see the deer. Of course, that wasn’t unusual; the gray-brown coat blended into the leaves well, as they were designed to do.
“Alright,” Jake said. “Let’s spread out and mosey over that way. Be ready to shoot in case he jumps up.”
They made their way over, but their caution was unnecessary. There was no sign of the deer.
“You missed!” Joe Bob accused him, completely and righteously pissed off by the missed opportunity.
“I didn’t miss! I saw him fall, right here!”
“Well he must have got up again, because he’s sure as hell not here now. I still say you missed!”
“I didn’t miss! I’m a good shot!”
“You couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle!”
“Damn it, I hit him!”
Ignoring their arguing, Jake carefully scanned the ground. The leaves were disturbed, showing their wet undersides, and in a couple of places exposing the black forest loam. Spotting a blot of crimson, he squatted and touched it before bringing his finger and thumb close to his face, rubbing them back and forth as he started intently.
Damn it!
“You hit him, alright,” he said flatly, carefully without inflection or accusation, “He’s gut-shot.”
Still stinging from his argument with Joe Bob, Scott asked defensively, “How do you know?”
Jake raised his arm, offering his red stained digits, the scarlet liquid studded with coarse particles.
“The blood’s dark red, and it’s got pieces of chewed-up grass in it. You hit him right in the belly.”
“Damn it, Scott...” Joe Bob began, and Scott interrupted, whining, “I couldn’t help it! He was running!”
“He was running, alright! Now he’ll run all over the damned county!”