by Jim Harrison
Joseph felt sluggish looking at the carcasses. They were scattered around the clearing and he hoped he wouldn't find more. In former times he would have acted more quickly, even to the point of riding out at night and firing into the air. He felt weak and stooped near a doe to catch his breath. He touched one of her eyes and found it frozen solid. He rubbed his hands along her frozen stomach which no doubt held a fawn. He was not so much disgusted with the dogs as he was with the people who didn't take care of them.
When he got back to the house he called the game warden and discussed what to do, though a plan had already been forming in his mind. The game warden offered his help but Joseph insisted that he could take care of it. That night he set the alarm for two hours before dawn and told his mother that he would probably be back soon after daylight. There had always been a number of feral dogs around but he had never seen one in daylight, only their tracks in snow or sand. Years before they had lost three sheep and had sat up the night after waiting for the dogs to return, but against his advice Carl had insisted on taking a thermos of coffee which on a cold night could be smelled by any mammal a mile away. And the doctor had been frightened while fishing the Pine River to see a row of large rather gaunt-looking dogs watching him from a clay bank in a particularly wild area. When they followed him downstream he had been alarmed enough to call the game warden in Manistee who said nothing could be done about the dogs in the large forests. When the dogs were contained in a smaller swamp the local hunters would try to drive them out once a winter and shoot them. Joseph suspected that many of the predations blamed on coyotes were in fact caused by feral dogs. He had never met a farmer who could tell the difference between coyote and dog tracks.
When the alarm went off and he dressed in the dark he was happy to see that the moon was shining bright and clear. He picked up his rifle and cattle blanket in the pump shed but was a little disturbed when he stepped into the barnyard to see how still the night was—not even the faintest breeze to cover any noise he might make. He had lost to the stillness the advantage he would have had by approaching that neck of the swamp downwind. He tied an old gun strap to the blanket and set off across the frozen ice and fresh snow as if he were going to sow oats by hand.
It took an hour to reach the place he had in mind but it proved to be too far back in the poplars from the clearing to afford clear shooting. He crawled closer and unpacked and spread the blanket behind a log that would make a steady rest for the rifle. The neck of the swamp protruded into the clearing where two of the carcasses lay. He hoped they would be hungry enough to feed off the frozen carcasses but doubted it. Fresh game was easy this time of year when the severity of February weather made the deer the easiest mark conceivable. The deer population had been unusually high with all the food available in the new growth that had sprung up after several cuttings of timber for lumber and pulp. Their numbers increased vastly if there was a succession of two or three light winters.
Lying there waiting Joseph felt a sharp pang of loneliness for Carl who had been dead ten years. It was strange how one could go along for weeks, months even, feeling nothing and then something would set the grief off again in a wave. Now it was the cattle blanket beneath him. They had always spread their lunch on it when ice fishing and if it was cold and windy enough they would make a small lean-to out of a tarpaulin. So he would be happy to be here tonight, only I would have to keep him from drinking his coffee or even Guckenheimer, the smell of which is far stronger.
The first baying of the hound shocked him and he looked around wildly trying to get relocated after his reverie. He shivered and strained his eyes toward the far edge of the clearing and the dark wall of trees. There wasn't enough light to see his watch but he had followed the path of the moon as it passed through the spare contorted branches of beech and figured it must be close to dawn. Then the hound bayed again, sounding closer this time, and a bluejay screeched, disturbed from sleep. Another dog barked, then yelped, and he heard a thrashing in the brush. There must be at least two of them, he thought, blowing on his cold hands and noticing he could see them better than before. There was a pale tinge in the east and the first hint of a breeze a little warmer against his face than the night air had been. He heard more thrashing in the brush across the clearing as if an animal were wheeling and circling in the same place. Now as the prey was cornered the hound's baying turned to a steady yelping and there was deeper snarling from another dog.
Joseph wiped the moisture from the scope of his rifle and sighted at the noise. He saw the tip of a tag alder sway and then the deer suddenly broke into the clearing, breathing deep and hoarsely with fumes of steamlike vapor coming from her mouth and nose in the cold morning air. He put the deer in the crosshairs of his scope. She was dragging a hind leg and began bleating like a sheep, as badly wounded deer sometimes do. He repressed an urge to shoot her and relieve her misery. Then the first of the dogs entered the clearing and he was surprised to see it was a spaniel he recognized from several miles away near the lake. He sighted on the spaniel's yipping head as the dog approached the deer as if pointing a bird, but then the hound sprang into the clearing with an even larger dog that resembled a German shepherd. The deer faced them with no resolution. The scope was misting from his breath and he wiped it. He flicked the safety and shot the shepherd in the neck and hit the startled hound in the chest as it stared at the source of the first shot. The spaniel raced across the clearing and Joseph swung on it but changed his mind. He lacked the heart to shoot a bird dog. He swung back on the shepherd lying still in the snow, then on the hound who was quivering. He shot the hound again and it lay still. Joseph was startled to see the deer standing there with head raised, breathing heavily as if nothing had happened. Then she swung her head and stumbled back into the woods. He was sweating and exhausted as he walked back to the house.
Joseph tried to imagine a time when Michigan wasn't a game farm for hunters, when the natural predators, the puma, wolf, coyote, and lynx still lived there. And the Indian. Not man hunting for sport and his house pets gone wild and utterly destructive. But this wave passed and he was swept back into memory seeing the farm in the distance in the dawn light with a trail of drifting smoke coming from the chimney over the kitchen wood stove. What pleasure it had been when company came in winter. He and his sisters would talk excitedly company is coming and they would get up early to make the house sparkle. It was usually on Sunday and they would go to church in the morning then come home and wait in their best clothes for the relatives and their children to arrive. Sometimes it was the doctor and his pale wife, who died soon after Joseph's accident without having borne any children.
Rosealee's mood did not improve. One evening late in March Joseph promised to take her to the movies at the county seat. It was Friday and ordinarily they did something together to celebrate the end of the school week. Joseph drove over the frozen mud ruts of her driveway with a sort of energyless foreboding. He had spent the hour after school and before dinner in the car with Catherine. She had said that she had to talk to him and couldn't wait, which left him giddy throughout the afternoon over the idea she might be pregnant. When he read poems aloud last hour he stumbled over his favorites; “swollen streams” became a seventeen-year-old girl's pale swollen stomach. Oh my God, he thought, with the guilty urge to head for a far place, some island in the ocean. Zanzibar would be ideal, at least the National Geographic rendition.
But his premonitions had proven false. Catherine had only announced that she intended to go to drama school and hadn't decided on New York or Chicago. Joseph could have strangled her because they had never met in daylight without the horse ruse. After she asked for his opinion and got only his silence and a sigh of relief she reached for his trousers. He stopped her hand, wanting to drive a little farther on the forest road if it wasn't too muddy from the thaw or if there were no drifts left to form barriers.
“You scared me.” He gunned the car through a puddle of slush. She raised her eyebrows. “I thought
you might be pregnant.”
“I wear a diaphragm, silly.” She pulled his ear, then began giggling. Soon she was laughing hysterically and this distracted him enough to get the car stuck in a rut. He told her to shut up, and rocked the car gently out of the mud.
“How about that first time. Did you have it on then? I mean in October?” He backed the car into what looked like a safe, dry place. He often parked here grouse hunting and for a few moments he wished he were grouse hunting and had never met Catherine.
“Why should I tell you?” She began laughing again. She knelt on the seat, raised her skirt, and deftly took off her panties, slipping them backward over her shoes. He always wondered how she could manage this act so gracefully. Perhaps there had been many rehearsals.
“I just wanted to know. I don't want to play the fool.” He brushed her hand away. “I'm not doing anything until you tell me.” He lit a cigarette.
“OK you grouchy bastard. Yes I was wearing it then. My mother had me fitted for one in Atlanta when I was sixteen. When I first saw you in class I knew you loved the arts as much as I did and I was lonely and I liked the way you looked. So that Saturday I saddled the horse, then remembered you had at least looked at me in a funny way a few times, so I went back in the house and put it in in case you might want to make love to me. Satisfied?”
Suddenly Joseph began laughing and his bad mood evaporated out a crack in the steaming windows. “You must be the only girl in the county that's got one. Where is it?” He was curious about what they looked like.
“Inside me, dummy!” She pressed his hand against her.
Now in Rosealee's driveway with a fine sleet ticking off the window he dreaded the evening. His ailing mother had roasted a chicken and he had eaten the whole thing, stuffing and all, plus a monstrous drink. He frankly needed a nap and feared the night's activities closing in. Friday was their special evening on the parlor couch while her son Robert wandered around in town. Her aged mother-in-law slept in the bedroom above the parlor but she was nearly deaf. Once they had made love during the boxing matchs, the Friday night fights on the flickering television. Chico Vejar versus Chuck Davey. Rosealee never permitted lights on and the blue light from the TV was sexual. He found himself slipping on the porch then stumbling in the door.
“You're going to break your neck. Is it icy? What were you doing out in the car?”
“Thinking. Yes, it's slippery.” His last idle thought had been why Catherine wanted to do it so often. She could talk about poetry one moment and the next she'd be hissing and groaning.
“Maybe we shouldn't drive to the movies. What do you think?”
Joseph looked around the big living room. It always hopelessly reminded him of Orin. The house was large and solid, much better than the house he lived in. Orin's father had been bitter about his wife's bearing only one child. Joseph's dad would console him with the fact that he got only daughters and God had injured his son's leg. Sometimes Orin and Joseph would sit on the tavern porch on Saturday afternoons and try to overhear their fathers. They both knew that Orin's dad had a girl friend and thought it very mysterious.
Rosealee waved her hands in front of his eyes, startling him. “What's wrong with you?”
“Maybe I got the flu.” He sat down heavily.
“You've had the flu for months. You're acting strange and I don't think it's your mother.” Her arms were folded and her voice bleak.
“It's a change of life.” Joseph spoke calmly. “Men my age go through a change of life. They know they're going to die without doing what they wanted. I read an article about it.”
“Oh, bullshit!” She was angry. “What do you want to do other than screw a movie star like everybody else?”
Joseph laughed. Rosealee never swore unless she was extremely upset. Now her eyes flashed. But more sadly, he thought, she sensed he was slipping away from her after so long.
“What do I want to do? I want to spend some time on the ocean. In a boat and swimming. Where it's warm and there are no people, no students, only fish and water. I don't want to teach any more but that decision's been made. So I want to spend a few years around the ocean just reading and drinking and fishing.”
“You really are a dumb Swede.” Her voice was softer, sensing that he was acting very odd and serious. She went into the kitchen and got him his glass of bourbon and water without ice.
“I also want to fuck you in the broad daylight.” His voice tightened and his eyes looked at her unsteadily. He had never used the word in her presence. “I'm tired of fucking you in the dark Friday and Sunday nights and sometimes on Wednesday. I want to fuck you with all the lights on or in broad daylight doing everything I ever thought of.”
“Is this what happens when a dumb Swede reads too many novels or drinks too much too long?” She tried to lighten the mood but he grabbed her arms.
“Look at me. We're forty-three and we've never fucked in the daylight let alone seen the ocean. We've been to Washington once but never New York. We've never fucked outside except we almost did thirty years ago. I think we should act different before we get old and die and it's too late. Don't you want to act differently? I'm tired of you acting like a goddamn widow. It's been six years. I'm tired of fucking a widow in the dark. I've loved you since I was thirteen.” Joseph drank his whiskey in three gulps and tried to stand but felt weak.
“I'm so sorry.” Rosealee wept. “I'm so sorry I disappoint you.”
Joseph abruptly got up and she stumbled against the chair to get out of the way. He turned on the ceiling light and three lamps. He drew the drapes and began taking off his clothes.
“Other than my leg which you've seen a hundred times while swimming, do I look so goddamn strange I have to be stuck in the dark all the time like a goddamn snake? Look at me now.”
Rosealee looked around the room fearfully, as if God were watching the scene, or her mother-in-law or dead husband.
“You're not looking and you haven't answered.” His voice rose then cracked on “answered.” He felt dizzy and for a moment wished he hadn't taken off his clothes. But it was too late to do anything but plunge on. “I want you to fuck me like you did Orin at sixteen or twenty or twenty-five. Like he told me you did. Like you and Arlice talked about, laughing all the time. I don't want to just fuck a sad widowed schoolteacher then die in the winter.”
“Oh, shut up, please shut up.” Rosealee's eyes flashed then she started crying again. “You're crazy.” She paused, feeling somehow girlish, as if she were doing something naughty in the barn or woods with Orin and they had narrowly escaped being discovered. “Let me think a minute.” She rushed into the kitchen, her head pounding. Now she did feel strangely girlish and excited. She drank from the bottle and coughed.
Joseph looked down at his stomach, member, and twisted leg. He looked odd to himself in the bright light. He heard Rosealee put down the bottle and cough. “Bring me a drink,” he yelled. “If I have to stand here all evening I may as well have a drink.” Drinking is cheap magic he thought, noticing a scratch Catherine had left on his thigh. He had asked her to trim her nails but supposed she wanted to leave a mark.
“All the way?” Rosealee came into the room in her bra and panties and handed him his drink. She stared at the floor and blushed deeply.
“Absolutely everything.” Joseph felt giddy as if he were remonstrating a pupil. “And hurry up with it.” Now that he had the upper hand totally he meant to keep it. He drank slowly and watched her unhitch her bra and toss it on the couch. Their eyes met and they both were somber. Joseph thought that she looked much more interesting than he had expected, more definite somehow than Catherine's easy nakedness, almost muscular from working hard since a young girl.
“Well here goes.” She stepped out of her panties then looked vacantly at the ceiling.
“Now we can get started,” he announced. He walked in a slow circle around her, poking here and there as one judges cattle. He was disarmed by the way her body shook with laughter.
Joseph awoke on the floor covered only partly by an afghan. The hall clock said four a.m. The ceiling light buzzed. He stretched from his cramped position and looked at Rosealee stretched out on the couch on her belly, still nude. She was snoring lightly and her back had collected some lint from the rug. Joseph stood by the couch and stared down at her bare bottom, cementing mentally what had happened hours before. He leaned down and kissed her neck, then on a sudden impulse covered her once more. She kept her eyes closed but managed to lift his weight until she reached her hands and knees.
When he finally reached home it was dawn. He had driven the three miles with the car lights out and had been startled to see four deer standing in the road. Then he turned the lights on and the deer stood for a minute transfixed as they always did. He never understood why they did this as it got them killed so often by both moving cars and the poachers, the jacklighters who aimed their rifles down the flashlight's beam. What a sleazy way to kill an animal. He regularly called the game warden when the poachers were in the area. It had once caused him some trouble when a violator got on his back in the tavern, accusing him of being responsible for his getting caught. It was a former student, now in his thirties. Joseph was playing pool with the doctor and on being pushed too far had cracked the lout hard across the knees with the cue, sending him to the floor.
Now he stood in the barnyard outside the pump shed door. The neighbor's rooster crowed and the milk truck rattled down the section road. The wind from the north that had brought the sleet the night before had switched around to the southwest and had warmed. The air had the smell of another false spring. True spring never reliably came until early May and until then it was best not to expect much from the weather. Joseph thought idly of how many years he had gotten up at dawn to do chores, or well before dawn to do the milking so he could go trout fishing. Only after summer parties had he occasionally stayed up through the night. He had never felt so exhausted and it wasn't the easeful exhaustion of having worked long and hard in the field. He noticed that his mother's bedroom light was on so he went in.