by Kate Manning
“You’re going hunting with us tomorrow, right Mom?” he said, goading. “We’re going out for whitetail.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Hattie said.
“C’mon, Mom!” Milo said, and poked her in the ribs. “It’s buck season.”
“The day I go hunting,” Hattie said, “is the day pigs fly.” She went into the kitchen with a pretend scowl, trying to disguise the look of smitten indulgence on her face.
They made me jealous, the way they all liked each other, joking around. My brothers—none of us—would dare tease our mother that way.
“We’re going hunting?” I asked.
“You bet,” Milo said. “A-hunting we will go. Dad’s coming.”
“I wasn’t aware,” said Mr. Robicheaux, from his chair, “of such a plan.”
“That’s because I just made the plan,” Milo said. “You need to get out and bag a whitetail!”
“All right,” he said. “I’d enjoy that.” Clearly both Milo’s parents were among the many victims of his charm.
“Are you a hunter, Miss Halsey?” he asked me.
“Not me,” I said. “I’m a gatherer.”
He smiled at that, and it was his son’s smile now, so maybe, I thought, the father might soften toward me someday.
“I’ve never been hunting,” I said.
“Tomorrow’s your chance then,” he said.
“Oh, Charlotte will never come,” Milo said. “She likes to sleep late.”
“No, I’d like to try,” I said.
“You won’t like it. It’ll be cold.”
“So what?” I said.
“Four A.M., Charlotte,” he said. “Heavy gear. Guns. Ugly boots.”
“She doesn’t have to carry gear,” Mr. Robicheaux said.
“I can carry whatever I’m supposed to carry,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
The more Milo tried to talk me out of it, the more determined I became. To be honest, I didn’t want to go hunting, I was revolted just to think of it. But it bugged me, Milo saying I would never go. And I certainly couldn’t stay at home not helping Hattie all day. Sit sit.
“I’m going,” I said.
“Atta girl,” Milo said. He found and cleaned and polished his gun, excited and humming. “You can use Dad’s old rifle,” he said. “Right, Dad? Charlotte can use the Remington?”
“Sure, son.”
“I don’t think I’ll be needing a gun,” I said. “I’m just hunting. Not actually shooting.”
“The only kind of shooting Charlotte knows about,” Milo said, “is: click, click.” He winked his eye like a camera shutter. “Charlotte’s a big-time fashion model.”
“So you said.” Mr. Robicheaux got up and put his pipe away. “See you first thing.” He went to the kitchen with his wife so neither of them, I thought, would have to watch the two of us, climbing the curving staircase hand in hand, up to the second floor.
Milo’s room was a boy’s room. Ships and snails, rocks, posters, trophies, a closet full of mitts and bats. What you’d expect, except for the little sayings. In between some snapshots, about a dozen slips of paper were stuck up on the bulletin board, each one typed up like something out of a fortune cookie.
Man is the origin of his action.
—Aristotle
Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle.
—Michelangelo
There is no such force as the force of a man determined to rise.
—W. E. B. Du Bois
Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.
—Muhammad Ali
“Where’d these come from?”
“Various places. My father mostly. My sister sent me some of them. The Ali one I cut from the newspaper.”
“You were sweet,” I said.
“Not goddamn sweet.”
“You had a part in your hair!” I said, looking at his yearbook picture. “You had a little necktie!” He growled at me but he was smiling, pushing the twin beds together into one big bed, the wooden wheels scraping and shuddering on the floorboards so I kept saying Shhhh!! and he kept saying Why don’t you relax, why don’t you?
Not long after we turned out the light, I realized that something I needed was in my purse, and that my purse was downstairs in the kitchen, and there was nothing to be done but to go down and get it. I put jeans on under my nightgown, which, to put it mildly, was unsuitable for going down to the kitchen. But once I got out on the back stairs landing, I heard them talking, whispering, really.
Drink this, you’ll feel better.
Both tablets?
Yes.
Don’t know what’s wrong. Indigestion probably.
Not surprised.
Don’t know what he could be thinking.
Not thinking.
Thinking with his you know what is what.
A woman like that.
Well, now, Hattie, let’s aim for fairness.
All right, you’re right. Let’s aim.
Here there was a silence, till Milo’s father finally spoke.
She’s going out with us tomorrow. Said she’s game.
Fair enough, his mother said. Maybe she has some kind of gumption.
Maybe.
He’d like that, she said. Then: You have to drink it all, Milton, you can’t get away with just half.
All right, all right.
It will be all right.
You think?
I do.
He’s a good boy, Hattie.
Then the sound of the TV. I was shocked, standing there on the stairs for the longest time. I liked them. I was doing my best! What else could I do? I tried to calm down. Tried to remind myself I was the first girl Milo ever brought home. I tried to aim for fairness.
“Milo.” I shook him awake.
“Hmm. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I said, but he knew, he said later, that I was bothered. “You have to go downstairs for me.” I made him go get my purse. I heard him downstairs, mumbling something, laughing, kissing his parents.
“Night, Mom, night, Dad.”
“Night.”
“Night, my Milie.”
Milie. Whatever she thought of me, I liked that she called him that, My Milie.
“Hey, Milie,” I said under the covers. “Hey, you little Milie.”
He growled at me. “Don’t call me that.” But I could see he liked it.
“You don’t have to go hunting,” he said.
“I’m going,” I said.
Milo’s father was waiting for us in the car at five in the morning, the engine running, a cloud of exhaust escaping into the dark. I got in the back and watched them load gear in the headlights, their breath steaming above the beams. It was an old routine with them. Clearly I was making a huge mistake, would get in the way, bring bad luck the way a woman on a ship made it sink. But to change your mind was womanly. It lacked gumption. Moreover, it was too late to turn back. Mr. Robicheaux got behind the wheel, Milo up front next to him. We drove for a while and parked off a dirt road. The weak daylight revealed brown woods full of scrub and occasional stands of pine, in hilly country. We climbed out and began unloading gear.
“Okay, Charlotte,” Milo said, “put this on.” He handed me an orange vest like the ones he and his father were wearing.
“Oh!” I said. “Fashion!”
“That, young lady, is so you won’t be mistaken for game and shot by our fellow sportsmen,” his father said curtly.
“Right,” I said, and put it on.
“Won’t the deer spot us from miles away?” I asked. “Don’t we want some camouflage-type jacket?”
“No,” Milo’s father said. “Deer are color-blind.”
“At least someone is around here,” Milo said, straight-faced.
Milo’s father paused and allowed half a smile to play around his mouth before he laughed. Which made all of us loosen up. After a while his dad started whistling. Milo pinched me on the backside when he wasn’t looking.<
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“Okay, let’s get on with it, Charlotte,” Milo said. “No talking and follow what we do. Stay behind us.”
“Yessir,” I said, saluting him.
“Dad, you go first,” Milo commanded as we set out.
I saluted him again and kowtowed so that Milo’s dad was laughing.
“Charlotte’s worse than Bobbie,” Milo told him. “She’s a wise guy. We never should’ve brought her.”
“Well, if she loses us a trophy,” his dad said, “we’ll just have to leave her to find her own way home, the way we did with all those others.”
Their jokes at my expense made me happy for some reason.
We set out, looking for rubs, which meant antler marks on trees, looking for spoor, which meant droppings. I kept getting the giggles. “Is this spoor?” I whispered. “How about this? This looks like spoor!” But the men were apparently not amused anymore so I stopped. Milo was completely absorbed, walking silently, his gun tucked under his arm, his eyes flicking left and right. He paused often and stooped down or just listened. His father, too. They communicated by nods of the head, juts of the chin, pointing. At first it was fascinating to watch them, but mostly the hunt was boring, like golf, only without the occasional suspense of little white balls lofting up and possibly going down holes. We concentrated on holding still. Lying down would be pleasant, I thought, even in the backseat of the car, with the oily blanket and the duffel bag for a pillow. “I think I’ll just—”
“Shh!” Milo exhaled softly. He and his father were frozen still and I saw why: In the clearing was a girl-eyed buck with his head up, checking the wind. Mr. Robicheaux’s gun was up just like that and he shot him, crack, crack. Pop-gun noises.
He just fell.
My breath was stopped. “Oh dear God,” I said. The deer lay there, heaved once and shuddered so you could see its ribs rise and shake clear across the clearing.
“Got him,” his father said.
“Oh geez, Dad, that’s sweet!” Milo cried in the same breath.
“I thought he’d spook,” his father said. “Thought she’d spooked him.”
Both of them looked at me, turned away with my hand across my mouth.
“What did she think we were out here doing?” his father said. “Antiquing?” It seemed he was annoyed but it was hard to be sure. The huge buck was whiffling a little, dying in the leaves not fifty feet away from us.
“It’s okay, Charlotte,” Milo said reassuringly. “The deer’s just sleeping.” And he walked over quickly to the big animal and slit its throat. “That’s it then,” he said, beaming, and wiped his hunting knife on some leaves, put it back in its sheath, hanging from his belt.
“Yessir,” his dad said, walking over now, too. “A broadside shot.”
“He’s a good big one,” Milo said. They were both over there suddenly talking like John Wayne. “Ya hit him a good shot square on, Dad. Eight points.”
“Yep,” his father said, “an eight-point buck.”
“Look at the rack on him!” Milo said. “Nice rack!”
“We’re at least a mile from the road.”
“Yeah,” Milo said. “Dress him here.” He came back over to me and asked was I all right.
“You just … killed it?” I asked.
“Dad pretty much killed it. I euthanized it.”
“Miss Halsey, would you prefer to go back to the car?” Mr. Robicheaux called to us from where he stood over the deer.
“Maybe you should, Charlotte,” Milo said.
“No, I said I’d come. So.”
“Okay,” Milo said.
“You’ll have to show me, you know, what to do, skin it or whatever.”
“Atta girl,” Milo said, beaming.
“I think maybe we should walk her back,” his dad said.
“No!” Milo said. “She said she’d stay. She said she’ll help.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ll try it.”
His father didn’t say anything. They began to dress the deer. With my teeth grit, I got through it, basically by pretending to be a pioneer woman traveling in a covered Conestoga wagon like the one my ancestors rode in my imagination to California, enduring unbearable hardship without showers, getting malaria and dysentery, losing the trail, and of course, having to hunt. I had no problem, like some professional colleagues I could mention, with wearing fur or eating meat. These all seemed the natural order of things to me, and I didn’t see why I should pretend otherwise simply because my food came from restaurants. Somewhere somebody had to kill it.
What bothered me was the warmth of the deer. How, even with the heavy gloves they gave me to wear, I could feel the live, ebbing temperature of the animal. It made me nauseous. But I helped them. I asked them to show me what to do. Milo was impressed. “Bobbie would never do this. Wouldn’t even try,” he said. Who could blame her? I thought. It was a messy business. The men knew what they were doing, how to gut, how to skin, how to section the haunches. Milo’s knife worked easily under the hide, between the bones and through sinews. He knew his way around with a knife.
Milo’s mother came out to the car as we drove in. “You got your buck, then,” she said, eyeing the deer strapped to the roof. “How was it?”
Meaning, I thought, how did the fashion model deal with all the blood?
“Charlotte did fine,” Milo told her. “She was great.” He and his dad went to wash up for breakfast.
“How was it, really?” Hattie asked.
“To be quite honest,” I said, “I didn’t care for it.”
“No,” she said, “it’s nothing I’d enjoy, either. Come on, have some breakfast.”
“I don’t think I’m really hungry,” I said. “Not right now.”
“Are you all right?” she asked, a crease of worry on her face.
“Yes,” I said. But I pictured again the way the deer went down, the look on its face, and my eyes teared up.
“Oh, my,” she said, “I worried about this.” She put her arm around me and held it there awkwardly for a second.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You did your best,” she said. “And that’s all you can do, right?”
“I hope so.”
“That’s what I always told my kids: Do your best.” Then she smiled brightly. “And after that: just don’t think about it! Because, you know, the venison is quite delicious in a stew, so I simply don’t think about the rest.”
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t, either.”
She told me later that her heart softened to me a little that morning, seeing me try, but hating the whole thing, same as she did. Maybe she saw something about me she hadn’t seen at first, hadn’t expected. I hoped so anyway, even as I saw something about her, about Milo and his family, that reminded me in a strange way of my own: how you just don’t think about whatever it is that’s bothering you. You put it out of your mind. I wonder now if that was a lesson we all learned much too well, me especially.
14.
We left New Hampshire early on Sunday afternoon. Milo was driving like he was at the helm of the Batmobile, tapes cranked so loud the car was throbbing. “So my parents liked you,” he said.
“Not entirely,” I said, but smiled. “They think I’m a floozy.”
“You were great,” he said. “You were fine.”
“But I heard them talking about me,” I said.
“They worry,” he said, and told me his father had said something the first afternoon, out by the woodpile. Son, you’re not thinking, son. You are asking for trouble, you know that. This is what Mr. Robicheaux told Milo, out of my hearing. We taught you to be proud of yourself, who you are. Your mother is a beautiful woman, Milo. Your sister is.
“So, what you’re saying,” I said, “is they actually hate me.”
“They’ll get over it,” he said.
I checked to see if he meant that, but he was fooling with the controls, the window washer and the airflow, and didn’t look at me.
“You have to under
stand, Charlotte. My parents are proud of me, but I’m not completely what they had in mind.”
“No, that’s my parents,” I said. “You’re confused.”
“Mine, too.”
“How can you not be everything they had in mind?”
“For one: They were furious with me when I left school for a sport. A sport!? they said. You think you can make your way in this life off a game? Out of playing?” He was imitating his mother now, I could tell. “No son of mine will be a college dropout.”
“We had big fights. They were livid,” he said. “Since I was supposed to be summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Ph.D. like my sister. A doctor or a lawyer or president or king. My mother had apoplexy. My father said, You make your bed, son, you lie in it.”
“Poor Milo.”
“Poor Milo my ass,” he said. “I never minded lying in any of the beds I made for myself.”
“Funny,” I said. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Well, they came around,” he said. “They always do.”
I thought about that, hoping not to be some kind of exception to the rule.
We hit a traffic snarl outside Bridgeport. I-95 was a red glitter of taillights stretching ahead in the skeleton dusk of October. A jackknifed tractor trailer, the radio explained. The cars were inching. Milo was restless and irked. He had a big story to do the next day, about advances in arthro-scopic knee surgery, a subject he knew well. He would be interviewing Joe Namath and his own personal doctors. He drummed his fingers on the wheel, opened his door, got out, stood on the pavement and craned his neck to see where the trouble was. I said, “There’s nothing we can do about it.” But he was anxious to get home. Five in the afternoon already. He gassed the engine in neutral for thirty minutes and idled along. Finally he pulled onto the shoulder, passing everyone on the right and careening down an exit ramp for a shortcut he was sure he’d find.
The road off the exit ran along parallel to the highway, past weedy lots and ramshackle buildings, no traffic lights. Milo grinned at me when he saw it was empty of cars. “Ahh, sweet,” he said, and floored it. “We’ll be home in time for supper.” The way he said it was cute, like Dorothy Gale, from Kansas.
Then we heard the siren.