by Tobias Wolff
At the end we see the explorers sleeping in a meadow filled with white flowers. The blossoms are wet with dew and stick to their bodies, petals of columbine, clematis, blazing star, baby’s breath, larkspur, iris, rue—covering them completely, turning them white so you cannot tell one from another, man from woman, woman from man. The sun comes up. They stand and raise their arms, like white trees in a land where no one has ever been.
Hunters in the Snow
Tub had been waiting for an hour in the falling snow. He paced the sidewalk to keep warm and stuck his head out over the curb whenever he saw lights approaching. The fall of snow thickened. Tub stood below the overhang of a building. Across the road the clouds whitened just above the rooftops, and the whiteness seeped up through the sky. He shifted the rifle strap to his other shoulder.
A truck slid around the corner, horn blaring, rear end sashaying. Tub moved to the sidewalk and held up his hand. The truck jumped the curb and kept coming, half on the street and half on the sidewalk. It wasn’t slowing down at all. Tub stood for a moment, still holding up his hand, then jumped back. His rifle slipped off his shoulder, clattering on the ice, and a sandwich fell out of his pocket. The truck went careening past him and stopped at the end of the block.
Tub picked up his sandwich and slung the rifle and walked down to the truck. The driver was bent against the steering wheel, slapping his knees and drumming his feet on the floorboards. He looked like a cartoon of a person laughing. “Tub, you ought to see yourself,” he said. “You look just like a beach ball with a hat on. Doesn’t he, Frank?”
The man beside him smiled and looked off.
“You almost ran me down,” Tub said. “You could’ve killed me.”
“Come on, Tub,” said the man beside the driver. “Be mellow. Kenny was just messing around.” He opened the door and slid over to the middle of the seat.
Tub took the bolt out of his rifle and climbed in beside him. “My feet are frozen,” he said. “If you meant ten o’clock, why didn’t you say ten o’clock?”
“Tub, you haven’t done anything but complain since we got here,” said the man in the middle. “If you want to piss and moan all day you might as well go home and bitch at your kids. Take your pick.” When Tub didn’t say anything, he turned to the driver. “Okay, Kenny, let’s hit the road.”
Some juvenile delinquents had heaved a brick through the windshield on the driver’s side, so the cold and snow funneled right into the cab. The heater didn’t work. They covered themselves with a couple of blankets Kenny had brought along and pulled down the flaps on their caps. Tub tried to keep his hands warm by rubbing them under the blanket, but Frank made him stop.
They left Spokane and drove deep into the country, running along black lines of fences. The snow let up, but still there was no edge to the land where it met the sky. Nothing moved in the chalky fields. The cold bleached their faces and made the stubble stand out on their cheeks and along their upper lips. They stopped twice for coffee before they got to the woods where Kenny wanted to hunt.
Tub was for trying someplace different; two years in a row they’d been up and down this land and hadn’t seen a thing. Frank didn’t care one way or the other, he just wanted to get out of the goddamned truck. “Feel that,” he said, slamming the door. He spread his feet and closed his eyes and leaned his head back and breathed deeply. “Tune in on that energy.”
“Another thing,” Kenny said. “This is open land. Most of the land around here is posted.”
“I’m cold,” Tub said.
Frank breathed out. “Stop bitching, Tub. Get centered.”
“I wasn’t bitching.”
“Centered,” Kenny said. “Next thing you’ll be wearing a nightgown, Frank. Selling flowers out at the airport.”
“Kenny,” Frank said, “you talk too much.”
“Okay,” Kenny said. “I won’t say a word. Like I won’t say anything about a certain babysitter.”
“What babysitter?” Tub asked.
“That’s between us,” Frank said, looking at Kenny.
Kenny laughed.
“You’re asking for it,” Frank said.
“Asking for what?”
“Hey,” Tub said, “are we hunting or what?”
They started off across the field. Tub had trouble getting through the fences. Frank and Kenny could have helped him; they could’ve lifted up the top wire and stepped on the bottom wire, but they didn’t. They stood and watched him. There were a lot of fences, and Tub was puffing when they reached the woods.
They hunted for two hours and saw no deer, no tracks, no sign. Finally they stopped by the creek to eat. Kenny had several slices of pizza and a couple of candy bars; Frank had a sandwich, an apple, two carrots, and a square of chocolate; Tub ate one hard-boiled egg and a stick of celery.
“You ask me how I want to die today,” Kenny said, “I’ll tell you burn me at the stake.” He turned to Tub. “You still on that diet?” He winked at Frank.
“What do you think? You think I like hard-boiled eggs?”
“All I can say is, it’s the first diet I ever heard of where you gained weight from it.”
“Who said I gained weight?”
“Oh, pardon me. I take it back. You’re just wasting away before my very eyes. Isn’t he, Frank?”
Frank had his fingers fanned out on the stump where he’d laid his food. His knuckles were hairy. He wore a heavy wedding band and on his right pinkie another gold ring with a flat face and an “F” in what looked like diamonds. “Tub,” he said, “you haven’t seen your own balls in ten years.”
Kenny doubled over laughing. He took off his hat and slapped his leg with it.
“What am I supposed to do?” Tub said. “It’s my glands.”
They left the woods and hunted along the creek. Frank and Kenny worked one bank and Tub worked the other, moving upstream. The snow was light but the drifts were deep and hard to move through. Wherever Tub looked the surface was smooth, undisturbed, and after a time he lost interest. He stopped looking for tracks and just tried to keep up with Frank and Kenny on the other side. A moment came when he realized he hadn’t seen them in a long time. The breeze was moving from him to them; when it stilled he could sometimes hear Kenny laughing—nothing more. He quickened his pace, breasting the drifts, fighting away the snow. He heard his heart and felt the flush on his face but never once stopped.
Tub caught up with Frank and Kenny at a bend of the creek. They were standing on a log that stretched from their bank to his. Ice had backed up behind the log. Frozen reeds stuck out.
“See anything?” Frank asked.
Tub shook his head.
There wasn’t much daylight left and they decided to head back toward the road. Frank and Kenny crossed the log and they all started downstream, using the trail Tub had broken. Before they’d gone very far Kenny stopped. “Look at that,” he said, and pointed to some tracks going from the creek back into the woods. Tub’s footprints crossed right over them. There on the bank, plain as day, were several mounds of deer shit. “What do you think that is, Tub?” Kenny kicked at it. “Walnuts on vanilla icing?”
“I guess I didn’t notice.”
Kenny looked at Frank.
“I was lost.”
“You were lost. Big deal.”
They followed the tracks into the woods. The deer had gone over a fence half buried in drifting snow. A no-hunting sign was nailed to the top of one of the posts. Kenny wanted to go after him but Frank said no way, the people out here didn’t mess around. He thought maybe the farmer who owned the land would let them use it if they asked. Kenny wasn’t so sure. Anyway, he figured that by the time they walked to the truck and drove up the road and doubled back it would be almost dark.
“Relax,” Frank said. “You can’t hurry nature. If we’re meant to get that deer, we’ll get it. If we’re not, we won’t.”
They started back toward the truck. This part of the woods was mainly pine. The snow was shaded and
had a glaze on it. It held up Kenny and Frank but Tub kept falling through. As he kicked forward, the edge of the crust bruised his shins. Kenny and Frank pulled ahead of him, to where he couldn’t even hear their voices anymore. He sat down on a stump and wiped his face. He ate both his sandwiches and half the cookies, taking his own sweet time. It was dead quiet.
When Tub crossed the last fence into the road the truck started moving. He had to run for it and just managed to grab hold of the tailgate and hoist himself into the bed. He lay there, panting. Kenny looked out the rear window and grinned. Tub crawled into the lee of the cab to get out of the freezing wind. He pulled his earflaps low and pushed his chin into the collar of his coat. Someone rapped on the window but Tub wouldn’t turn around.
He and Frank waited outside while Kenny went into the farmhouse to ask permission. The house was old and paint was curling off the sides. The smoke streamed westward off the top of the chimney, fanning away into a thin gray plume. Above the ridge of the hills another ridge of blue clouds was rising.
“You’ve got a short memory,” Tub said.
“What?” Frank said. He had been staring off.
“I used to stick up for you.”
“Okay, so you used to stick up for me. What’s eating you?”
“You shouldn’t have just left me back there like that.”
“You’re a grown-up, Tub. You can take care of yourself. Anyway, if you think you’re the only person with problems I can tell you that you’re not.”
“Is something bothering you, Frank?”
Frank kicked at a branch poking out of the snow. “Never mind,” he said.
“What did Kenny mean about the babysitter?”
“Kenny talks too much,” Frank said.
Kenny came out of the farmhouse and gave the thumbs-up and they began walking back toward the woods. As they passed the barn a large black hound with a grizzled snout ran out and barked at them. Every time he barked he slid backward a bit, like a cannon recoiling. Kenny got down on all fours and snarled and barked back at him, and the dog slunk away into the barn, looking over his shoulder and peeing a little as he went.
“That’s an old-timer,” Frank said. “A real graybeard. Fifteen years if he’s a day.”
“Too old,” Kenny said.
Past the barn they cut off through the fields. The land was unfenced and the crust was freezing up thick, so they made good time. They kept to the edge of the field until they picked up the tracks again and followed them into the woods, farther and farther back toward the hills. The trees started to blur with the shadows, and the wind rose and needled their faces with the crystals it swept off the glaze. Finally they lost the tracks.
Kenny swore and threw down his hat. “This is the worst day of hunting I ever had, bar none.” He picked up his hat and brushed off the snow. “This will be the first season since I was fifteen I haven’t got my deer.”
“It isn’t the deer,” Frank said. “It’s the hunting. There are all these forces out here and you just have to go with them.”
“You go with them,” Kenny said. “I came out here to get me a deer, not listen to a bunch of hippie bullshit. And if it hadn’t been for Dimples here I would have too.”
“That’s enough,” Frank said.
“And you—you’re so busy thinking about that little jailbait of yours you wouldn’t know a deer if you saw one.”
“Drop dead,” Frank said, and turned away.
Kenny and Tub followed him back across the fields. When they were coming up to the barn Kenny stopped and pointed. “I hate that post,” he said. He raised his rifle and fired. It sounded like a dry branch cracking. The post splintered along its right side, up toward the top. “There,” Kenny said. “It’s dead.”
“Knock it off,” Frank said, walking ahead.
Kenny looked at Tub. He smiled. “I hate that tree,” he said, and fired again. Tub hurried to catch up with Frank. He started to speak but just then the dog ran out of the barn and barked at them. “Easy, boy,” Frank said.
“I hate that dog.” Kenny was behind them.
“That’s enough,” Frank said. “You put that gun down.”
Kenny fired. The bullet went in between the dog’s eyes. He sank right down into the snow, his legs splayed out on each side, his yellow eyes open and staring. Except for the blood he looked like a small bearskin rug. The blood ran down the dog’s muzzle into the snow.
They all looked at the dog lying there.
“What did he ever do to you?” Tub asked. “He was just barking.”
Kenny turned to Tub. “I hate you.”
Tub shot from the waist. Kenny jerked backward against the fence and buckled to his knees. He knelt there with his hands pressed across his stomach. “Look,” he said. His hands were covered with blood. In the dusk his blood was more blue than red. It seemed to belong to the shadows. It didn’t seem out of place. Kenny eased himself onto his back. He sighed several times, deeply. “You shot me,” he said.
“I had to,” Tub said. He knelt beside Kenny. “Oh God,” he said. “Frank. Frank.”
Frank hadn’t moved since Kenny killed the dog.
“Frank!” Tub shouted.
“I was just kidding around,” Kenny said. “It was a joke. Oh!” he said, and arched his back suddenly. “Oh!” he said again, and dug his heels into the snow and pushed himself along on his head. Then he stopped and lay there, rocking back and forth on his heels and head like a wrestler doing warm-up exercises.
“Kenny,” Frank said. He bent down and put his gloved hand on Kenny’s brow. “You shot him,” he said to Tub.
“He made me,” Tub said.
“No, no, no,” Kenny said.
Tub was weeping from the eyes and nostrils. His whole face was wet. Frank closed his eyes, then looked down at Kenny again. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere,” Kenny said, “just everywhere.”
“Oh God,” Tub said.
“I mean, where did it go in?” Frank said.
“Here.” Kenny pointed at the wound in his stomach. It was welling slowly with blood.
“You’re lucky,” Frank said. “It’s on the left side. It missed your appendix. If it had hit your appendix you’d really be in the soup.” He turned and threw up onto the snow, holding his sides as if to keep warm.
“Are you all right?” Tub said.
“There’s some aspirin in the truck,” Kenny said.
“I’m all right,” Frank said.
“For me,” Kenny said.
“We’d better call an ambulance,” Tub said.
“Jesus,” Frank said. “What are we going to say?”
“Exactly what happened,” Tub said. “He was going to shoot me but I shot him first.”
“No sir!” Kenny said. “I wasn’t either!”
Frank patted Kenny on the arm. “Easy does it, partner.” He stood. “Let’s go.”
Tub picked up Kenny’s rifle as they walked down toward the farmhouse. “No sense leaving this around,” he said. “Kenny might get ideas.”
“I can tell you one thing,” Frank said. “You’ve really done it this time. This definitely takes the cake.”
They had to knock on the door twice before it was opened by a thin man with lank hair. The room behind him was filled with smoke. He squinted at them. “You get anything?” he asked.
“No,” Frank said.
“I knew you wouldn’t. That’s what I told the other fellow.”
“We’ve had an accident.”
The man looked past Frank and Tub into the gloom. “Shoot your friend, did you?”
Frank nodded.
“I did,” Tub said.
“I suppose you want to use the phone.”
“If it’s okay.”
The man in the doorway looked behind him, then stepped back. Frank and Tub followed him into the house. There was a woman sitting by the stove in the middle of the room. The stove was smoking badly. She looked up and then down again at the child a
sleep in her lap. Her face was white and damp; strands of hair were pasted across her forehead. Tub warmed his hands over the stove while Frank went into the kitchen to call. The man who’d let them in stood at the window, his hands in his pockets.
“My friend shot your dog,” Tub said.
The man nodded without turning around. “I should have done it myself. I just couldn’t.”
“He loved that dog so much,” the woman said. The child squirmed and she rocked it.
“You asked him to?” Tub said. “You asked him to shoot your dog?”
“He was old and sick. Couldn’t chew his food anymore. I should have done it myself.”
“You couldn’t have,” the woman said. “Never in a million years.”
The man shrugged.
Frank came out of the kitchen. “We’ll have to take him ourselves. The nearest hospital is fifty miles from here and all their ambulances are out already.”
The woman knew a shortcut but the directions were complicated and Tub had to write them down. The man told them where they could find some boards to carry Kenny on. He didn’t have a flashlight but said he’d turn the porch light on.
It was dark outside. The clouds were low and heavy and the wind blew in shrill gusts. There was a screen loose on the house and it banged slowly and then quickly as the wind rose again. Frank went for the boards while Tub looked for Kenny, who was not where they had left him. Tub found him farther up the drive, lying on his stomach. “You okay?” Tub said.
“It hurts.”
“Frank says it missed your appendix.”
“I already had my appendix out.”
“All right,” Frank said, coming up to them. “We’ll have you in a nice warm bed before you can say Jack Robinson.” He put the two boards on Kenny’s right side.
“Just as long as I don’t have one of those male nurses,” Kenny said.