A Single Shot
By Matthew F Jones, Daniel WoodrellLittle, Brown and Company
Copyright © 2013 Matthew F Jones Daniel Woodrell
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-19670-3
CHAPTER 1
Sunday
Before the sun is up, John Moon has showered, drunk two cups of coffee, andchanged into his blue jeans, sweatshirt, and Timberland hiking boots. He haseaten two pieces of toast, a bowl of cereal, and put out food for his wanderingdog. Before leaving the trailer by the front door, he gets his 12-gauge shotgunand a handful of slugs from the gun cabinet off the kitchen.
The grass is damp with dew and the early-June air is heavy and already warm,promising it will be hot within a few hours. A mourning dove is cooing in a treesomewhere to John's left. Down the road, past the treeline, he hears the gentleclanging of cowbells and the lowing of Cecil Nobie's herd on its way from thepasture to Nobie's barn to be milked. The sun is just starting to peek out overthe crest of the mountain directly east of the one John lives two-thirds to thetop of.
Gazing down at the converging roads winding like miles of dusty brown carpetthrough the hollow below him, John sees a set of headlights descending the rightfork, piercing the three-quarters dark. He thinks this strange since only he andthe Nobies live on the right fork and unless there'd been an accident atNobies', in which case someone from there would likely have called John, none ofthem would be driving into town at four-thirty in the morning. John wonders ifthe vehicle might belong to a conservation officer, then decides he's beingparanoid. No green cap is going to get up before dawn to search for would-bepoachers. Thinking two teenagers must have fallen asleep parking the nightbefore, John shrugs, then starts walking up the mountain.
He hikes five hundred yards or so up to the road's end, then turns right andheads on a narrow path into a forest of pine trees on the state preserve.There's no wind and it's so quiet in the forest that, even on a soft bed of pineneedles, John's footsteps echo in his ears as if he is treading on snow. Everyfew steps, he stops, listens for several seconds, then, not hearing anything,moves on. He is looking for a ten-point buck he has seen three times in the lastweek, most recently on the previous afternoon from his back porch, where,through binoculars, he watched it graze for several minutes at the edge of thepreserve before it loped into the pines. John has figured the buck has a bedsomewhere in the pines. He has balanced in his mind the value of a hundred fiftypounds of dressed venison versus the thousand dollars in fines and possible twomonths' jail time it would cost him in the unlikely event that he is caughtshooting the deer out of season on state land, and has decided the risk is worthit.
As he approaches the far edge of the pines after which the forest turns denserwith deciduous trees and brush, in the canopy of pine boughs a crow startscawing. Several others join in. His senses suddenly heightened, John cocks theshotgun. The sharp click of the engaging mechanism increases the crows'agitation. A squirrel or a chipmunk jumps from one tree to another above him. Apinecone drops near his feet. Several smaller birds—sparrows or swallows—takeflight, slicing through the still air, before landing again.
Sensing the presence of a large animal besides himself, John cradles the gun intwo hands and starts slowly walking toward the pines' edge, where the half-risensun gives the trees' upper branches a bejeweled look. A branch suddenly snaps tohis left. Then a sound like rushing water. In one motion, John wheels toward thenoise, puts the butt of the shotgun to his shoulder, flicks off the safety, andaims at a bouncing tree limb. Just beyond the limb, he sees a tan-and-whiteflank disappearing into a patch of thistles and, above the thistles, a largerack of antlers. John fires. He hears the buck snort, sees the antlers tilt tothe right, below the level of the bushes, then rise up again, and, as he recocksthe shotgun, the deer shoot out the other side of the thistles, beyond hisrange, and disappear.
John pushes the safety in and runs toward the thistles, but before he getsthere, he stops next to a large oblong-shaped indentation in the pine needles.He kneels down, touches with his fingers the center of the spot, feels thewarmth left from the sleeping deer, even sees some of its coat lying there. Hefeels his heart loudly thumping in his chest, air rushing in and out of hisnostrils, beads of sweat rolling down from his armpits. And he can smell thebuck, the adrenal surge it's released, like John's own, pungent and harsh.
Holding the gun in one hand, he trots a half circle to the left of the thistles,doubles back on the far side, stops near where the deer came out, squats down,and sees several fresh drops of blood on the ground. So, it was wounded—probablyin the right rear flank, given the way it had pitched forward—and is headingdeeper into the woods, through thick underbrush and rough terrain, hoping totire its pursuer out.
John had hoped to down the deer with one bullet, then drag it quickly back tothe trailer, afraid that a gunshot, even at this early hour and distance fromtown, might be overheard by someone—maybe a hiker in the preserve—and rousesuspicion. Now that he has wounded the animal, though, he has no choice but topursue it. He can't just let it limp off somewhere and die slowly.
He follows the trail of blood down the east side of the mountain on a zigzaggingcourse through a stand of white oak undergrown with witch hazel, sumac, mountainlaurel, and nettles that tear at his pants and shirt and painfully rake hisface, until, after several hundred yards, the brush thins out and is interlardedwith moss-slick rocks and vine-covered boulders. Here the buck has headed north,along a narrow ridge parallel to one fork of the hollow road a half mile below.For a few seconds, John hears in front of him the sound of the deer's hoovesclattering noisily against the rocks. It's bleeding thin, sporadic drops, andJohn fears it might be a while before it gives out.
Winded, he stops for a short blow, looking east where the sun, now completelyup, casts a gold trail from the far mountain to the near. A hawk circles overCecil Nobie's red house and barn, which look doll-sized from this height. Theday vows to be perfect, if a little hot, but John doesn't mind hot. He likes tosweat. Taking a deep breath of the warming air, he starts again after the deer.
After nearly an hour more of bushwhacking, he comes to a dry creek bed, crossesit, then follows the deer where it has veered right, up the hill again, towardthe west boundary of the preserve. A steep half-hour climb through raspberrybushes and over clear-cut maples and white pine that have been sawed and left bythe state brings him finally onto the back side of Hollenbachs' mountain, whereOld Man Hollenbach a dozen years before grazed heifers and sheep. Now the oldpasture's a maze of crab-apple trees, chokecherries, Scotch pine, and brambles,but at least the terrain levels out.
Breathing heavily, John stops next to a thorn-apple tree where the deer musthave rubbed its wound because the trunk is marred by blood, and from there thetrail gets redder. From the way the grass and bushes are bent above the blood,John guesses the buck is dragging one leg. He thinks it can't last much longer,and, not for the first time, he worries about how he's going to lug a two-hundred-pound carcass all those miles back to his house. Maybe he can get SimonBreedlove to help by giving him some of the meat. He worries, too, that thefarther he has to cart the deer, the more chance he has of stumbling acrosssomeone else.
Wiping his brow, he starts across the pasture. It's not even nine o'clock andalready the temperature feels like it's gone up twenty degrees. John's clothesare soaked with sweat and he's thirsty enough to wring them out and drink it. Ahundred yards ahead, at the pasture's edge, he sees the deep grass swaying backand forth. He guesses it's the deer, but can't see it to shoot, then suddenlythe buck stumbles out of the grass onto the abandoned dirt road that winds upthe northwest side of the mountain to Old Man Hollenbach's played-out stonequarry. It just stands there, sniffing the air around its knees, looking dazedand ready to cave in. John raises the shotgun to his shoulder but there's toomany trees between him and the deer to get a clear shot off, and besides, hefigures by now he can pretty much walk up and put the animal out of its misery.Then the buck lets out a loud snort and, dragging its hindquarters, moves offdown the road toward the quarry.
John quietly curses, not because he's worried about losing the deer—unless itcan scale rock walls, there's only one way in or out of the quarry—but becausehe's tired of chasing it and is sorry, too, that the buck has had to endure somuch suffering. He hears a dog barking off somewhere and starts to worry againabout being caught and wishes it were colder so that he could hide the carcassin the quarry out of sight from buzzards and coyotes and come back for it thenext day before sunup. Then he decides maybe he ought to butcher the deer rightthere in the quarry—behind one of the slag heaps—and bring the meat home in twoor three trips. A grouse suddenly breaks cover almost beneath his feet and thefrantic beating of its wings nearly gives John a heart attack and he thinks,"Get this the hell over with."
When he reaches the road five minutes later, the deer is out of sight, but atrail of blood leads directly from there to the quarry, five hundred yards inthe distance. The grass on the road looks slightly impacted to John and some ofthe smaller rocks freshly dislodged. He kneels down and takes a closer look, butcan't tell whether the road has recently been driven on or only disrupted by thehailstorm two days before. "I'm goin' to go kill that deer," John tells himself,standing up and starting down the road in a nervous half-jog. "Take what meat Ican easy carry, and clear out pronto."
A flock of blue jays suddenly flies up from the quarry and starts squawking,flat out scaring John until he remembers that right about then the deer,bleeding and snorting, had probably stumbled inside and startled the birds.Still, he can feel his heart pounding in his ears. Slowing to a walk, he raisesthe gun to his waist. He smells spruce, the trees lining both sides of the road.At the entrance to the quarry, a small canyon with fifty-foot granite walls, hereminds himself that the deer would be crazed enough to charge whatever gets tooclose, and could, with those antlers, do some damage.
He flicks off the shotgun's safety, then warily enters the canyon overgrown withbriars, pine bushes, and crawling vines, stops just inside, looks around, andsees the same half-a-dozen slag heaps, junked truck chassis, gutted generator,plastic-covered lean-to, that have been there for years, and off to the right,the deep water-filled pit where John, as a boy, caught frogs, and behind it, thecircular opening in the wall he had never dared enter, on one side of whichstands a rusted shovel and pick.
John looks down for the deer's blood and at the same time hears to his left agrunt, then branches cracking. He shoulders the gun, wheels toward the sound,spots behind a briar thicket a moving patch of brown-and-white, aims at it, andfires. He figures he's hit the deer in the head or heart because, without asound, it drops from sight as if its legs have been severed.
John levers out the spent shell. Dangling the shotgun in one hand, he startswalking toward the thicket, when suddenly a loud snort sounds directly behindhim. He spins around and sees charging out from behind a slag heap, straight forhim, the injured buck.
John doesn't even have time to cock or shoulder the gun before the deer is soclose he can feel the phlegm flying from its flared nostrils and read the ragein its pain-maddened eyes.
Instinctively hop-stepping to his left, John grabs the rifle barrel with bothhands, then swings it upward as hard as he can. With a loud crack, the buttconnects with the deer's jaw a moment before its antlers pierce John's leftshoulder. He goes down and the buck, standing above him, lowers its head as ifto gore him, then suddenly lets out a pained bleat, starts to tremble as if it'sbeen electrically shocked, and drops in a heap next to John.
He rolls to his right, slowly pushes himself with his hands into a squat, thenstands. With the effort, the pain in his gored and bleeding shoulder doesn'tincrease or radiate. A good sign, thinks John. He extends his arm graduallyforward and back, then gingerly loops it in a full circle, heartened that he hasfull motion in the joint.
At his feet, the deer suddenly twitches, its legs kicking out as if it willrise. Startled, John jumps back. Then the buck lies still. John sees it isn'tgoing anywhere. His shotgun butt has crushed its jaw, forcing its teeth into agrotesque grin; its rear quarters are a mass of blood, thistle-matted fur, andexposed bone; it's exhaling as much fluid as oxygen; its eyes are clouded asthough it's already in the afterlife. Looking down at the dying animal, John hasthe same sad feeling as he did watching his father doing likewise in a hospitalbed fourteen years before.
He picks up his shotgun from the grass-and weed-covered gravel, starts to cockit, then, changing his mind, wraps both hands around the barrel, hoists the buttlike a post-hole digger above the deer's head, and brings it forcefully down.The deer's skull collapses like a rotten vegetable. The buck groans once, forseveral seconds twitches again, then lies still. Placing the gun on the ground,John thinks it shouldn't have come to this. The buck should have died in thepines from a single shot.
He reaches up, pulls off his torn sweatshirt, wads it into a ball, then dabswith it at his injured shoulder until enough blood has been removed for him tosee a jagged puncture wound, half an inch deep, oozing a slow, steady stream. Heunwads the shirt, grips it at both sides of the tear, and rips it in two. Hewraps one piece tight around his bicep, just above where he's bleeding, bindingit with a square knot, and the other securely around the wound.
Fighting a sudden urge to turn and run from the quarry, he takes a deep breathand tries to calm the fluttery feeling in his stomach. He picks up the shotgun,wipes its butt on the grass, and closes its breech. He looks down once more atthe deer, then over at the briars. Holding the gun ready at his side, he slowlywalks the twenty-five yards over to the thicket, stops in front of it, and withthe shotgun's barrel moves the forward branches aside. He tries to peer throughthe tangled thicket to the far side, but it's dense as a sponge, and he can'tsee anything but more branches and briars. Nor can he hear anything, not eventhe blue jays, which, oddly, have gone mute. "Whatever's there," thinks John,"is bad hurt or dead."
He remembers the flash of brown-and-white he saw, and the shovel and pickstanding—not lying—by the hollowed-out spot in the wall behind him. He remembersreading in a book once about how lives are begun, altered, and wiped out in asecond, and something else about people only coming to know themselves throughtragedy. "Where did that thought come from?" he wonders. "And why? I'm a goodhunter," he tells himself. "I followed a wounded, crazed deer into a box canyon,heard an animal grunt behind me, saw it move, then shot it."
He walks rapidly to the right of the patch, ten feet wide at least and almostthat tall, and without hesitating rounds the corner. On the far side, on theground five feet in front of him, he sees the worn bottoms of two sneakeredfeet, then blue-jean-covered legs, a slim torso adorned by an earth-stained,white T-shirt, and a dirty-blond clump of hair protruding from beneath a floppybrown hat. The body has a circular sweat spot on its lower back and liesfacedown behind the brambles, arms thrown out in front of it toward a smalldenim satchel.
John is hit by a wave of nausea. Instinctively, he flicks on the shotgun'ssafety, drops the gun at his feet, runs up to the body, kneels next to it,places one hand on the white neck beneath the hair clump, and feels for a pulse.He doesn't find one. "Come on," he says aloud. He reaches his hands beneath thebody's warm, damp stomach, then carefully rolls it over. He sees first, in theleft center of the chest, the slug's gaping entry wound, then a woman with hereyes wide open. "Please, God," says John. "No."
(Continues...)Excerpted from A Single Shot by Matthew F Jones, Daniel Woodrell. Copyright © 2013 Matthew F Jones Daniel Woodrell. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.
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