Another Death in the Woods.
This is one of many upcountry tales that did not make it into the “Sam” book.
In my blog post “A Death in the Woods” a man with great hunting prowess took a calculated risk and brought down a black bear with one shot from a longbow. He will be hailed as Bill The Bearslayer forever in his town. In this story another younger man tries his luck as a huntsman with a different set of results.
The part of the country where this story takes place has fallen on hard times. The area, is depressed and jobs are few, far between, and generally do not offer opportunities for advancement. Small hill farms have all gone bust, and a scant handful of large dairying operations hang on by their fingernails. They stay in business by adopting the modern methods: cows are confined year-round, milked three times a day and fed where they stand in the barn. The rural landscape is not so idyllic-looking as it once was, the cows not so happy or healthy, and the heavy round-the-clock labor is often hired out to guys from Mexico and whatever local kids can hack the drudgery. If a local kid moves on from his farm job, it might be into construction or driving a grader for the DPW, but usually not to college.
If you are a healthy, good-looking, charming young man in your prime, perhaps working as a hired cowman, perhaps not, what can you do to bring honor on yourself? Options might include adventures with controlled substances and/or baby-daddying, or heaven forbid a bit of petty crime; but the best choice is still to go hunting. You put meat in the freezer. A trophy on the wall. You’re a man among men. You get bragging rights.
So it befalls that one night in early October, that this charming young man, we’ll call him Dexter, is driving his car in the wild upper end of a certain hollow. The hollow is a big working dairy farm owned by the industrious Farmer Brown. The farmer’s extended family and fulltime employees have built their homes at intervals of a mile or so along the road. Dexter has driven well past the houses; perhaps he is scouting the game, perhaps not, when he finds himself no longer on the road, but mired in a swamp. Trying to get out has the usual result of putting him further in.
At this point Dexter could easily hike the five miles cross-lots to his Mom’s, but he feels a desperate need to try to rescue his vehicle. The nearest house, belonging to Farmer Brown’s son and his wife, is two miles away. Arriving in their dooryard, and perhaps not wishing to wake them up, Dexter borrows a car–its keys were in the ignition, as keys usually are in the country– and drives the car back up-hollow. He hitches his bogged-down car to the borrowed one, gets in and guns it, with the unfortunate result that both cars are now mired in the swamp, and the treads of the borrowed one have burned off.
Dexter is feeling increasingly frantic. He returns to the same house and borrows another vehicle; but this time he roars off down-hollow to the next house, the home of a man I’ll call Miguel. Miguel is the farm foreman, Dexter’s friend and compañero, and the babydaddy of his sister, Tammi. Miguel’s windows are dark, for it is now quite late at night. Dexter knocks and kicks at his buddy’s door with growing fury and frustration. Finally he shouts “Come out, I know you’re in there!” Waking with a start, not recognizing Dexter’s voice, Miguel dives out the back window and sprints into the woods. He has reasons of his own for doing this, that we need not go into here.
Miguel re-emerges from the woods at the home of Farmer Brown. Rousing his boss from bed, Miguel tells him there are lots of people shouting and pounding on his door, and that he is very scared. Farmer Brown advises Miguel to stay right where he is, and heads up-hollow in his pick-up. Miguel’s dooryard is empty, except for the presence of his son’s wife’s car. He opens the door and finds Dexter and some empty beer cans snuggled up together on the couch. Dexter offers a vague explanation of what has happened so far. He appears to have lost that sense of urgency that has propelled him through most of the evening. Now resigned to his fate, he just wants to sleep. Farmer Brown takes his leave, saying that he will haul the cars out of the bog tomorrow morning, and then he will have some words with Dexter.
Morning comes, as morning must, and Farmer Brown drives up past Miguel’s, past his son’s, to the end of the hollow. He arrives at a field of corn-stubble crossed by two sets of car tracks that weave around in an erratic fashion, eventually heading toward the swamp. Farmer Brown also sees flock of big black vultures in the middle of the field, having their breakfast. He drives into the field; the vultures fly off, revealing what they have been eating– the fresh carcass of a large buck deer. The deer has a bullet-hole behind its shoulder blade. A picture begins to form in Farmer Brown’s mind, and it is not a pretty one.
This picture includes Dexter, and his possible– no, probable– consumption of alcohol, his almost certain jacklighting and shooting of a deer from a car window and out of season, his vain and alcohol-befogged search for the deer in the dark field, his appropriation of other people’s cars, scaring the crap out of Farmer Brown’s trusted foreman Miguel, and the subsequent awakening of Farmer Brown from his sound and virtuous sleep. The good man whips out his cell phone. Then he realizes that he and the deer are no longer in his home state. He calls Fish and Game in the adjoining state.
An hour later, Dexter leaves Miguel’s house, the hollow, his friends and family and his home state, in the company of two game wardens, his deer rifle and his illegal buck. He is going to spend some serious time sobering up and explaining himself to unsympathetic strangers. He, like the man who shot the bear with a single arrow from a longbow, will be celebrated forever for his adventures in Farmer Brown’s Hollow. This notoriety will not bring him honor. It may or may not make a man of him.
