I\u2019ve got a white-knuckle grip on a gut hook knife that needs to be sharpened, clumsily hacking off the asshole of a six-point stag, when it starts to occur to me that this whole thing reminds me of you.<\/p>\n
Not just because I\u2019ve had a finger up its butt, either. That\u2019s what I\u2019d say if you were here\u2014make the joke and watch you grimace-laugh, curled up in the back of the truck and flushing red in the cold, since you wanted to keep me company.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re not here, though. The wind is as bitter-biting as November ever is, skimming over the endless sea of yellowed dead field grass \u2018til it reaches the end of the clearing and makes the trees shiver, and there\u2019s nothing but blood and an old beer cooler in the back of that truck.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I think, sawing the milkwhite skin from the candy-pink bulk of the deer\u2019s ham, I\u2019m the stag in this situation, you fucking cocksucker.<\/p>\n
The deer\u2019s slit open now. I\u2019ve got the knife under the skin, pulling up towards myself to keep the soft parts safe, and I\u2019m thinking about it. You said, You\u2019re a real fucking piece of work, Thomas, with your eyes all shiny, and I said, Well goddamn, what the hell did you expect?<\/p>\n
I think that was a valid question. I mean, honestly\u2014what the hell did you expect? Did you want a ring or something, Charlie? Want me to move out to the coast with you, wash dishes in a big nasty kitchen, ankle-deep in waterlogged, half-gnawed onions the likes of which my third-world hourly rate can\u2019t even pay for? Is that living the dream, Charlie? Fuck you. You\u2019re the one who went and said all that dumb shit out loud. This isn\u2019t on me.<\/p>\n
My dad taught me how to do all of this. The cleaning, I mean\u2014I\u2019ve got the skin pulled back and I\u2019m laying the knife real surgical-like into the half-clear membrane of the buck\u2019s hind muscle. The skin don\u2019t want to let go, \u2018cause it never does; it\u2019s on there good, and for good reason. Don\u2019t want to expose all that pretty meat and the sticky red mess of it to the mean teeth of the world, now do we? Daddy always said that\u2019s why we bruise, you know\u2014when you bleed, it\u2019s the skin\u2019s job to catch the stains for you, so you don\u2019t get them all over your mama\u2019s carpet. If you\u2019re bleeding, boy, it\u2019s \u2018cause your skin wasn\u2019t thick enough. Clean it up.<\/p>\n
You bruise easy, Charlie. Bled easy, too\u2014got popped in the nose once in high school for your big fucking mouth and bled all over my front seat like it was killing you. I never minded getting the shit kicked out of me: I was built for it better. Used to go to football practice and take every tackle with my whole back\u2014neck to navel\u2014painted up in belt-stroke technicolor, my daddy\u2019s signature scrawled out right there in the darkness of it. You took a single solid hit to the face that one time and your whole face swole into this mean little multichromatic whirl of chintzy blue-black, eyes purpling themselves closed, blood in your mouth, your nose, your eyes, all over the both of us. Staining my goddamn seats.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a sharp crack in the afternoon when I break the tailbone, and then we\u2019re into the ugly part. I\u2019ve got my hands wrapped around the red-soaked bone fragment and I\u2019m using it for grip, yanking hard, tearing the skin down off the belly and exposing the long incarnadine lines of fat and fleshmeat at the stag\u2019s sides. It\u2019s easier than it should be.<\/p>\n
I saw a kid die once, at church camp. His buddy pushed him and he lost his feet, cracked his head on a rock. Just some real \u201cJesus hates this guy, specifically\u201d type shit. They were all laughing until the poor fuck started twitching, and I was just standing there, too dumb to know what the fuck I was looking at. Acts of violence, I figure, are just about always too easy, once you consider what they cost you. What it all can become; what it can do to you. All of that mess.<\/p>\n
You kissed me in the kitchen of your grandma\u2019s trailer, that first time, \u2018cause you\u2019d had too much to drink and I\u2019d broke up that stupid fight on the riverbank you\u2019d gone out of your way to start. And I was there, I guess. I don\u2019t know. I kissed back. Then I fucked you on the floor like it meant something, even though my beat-to-shit ribs hurt like a mother, and then I stayed the night. That was all too easy, too.<\/p>\n
It only takes a few more cuts on the shoulders and the hide rips right off, right up to the neck, where I hack it off around the head. The poor bastard\u2019s naked all the way, after that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen a lot of deer in my life, mind you\u2014hundreds, I\u2019d say conservatively. Maybe more, since these hills are chock full of the bastards, and I\u2019ve been living and dying in these hills since the day I was born. The thing that\u2019s hanging by its back tendons in my yard don\u2019t look like a deer now. Not in the way you know it, anyhow. It\u2019s a grotesque glimpse into the big red ugly underneath, all pink and wet and bone and sinew, cut back from the shape of the familiar into something all too recognizable as meat. And once you make a thing into meat, Charlie, you gotta gut it: crack its chest open with great steel loppers and clear out the glaucous bubbles of its insides in little wet handfuls. See how it fits, hold it in your hands, and then realize that it\u2019s all just really fucking sticky, in the end, and the smell will choke you.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to call you, I\u2019ve decided. I thought about it\u2014thought about it in the shower, and when I was cooking, and when I was driving, and whenever I see your name in my inbox, three names down after my mom, my sister, and Diane. I wish I would, sometimes. I won\u2019t. Swear to God I won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
And you\u2019re going to go to the coast, now. Go to school, kiss someone else in the kitchen, get fucked somewhere softer than I managed it. It\u2019ll be good, I promise. Violence is easy, like I said\u2014swinging wildly \u2018cause you feel like it, breaking things under your hands, bleeding all over the seats and laughing about it like it\u2019s nothing, like you don\u2019t scare me to death, you fucking dipfuck piece of shit. Making peace with the world you live in is the hard stuff. I\u2019d say you\u2019d better learn that someday, but I\u2019ll be honest: I hope you never do.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re going to think this was your fault. You\u2019re stupid like that. You\u2019re gonna think, I shouldn\u2019t have said all of that bullshit I said at the docks. I shouldn\u2019t have pushed it. I should\u2019ve been content with what I had instead of always fighting to first blood for more than people are willing to give me. And you\u2019re right about all of that, you goddamn shithead, but still. It wasn\u2019t your fault.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just me, Charlie. I\u2019ve never known a love that wasn\u2019t a skinning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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