My girlfriend helps me with the deer carcass. It lies awkward and stiff on a tarp in the bed of my dad\u2019s old pickup he let me borrow. I\u2019d meant to do this sooner, not involve her, but she\u2019d insisted, and it\u2019s not a misnomer that dirty work is done in the dark. Up in the city we don\u2019t have this kind of dark. City dark is encased in the glow of lights that block out all the bright star signals. It\u2019s a pale, mauve dark. As we unload the carcass, both wearing gloves, we do so washed with Kansas-small-town-gravel-road darkness, all those signals coming in sharp and clear, deafening.<\/p>\n
The day before, I\u2019d set up shop in my dad\u2019s tree stand, waited all day, hunted in the frigid morning and then again that night, finally seeing a magnificent 9-point buck. I whiffed the shot a bit, not ideal, but it got the job done. Dad and I tracked it down at dusk, field dressed it, dragged it to the truck, took it home, hung and bled it, and the next day we cleaned it\u2014skinned it, cut away all the meat, sawed off the skull and antlers. Now here my girlfriend and I are, dumping the remains. She wants to see how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are we just leaving it out here? Isn\u2019t there something else we can do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, use the bones and sinews and tendons, blood for something, like Native Americans. Some culture that values all the parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
I consider this. \u201cNo. This is how it\u2019s done. We got the meat and trophy, now the coyotes will come pick at this.\u201d<\/p>\n
She nods in the dark. We pull it from the bed of the truck but at the last second she drops her end and the carcass smacks the hard ground, splattering blood up on us. She shrieks. I kick the remains down into the gravel-dusted ditch, my dad\u2019s boots doing the trick better than my tennis shoes could have.<\/p>\n
She stands there, examining the blood spatter in the truck\u2019s tail lights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not what I expected to happen. This is disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n
All around crickets sing in rhythm with the starlight, the pre-winter air so thick with Kansas that the sounds cascade. I think: I\u2019ve needed this; I\u2019ve missed this feeling. This air, these sounds, even this carcass, both of us occupying this moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so bad for that poor deer. What did it do to end up like this? Ripped apart and kicked into a fucking ditch. Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say anything. I could argue any number of things and it won\u2019t solve anything. I\u2019m still in awe at the stars. Maybe that\u2019s why I don\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
Eventually I get the sense that I need to defend myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen. It was a clean, humane shot, I thanked the lord for the kill, we used all the meat, which we will eat, and now, with what\u2019s left, there\u2019s no use for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNative Americans used all of the animal, not just the meat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell do I look like a goddamn Indian to you?\u201d I yell. \u201cWhy did you even come if you\u2019re only going to criticize everything I\u2019m doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to spend time with you, not be cooped up at your parents\u2019 like when you were hunting. It\u2019s awkward talking to them. I don\u2019t know them. Your mom treats me like some alien bug she\u2019s suspicious of.\u201d<\/p>\n
She cries softly, from the blood and me yelling at her, I decide. I also decide we could both use a relaxer, to take the edge off. I grab the joint and a lighter I\u2019d stashed in the driver door panel. She\u2019s still staring away from me when I light it. When I start coughing, she turns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is that? Weed?\u201d<\/p>\n
I hold it out for her to take, but she just stands there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did you even get that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy cousin. He grows it here in town. It\u2019s good stuff\u2014not shitty ditch weed. Here, take it. There\u2019s nobody around for miles\u2014just us out here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think right now, in the freezing cold, on some dirt road in a backwoods town, covered in blood\u2014you think this is the time to get high? You\u2019re unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
I take another hit, then hold it out to her again. She just stands there, jeans, hoodie, stocking cap lit red in the dark.<\/p>\n
I change the subject: \u201cLook, I don\u2019t have\u2026 the best relationship with my mom. Never have. My sisters were the favorites, and I don\u2019t know how to hold a conversation with her. I thought maybe you could.\u201d I find that weed makes it easier.<\/p>\n
She turns away and walks up the road, back the way we came, back towards town. Her shoes make a rough cacophony against the gravel.<\/p>\n
“Hey, where are you going?\u201d I ask, coughing some more.<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t respond. She just keeps walking. She\u2019s pissed, I think. She\u2019s right that it\u2019s a little chilly to be smoking, but I don\u2019t mind. It\u2019s all part of the process: prep, hunt, kill, dress, clean up, celebrate. That\u2019s how it\u2019s done. I\u2019ll finish up here, then go find her. She won\u2019t have walked far. She can use the space, the time to think. Space is good.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m cold and the quiet is freaky, my shoes making the only sound against dusty gravel. The tear trails and blood spatter feel like they\u2019re freezing into icicles on my face. I gag when I think about the blood all over me again, and I throw up on the side of the gravel road when my fingertips feel a chunk in my hair. I\u2019m well out of earshot of him now, so I\u2019m the only creature around to bear witness to this.<\/p>\n
Freezing under those blinding stars, walking on a gravel road in the middle of BFE Kansas, dead deer remains all over me, I wonder how my life has come to this moment. Mom had warned me. She\u2019d said, “Be careful with that boy, he could have a dark side to him. Probably does. Most do.” And now I wonder if she had ever found herself walking an ill-traveled backroad alone in winter at the hands of darkness. Maybe she had, muttering curses about a boy in the cold dark, but probably without the blood. My friends, unlike my mom, all like him. They\u2019re jealous because he\u2019s handsome, strong, rugged in a way I once found sexy. I keep walking toward town, the way we\u2019d come from.<\/p>\n
When we first met, at a bar in college, he\u2019d been so confident. He\u2019d just graduated that night, as had my friend Liz. Liz and I were waiting in line at the bar to celebrate her, both looking cute, and he came right up to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, beautiful. What are you drinking?\u201d he asked, cocked smile, eyes on only me as if Liz didn\u2019t exist. Later, on the dance floor, his stubble darkened in the low light, he spun me and dipped me in rhythm to the music, strong hands on my hips like he knew exactly what he was doing.<\/p>\n
I feel like I\u2019ve walked two miles, but that probably isn\u2019t true. The fact that he hasn\u2019t come to find me by now upsets me even more, pisses me off like nothing else has in recent memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cFuck!\u201d I yell to nobody, those bright ass stars dampening the echo of my voice so it falls flat. Tears start freezing again. I now wish I\u2019d taken a couple hits of his joint because being high right now might help me forget, might make me feel good. But then he would\u2019ve had the satisfaction of my joining.<\/p>\n
If my phone weren\u2019t in the cupholder of his truck, I would text my friend group that he brought me out here, got me deer-bloodied, and now I\u2019m freezing walking alone in the dark. They would be supportive, tell me to high-tail it to town if it\u2019s not far, or suck it up and go back to the truck for now, deal with the relationship later. Jasmine would say, no\u2014fuck that, fuck him, don\u2019t go back, get to town, get your shit, one of us will drive down to save you. Gina would play devil\u2019s advocate, say: look, he\u2019s just being a guy, it\u2019s what guys do, they\u2019re assholes sometimes, and didn\u2019t you ask to go dump a deer carcass with him anyway? Didn\u2019t you know what would happen?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I absolutely did not know that would fucking happen,\u201d I enunciate to the universe, the words a fog rising above me.<\/p>\n
I think back to what he said about his mom. While he was hunting the day before, I sat on his parents\u2019 couch scrolling on my phone, catching glimpses of his mom side-eyeing me through her dark curls as if I couldn\u2019t see. The only thing she\u2019d said to me in the godawful silence was, \u201cHunting, fishing, boy\u2019s trips\u2014he and his dad always leave me out, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind me I hear truck exhaust and gravel crunch growing louder. Light begins to peak over the hill I\u2019d just walked over, creeping brighter and brighter, gravel dust suspended in the air as if frozen. I don\u2019t know why I do it, but don\u2019t question it either\u2014I take off running into the field to my left. It\u2019s not a crop, just overgrown brush and weeds, a few trees scattered. Twenty yards in I trip over something and wind up on my back, the wind knocked out of me. I start coughing in breathy plumes. I don\u2019t look up but I hear his truck pass by and keep driving, exhaust like a voice yelling out and fading away. Eventually the only light comes from those stars again, staring down at me, their quiet all-consuming.<\/p>\n
Lying prone in a Kansas field, I wonder when he\u2019ll start panicking\u2014forehead damp with sweat, his heart pounding. When he doesn\u2019t find me, he will keep looking, might loop in his family or the police, both. But before all that, he\u2019ll drive and drive, stir up dust. He\u2019s too stubborn to ask for help when he should, only when it\u2019s too late. But it feels good to hide\u2014backed away into the frozen landscape, part of it, him searching the countryside. Before I gather myself to my feet and begin following tire tracks to town, I just lie there in the dark and feel the potential energy of what\u2019s to come next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freezing under those blinding stars, walking on a gravel road in the middle of BFE Kansas, dead deer remains all over me, I wonder how my life has come to this moment. Mom had warned me. She\u2019d said, “Be careful with that boy, he could have a dark side to him. Probably does. Most do.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2152,3437,3435,3436,310,3434,3438],"class_list":["post-19507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-country","tag-couple","tag-deer","tag-gravel","tag-hunting","tag-kansas","tag-smoke","writer-cody-shrum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19507"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20081,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19507\/revisions\/20081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}