FICTION

DOMINION6

BY ROBERT STONE

“BY gad, sir,” Michael Ahearn said to his son, Paul, “you present a distressing spectacle.”

A few nights earlier they had watched“The Maltese Falcon” together. Paul, whohad never seen it before, appeared to bedelighted by his father’s rendition of Syd-ney Greenstreet. Sometimes he wouldeven try doing Greenstreet himself.

“By gad, sir!”Paul’s attempts at movie voices were

not subtle but commanded inflectionsnormally beyond the comic repertory ofa twelve-year-old boy from a smalltown on the northern plains. His voiceand manner were coming to resemblehis father’s.

The boy was lying in bed with acopy of “The Hobbit” open across hiscounterpane. This time he was notamused at his father’s old-movie im-pressions. He looked up with resent-ment. His beautiful long-lashed eyes—his mother’s—were angry. But Michaeleasily met the reproach there. He tookany opportunity to look at his son. Therewas something new every day, a differ-ent ray, an unexpected facet reflected inthe aspects of this creature enduring histwelvedness.

“I want to go, Dad,” Paul said evenly,attempting to exercise his powers ofpersuasion to best effect.

He had been literally praying to go.Michael knew that because he had been spying on Paul while the boy knelt beside the bed to say his eve-ning prayers. He had lurked in the hall-way outside the boy’s room, watch-ing and listening to his careful recitationof the Our Father and the Hail Maryand the Gloria—rote prayers, courtesyof the Catholic school to which theAhearns, with misgivings, regularly dispatched him. Michael and his wifehad been raised in religion and theywere warily trying it on again as par-ents. Sending Paul to St. Emmerich’smeant laughing away the horror storiesthey liked to tell about their own reli-gious education in the hope of winning

a few wholesome apparent certaintiesfor the next generation.

“I was fourteen before my father tookme hunting,” Michael said. “I thinkthat’s the right age.”

“You said kids do everything sooner.”“I didn’t say I thought kids doing

everything sooner was a good idea.”“You don’t even like to hunt,” Paul

said. “You don’t believe in it.”“Really? And what makes us think

that?”“Well, I’ve heard you with Mom. You,

like, agree with her it’s cruel and stuff.”“I don’t agree with her. I understand

her position. Anyway, if I didn’t believein it why should I take a tender runtlike you?”

Paul was immune to his father’s goad-ing. He went for the substance.

“Because I really believe in it.”“Oh yes? You believe in whacking

innocent creatures?”“You know what?” Paul asked. “This

was a Christian Ethics topic. Huntingwas. And I was like pro—in favor. Be-cause Genesis says ‘dominion over beasts.’If you eat the meat, it’s O.K. And we do.”

“You don’t.”“Yes, I do,” Paul said. “I eat venison

kielbasa.”Michael loomed over him and with

his left hand put out the lamp on thebed table.

“ ’Tis blasphemy to vent thy rageagainst a dumb brute,” he informed hisson. He had been teaching “MobyDick” with his favorite assistant, a verypretty South Dakota girl named PhyllisStrom. “Now, good night. I don’t wantyou to read too late.”

“Why? I’m not going anywhere.”“Maybe next year,” Michael said.“Sure, Dad,” said Paul.He left the bedroom door its cus-

tomary inch ajar and went downstairsto the study, where his wife was gradingChaucer papers.

“Did he beg and plead?” she asked,looking up.

“I don’t think he’s absolutely sure if

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78 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

he wants to go or not. But he takes apro-hunting position.”

She laughed. Her son’s eyes. “Awhat?”

“In Christian Ethics,” Michael pro-nounced solemnly. “Dominion over thebeasts. He argues from Genesis. Chris-tian Ethics,” he repeated when shelooked at him blankly. “At school.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Well, it doesn’tsay kill the poor beasts. Or does it?Maybe one of those teachers is a gunnut.”

Kristin had been raised in a Lutheranfamily. Although religiously inclined,she was a practical person who workedat maintaining her critical distance from dogmatic instruction, especially of the Roman variety. She concurred in Paul’s attendance at the Catholicschool because, to her own rather con-servative but independent thinking,the position of the Catholics of theircollege town had incorporated Lu-ther’s reforms. Many Sundays she went to Mass with them. At Christ-mas, they went to both churches andevery Good Friday to the LutheranTenebrae.

“It’s him,” Michael said. “It’s hisfunny little mind.”

Kristin frowned and put her fingerto her lips.

“His funny little mind,” Michaelwhispered, chastened. “He thought it up.”

“He always sees you going. Not thatyou ever get much.”

“I get birds. But deer season . . . ”“Right,” she said.The circle of unspoken thought

she closed was that Michael used thepheasant season as an excuse to walkthe autumn fields around their house.With the dog and a twenty-gaugeshotgun borrowed from a colleague,he would set out over the frosted brown prairie, scrambling under wirewhere the land was not posted, pastthinly frozen ponds and rutted pas-ture, making his way from one woodedhill to another. It was a pleasure to walk the short autumn days, each knoll bright with yellowed alder, red-brown ash, and flaming maple. And if the dog startled a pheasant into a headlong, clucking sacrificial dash hemight have a shot. Or not. Then, if hebrought a bird down, he would have topluck it, trying to soften the skin byheating it on the stove without quiteletting it cook, picking out the shotwith tweezers. Kristin refused to do it.Michael disliked the job and did notmuch care for pheasant. But you hadto eat them.

And in deer season, certain years,Michael would go out with a couple of friends from the university who were good shots and the kind of avidhunters he was not. He went for thecanoe trip into the half-frozen swampand the November woods under theirfirst covering of snow. The silencethere, in the deep woods they prowled,was broken by nothing but crows, andstay-behind chanting sparrows and theoccasional distant echo of firing. Ifthey got lucky, there might be the callof an errant Canadian wolf at night.And there were the winter birds, gros-beaks, juncos, eagles gliding silentabove the tree line. And the savor ofgood whiskey around the potbelliedstove of the cabin they used as fieldheadquarters. Killing deer was not theobject for him.

Kristin, though she had grown upon her family’s farm, forever borrow-ing her male relatives’ jackets withpockets full of jerky, tobacco plugs, andbright-red shotgun shells, mildly dis-approved of hunting. At first, she hadobjected to Michael’s going. He wasnearsighted, a daydreamer.

“You shouldn’t carry a weapon if youdon’t intend to take a deer.”

“I don’t shoot seriously.”“But you shouldn’t shoot at all. It’s

worse if you wound one.”“I hardly ever discharge the piece,

Kristin.”But a man had to carry one, in the

deep woods, in winter. It was sinis-ter, suspicious to encounter someone in the forest without a gun. Farmerswho welcomed hunters on their land in season looked fearfully on unarmedstrollers, trespassing. And sometimes,if he was standing with the others and a band of deer came in view and ev-eryone let go, he would take his shot with the rest of them. He had neverclaimed one.

From the living room next to Kris-tin’s study, their black Labrador gave up his place beside the fire and trottedover for attention. Olaf had been Paul’sChristmas puppy six years before andserved as Michael’s shooting companionevery fall. Michael bent to scratch hisneck.

Kristin put her papers aside.“Christian ethics,” she said, as though

she were weighing their general useful-ness. “I don’t think Genesis likes hunter-

“What do you think sitting around being bored out of your mind will be like in the new millennium?”

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ROBERT STONE 79

gatherers much. I think it favors theshepherds.”

“I must look it up. You always learnsomething, right? Reading Genesis.”

EARLY the next morning, two of Mi-chael’s colleagues from State came

by in a Jeep Cherokee. Kristin servedthem coffee and handed out baggedsandwiches to take along.

Alvin Mahoney, a tall, balding histo-rian with a rosy drinker’s face, presentedMichael with his hunting piece.

“Remember this? Remington twelve-gauge?”

Michael jammed three deer slugsinto the magazine and pumped themforward to get the feel of the gun.

“You can put six in there,” Mahoneyreminded him. “Only if you do—remember they’re there.”

“Yep.” Michael lowered the shotgun,unloaded it, and stuffed the shells in hisjacket pocket.

The third hunter was a sociologistnamed Norman Cevic, whom studentsliked to think of as coming from NewYork, though he was actually from IronFalls, a tough little smelter town on thelake not far away. Norman did his bestto affect a streetwise quality for thesmall-town adolescents at the univer-sity. He was about the same age as Ma-honey, twenty years older than Michael,though he seemed younger.

“Norm went out opening day,” Ma-honey said. “Straight out of the shot-gun. So to speak.”

“Wasn’t it a zoo out there?” Kristinasked. “I mean humanwise?”

“Not if you know the territory,” Nor-man said. “I didn’t see a soul.”

“You took the canoe?” Michael asked.“Sure.” Norman had a gravelly voice

that amused the students. “Had to use itto get in there. Didn’t see a soul,” he toldthem again.

No one said anything. Paul was lurk-ing in the kitchen doorway in his bath-robe. Norman took a sip of coffee.

“Except,” he said, “Hmongs. I sawsome Hmongs in the distance. Probablywalked all the way in there. No snow yet.”

“They need the meat,” Kristin said.“They live on it.”

“Roots,” Norman said. “Wintergreens. Squirrel. Raccoon.”

“How did you know they wereHmongs?” Paul asked from his half-concealment.

“Good question,” Norman said.“Smart kid. We should take him hunt-ing next year. Want to know how?”

Paul looked to his father, then nodded.

“How I knew they were Hmongs,”Norman declared, as though it were thetitle of a lecture. He had been cradling aMossberg thirty-thirty in one arm whilehe drank his coffee. Now he put the cupdown and let the rifle slip through hisfingers until he was holding it by the tipof the barrel just short of the end-sight.“Because,” he told Paul, “they carriedtheir weapons by the end of the barrel.Sort of trailing the stock.”

“Huh,” said Alvin Mahoney.“Which is how they carried them in

Vietnam. And Hmongs are very nu-merous in Iron Falls. So,” he said, ad-dressing himself to young Paul, “when Isee a man in deep woods carrying a riflethat way I presume he’s a Hmong. Doesthat answer your question, my friend?”

“Yes, sir,” Paul said.“Hmongs are a tribal people in Viet-

nam and Laos,” Norman told Paul. “Doyou know where Vietnam is? Do youknow what happened there?”

Paul was silent for a moment and

then said, “Yes. I think so. A little.”“Good,” said Norman. “Then you

know more than three-quarters of ourstudent body.”

“Mr. Cevic was in Vietnam duringthe war,” Kristin told her son. Sheturned to Norman, whom she ratheradmired. “How long was it that youspent there?”

“A year. All day, every day. And allnight, too.”

JUST before they left, the telephone rang. From his wife’s tone, Michael

knew it was his teaching assistantPhyllis Strom. Descended from prairiesodbusters, Kristin did not always trou-ble to enliven her voice when addressingstrangers and people she disliked. Shehad a way of sounding very bleak in-deed, and that was how she soundedthen, impatiently accumulating Phyllis’sinformation.

“Phyllis,” she sternly announced.“Says she may not be able to monitormidterms on Thursday. Wonders ifyou’ll be back?” There was an edge ofunsympathetic mimicry.

Michael made a face. “Phyllis,” hesaid. “Phyllis, fair and useless.” In fact,

80 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

he felt sorry for the kid. She was en-gagingly shy and frightened of Kristin.

“I told her you’d left,” his wife toldhim. “She’ll call back.” The new andrigorously enforced regulations requiredchastity in student-faculty collabora-tions, but Kristin was not reassured. Sheimagined that her anxieties about Phyl-lis were a dark, close secret.

“Do I really have to come back forthis?” Michael said as they went out tothe car. “I’ll call you from Ehrlich’s to-morrow night after six.”

They drove past dun farm fields, to-ward the huge wooded marshes thatlined the Three Rivers where their nar-row valleys conjoined. In about four anda half hours they passed Ehrlich’s, asprawling pseudo-Alpine bierstube andrestaurant.

“I want to go on to the Hunter’s,”Michael said.

“The food’s not as good,” Mahoneysaid mildly.

“True,” said Michael. “But Hunter’ssells an Irish single malt called Wil-loughby’s on their retail side. Only placethey sell the stuff west of Minneapolis.And I want to buy a bottle for us todrink tonight.”

“Ah,” Mahoney said. “Sheer bliss.”On his tongue, the phrase could only

be ironic, Michael thought. Bliss wasunavailable to Mahoney. It was simplynot there for him, though Michael wassure he’d like the Willoughby’s well

enough. But for me, Michael thought,bliss is still a possibility. He imaginedhimself as still capable of experiencingit, a few measures, a few seconds at atime. No need of fancy whiskey, the realthing. He felt certain of it.

“How’s Kristin?” Norman askedMichael.

“How do you mean, Norm? You justtalked to her.”

“Has she seen Phyllis Strom thisterm?”

“Oh, come on,” Michael said. “Thinkshe’s jealous of little Phyllis? Kris couldswallow Phyllis Strom with a glass ofwater.”

Norman laughed. “Let me level withyou, buddy. I’m scared to death of Kris-tin. Fire and ice, man.”

Mind your business, he thought.Cevic had appointed himself sociol-ogist to the north country. In fact, Mi-chael thought, at home the ice mightbe almost imperceptibly thickening.Kristin had taken to rhapsodizing moreand more about her father, upon whoseforge her elegantly shaped, unbendingangles had been hammered. The god inthe iron mask, mediator of manhoodand its measure. Still alive under thegranite. A man might well dread hisown shortcomings in that shadow.

“Smartest move I ever made,” saidMichael, “marrying that girl. Definitelysleep nights.”

Perhaps, he thought, that had not

been the best way to phrase it, for Cevicthe curious and curiously minded.

THE landscape grew more wooded as they approached Mahoney’s

cabin, where they planned to spend thenight. Farm fields gave way to sunkenmeadows lined with bare oak and pineforest. Thirty miles along, they came tothe Hunter’s Supper Club, a diner inblue aluminum and silver chrome. In-congruously attached to the diner, ex-tending from it, was a building of treatedpine logs with a varnished door of itsown. At eye level on the door was thebuilding’s single window, a diamond-shaped spy hole, double-glazed andtinted green. A hand-painted sign thelength of the roof read “Souvenirs Tag-ging Station.”

They parked beside the half-dozenbattered cars in the lot, and walkedacross the sandy, resin-scalded groundand into the metal diner. There werebanquettes and a counter and a heavyyoung waitress in a checkered dress andblue apron. The restaurant itself wasempty except for two old farmers at thecounter, who shifted themselves arthrit-ically to see who had come in. From thebar, which sounded more crowded,came jukebox music. Waylon Jennings’“Lowdown Freedom.”

Their table looked out on the emptytwo-lane highway. Michael ordered cof-fee with his ham and eggs and got up to

buy the whiskey at the adjoiningbar.

The bar had eight or nine cus-tomers, half of them middle-agedmen, burnt-up drunk, unhealthy-looking and ill-disposed. Therewere also two Indian youths withponytails and druggy, glittery eyes.One had a round, apparently placidface. The other was lean and edgy,his features set in what at first ap-peared to be a smile but wasn’t.Michael stood at the take-awaycounter, resolutely minding hisown business. Then the barmaid,whom he had not seen at first,came out from some storage spacebehind the mirror and the stackedbottles and the pigs’-feet jars.

The barmaid looked only justold enough to serve liquor. Shehad jet-black hair and brilliantblue eyes evenly set, a thin perfectnose and long pale lips without a

ROBERT STONE 81

trace of lipstick. She was tall, wear-ing black cowgirl clothes, a rodeo shirtwith little waves of white frosting and mother-of-pearl buttons. Her hairwas thick and swept to one side at theback.

“Say,” she said.“Do you have Willoughby’s today?”“Could be we do,” she said. “Like,

what is it?”Michael pondered other, different,

questions. Could he drive out every Fri-day and Saturday and have a Friday andSaturday kind of cowboy life with her?But not really. But could he? Would shelike poetry with a joint, after sex? Notseriously. Idle speculation.

“It’s whiskey,” he told her. He thoughthe must sound impatient. “It’s unblendedIrish whiskey. You used to carry it.”

“Unblended is good, right? Soundsgood. What you want.”

“Yes,” Michael said. “It is. It’s whatI’m after.”

“If it’s good, we mostly don’t haveit,” she said.

And he was, as it were, stumped. Nocomeback. No zingers.

“Really?” he asked.Someone behind, one of the young

Indians it might have been, did him infalsetto imitation. “Really?” As though itwere an outrageously affected, silly-assquestion.

“But I can surely find out,” she said.When she turned away he saw that

her black pants were as tight as theycould be and cut to stirrup length like areal cowgirl’s, and her boot heels scuffedbut not worn down from walking. Healso saw that where her hair was sweptto the side at the back of her collar whatappeared to be the forked tongue of atattooed snake rose from either side ofthe bone at the nape of her neck. A ser-pent, ascending her spine. Her skin wasalabaster.

He heard voices from the back. Anold man’s voice raised in proprietaryanger. When she came back she wascarrying a bottle, inspecting it.

“What do you know?” she said.“Specialty of the house, huh? YouIrish?”

Michael shrugged. “Back some-where. How about you?”

“Me? I’m like everybody else aroundhere.”

“Is that right?”“Megan,” one of the smoldering

drunks at the bar muttered, “get yourbutt over this way.”

“George,” Megan called sweetly,still addressing Michael, “would you not be a knee-walking piece of pigshit?”

She took her time selling him theWilloughby’s. Worn menace rumbleddown the bar. She put her hand to herear. Hark, like a tragedienne in a Victo-rian melodrama.

“What did he say?” she asked Mi-chael, displaying active, intelligent concern.

Michael shook his head. “Didn’t hearhim.”

As he walked back to the diner sec-tion, he heard her boots on the woodenflooring behind the bar.

“Yes, Georgie, baby pie. How may Iserve you today?”

Back in the restaurant, their tablehad been cleared.

“He ate your eggs,” Norman said, in-dicating Alvin Mahoney.

“Naw, I didn’t,” Alvin said. “Normdid.”

“Anyway,” Norman said, “they weregetting cold. You want something totake along?”

Michael showed them the sack withthe whiskey.

“I’ll just take this. I’m not hungry.”When he tasted his untouched coffee, itwas cold as well.

Beyond the Hunter’s Supper Club,the big swamp took shape, and snowwas falling before they reached thecabin. They followed the dirt road to it,facing icy, wind-driven volleys that rat-tled against the windshield and fouledthe wipers. As they were getting theirbags out of the trunk, the snow’s qual-ity changed and softened, the flakes enlarged. A heavier silence settled onthe woods.

As soon as it grew dark, Michaelopened the Willoughby’s. It was won-derfully smooth. Its texture seemed, atfirst, to impose on the blessedly warmroom a familiar quietude. People saidthings they had said before, on othernights sheltering from other storms inpast seasons. Norman Cevic grousedabout Vietnam. Alvin Mahoney talkedabout the single time he had broughthis wife to the cabin.

“My then wife,” he said. “She didn’tmuch like it out here. Naw, not at all.”

Michael turned to look at Alvin’s

worn, flushed country face with its faintmottled web of boozy angiomas. Thenwife? Alvin was a widower. Where hadhe picked up this phrase to signal thelouche sophistication of la ronde? Latewife, Alvin. Dead wife. Because Almaor Mildred or whatever her obviatedname was had simply died on him. Inwhat Michael had conceived of as hisown sweet silent thought, he was sur-prised by his bitterness, his sudden,pointless, contemptuous anger.

He finished his glass. At Alvin’s age, given their common vocabulary offeatures, their common weakness, hemight come to look very much thesame. But the anger kept swelling in histhroat, beating time with his pulse, avital sign.

“Well,” Norman said, “all is forgivennow.”

Michael, distracted by his ownthoughts, had no idea what Cevic wastalking about. What was forgiven? All?Forgiven whom?

IN the morning they helped Alvin se-cure the cabin. His twelve-foot alu-

minum canoe was in a padlocked sheddown the hill. Getting the canoe out,they found the padlock broken, but theburglars, in their laziness and ineffi-ciency, had not managed to make offwith the boat. One year they had foundthe bow full of hammered dents. Stillworking in darkness, they placed thecanoe in its fittings atop the Jeep.

A blurred dawn was unveiling it-self when they reached the stream thatwould take them into the islands of theswamp. There was still very little light.Black streaks crisscrossed the little patchof morning, the day’s inklings. Theyloaded the canoe by flashlight. Glassyice crackled under their boots at theshore’s edge.

Michael took the after paddle, steer-ing, digging deep into the slow, blackstream. He kept the flashlight betweenthe seat and his thigh so that its shaftbeams would sweep the bank. Pad-dling up front, Norman also had a light.

“Nice easy stream,” Alvin said. “Ikeep forgetting.”

“It speeds up a lot toward the bigriver,” Michael said. “There’s a gorge.”

“A minor gorge,” Norman said.“Yes,” said Michael. “Definitely minor.”“But it gets ’em,” said Cevic. “Every

82

spring they go. Half a dozen someyears.” He meant drowned fishermen.

Yards short of the landing, Michaelpicked up the flashlight, lost his glovedgrip, and sent it tumbling over the side.He swore.

They circled back, and riding theslight current got a look at the flashlightresting on the bottom, lighting theweedy marbled rocks seven, maybeeight feet below.

They circled again.“How deep is it?” Alvin asked, and

answered his own question. “Too deep.”“Too deep,” Michael said. “My fault.

Sorry.”“No problem,” Norman said. “I’ve

got one. And it’s getting light.”By the time they had off-loaded, the

day had composed itself around the skel-etal woods, each branch bearing a coat ofsnow. They fanned out from the river,within sight of the glacial rock face thatwould be their rendezvous point. Eachman carried a pack of provisions, a gun,a compass, and a portable stand. Mi-chael made for high ground, following aslope north of the rock. The snow wasaround four inches deep. He saw quite afew deer tracks, the little handprints ofraccoons, the hip-hop brush patterns ofrabbits. There were others, too, suggest-ing more exciting creatures, what mightbe fox, marten, or wolverine.

He fixed his stand in the tallest treeamong a cluster of oaks on sloping,rocky ground. The view was good, com-manding a deer trail out of the pinesabove him which led toward the river.Now the animals would be prowlingdown from the high ground where theyhad passed the night, struggling onlyslightly in the new-fallen layer, brows-ing for edibles. He waited. Invisiblecrows warned of his presence.

Then there commenced the curiouspassage into long silence, empty ofevent. Confronted by stillness withoutmotion, a landscape of line and shadowwhich seemed outside time, he took inevery feature of the shooting ground,every tree and snowy hummock. It wasalways a strange, suspended state. No-tions thrived.

He watched, alert for the glimpse ofstreaked ivory horn, the muddy cam-ouflage coat incredibly hard to defineagainst the mix of white, the shades ofbrown tree trunks and waving dark ever-green. Braced for that flash of the flag.

Every sound became the focus of hisconcentration. He got to know eachtree, from the adjoining oak to the standof tall pines at the top of the rise.

Michael had come armed into thewoods for the customary reason, to sim-plify life, to assume an ancient, uncom-plicated identity. But the thoughts thatsurfaced in his silence were not comfort-ing. The image of himself, for instance,as an agent of providence. The fact thatfor every creature things waited.

He regretted coming out. Somehowhe could not make the day turn out tobe the one he had imagined and lookedforward to. The decision about whetherto shoot led straight back to the life hehad left in town. To other questions:who he was, what he wanted. To thewintry shadows across his bond withKristin. He sat with the safety off, tense,vigilant, unhappy, waiting for the deer.He considered the wind, although therewas hardly any.

The empty time passed quickly, assuch time, strangely, often did. It waslate in the darkening afternoon whenhe heard a voice. As soon as he heard it,he applied the safety on his shotgun.

The voice was a man’s. At first, Mi-chael thought the man was singing. Butas the voice grew closer, he realized thatthe slight musical quality there reflectedpain. He came completely out of thelong day’s trance and prepared to getdown and help. Then, the vocalist stillapproaching, he caught the anger, thequality in the voice that dominated allothers, the rage of someone utterly be-side himself. Presently the words came—obscenities, strung together without abreath, alternately bellowed and shriekedas though they were coming from some-one walking with difficulty. It stillseemed possible to Michael that some-one was hurt.

He scanned the woods in front ofhim, then adjusted his position to takein the ground just over his shoulder. Atthat point, he saw the fool.

A man about fifty came out of thepine cover forty yards away, slightly upthe slope. If Michael’s stand had notbeen placed so high, he realized, theman might easily have seen him. Butthe man’s attention was altogether fo-cussed on the buck he had brought down,a fine ten-pointer with a wide rack.

“Oh shit,” he cried piteously, “oh goddam fucking shit cocksucker.”

He was struggling with the oddwheelbarrow across which he had slunghis prize deer. It was a thing full of seamsand joins and springs. Though it ap-peared large enough to contain the kill,it could not, and its inutility was thesource of his sobs and curses and rageand despair. As the unfortunate manshoved and hauled, pushed and pulledhis burden, covering the ground byinches, the extent of his rage becameapparent. To Michael, observing fromthe tree, it was terrifying.

And justified. Because against everysnow-covered rock and log the wheelsof the weird contraption locked. Its use-less container spilled forth the corpse ofthe deer and its antlers caught on thebrush. Each time, the hunter manhan-dled it back aboard, whereupon it fellout again the other way, and the crazywheelbarrow tipped on its side, and the handle slid from his grasp and hescreeched in impotent but blood-chillingfury. Some men were poets when theyswore. But the hunter below was not apoet; he was humorless and venomousand mean.

On and on, tripping on boulders,slipping on the ice and falling on hisass, endlessly locked in a death gripwith his victim as though he had single-handedly strangled the poor thing.

“Oh shit, oh goddam shit the fuckcocksucker.”

And when he stopped to stand toone side and kick the contraption—andfollowed that by kicking the deer—Michael, hardly daring to stir lest he beseen, buried his face in his sleeve againstthe trunk to repress the laughter wellingup in him.

But now the fool, following the deertrail in his one-man danse macabre, wascoming under the sparse bare branchesof Michael’s very tree. Michael couldsee his eyes and they were terrible andhis red face and the freezing spittle onhis graying beard. The man was coveredwith blood. He was humiliated andarmed. Michael prayed that he wouldnot look up.

He held his breath and watched fas-cinated as the man and the deer and thewheelbarrow passed beneath him in fitsand starts and howlings. If the hunterbelow was possessed of the violent para-noid’s tortured intuition, of the faintestsense of being spied on in his ghastlymortification—if he tilted back his head

SKETCHBOOK BY ANA JUAN

84 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

far enough to wail at the sky—he wouldsee the witness to his folly. High abovehim lurked a Day-Glo-painted watcher in a tree, his masked, delighted facewarped in a fiendish grin. If he sees me,Michael thought suddenly, he will killme. Michael slipped his shotgun’s safetyoff and put his gloved finger at the trigger.

Iced by fear, Michael’s hilarity wastransformed into a rage of his own. Ohpriceless, he thought. Bozo sits up latedrinking Old Bohemian in his trailer. Inbetween commercials for schools thatwill teach him to drive an eighteen-wheeler and make big money, or be aforest ranger and give people orders andlive in the open air instead of cleaningshovels down at the guano mill, he seesan ad for this idiotic conveyance to haulkilled deer out of the forest. No more

jacklighting them off the Interstate rampor chainsawing road kill, hell no, he’ll gointo the forest like a macho male manwith his nifty collapsible wheelbarrow.Folds up into twenty-five tiny parts soyou can stick it in your back pocket like aroll-up measuring tape or wear it on yourbelt. It was shocking, he thought, the sat-isfaction you took in contemplating an-other man’s disgrace. Another man’satoned for your own.

Finally, cursing and howling, thehunter bore his burden on. When hewas gone, Michael realized he had beentracking the man down the barrel of hisshotgun, every stumbling inch of theway. He shivered. It had got colder, noquestion. A wind had come up, whis-tling through the branches, rattling the icy leaves that still clung to them.When he looked at his watch, it was

nearly four and time for the rendezvous.He tossed his pack, climbed from histree, and set out for the base of the gran-ite rock where he had left the others.

ALVIN MAHONEY was already wait-ing, hunkering down out of the

wind. He stood up when Michael approached.

“See anything?”“No deer. I did have something to

watch though.”Norman Cevic came trudging up

from the direction of the creek, his red-banded felt hat low over his eyes.

“So, I didn’t hear any firing, fellas.Nothing to report?”

With all the suppressed energy ofhis long solitary day, Michael spun outthe story of the sorry, angry man andhis wonderful device.

“Didn’t you hear the guy?” he askedhis friends.

Norman said he had heard nothingbut crows and wind in the trees.

“Poor bastard,” Alvin said.“You’re lucky,” Norman said. “Lucky

he didn’t look up and shoot you. A lo-cal. Probably needs the meat.”

Michael wiped his lenses with aKleenex. “You’re breaking my heart.”

“Revenge on the underclass,” Nor-man said. “Nothing like it.”

“Oh, come on,” said Michael. “Don’tbe so fucking high-minded.”

“We all enjoy it,” Norman said. Thenhe said, “You know more game wardensget killed in the line of duty than anyother law-enforcement officer?”

For a while they talked about pop-ulism and guns and militiamen. Theyhad fallen silent in the dimming lightwhen Alvin silently put a delaying handon Michael’s arm. Everyone stoppedwhere they stood. There were deer, fourof them, an eight-point buck and threefemales. One of the females looked little older than a yearling. The deer were drinking from the icy river, up-stream, upwind. The three men beganto ease closer to the stream, where abend would provide them a clear line offire. The deer were something morethan thirty-five yards away. Michaeltried shuffling through the snow, whichwas topped with a thin frozen layer, justthick enough ice to sound underfoot.He stepped on a frozen stick. It cracked.One of the does looked up and in theirdirection, then returned to her drink-

“Hi. I’m Wendell, Jr. I’m six and I’m fully invested.”

• •

ROBERT STONE 85

ing. Finally, they came to a point beyondthe tree line and looked at one another.

The target of choice would be thebig buck. If they were after meat, thedoes, even the youngest, were legalgame. The buck was splashing his wayto the edge of deep water. In a momentall four of the deer tensed in place, earsup. A doe bent her foreleg, ready tospring. There was no more time. Every-one raised his weapon. Michael, with-out a scope, found himself sighting theshoulder of the buck. It was a beautifulanimal. Magical in the fading light.Things change, he thought. Everythingchanges. His finger was on the trigger.When the other men fired, he did not.He had no clear idea why. Maybe theexperience of having a man in his sightsthat day.

The buck raised his head and took a step forward. His forelegs buckled,and he shifted his hindquarters so thatsomehow his hind legs might take upthe weight being surrendered by hisweakening body. Michael watched thecreature’s dying. It was always hard towatch their legs give way. You could feelit in your own. The pain and vertigo.

“If he falls in that stream,” Normansaid, “he’ll float halfway to Sioux City.”

But the animal staggered briefly to-ward the bank and toppled sidewiseinto the shallows. The does vanishedwithout a sound.

“Did you take a shot?” Norman askedMichael. Michael shook his head.

Examining the kill, they found twoshotgun wounds close to the animal’sheart.

“Guess we both got him,” Normansaid.

“He’s yours,” said Alvin. “You shotfirst.”

Norman laughed. “No, man. We’llhave the butcher divide him. Threeways.”

Michael helped drag the dead deerby its antlers out of the water.

“Anybody want to mount that rack?”Norman asked.

“I don’t think my wife would livewith it,” Michael told him.

“Mine either,” Norman said. “Any-way it’s not trophy size.”

THEY were only a short distancefrom the canoe, but it was dark by

the time they had hauled the deeraboard. Paddling upriver, they came to

the place where Michael had droppedhis flashlight overboard. The beam wasstill soldiering on, illuminating the bot-tom of the stream.

They secured the buck to the hood oftheir Jeep and set out for the state high-way. This time they did not stop at theHunter’s Supper Club but drove all theway to Ehrlich’s to get the deer tagged.When they had finished the forms forFish & Game, they went into the restau-rant and sat down to dinner. Mahoneywas the designated driver and abstainedfrom drink. He would, Michael thought,make up for it at home. He and Nor-man had Scotch, but it was not nearlyas good as the Willoughby’s. Then theyordered a pitcher of beer.

The menu featured wurst, schnitzel,potato pancakes, noodles, and dump-lings. There were deer heads and antlerswith brass plaques on the dark woodwalls and scrolled mottos in Gothicscript. A polka was on the jukebox andthe place was filled with hunters. AtEhrlich’s many of the hunters had fam-ily members along. There were womenand children, even babies. Happy cou-ples danced. The entire place rejoiced inan atmosphere of good-hearted revelry.

“Boy, is this place ever different fromthe Hunter’s,” Michael said. “It’s notjust the food.”

“Know why?” Norman asked.“Different people,” said Michael.“Different folks,” Norman said.

“This is Prevost County. They’re Ger-mans here. They’re peace-loving. Or-derly. You gotta love ’em.”

“Do you?”“Sure. Whereas the Hunter’s is in

the fucking swamp. Harrison County.Irish, Scotch-Irish. French Canadian.They’re poor and surly. They’re over atthe Hunter’s getting nasty drunk andselling one another wolf tickets. Whilehere, hier ist frölich.”

He spread his arms, and with a cold, false smile enacted a parody ofgemütlichkeit.

“Maybe we belong over there,” AlvinMahoney said.

Michael and Norman looked at eachother and laughed.

Norman raised his beer glass. “Here’slooking at you, Alvin,” he said.

Alvin laughed. He was nervous,drinkless. It might be safer driving, Mi-chael thought, to let him have a belt.

Michael was aware of Norman’s

watching him. “You didn’t shoot today,”Norman said.

Michael shrugged.As they were waiting for the check,

Norman said, “I have to ask you some-thing. Over at St. Emmerich’s, what arethey teaching my friend Paulie aboutabortion? Me, I don’t think there’s muchwrong with the world that doesn’t comefrom there being too many people.”

Michael poured out the last of thebeer.

“I’m sorry,” Norman said. “You’re theonly person I know to ask.”

For the second time Michael was an-noyed with Norman. Of course, sociol-ogizing was the man’s job. And he hadnever been subtle or discreet. He hadbeen to Vietnam. He owned the bigquestions.

“They don’t talk about it,” Michaelsaid. “Not at that level.” He put a papernapkin to a tiny puddle of foam on thetable before him. “They talked abouthunting the other day.” What he saidwas not exactly true. Paul was beingtaught that life began at conception. Therest, of course, would follow. But Mi-chael was not in the mood to defend thetheses of St. Emmerich’s Christian in-struction. Embarrassed, he flushed andhid behind his beer. He felt besieged. Asthough they were trying to take some-thing away from him. Something he wasnot even sure he possessed.

Because I believe, he thought. Theyknow I believe. If I believe. But faith isnot what you believe, he thought. Faithwas something else.

A blond waitress with a pretty, whole-some smile came over to them but shedid not have the check.

“Is one of you guys Michael Ahearn?”she asked.

“Me,” Michael said.“Sir, you got a phone call. Want to

take it in the kitchen?”He followed her across the room, re-

sounding with polkas, laughter, the rat-tle of plates and foaming schooners. Inthe kitchen three generations of women,the oldest in her late sixties, the youn-gest a little older than his son, workedpurposefully. The warm room smelledof vinegary marinades. His wife was onthe phone.

“Michael,” she said. Her voice wasdistant and, he thought, chill. It madehim think of the woods. Or of the lightshining at the bottom of the freezing

86 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 27, 1999 & JANUARY 3, 2000

stream. “Paul is not accounted for. Hewas at the gym and then I thought hewas going to Jimmy Collings’. But he’snot there. And his schoolbooks are here.And Olaf is missing.” She paused. “It’ssnowing here.”

He remembered the deer at the edgeof the stream. Its life ebbing, legs givingway.

“I suppose I called for moral sup-port,” she said. “I’m afraid.”

“Hang in,” he told her.He walked unseeing back through

the noisy room. Alvin and Normanwere paying the check. Michael wentinto his wallet, took out two twenties,and threw them on the table.

“That’s too much,” Norman said.“Kristin is worried about Paul. He’s

out late.”“I think he eloped with June,” Nor-

man said. “She’s hot for him.” June wasNorman’s wife. Then he looked at Mi-chael and saw how things stood.

It was snowing on Ehrlich’s parkinglot when they got to the Jeep. Alvinchecked the lines securing the carcassof the deer. Michael took a back seat.

“You know,” Alvin said, “kids are always getting up to some caper andyou get all hot and bothered and it’snothing.”

It was the last thing anyone said onthe ride home.

The snow came harder as they drove,slowing them down. Michael watched itfall. He thought of the man with thedeer in his wheelbarrow. By gad, sir, youpresent a distressing spectacle. If hecould make it up somehow. His thoughtshad all been mean and low. What hedid not want in his mind’s eye now washis son’s face. But it was there after alland the boy under snow. Hang in.

“Did I pass out?” he asked them.“You were sleeping,” Norman said.How could he sleep? He had slept

but forgotten nothing. His boy hadbeen there the whole time. Prayer. No.You did not pray for things. Prayers, likeFranklin’s key on a kite, attracted light-ning, burned out your mind and soul.

When, hours later, they drove intotown there were dead deer hangingfrom the trees on everyone’s lawn. Thelawns were wide in that prairie town.They supported many trees and almostevery bare tree on almost every lawn infront of almost every house had a deaddeer, or even two, slung over the low

boughs. There were bucks and does andfawns. All fair game, legal. There weretoo many deer.

A police car was blocking Michael’sdriveway. Norman parked the Jeep onthe street, across the lawn from his frontdoor. Everyone got out and when theydid the young town policeman, whomMichael knew, whose name was Van-dervliet, climbed out of his cruiser.

“Sir,” Vandervliet said, “they’re nothere. They’re at MacIvor.”

MacIvor was the tri-county hospitalon the north edge of town.

Norman put a hand on his shoul-der. Michael climbed into Vandervliet’sPlymouth cruiser.

“What?” Michael asked the youngcop. “Is my son alive?”

“Yes, sir. But he’s suffering from exposure.”

And it did not sound so good be-cause as they both knew the cold, at acertain point, was irreversible, and allthe heat, the fire, the cocoa, hot-waterbottles, sleeping bags, down jackets,quilts, whiskey, medicine, nothing couldmake a child stop trembling and histemperature rise.

“Your wife is injured, Professor. Imean she ain’t injured bad but she felldown trying to carry the boy I guessand so she’s admitted also over there atMacIvor.”

“I see,” Michael said.“See, the boy was looking for the dog

’cause the dog was out in the snow.”On the way to the hospital, Michael

said, “I think I’m going to shoot thatdog.”

“I would,” said Vandervliet.

AT MacIvor, they were waiting for him. There was a nurse whose

husband ran the Seattle-inspired coffeeshop in town and a young doctor fromback East. They looked so agitated, hewent numb with fear. The doctor intro-duced himself but Michael heard noneof it.

“Paul’s vital signs are low,” the doctorsaid. “We’re hoping he’ll respond. Un-fortunately he’s not conscious and we’reconcerned. We don’t know how long hewas outside in the storm.”

Michael managed to speak. “Hisbody temperature . . . ?”

“That’s a cause of concern,” the doctor said. “That will have to showimprovement.”

Michael did not look at him.“We can treat this,” the doctor said.

“We see it here. There’s hope.”“Thank you,” Michael said. Above

all, he did not want to see the boy.That fair vision and he kept repellingit. He was afraid to watch Paul die,though surely even in death he wouldbe beautiful.

“We’d like you to talk to . . . to yourwife,” the doctor said. “We’re sure shehas a fracture and she won’t go to X-ray.”He hesitated for a moment and wentoff down the corridor.

At MacIvor the passageways had theform of an “X.” As the doctor walkedoff down one bar of the pattern, Mi-chael saw what appeared to be his wifeat the end of the other. She was in awheelchair. The nurse followed him ashe walked toward her.

“She won’t go to X-ray,” the nursecomplained. “Her leg’s been splintedand she’s had pain medication and wehave a bed ready for her but she won’trest. She won’t let the medication do its thing.”

Kristin, huge-eyed and white as chalk,wheeled herself in their direction. Butwhen Michael came up, the nurse intow, she looked through him. There wasan open Bible on her lap.

The nurse went to take the han-dles of Kristin’s wheelchair. Michaelstepped in and took them himself. Doits thing? He had trouble turning thewheelchair around. The rear wheels re-fused to straighten out. Do their thing.He pushed his wife toward the wall.Her splinted right leg extended straightout and when her foot touched the wallshe uttered a soft cry. Tears ran downher face.

“There’s a little trick to it,” said thenurse. She made a sound that was notquite a laugh. “Let me.”

Michael ignored her. The wheelchairresisted his trembling pressure. Oh god-dam shit.

“Take me in to him,” Kristin said.“Better not,” the nurse said, to Mi-

chael’s relief.If he could see himself, futilely try-

ing to ambulate his wife on wheels,Michael thought, it would be funny.But hospitals never had mirrors. Therewas a discovery. In the place of undo-ings, where things came apart, yourchildren changed to cadavers, you spunyour wife in wheelies, no mirrors. The

ROBERT STONE 87

joke was on you but you did not have towatch yourself.

When they were in the room shesaid,“I fell carrying him. He was by thegarden fence—I fell in the snow.” Hecould picture her carrying Paul up fromthe garden, tripping, slipping, stum-bling. He took her icy hand but shewithdrew it. “He was so cold.”

“Lie down,” he said. “Can you?”“No, it hurts.”He stood and rang for the nurse.Kristin took up the Bible as though

she were entranced and began to readaloud.

“ ‘Be merciful unto me, O God, bemerciful unto me: for my soul trustethin thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wingswill I make my refuge.’ ”

Closing his eyes, he tried to hold onto the words. Listening to her read inher mother’s strange featureless tone hecould imagine Luther’s Bible the wayher mother out on the plains must haveheard it from her own parents. A psalmfor fools in the snow. Really expect-ing nothing but cold and death in theshadow of those wings. Odin’s raven.

“ ‘Until these calamities be overpast.I will cry unto God most high.’ ”

Michael sat listening, despising theleaden resignation of his wife’s prayer,its acceptance, surrender. His impulsewas flight.

“ ‘My soul is among lions,’ ” she read,“ ‘and I lie even among them that areset on fire.’ ”

His impulse was flight. He sat thereburning until the nurse came in. For somereason, she looked merry, confidential.

“I think we turned a corner,” she said.“Michael! Kristin! I think we turned acorner.”

Then the doctor entered quietly andthey got Kristin into bed and she wentunder the medication. Even uncon-scious her eyes were half open.

The doctor said you responded oryou didn’t and Paul had responded. Histemperature was going up. He wascoming up. He would even get his fin-gers and toes back and his ethical littleChristian brain going, it appeared. Thedoctor looked so relieved.

“You can have a minute while we getthe gurney. We’ve gotta get her X-rayedpronto because she’s got a broken legthere.”

“You can see Paul,” the nurse said.“He’s sleeping. Real sleep now.”

The doctor laughed. “It’s very ex-hausting to half freeze to death.”

“It would be,” Michael said.While they got the gurney, he looked

into Kristin’s half-open, tortured, long-lashed blue eyes and brushed the slightlygraying black hair from them. With herlong face and buck teeth she looked like the Christus on a Viking crucifix.Given her, he thought, given me, whydidn’t he die? Maybe he still will, Mi-chael thought. The notion terrified him.He had stood up to make his escapewhen the orderlies came in to takeKristin away. Michael rubbed her coldhand.

The chapel was down at the end of the corridor. It had a kind of altar,stained-glass windows that opened onnothing, that were inlaid with cloudsand doves and other fine inspirationalthings.

Michael had been afraid, for a while,that there was something out there, atthe beginning and end of conscious-ness. An alpha and an omega to things.He had believed it for years on and off.And that night, he had felt certain,the fire would be visited on him. Hisboy would be taken away and he wouldknow, know absolutely the power of themost high. Its horrible providence. Its

mysteries, its hide-and-seek, and les-sons, and redefined top-secret merciesto be understood through prayer andmeditation. But only at really specialmoments of rhapsody and ecstasy and,O, wondrous clarity. Behold now behe-moth. Who can draw Leviathan? Etcetera.

But now his son’s life was saved. Andthe great thing had come of nothing, ofabsolutely nothing, out of a kaleido-scope, out of a Cracker Jack box. Everyday its own flower, to every day its ownstink and savor. Good old random sin-gularity and you could exercise a properrevulsion for life’s rank overabundanceand everybody could have their rightsand be happy.

And he could be a serious person, agrownup at last and not worry over thingsthat educated people had not troubledthemselves with practically for cen-turies. Free at last and it didn’t mean athing and it would all be over, somethings sooner than later. His marriage,for one, sealed in faith like the Sepul-chral stone. Vain now. No one watchedover us. Or rather we watched over eachother. That was providence, what a re-lief. He turned his back on the inspira-tions of the chapel and went out to watchhis lovely son survive another day. ♦

“Haven’t you got anything a little more, like, ironic?”