19

KICKED AWAKE BY MY FATHER, STILL DARK. HE’D FOUND my hiding place behind the fallen trunk. Get up, he said. Familiar shadow, made foreign now by my time on the road.

Exhausted and curled in my sleeping bag, I did not want to wake. Breath heavy. But he jabbed his boot in my side again and I sat up. Okay, I said.

Get over here, he said.

He walked away, backlit by a small fire, yellow outlines of him and a cavern forming above in the trees. Domed ceiling of any cathedral. The moon low on the other side of the sky now, setting, fading in firelight. No stained glass. No windows, even. Open arches.

My back in knots, but I rose and pulled on my jacket and hat and boots and followed him across shadows and deadfall, hollows and pools of black, carrying my rifle. The trees dry above, all color leached. My skin coming alive.

Tom at the griddle, a kind of Hephaestus I see now, working in darkness, without a lantern, working always with hot iron and sizzling flesh, no longer forging in metal alone. My grandfather still on his slab of marble, but I thought I saw an eye open as I passed. My father gone beyond the fire to stand before the hooks, our altar.

Dead man and buck the same color, pale yellow, horns and ankles made of the same bloodless material. Almost as lifeless as the painted plastic hanging in any church.

You can’t hang a man next to a buck, my father said.

That’s all I have left of the buck. I had to leave the rest of him in the road.

They’re not the same.

They are the same, my grandfather said from behind us. I turned and he was already up in his long johns, a mound of flesh wrapped loosely in cloth stained and yellowish in this light, his robes. As if we all had come here to be judged by him.

Don’t start, my father said.

Well what is the difference? Your son has killed a man and a buck, and you and he have hung them here. You hung the man yourself. You skewered his ankles as if he was an animal.

They’re not the same.

How are they not the same?

I’m not listening to this, Tom said. He walked over and was holding a spatula, the small fire close behind him, associated with him. Bright spots of grease along his bare forearm. We eat a buck. We bury a man. There’s the difference, you fucking monster. He was pointing at my grandfather with the spatula, as if it were some kind of knife.

There’s nothing left to eat, I said. You made me leave everything in the road.

My grandfather smiled. The best part of youth, he said. The utter lack of humor.

What does that mean? I asked.

Take that head down, my father said. I won’t have them hanging together. My father’s face creased in this light, long thin shadows down his cheeks. He was a weak figure. He could make no demands. He determined nothing, and this had always been true.

It’s my first buck. I get to hang him here.

My father’s arm a sequence too fast to follow, a kind of shadow that struck the side of my face and knocked me into the dirt. My skin burned and bones of my face throbbing. On my knees and still holding my rifle.

He’s right, my grandfather said. He gets to hang his first buck here. That’s the rule we follow. If we don’t follow that, then why not eat the man and bury the buck?

And suddenly that’s what I could see. On my knees on that ground, the blood still pumping in my face, I could see Tom carving pieces off the dead man and frying them on his grill. A different kind of church, the body of Christ more literal, no icon in wood or plastic but actual flesh and each of us feeding from it every day. Feeding from the flesh of bucks, too, and finding no difference.

You really are a monster, Tom said.

What rule says you eat the buck and not the man? my grandfather asked.

Every fucking rule in the world.

Did the rules say this boy could kill that man?

No.

Well what happens to the rules then?

Sometimes I think I invented my grandfather, that he never existed on his own. His voice is my own voice now, and I can’t find any separation. I can’t find what was him then and what is me now. His views have infected me.

You are all fucked in the head, Tom said. All three of you, and when we get back, everyone’s going to know. Enjoy your last bit of craziness. We’re leaving here today.

We’re not leaving today, my grandfather said. We’re going for a hunt today, and then taking a nap, and then going for another hunt, same as every other day. And we’re leaving tomorrow, as we planned. And that buck’s head is going to hang there until we leave.

We’re not going for a hunt, my father said. I’m burying this man. I’m going to bury him right now. This has gone on too long. You can have your fucking head hanging there all you want, but the man is not hanging beside him.

My father went to the ropes then, worked in darkness, his back against the light, and I could hear the men breathing above me, could hear the snap of the fire.

Rope tearing against bark, and the dead man fell before me, all one piece in motion, a slab, no collapse or fold but only a hard dull fall onto his shoulders and then ankles swinging down slowly until they rested a few inches above the ground. Some part of him refusing to return to earth, something always otherworldly about him. Sly grin still and head ducked, capable of anything.

So you’re ready to say this man’s death meant something? my grandfather asked.

I’m not saying anything, my father said. And I’m not talking to you.

Well what does it mean to bury him?

You don’t ask questions like that.

These are the only questions. What if we chop his head off and bury him with the buck’s head? Does that make any difference?

Tom walked over to the fire and took out a long thick stick burning at its end. Red grid of coals inside the flames. He held this up and gazed at it. Would it matter if I burned your eyes out with this stick? he asked. Would that make any difference?

I’m not the one whose eyes should be burned out, my grandfather said, and he pointed down at me. If the man’s death means something, then there has to be consequence.

Both of you, my father said. Please just kill each other now. I can’t listen to either of you ever again.

What does it mean to bury him? my grandfather asked. What will that do?

The dead man was looking all around while we were distracted. Shifty-eyed. Planning his escape. A quick leap over the stream, through trees and ferns and into that meadow. Head of a buck, body of a man, feet swiveling and flapping at the earth, arms yanking at his sides useless, but that great head with its rack and large eyes looking back, seeing all shapes. Body jerking below, but that head smooth, gliding over the earth.

My father crawled to the ankles and pulled them to ground, yanked out the hooks. The dead man free now, and I waited for him to run, but my father rose and picked up the ankles with their bloodless holes and dragged him toward the truck. The man’s arms outstretched and knuckles curled, risen off the ground, locked into that shape, reaching for everything, no neck, orangutan Jesus pale and rotting and waiting. He would not go into any grave easily. I knew that.

Well I guess it’s back to bed, my grandfather said, yawning and scratching his sides. We come close, and then we just go on. Dig your hole and try not to think about anything.

Fuck off, my father said.

Yeah, my grandfather said. He turned and picked his way carefully over the needles and cones, barefooted, unsteady, and sat down at the table. Breakfast first, then I’ll fuck off and catch a bit of shut-eye.

Tom tossed his firebrand back into the pit and returned to the griddle. Fine, he said. Aren’t you going to ask any important questions, though? Why eat an egg? What is an egg? What does the egg have to do with the bacon? Is there any rule that says we have to eat the bacon before the egg? What if the bacon is the egg? Is there any consequence to an egg?

Help me lift him, my father said. He was talking to me, waiting at the back of the pickup.

I stood, but I didn’t want to touch the dead man. I couldn’t just reach down and hold those hands.

Right now, my father said. Hurry the fuck up.

My father in shadow, the truck blocking the fire. I held my rifle in both hands as I came closer and was hidden also. Cold and not yet morning.

Now, he said.

The dead man a pale bluish shadow against the darker ground. Those hands suspended and curled midair, warning us, trying to describe the enormity of something but frozen midwarning, without blood or sound or time.

Put down your rifle and grab his hands.

I was frozen, locked as solidly as the dead man.

Fuck me, my father said. He dropped the ankles and circled the dead man in only three quick strides, grabbed my arm and hauled me around to the feet. Grab his ankles then, he said.

The dead man reaching for me. Unclear where the ground was or which way we hung in gravity. It looked like he was standing above with those arms reaching high, which meant I was lying on the ground, the world rocked ninety degrees, but there was only air behind my back. I was held against nothing, and the dead man bearing down. His head ducked low because he was about to spring.

Grab his ankles. My father’s voice loud.

The removal of Jesus from the cross. His burial. The problem is that he’s going to rise, and there’s some premonition of that, and the premonition binds you in place. You can’t move or breathe.

Goddammit, my father said. Are you completely fucking retarded?

Your son knows, my grandfather said from the table. He knows the man’s death means something. He knows there’s going to be consequence. He knows more than you do.

How about you dig a hole, my father shouted back. How about you dig a big hole and get down in it and when we get back we’ll throw the dirt over. I’d be happy to do that. No hesitation at all.

You can’t bury everything, my grandfather said. Some things won’t be buried.

Spare me.

What will this burial do? Will it mean your son didn’t kill the man? Will it mean the man’s not dead?

Did the bacon come from the egg? Tom asked. Did the bacon ever have wings? Is the bacon a pterodactyl?

My father knelt down in darkness at the man’s side and cradled him, lifted him in a drooping slab, arms and legs not quite rigid, and turned to swing the feet in first over the tailgate, but they weren’t high enough, even with the tailgate down. They were caught.

Aaah! my father yelled, and he dipped and swung the body to get those feet to clear, then pushed the dead man into the bed with all my grandfather’s pinecones, sliding him along metal ruts. The body pale and rubbery and flexing, a different luminescence. Hands hanging midair still, over the edge, but my father swung the tailgate up and slammed them.

Get in the truck, he said.

Bravo, my grandfather said. You’re halfway to nothing.

My father grim. I climbed in the cab and he was hunched forward over the wheel. You have done this, he said. This is all because of you. So you’re going to drag that body all the way to the upper glade and give him a proper burial.

The upper glade?

That’s right. My father turned the ignition then and the engine was surprisingly loud, rough and pulsing, racing against the cold. Grab the shovel, he said. Unless you want to dig a grave with your bare hands.

I walked to the fire pit, my grandfather and Tom both watching, and grabbed our camp shovel, hinged and small, army surplus. It would take forever to dig a grave with that.

But I climbed into the cab, and my father turned the truck around and swung onto the road, except there was no road to see and he did not turn on the lights. He drove in darkness. We left the fire and its light almost instantly, and there was no other light to steer by, the moon down now and only a dim scatter in one end of the sky.

The sound of the truck isolated us from the rest of the world. Held together in this cab waiting for what would happen. And yet sound is all my father could possibly have used to navigate. The scree along one side to know he was at an edge, the snapping of small branches under the tires and then drifting back into smoother sound of dirt and small rocks and pinecones crushing, soft small grenades going off. Or perhaps he drove from memory, the shape of this road become a part of him.

A dark form beside me, a form I didn’t know. I couldn’t see him, and it seemed it had always been this way. My grandfather had erased him.

Falling through darkness, compression in the engine winding up high and my hand braced on the dash, and I couldn’t see what was below. The dead man behind falling toward us, his arms outstretched.

What I know of my father is that he was moral. He wanted all to be made right. He would have remade us all, melted us down and recast us in a different mold. And this was why he had no chance. This was why he was erased and I can never remember him now as anything more than a shadow beside me, some reminder of who I perhaps should have been but could never possibly have been. You can’t undo your own nature, and the moral are always left helpless in the face of who we are.

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