Heart of the Fields

The hunters were all Hansens. They were all dressed in red and stood in the snow near their pickups. Benny’s father said again, “You’re sure there was nothing.”

“Nothing,” Benny said.

Benny’s father cursed; his breath smoked in the December air and a clear droplet spun from his nose.

Benny turned away. He leaned on his rifle and tried to get his breath without taking the frozen air too deeply into his lungs. Beside Benny, three of his cousins were lying back on the snow, their coats open at the throat and steaming. Benny and they had just finished driving the big timber where the snow was hip-deep in places. Benny’s father, his uncles, and his grandfather had been on stands waiting for the deer to break out. There had been no deer.

Benny looked down the field to his grandfather. The grandfather’s gray Ford sat parked in the northeast corner of the hay field, alongside a low patch of brush. The brush broke the outline of the Ford, shielded it from the timber and from the eyes of any deer that might try to come east across the open snow. A yard-wide oval of carbon blackened the snow beneath the Ford’s tailpipe. To keep warm, his grandfather ran the motor all day. By its constancy, the Ford’s dull, thumping idle was a part of the landscape of pines and snow and fields, a sound that, like a steady breeze, went unnoticed until it died. But during deer season, the Ford’s pumping rhythm never ceased.

Benny wondered if his grandfather got lonely, there in the car all day. He knew his grandfather took with him only a cold egg sandwich, a thermos of Sanka, and the old twelve-gauge shotgun with a single slug—“In case one tries to come east,” as the old man said every year.

The grandfather no longer carried his own deer rifle, the silvery Winchester Model 94. Benny had it. Benny’s father and uncles decided those things. They awarded the rifle to Benny because they believed the grandfather’s eyes were too dim to make good use of the rifle, and because, at age thirteen, Benny was the oldest grandchild.

Benny drew his glove along the worn walnut stock of the Winchester. He thought of walking on to the Ford to talk with his grandfather, but in the failing light the snowy road lengthened even as he watched. Today, however, was the last day of deer season. They would not have to hunt tomorrow, and Benny would visit him then. He would make lunch, scrambled eggs and toast and cranberry jelly and Sanka, for his grandfather. And then they would sit together by the oil burner and listen to the radio.

“Well—that’s it for this year,” Benny’s father said, and cursed again.

Benny turned. Across the blueing snow, two fluorescent orange hunting caps swam out from the timber’s shadow. Drawing light from air, the hats bobbed toward Benny and the others in separate rhythms. They were the last of the drivers. There was now no chance for deer.

“Weren’t nothing in there,” one of the cousins muttered from the snow.

“The hell,” Benny’s father said quickly. “There’s deer tracks goin’ into that timber but none comin’ out. What does that tell you? It tells me you drivers got too spread out and the deer got back through you.”

None of the drivers said anything because Benny’s father was right. Some of the cousins, disoriented by the gray, sunless sky, had wandered in and out of the drive line. Other cousins, tired of the deep snow, walked the higher ridge trails instead of working through the bottom brush in the draws and holes. The deer, a great buck along with some does, had not stirred.

Hell, maybe the deer weren’t in the timber in the first place, Benny thought. Though he had seen the buck’s tracks earlier in the day, had seen the buck himself in the alfalfa and cornfields all that fall, by now Benny barely believed in the gray-brown ghosts.

A hundred yards away, the orange caps rode bodies now, Benny’s Uncle Karl and another cousin. “So where’d they go?” Karl called across the snow as if to get in the first word.

Benny’s father spit.

“They didn’t cross south,” Karl continued, waving his rifle. “They didn’t go west because of the lake. And they didn’t come north because you were there. Unless you didn’t see ’em.”

“They didn’t come north,” Benny’s father said, a tic of anger working his forehead.

The cousins were all standing now.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Karl muttered. “Maybe they’re hiding under these goddamn pickups.”

His boot thudded against the fender and snow fell over the tire.

“Maybe they came east, through here . . .” one of the cousins said.

“Then Grandpa would have seen them,” Benny answered immediately.

The hunters all looked, first at Benny, and then down the field at the grandfather’s Ford. They had forgotten the grandfather.

But Karl turned his back on the grandfather’s car. “Hell, the way his eyes are these days, he couldn’t see a deer if it jumped over his car.”

Benny turned quickly to his father, who only looked down and kicked snow from his boots as he nodded in agreement.

“Honk the horn for him,” Karl said, jerking his head toward the Ford, “let’s go home.”

“I will! I will!” Two of the youngest cousins scrambled to be the first into the pickups. The horns blared across the fields and their echoes wavered back from the timberline. The others began to case their rifles but Benny remained standing, angered at his father and uncle. He waited for the Ford’s brake lights to blink on red, for the race of the engine and the black blossom of exhaust.

But the Ford’s idle pulsed evenly on. There was no blink of light, no black smoke, nothing. From the side of his eye Benny saw his father, gun half cased, look up and freeze. The others straightened and stared downfield at the Ford. White-faced and wide-eyed, the cousins at the pickup horns now looked about as if they had done some terrible wrong.

“Honk again,” Benny’s father said with an old slowness.

The horns blared and the timber honked back the faded replies.

“Again,” Karl said quickly.

At the third honking there was motion near the Ford, brown motion from the brush alongside the car. Three deer uncoiled from the bushes, their white tails flagged up and bouncing. Behind Benny someone scrambled for a rifle. “No—” Benny’s father shouted.

The big buck and two does leaped a car’s length in front of the Ford and then ran straight away north. The buck’s antlers flashed through a last slant of sunlight and then all three deer disappeared into the shadow of the timber.

“Holy Christ—” someone began, but stopped. In the silence, the Ford’s thumping idle beat in the air like the heart of the fields.

“Grandpa!” Benny cried. He ran toward the Ford, tearing off his coat for speed, outdistancing the others. As he neared the car he saw his grandfather slumped in the front seat. Benny tore open the door.

“What? Whoa!” his grandfather exclaimed with a start. “You scared me there, Benny!”

“Grandpa! Are you—didn’t you hear us honk?”

The grandfather blinked. The white wisps of his eyebrows moved as he thought. “I don’t rightly know,” he finally said. “I guess I heard, but then I thought I was dreaming. Or something like that. I wasn’t sleeping, nosir. But I was dreaming, somehow . . .” His voice trailed off. The others were there now, crowding around the car. Benny held on to his grandfather. He buried his face in the roughness and the woody smell of the old wool coat and held his grandfather tight.

“Here now, Benny,” the old man said, “where’s your coat? It ain’t July.”

One of the cousins had retrieved Benny’s coat, and he stood up to put it on. His grandfather squinted around at the hunters. “Any luck today, boys?” he said.

No one said anything. Then Benny’s father said, “No, no luck today, Dad.”

The grandfather shook his head. “Guess we’ll have to eat track soup this year. And that’s thin eating, I always said.”

Benny’s father nodded.

“Everybody’s out?” the grandfather asked, peering across to the timber he could not see.

“Everybody’s out,” Karl answered.

“I’ll drive on home then, and get myself a hot cup of Sanka.”

The Ford’s engine raced briefly, then the car lurched forward; on the snow was a dark rectangle of wet leaves and grass. The Ford receded up the snowy field road toward the yellow yard light and buildings. The hunters stared after him. “I’ll be damned,” one of the men murmured.

Karl turned away to inspect the deer beds, three gray ovals in the snow, and beside them the scuffed hearts of the leaping hooves. But darkness had fallen and the hunters soon pressed on to their pickups.

Benny’s father led the caravan. He drove in the grandfather’s tracks that led up to the old house and then beyond, to the country road that forked away to their own farms and homes.

But tonight the chain of headlights behind Benny and his father did not pass through the grandfather’s yard. One by one the trucks turned in and parked. Doors thudded. Laughter hung in the frosty air as the Hansens, all of them, converged on the yellow lights of the grandfather’s house.