Marked for Death

When I walked into gun safety class, some of the boys laughed, their thirteen-year-old voices croaking like tree toads.

“Hey,” a pimply faced one said, “aren’t you in the wrong room?”

I pretended to check my registration sheet. “No, I’m in the right room—but the dermatologist is just down the hall.”

A few other boys snickered, and not at me. Pizza Face, aka “Tanner” (we had to wear stick-on name tags), looked at me dumbly. “Forget it,” I said. I glanced around, then took a desk near the front; since I was the only girl, I might as well be a cliché.

The instructor, Mr. Johnson, soon came into the room. “Good Saturday morning, class!” he said. He was a high school industrial arts teacher, but today he was all geared out: he wore a camo cap and a Dorks Unlimited shooting vest and carried two long guns plus a bunch of handouts under his arm.

“Don’t be afraid; they’re only guns,” Tanner said.

I glanced at them. “Looks like a .22 rifle and a twenty-gauge shotgun,” I replied. “Though I prefer a sixteen-gauge myself. The dram load is a little light for ducks and geese, but it’s perfect for partridge hunting—wouldn’t you agree?”

“Huh?” he said to me. He was staring at the guns, this undersized, scruffy kid with all the wrong clothes.

“Well, well, well!” Mr. Johnson said, his eyes lighting up as he saw me. “If it’s not Miss Samantha Carlson.”

“Sam,” I said. Please. Spare me.

“Samantha’s father happens to be a professional hunting guide and one of the top shooters in the Midwest,” the instructor said loudly. “If she’s anything like her father, you boys don’t stand a chance.”

There were a few uncertain chuckles.

“Maybe you could just turn a big spotlight on me?” I muttered.

This got a big laugh from the boys; Mr. Johnson drew back, cleared his throat, and moved to a different spot in the room.

I checked my watch. I had to pass this class in order to get my gun safety permit, which meant I could go deer hunting—real hunting, as in carrying my own gun. For midwestern kids, this is a big deal. The even bigger deal was this: I’d be hunting with my father. Just me and him. He wasn’t around much; right now he was guiding in Kodiak, Alaska—fish in the spring and summer, big game in the fall—but we had been planning this for years. “When you turn thirteen, it’s just me and you, honey,” he always said. My brothers, Jake, Ben, and Andrew, had their turn; now it was mine.

First, however, I had to get through this day. Stuck inside a school classroom on a hot August Saturday (the last one before school started) was bad enough, but most of my friends from La Crosse were off to the Mall of America in Minneapolis on one last shopping trip for school clothes. Growing up with three brothers, I constantly worried about becoming Jo March from Little Women. On the other hand, I wasn’t a full-time girly girl like most of my friends. To be honest, my life in that area was kind of a mess.

“Today’s class will cover the basic principles of firearms operation and hunting safety,” Mr. Johnson droned as he distributed handouts. I sighed again. My family lives in Wisconsin, in the countryside north of La Crosse, and we target shoot right in our backyard. My father got me started with a BB gun when I was about five. I wish he could have seen me smoke 24 of 25 sporting clays the other day with the Browning twenty gauge he bought me last Christmas, but these days he’s gone almost all the time. My parents seem kind of married, kind of not. I don’t ask. I only know that my mother has made a big deal of me knowing how to do all the stuff my brothers can do, such as ride a horse, clean fish, and use cables to jump-start a car with a dead battery. She’s a real outdoors woman herself; after deer hunting season, she always gets a manicure because deer blood chaps her hands, her cuticles especially (a beauty tip you won’t get from reading Teen Beat or Glamour).

“There will be a test at the end of the day,” Mr. Johnson said, “so pay attention—unless you think you know it all.”

He glanced sideways at me; I pretended to study the handouts, which anyway were easier on the eyes than a room full of thirteen-year-old males. After the teacher moved on, I sneaked another look around. The boys looked like they had all been dropped as babies. Some had noses and ears way too large for their faces; some had no chin, or too much jaw; some were tall, some (like Tanner) were small in their desks; some had patches of whisker fuzz and croaky voices while others sounded like canaries. Not a pretty sight. Tanner had drawn something rude on his desk and was trying to get the kid next to him to look at it.

“We’ll start with the fundamental, number one issue of handling a gun: muzzle safety,” the instructor said. He held up the small rifle. “If the bore, or ‘business end’ of a gun is never pointed at a person, no one can ever be shot accidentally.” Then he took ten minutes saying the same thing ten different ways. We get it, we get it! I checked my watch again to make sure its battery wasn’t dead.

After muzzle safety, it was on to more bonehead facts and information, including a filmstrip (I thought they went out with the last century) on moving safely through the field while carrying a gun. “Always be sure of your target, and never, ever, run with a gun.”

Yawn.

“The next part of our class contains graphic images,” the instructor said as he set up his slide projector.

“All right!” Tanner said to anyone who would listen.

“These photographs were taken at the scene of actual hunting accidents.”

“Even better!” Tanner whispered.

Everybody ignored him. If Tanner were a character in an action movie, he would be marked for death—you know, the swimmer who paddles away from the others in a shark flick, or the camper who wanders into the woods at night in a slasher film.

“Fair warning: some of these slides are explicit, or, as you youngsters might say, ‘gross,’ ” Mr. Johnson said.

No one said anything.

“Their purpose is to shock you,” he continued, taking his time, making us wait. Clearly this was his best stuff. “I want you to see the effect of a rifle bullet or a shotgun blast on human flesh.”

I got ready by squinting my eyes. The first slide was of a hunter facedown in brown leaves with a big black splotch on the back of his blaze orange jacket; compared to the computer games that Jake, Ben, and Andrew played, it was pretty tame.

“That’s what he looked like in the field,” the instructor said. The next slide flashed onto the screen—I looked away but not in time—and there was a sucking in of breath around the room. “This is what he looked like in the coroner’s office.”

A stainless steel table. A totally naked guy lying on his stomach with a huge, Little Shop of Horrors flower growing on his back: white, fatty petals at the edges, bulging red stuff in the middle, things that looked like black tongues. I felt my breakfast Cheerios move in my stomach.

The slides continued. I watched the next one from the very corner of my eye: an arm blown away just below the elbow, flaps of skin hanging like a fringed skirt on a doll. “This hunter bled to death,” the instructor announced.

Two dead hunters were enough. We got the picture—at least I got the picture—and while the boys watched the rest of the freak show, I watched them: it was a great moment to observe the species. With each new image, Tanner’s jaw dropped a degree lower until I could hear him breathing through his mouth.

“Okay, that should be enough,” the instructor finally said. He shut down the projector and turned on the lights. There were exhalations and murmuring and thumping about in the desks. After another short filmstrip on target shooting and safety, at last it was lunchtime.

Even better, we got to go outside.

On the elementary school playground we took our bag lunches toward some grass. Tanner carried only a twenty-four-ounce Mountain Dew. “Hey everybody, did you see that dead guy’s butt?” he said. Everybody ignored him. We sat down. Tanner kept looking for a group to join, but nobody would let him in. Being a sucker for birds and chipmunks fallen from nests, I was just about to give in and make room for him, when he raced across to the swing set. He took a swing and began to pump himself higher and higher. Gradually we turned to watch him. Soon, at high arc, the chains began to slack and he free-fell with harder and harder jerks. “Hey everybody, higher?” he called.

“Yeah—way higher!” several boys called, and snickered.

“What a jerk,” one of them said, and turned away.

Tanner stood up in the swing and pumped. I held my breath.

“Anybody, want to see me jump?”

“Yeah—for sure!” several guys called; the boys turned as one to get a good look at Tanner breaking his neck. I’d had enough; I ran over to the swing set and grabbed at the chains as they flashed by. “Tanner, cut it out! You’re gonna get hurt!”

His head jerked sideways and he stared down at me. Then he looked at all the boys, and I realized I’d just made things worse for him. Luckily for all of us, Mr. Johnson stepped through the door. “The bus is here,” he called; in an instant, the boys raced off, leaving me with Tanner.

“Hey everybody, wait up!” Tanner shouted.

I waited as he braked himself in a cloud of dust, and then jumped. He did a running flip, and landed on his back with a thud. For a second his mouth went fish-lips as he sucked at the air, and soon he sat up, gasping.

“See, what did I tell you?” I said. “Those guys just wanted to see you get hurt.”

He looked at me, and for a second his eyes were not crazy and jumpy. It was like there was a normal kid buried somewhere inside his head. But really deep inside.

“Race you to the bus!” he said.

The yellow school bus took us to the local target range for actual shooting—in other words, the fun part of the day.

“I’ve never shot a gun before,” Tanner said; of course he had to sit by me.

The boys all looked at one another, then rolled their eyes.

“Does it kick?” he asked me.

“Some,” I said, “but just keep the butt of the stock tight against your shoulder. That and your cheek tight on the wood.” I thought for sure he’d make some lame joke about “butt” and “cheek.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Tanner said. I looked twice at him. Tanner was possibly the only thirteen-year-old boy in the world who didn’t mind taking directions from a thirteen-year-old girl. The boys rolled their eyes again; however, as the shooting range approached, they all began to stare out the bus windows. I got the feeling that many of them had never shot a gun.

First, everyone shot the little .22 caliber, single-shot rifle. Three shots in the three main positions: prone, sitting, and standing (off-hand). The first boy couldn’t figure out the sitting position; that is, which elbow to place on which knee. When my turn came I took time to get my breathing right—it’s best to squeeze the trigger in that dead moment just after exhaling—and put all three shots, in all three positions, in the bull’s-eye black. “What did I tell you, boys,” Mr. Johnson said.

Soon we moved to the shotgun and clay pigeons. Mr. Johnson let me “demonstrate” by going first. I figured he’d try something sneaky, and from the corner of my amber shooting glasses saw him adjust the bench-mounted thrower to “rabbit,” meaning a ground-skipping clay.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded. “Pull!” The clay came out low and fast, but I led it right—and puffed it—just before it flew out of range. By the end of the day I had twenty new friends, Tanner in particular, plus my Hunting and Gun Safety certificate and badge.

For the boys the big question was where to sew on their badge: cap or hunting jacket? They even included Tanner in that debate. I slipped mine in my pocket and got out of there.

“How’d it go?” my mother asked. Her name is Amy, and she was waiting for me in the parking lot beside our Jeep. Tanned and lean with a sandy brown ponytail, she wore her usual Saturday outfit: jeans, dusty cowboy boots, and the leathery, soapy smell of Penny, our horse.

“She can shoot like heck!” Tanner called across to my mother. “She’s cool!”

I shrugged. “Tanner, my new best friend.”

My mother smiled. “Thatta girl.” She put her arm around me right there in the open.

“Please, Mom,” I said.

“Sorry,” she said, and let go.

I watched the other boys head off with their fathers, all except for Tanner, who got on a battered bicycle with a wobbly back tire. My mother started the car and we drove away. I kept looking back.

“What?” she asked.

I was silent.

“You miss your Dad,” she said.

I shrugged. “Do you?”

She paused a moment too long. “He’ll be home for a while real soon.”

She drove on and we were both silent. We never talked much about him; there was lots of unsaid stuff about him being gone. I think she thought I blamed her, and maybe in some ways I did.

When I got home I left my father a voice mail message about passing the gun safety class; he hardly ever answered his cell phone, but then again if you’re a hunting guide, the last thing you need is your phone to start beeping. Sometimes I called his number just to hear his voice message.

The first day of school was a disaster. Everybody except me had grown a foot taller and several bra sizes bigger; I was wearing bright new Adidas when all the girls in the Tara-Melanie group were wearing strappy sandals (how come I didn’t hear about that?). And the bad news didn’t stop there. I was standing with Tara and Melanie, in the eighth-grade hallway, when a loud voice called, “Sam—hey Sam!”

I looked over my shoulder. I froze.

Tanner came rushing up. His pimples were somewhat better, and he had on a clean shirt, but he was wearing old, busted-out tennis shoes and ratty jeans and his hair needed a major washing. The girls around me drew back.

“It’s me, Tanner! Remember? From gun safety class?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I checked my watch.

“Hey Sam, I was thinking—maybe we can go hunting some day!”

I felt my ears begin to burn, and could only imagine their new color. “We’ll see. Actually, I gotta go to class,” I said.

“Okay, see you around, Sam,” Tanner said cheerfully, and turned away.

“Who was that?” the girls asked in unison.

“Just this . . . kid,” I said, and felt my face turn really red.

As school continued that first week, Tanner ricocheted from group to group. Nobody wanted anything to do with him, so I ended up talking to him a couple of times. From his lineup of mostly special classes, I could tell he was a “consonant kid” (I once heard a teacher use that phrase)—hyperactivity disorder (HD), behaviorally and socially challenged (BSC), etc. The only conversation he could really stay with was about hunting. Going hunting. Someday even owning a hunting gun. I tried to be nice to him but he was like a stray dog: feed him and he only comes back more often; chase him away and you feel like dirt. One day I asked him about his parents.

“My foster parents or my dead ones?” he said.

I swallowed. “Whichever.”

“My foster parents are okay. But my real parents died a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My father, that is,” he added. “My mother’s in California in this drug treatment place.”

I tried to think of something to say.

“Actually, it’s a prison,” he added. “She’s in prison.” He looked straight at me. “Usually I lie about her.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” was all I could think to say, but with Tanner that was enough. He smiled like he was the happiest kid in the world.

After that, Tanner attached himself to me like a wood tick. Like a leech. Like a lamprey. I swear he was sucking my blood, and he certainly didn’t help my hall life. Tanner and the fact that my father was never around. Once Tara asked, “Is your mother, like, a single mom?”

I laughed as if that were the funniest thing I’d ever heard; none of the Mary-Kate and Ashley group (as I sometimes thought of them) laughed with me.

As October rolled around, and with it the opening of small game season, Tanner pestered me daily about going hunting. “Mr. Johnson said he’s going to find someone to take me grouse hunting,” he said. “When we go, want to come with?”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“You could show me how to wing shoot and stuff like that.”

“We’ll see,” I muttered. It was the only answer that worked with Tanner, the only response that made him go away. Not yes, not no. “We’ll see.”

Then the leaves turned yellow and red and brown, geese honked high overhead as they flew south for the winter—and my father blew home with them. Suddenly one day there he was in his dusty black Ford Explorer, waiting for me after school right there in front of the busses and everybody.

“Daddy,” I shrieked. I raced into his arms. I didn’t care if anybody saw me. In fact, I hoped they did.

“Sam, honey!” he said, and lifted me off the ground and swung me around. He smelled like cigar and leaves and wood; his trimmed beard had flecks of snow in it, a speckled whiteness that I never noticed before. There were also new, fine wrinkles around his eyes, which were tired, and a little sad, as if he’d been working too hard or lost something important. “I’m home to do some scouting for deer season,” he said, flashing his old smile and holding me tight with one strong arm. “Hope you haven’t forgotten our date.”

I began to cry.

“Honey, honey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said, rubbing away my tears.

“Well, I certainly hope not,” he said.

“Hey, is that your Dad?” a loud voice said.

Tanner. Tanner lurched up beside us.

“Hello there young man,” my father began.

“Go away!” I said suddenly to Tanner.

Tanner flinched as if I had kicked him. My father looked at me with disappointment—which only made the moment worse. I rushed into the Ford and slammed the door. My father came around and settled into the driver’s seat.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Just . . . this . . . boy,” I blubbered.

My father smiled and started the engine. “Oh, that,” he said.

“No—you don’t understand,” I said, even more annoyed. I looked out the window; Tanner was still standing there, staring after us with his mouth-open-deer-in-the-headlights look.

For the rest of that week, the one before deer season, my father picked me up every day after school. And every day, Tanner found some excuse to be there. “What’s the deal with Tanner?” my father said.

I shrugged. “I met him in gun safety class this summer. He just sort of attached himself to me.”

“He’s new in school?”

I nodded.

“Does he have any friends?”

“I’m it,” I said sarcastically.

My father looked in his rear view mirror at Tanner, then across to me. “I’m proud of you, honey.”

On Wednesday afternoon, when I came to meet my dad, I saw the gun safety instructor, Mr. Johnson, talking with my father. When I approached, their voices dropped to a murmur, then became hearty and false.

“Hello Sam,” Mr. Johnson said way too cheerfully.

“Sam, Sam, guess what?!” Tanner shouted as he raced up behind me.

“What,” I said flatly.

“Mr. Johnson says I might get to go deer hunting with you and your father! Isn’t that right, Mr. Carlson?”

On the way home I sat as far as I could from my father and stared out my window. I wouldn’t let him see my face.

“It’s not like that, Sam,” my father said again. “And anyway, what could I do? Bob Johnson tells me this kid’s story—how he’s bounced around foster homes all his life, how he came to the gun safety class all on his own. The one thing the kid wants to do is go deer hunting. What could I say?”

“Like, ‘No’?”

My father sucked in a breath. “I considered that. But sometimes we have to . . . share what we have. Share the luck. Share the gifts. Think about it: this kid has no one. For starters, you’ve got two parents.”

“Sort of,” I said.

My father fell silent.

I glanced over at him. His eyes had a hurt look, and they stared straight down the road.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt my own eyes burning again.

“It’s okay, baby,” he murmured, and touched my hair.

“It’s just that you always said—” I began, but my voice broke.

“I know, I know: ‘just you and me.’ But it will still be almost like that. I’ve got it figured out. I’m going to make a blind for Tanner that’s way away from us. You and I will take the tree stand, and I’ll check on him once in a while. It will all work out, okay?”

I bit my lip. I didn’t say anything.

On Thursday night after school, my father took Tanner and me to the shooting range. “I just want to make sure he knows what he’s doing,” my father said to me. I made my statement by staying in the truck. And anyway, my gun, a twenty-gauge shotgun set up for deer hunting was long-since targeted in. Tanner was using one of my brother Andrew’s old ones, a single-shot “starter” twenty gauge. The range was busy with last-minute shooters; guns boomed and crashed. Tanner’s first screw-up was to wave the muzzle sideways across the line of bench shooters—including my father. I sucked in a breath. A couple of hunters drew back and glared, and my father snatched the muzzle downward. I flashed on the dead hunter on the autopsy table. But the gun was not loaded, and I saw my father mouthing stern words to Tanner—who hung his head. Then my father got Tanner situated at the bench and the gun pointed in the right direction. At first Tanner flinched and jerked each time he fired. Dust kicked up yards below the target, but gradually he began to lean more tightly into the stock, and keep his cheek on the wood when he squeezed the trigger. My father glanced at me; I looked away. When the round of firing stopped, and hunters walked forward to check their targets, Tanner raced wildly downrange and came rushing back against traffic waving the target.

“Look, Sam, I hit it three times!” Tanner shouted.

“Great,” I said without expression. He had shot at it ten times.

“Not that bad your first time with a new gun,” my father said, as they returned to the truck.

Still holding the gun, its muzzle waving, Tanner hopped up and down with excitement. My father quickly took the shotgun from Tanner. “What did I tell you? Never jump or run with a gun!”

“Sorry,” Tanner said with that instant kicked-dog look in his eyes. My father glanced at me.

“But you did all right today,” my father added. “Saturday morning, if you promise to be safe and remember what you learned, we’ll go hunting.”

“I promise, I promise! Oh man, I can’t wait!” Tanner said.

My father smiled, but something in my stomach clenched, and it had something to do with my father. But he was a pro. He had worked with hunters of all kinds. He had to know what he was doing.

We dropped Tanner off at his foster parents’ place, a double-wide trailer with several battered plastic tricycles lying about.

“What time will you pick me up Saturday morning?” Tanner asked.

“Let’s say 5:00 AM.”

“I could be ready earlier,” Tanner said.

My father patted Tanner on the back and shooed him out of the pickup. “5:00 AM. I’ll be here.”

Tanner raced up the double-wide. At the door he braked and brought up his hand as if to knock. Then he changed his mind and rushed inside, slamming the door so hard the wall quivered.

My father stared after him. Then he looked at me. I looked out my window.

“Hey, you want to get a Dairy Queen or something?” my father asked. “Just you and me?”

On opening morning we drove into town to get Tanner. It was chilly and pitch-black outside, and the streetlights were bright as we entered La Crosse. In the trailer park with its curving streets, Tanner was the only moving thing. He stood outside, stamping his feet up and down against the cold, and puffing frosty breaths.

“Wow am I glad to see you!” he said, leaping into the truck. He shuddered with cold, and there was frost on his eyelashes.

“How long you been waiting?” my father said, turning up the heater fan.

“Not that long,” Tanner shrugged.

North of town, at the dark edge of the woods we owned and would hunt, my father let the truck coast to a stop. “It’s very important to enter the woods quietly,” my father said to Tanner. “I’ll take you to your stand.”

Tanner nodded continuously. He could not stop grinning. “I can’t believe this,” he said to me.

“Shhhhhh,” my father said. “Deer have great hearing. They’re already listening to us.”

Tanner looked at the dark woods.

“Remember, you’ll stay there until I come for you,” my father said to him. “It takes patience to wait for a deer.”

“Why can’t I, like, track them and sneak up on them?”

“That comes later, with more experience,” my father said. “Most hunters start out on the stand, or a blind.”

Tanner nodded with some disappointment.

“Sam and I will take the tree stand. Whistle if you need help of any kind, all right?”

Tanner nodded, and then the two of them headed off into the darkness. My father’s little flashlight bobbed along the trail like a firefly. It became a little speck, then went dark. I sucked in another breath.

After ten minutes or more, my father’s bobbing light reappeared, and I began to relax. My father and I went to our stand. It was a platform about six feet off the ground, sort of like a tree house with two chairs. It had a tiny little heater if we needed it, and a railing on which to rest our guns. We settled in, and after we were quiet, the forest gradually came alive: invisible ducks whistled overhead; an owl went “who-who”; there was a sharp skittering sound in the leaves below.

I tensed and gripped my rifle.

“Squirrel,” my father whispered.

Gradually the light came. First to appear were the silhouettes of spruce trees, then a broad duskiness spread downward from their points. The grayness softened and slipped closer to the ground, like a giant scrim curtain being raised; soon we could see the deer trail that ran parallel to our stand. My father checked his watch. “It’s legal shooting time,” he whispered. And almost on cue I heard soft steps coming down the trail.

“Get ready,” my father said softly.

I clicked off the safety.

The shape of a deer appeared; at walking speed, it was moving right toward us.

“Let’s see what it is first,” my father whispered.

The deer was not large, but there was a pale flash of horn.

“Spike buck,” my father murmured. “Let’s let him pass.”

As we watched, the buck stopped to paw for some acorns, then dipped his head for a mouthful; he chewed audibly—a muffled crunching—as he looked around. His erect ears pivoted like pointed radar dishes. Then his tail flickered white, and he moved on, disappearing as if absorbed by the bushes and trees.

“A good sign,” my father said. We settled back to wait for a bigger and better deer. My pulse was rushing in my ears.

By 10:00 AM we had seen nothing but chickadees, a pileated woodpecker that chipped popsicle stick chips of wood from a dead pine tree, and at least a dozen gray squirrels. By noon, with full light, the woods went gradually quiet. Dead. It was like everything—all the birds and critters—were taking their nap. We relaxed, too, and my father told me stories about his job as a guide, how some people were great but others were total slobs and jerks.

“Same with school,” I said. I was about to tell him about my friends—at least I thought they were my friends—when “Boom!” went Tanner’s gun.

My father and I looked at each other; then we heard Tanner’s whistle.

“I’d better go check,” my father said quickly.

“Be careful!” I said suddenly.

“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll be right back.”

I waited alone in the stand. I could hardly get my breath; I kept having this terrible feeling, but soon enough my father’s orange cap and coat blossomed on the gray trail. He climbed back into our stand shaking his head and smiling.

“He says he saw a deer of some kind, and had a good shot. But we looked all over and couldn’t find blood. I’m sure he missed him cleanly.”

We settled back into our chairs. The sun was out now, though still low (it was November), and by 2:00 PM the woods slowly lost its brightness. Began, like the tide going out, to grow dusky again. My father dozed for a little while; it was nice waiting there, holding my gun while he napped: it was like I was on guard for him.

When he woke up, we continued talking, about my friends this time, about boys I liked. I was surprised to be telling him stuff.

He nodded. “When I was a junior in high school I was dating this really hot senior girl,” he said. “She sort of picked me, you could say. Anyway, we went to her senior prom, and then parking in my Chevy afterward. She wanted to go all the way that night, but I wasn’t ready, so we didn’t.” He glanced sideways at me.

“So, Dad, is that my lecture on abstinence?”

He said nothing but I saw the smile in his eyes. We turned to stare out at the forest in comfortable silence.

Suddenly there was a scattering, crunching sound on the trail; it was grayer now, and the air colder—the woods were coming alive again.

“Get ready!” my father whispered.

Two does bounded along with their brown and white tails erect.

“There must be a buck close behind,” my father whispered.

Hot on their tracks came a buck with tall antlers—at least eight points. He was moving too fast for a good shot, and in a couple of seconds went out of sight in Tanner’s direction. I let out a disappointed breath and lowered my muzzle.

“That’s okay, honey. You didn’t have a clean shot. Who knows—we might see him again.”

Or not. “Boom!” went Tanner’s gun.

My father looked at me. Then we heard Tanner’s voice calling for us. “I hit him, I hit him,” he shouted faintly.

“Wait here,” my father said. “I’ll go check.”

“Be really careful, Daddy!” I said again.

He looked at me oddly. “Sure honey,” he said. And left.

I watched him disappear down the trail.

Several minutes passed; nothing in the forest moved. I could hardly breathe.

“There he is,” Tanner suddenly shouted. “I see him!” His voice was to the east now, and moving; he was running through the woods.

Then “Boom!” again.

And a hoarse scream; a wailing.

“Daddy!” I shouted. Dropping my gun, I leaped to the ground and raced through the loud leaves underfoot, past the slapping, stinging branches. “Daddy!” I kept crying.

“Over here, Sam!” my father called. His voice sounded terrible—as if he couldn’t breathe.

I rushed into a clearing. Beside a fallen, mossy log, my father was slumped over—slumped over Tanner, who lay on his back in the brown leaves.

“Look, Sam! I got him!” Tanner said to me, struggling to sit up. He pointed. Twenty yards away a large buck lay brown on the brown leaves; an antler curved up darkly.

Tanner held his other hand over his stomach. His face was bone pale and his eyes white and sort of pop-eyed. My father said, “Sam—we have a shooting accident here. I want you to run back to the stand—my cell phone is in my backpack. Call 911.”

“I’m sorry!” Tanner said to us. He started to cry. “I reloaded, then was running, I must have tripped . . .”

“Go, Sam!” my father said.

I ran as fast as I ever have—made the call—then rushed back up the trail toward Tanner, now following the blood on the leaves. The deer’s blood or his blood, I couldn’t tell. So much blood, spatters of it on the brown hands and fingers of the oak leaves.

My father met me before I could see Tanner again. He blocked my view. “Sam, I want you to go back to the truck,” he said slowly. “Wait for the ambulance, then show them the way here. I’ll wait with . . .” Then his voice broke, and he drew me fiercely into his arms and held me tight.

At Tanner’s funeral, we put the deer’s antlers on his coffin. Melanie and Tara and some of their friends from school attended; at first I was pleased, and we all hugged, but later I saw Tara whisper something, then giggle under her breath at the others, who cried continuously, as if Tanner were their best friend. For a second I hated them, but then let go of it.

The preacher was bald and had a voice like the teacher on the Simpsons (twice he called Tanner “Tyler”). The eulogy was mainly clichés about “the less fortunate among us” and life as a “flickering candle.” Tanner’s foster parents were there, but their baby began to wail, then throw up, and they had to leave. Quickly the service was over. Tanner’s body was to be shipped somewhere, Minneapolis I think, so there was no trip to the cemetery, no burial. After the church service there was punch, coffee, and cake in the chilly church basement. The lunch was hosted by a flock of blue-haired old ladies who chattered cheerfully among themselves in the kitchen. There were more church ladies than people who actually came for Tanner.

I stayed close to my father, as did my mother. I hadn’t seen them together, dressed up, forever. They held hands, too. Mr. Johnson, the gun safety teacher, came up to us. “Well, Tanner got his deer,” he said.

I realized one thing about funerals: adults say incredibly stupid things.

“He wasn’t ready,” my father said, staring across the room. “I should have known that.”

“It’s all he wanted to do—go hunting just one time,” Mr. Johnson said.

“Excuse me,” my father said; I could see the pain in his eyes.

“Let’s go, Daddy,” I said.

He nodded and let me take him by the arm and out the door. My mother followed. It was bright now, the sun breaking through patchy clouds, and the three of us drove home in silence.

At home we all ate dinner in more silence. My brothers used their best manners.

“I’ve been thinking,” my father said. “I have an offer to manage a sporting goods store here in La Crosse.”

My mother looked up quickly.

He swallowed. “I’m thinking of taking it.”

We all stared at him.

“The owner wants to sell eventually, and I’ve got some ideas on new sports lines, new gear.”

My oldest brother, Jake, perked up. “Hey, you could hire us!”

“And go broke immediately,” my father replied. “But seriously, what do you think?” he said, turning to my mother.

“Could you stand being inside a store all day?” she asked.

“I’d do some Midwest guiding on the side—if I could find good help for the store.”

Andrew, Ben, and Jake took their cue and began to poke and laugh at each other.

“I think I’ll take the offer,” my father said suddenly. He looked at me. “Life’s too short.”

I looked down; my eyes felt hot and then they spilled over.

“Hey, what’s a matter with her?” Andrew called.

“Nothing’s the matter with her,” my father said, and under the table took my hand. I held on tight, and kept crying; my brothers, after glances among themselves, went back to eating. Maybe crying is a girly kind of thing, but I was home and it felt right and nobody minded. Soon enough I needed to dry my eyes, which meant I had to let go of my father’s hand. There’s an art to hand-holding, even if it’s with your dad; someone has to let go first, but tonight neither of us were in any hurry.