Colton rolled out of bed in the dark. Despite the trazadone and weed, he hadn’t slept well. His mind was stuck, replaying the three things hanging heavy over him—his daughter Gina’s pill problem and the money he shelled out to keep her out of jail, whether his bad knee would hold up for another season of guiding deer hunters, and his need to lay up meat for winter. As soon as he came to some peace with one thing, his mind moved to the next. By the time it circled back to where it started, the peace had faded.
He clicked on his lantern. His knee throbbed and buckled as he stood. Coupled with the cold, Colton knew the throbbing meant snow later that day. He pulled on his Carhartt work pants and jammed his feet into his insulted Muck Boots. He pulled on a heavy flannel work shirt.
Colton stoked the dying embers in the small wood burning stove. He put a kettle of well water on the stove top for coffee, then headed outside to the little cabin porch and lit a joint. Colton thought about his daughter, Gina. He shook his head. There was no preventing this. It’s us and this goddamned place… He noticed the soft rain falling and the wind picking up.
Colton went back inside and made coffee.
##
Colton sat in the ground blind he built at the pinch point near the creek bottom and the stand of pines. He liked the smell of that blind, all the pine, and pitch, and the decay of the needles, and the creek mud. The deer will be moving early today, he thought.
Colton planned to shoot the first deer he saw. He needed meat, so he took his shotgun instead of his bow. Gun season was a still few weeks off. Technically it was poaching but winter was coming and he needed to layup at least two deer to feed everyone.
Colton sat and listened. Hunting always took him to a place of being that connected him to something bigger than himself. He heard a grunt, followed by a wheeze, and snort off in the distance—tell-tale sounds of a buck lusting for a doe in heat.
Looking through the small opening in the brush blind, Colton could just make out trees and bushes in the gray light. Slow down big fella. Don’t get here before I can see you, he thought. He placed his barrel on the little ledge he built into the viewing hole of the hide. He clicked off the safety on his Remington 870, a slug already chambered.
Just after first light, the young buck appeared like a ghost 30 yards away broadside. Shit where did you come from little fella, Colton thought. He put his iron sights just behind the little 4×4’s shoulder, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger. He heard the thwack.
He’s small but it’s a start, he thought. Colton took out his pouch of Spirit and papers and rolled a cigarette; he’d have a smoke and let the deer die in peace.
Colton found the blood tail, easily passing by the red speckles and splotches on the fallen leaves looked like blood. At the base of an ash tree just off the game trail near the creek, Colton found a pool of blood where the buck had rested. Colton scanned the ground, then spotted the dead buck in a stand of brambles 15 feet away.
Grabbing its slender rack, he pulled the deer from the brambles, thankful for his heavy Carhartt pants and coat. He took out his Buck 110 knife, the blade sharp but worn from countless deer seasons, and field dressed the buck. Colton set aside the liver and heart. He smoked a joint while he worked, then began the long hike back to his cabin, dragging his deer.
##
Colton strung the skinned deer on the hoist he rigged near the cabin. He looked at the sky; he decided to let the carcass cool overnight and butcher it the next morning. This meat won’t freeze up before midday tomorrow, he reasoned. He cleaned the heart for his supper, and put the liver in a pan to soak overnight, and went back into the cabin.
Inside, he stoked the woodstove, and warmed his coffee. He smoked another joint, then a hand rolled another Spirit cigarette. He sat at the little handmade table, and in the dim light coming through the cabin’s sole window, wrote his daughter Gina a letter. It was short:
Dear Gina Marie–
You got a chance now. Don’t throw away the gift of rehab from that judge. She coulda give you jail. Most would. Don’t break your momma’s heart like your sister done. Think of Rhett and the lil one comin. Get clean girl.
Love- Paps
Tomorrow he’d take his ex-wife Tracy fresh deer meat, visit with his grandson Rhett a bit, and mail the letter. He would spend tomorrow afternoon processing meat—butchering, grinding in fat for burger, and canning stew chunks. He liked those days. For the rest of the day, he would rest his knee and enjoy the quite of an early winter day. He lit another joint and looked out the window. The rain and wind stopped, and the sky turned battleship gray, the lull between storms.
JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wrong Turn Literary, Café Lit, The Milk House, Fleas on the Dog, The Whisky Blot, among several others. His story, One Last Drop, was a finalist in the 2023 Hemingway Shorts Literary Journal, Short Story Competition.
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