Sit and Listen

For my Father, my Padre, my Dad, A man who taught me so much and still teaches me every day without me even knowing it.

And for his Dad, my Pop Pop,

I miss you every day and I hope you can still read me wherever you are.

This will be a sad story, but only for a moment. I promise there’s something to laugh about at the end. This story has weighed on my heart since the day I lived it, and I believe I’m ready to begin to unload some of that weight now, so others may learn to carry the weight of this story in their hearts and strengthen their souls without living its pain themselves. 

The more stories I tell, lately, the more I feel this reason may be the prime reason I even bother to try and tell stories at all. It took me this long to figure that out, so it could just be my mind trying to give me a reason for sitting down every morning in a room alone and talking to myself. I hear that kind of thing can make a person crazy. I hear that kind of thing makes a person prone to over-rationalization.

Okay, enough throat clearing, friends: I’ve got a story to light our way, so let’s wade into The Great White Fog and try to clear our minds a bit.

***

I am a young man in the woods of King William County, Virginia. I am hard to see, because I’m wearing the forest on me. It’s called camouflage. My father bought it for me at a sporting goods store called Green Top. So, I am nearly invisible. And I am alone.

I am lifting my shotgun off my lap and laying it on the leaves before me. 

I’m shaking my legs and stretching. I can’t feel my toes through the hunting boots tied to my feet. My father bought them for me, and unfortunately I didn’t yet know how to wear the boots of a hunter well. 

In the proper hands and on the proper feet, like my father’s and grandfather’s, those boots are the foundations of a hunter’s warmth. On my inexperienced feet, they were two underinsulated rubber bricks seeping the last of the warmth I brought to the woods from beneath my morning blankets.

In a sensible way, I felt myself getting colder with each passing second. Even then, as I reflect here in my warm office chair, I think the eeriness and confusion of the morning to come was whispering warnings to me. Unfortunately, I could only half hear them at the time through my fear and excitement. 

I stand from the bucket I brought for a seat and look up at the sky.

A white sun hangs high above me, held at a distance by generous sheets of gray clouds whose cold, wet November tendrils reach down and entwine themselves in the forest’s bare branches as the trees all around me spread their bony fingers up to that white sun, far far over my head, tickling the fog in excitement only they were equipped to experience. 

I’ve met quite a few trees since that morning, and can say with confidence that trees are the only creatures that move slow enough to appreciate and feel the spring that’s on its way through frozen winter mornings.

For a fast, nervous little critter like a preteenage human child, the morning was not beautiful nor was it exciting. It was bone chilling. Above all, it was frightening. Or should I say, I was frightened because my father and grandfather taught me there’s nothing really worth fearing in a winter forest in Virginia. Most anything that could eat me or poison me was asleep for the winter. The only predator in the woods that morning, that I knew about at least, were me and mine. And I think that frightened me at the time, though I couldn’t have said so. Being the only predator awake in the woods is a terrifying responsibility. If I didn’t truly feel that then, here’s the truth of what I was feeling:

Despite the cold, my heart was racing. I looked down at the gun laid at my feet and stood to shake my legs more from nervousness than cold. I looked at my watch. Only eight minutes had passed since I put the gun down and looked to the sky for something like an excuse to leave the woods that morning. Maybe some rain or a flurry of snow. Aside from the white fog all about, there was nothing and no one was coming for me. Not yet, at least.

This was hunting alone. This was what I’d been learning, and then yearning to do since my father and grandfather first let me stand between them and hold a rabbit they shot for a photograph I could later show to others as if to say, “Look, I can provide too. I am worthy of your love, too.” 

A small blonde boy holding a dead rabbit, for many of my readers (myself included) can be a deeply sad image. But, if I may, I believe I saw it as a trophy of coming meals, a totem of worthiness snatched from the living forest, when I was only about four years old. It goes to show how perceptive children are, though they’re often babbling idiots when it comes to articulating those feelings. And who can blame them, they’ve only been with us for a few years and have yet to learn the nuances of spoken human languages.

I’m sorry, I keep looking away from the story at hand. It’s only because I am ashamed of what I will do in a few sentences. However, I must be strong and look at myself for my own sake. I need your help, dear reader. Without you, this is just pain for the sake of learning myself. I’d like this pain I feel to be the kind of pain felt for helping others. If you haven’t already stopped reading yet, let me reset the scene:

I am hunting for the first time in my young life in the winter woods of Caroline County, Virginia. I am cold. I am scared. I am alone. I am telling myself--no--repeating to myself like a prayer, how the morning should go in my mind. It should be simple:

Sit (preferably in camouflage).

Listen.

Don’t make any overt or unnatural noises.

Listen.

Wait for the sound of the dogs.

Listen.

Wait for the sound of the branches snapping aside and leaves crashing underhoof.

Stand.

Listen.

Ready my weapon.

Wait for the sight of brown fur.

Breathe.

Aim.

Breathe.

Disengage the safety.

Aim.

Place the bead atop the gun barrel slightly ahead of my target running full tilt through the forest.

Aim.

Squeeze the trigger, slowly.

Breathe, despite the thunder.

Breathe.

Squeeze the trigger again, but only if I must. Know I also have a knife if that is faster and kinder though it rarely is.

Now breathe.

Breathe.

Listen for the dogs to quit out and die their small death at the sight of their dead neighbor.

If the dogs stop barking, continue breathing.

Breathe.

Go find the blood.

Follow the blood.

Go find the body.

Make sure it is only a body now, and no longer an animal like me.

If it is still an animal like me, still breathing and bleeding and dying painfully, I must kill it as quickly as possible. I have a knife, don’t forget, but I don’t know if I have the heart to find theirs in that last painful moment together.

Breathe.

Aim.

Breathe, despite the thunder.

It is my duty to my woodsbound neighbor: the last kindness I can offer after doing the most evil thing one creature can do to another. 

Once I’m sure it’s a deer and once I’m sure “it’s dead,” I can “figure out the rest in the skinnin’ shed,” as my grandfather used to say.

Another thing my grandfather told me, “If it’s brown, it’s down.” But dogs are brown. Trees are brown. He was brown, after decades spent working beneath the sun as a farmer, a carpenter, and a traveling electrician for the State hanging power lines across the Virginia hills and shooting rattlesnakes with a revolver he kept nearby, then stripping them of their rattles and pocketing them to bring home to my father and aunt as a souvenir of his love. “Look, Children,” those rattles said, “I love you so much I have killed a musical creature who was playing me its song in order to warn me. I killed it because I didn’t even want to consider its music anymore. I can’t afford to spend a second even contemplating death anymore now that you’re here in the world with me. So here, Children, take these rattles as trophies of my love for you.”

Suffice to say, my bighearted Nanny hated the rattles her husband brought home. I’m often entertained by her conspiring to throw the trophies out. I think she did this because she knew that somewhere a musical creature lay dead and decaying in the tall grass without its instrument.

But enough about them, I am the killer in this story, and I need to reckon with that. If not for you, dear reader, then at least for the sake of my own soul. For my father’s sake. Here is the story I feel I must now tell:

I am hunting for the first time in my young life in the winter woods of Caroline County, Virginia. I am cold. I am scared. I am alone. I am telling myself--no--repeating to myself like a prayer, how the morning should go in my mind. It should be a simple thing to sit and listen, but it rarely is.

“Hey, Card Shark,” a voice hummed from my chest. It was My radio and My name. It could have been my father, or my grandfather. I don’t remember now. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. In the woods that morning, anyone with a radio was my father and my grandfather by default. We were all there in the woods together that morning. Before we went into the woods, we all prayed together that morning. My father woke early to make sure we all ate together that morning too before we all spread out into the forest together.

We were hunting together, though at the time I was a selfish boy and I felt so alone because of my selfishness.

I’d forgotten that morning that everyone on the hunt had a radio and a name they’d earned while playing poker in the bunkhouse or shucking oysters in the skinning shed or drinking beers beneath the stars. The radios, the names, the nights spent together, these were all the ways we kept from shooting one another, much less harming one another. And that radio, that communication and invisible communion with my community, it turns out, was the only thing keeping me from running from the woods that morning. I was not alone, as I thought I was.

“Card Shark,” the voice said again.

“Come on,” I said, turning the volume knob to the first notch and holding the radio against my ear.

“Big buck comin’ to ya,” He said, husky and quiet with excitement. “Got a few dogs on it. Get ready.”

“10-4,” I said, kneeling to the gun at my feet. A breeze came then, carrying the distant insensate baying of the dogs. A faint bloodsong growing louder and louder. They were getting closer.

“Card Shark,” A different voice said.

“Come on,” I said again.

“Don’t forget,” it was my grandfather speaking this time, of that I’m sure.

“If it’s brown, it’s down,” he said.

I could almost see him then, tilting his head toward the dogs’ bloodsong, ready to hear my shots. Ready to hear how many it would take me to kill my target. Ready to hear if I shot well, or shot poorly. My shotgun only holds three shells. If I do well, he would hear one crack on the wind. If I do fine, he would hear two. If I forgot myself and my training, he would hear three. If I was lost to myself entirely, he would hear three--then he would hear more. That was my fear that morning. Not the fear of killing, but the fear of disproving myself ready for the responsibility of being a singular predator in the woods.

From this point on, I was away from myself and my “self” in the way I imagine other, much more experienced killers are when they feel they must do what they’re trained to do:

I checked out of my body and put all of my deadly responsibility on the motions and habits formed in the years spent training in the woods alongside my grandfather and my father up to that moment.

I forced a numb hand into my pocket and produced one red-cased shotgun shell capped in dull brass. I slid it into the chamber and sent the bolt home gently, so its mechanical report wouldn’t give me away to the forest. I loaded another shell into the chamber, and then another.

The bloodsong was all around me now. Soon, I would hear the woods parting themselves for the deer. I knew I wouldn’t hear the woods parting for the dogs alone. They’re small and can weasel their way through the underbrush. The underbrush snaps and gives way for large animals only.

I heard it then. The woods suddenly snapping and popping the way they do only when Something Big is running full-tilt through them. 

I clicked my radio off, let it fall at my side. The woods around me were howling and shrieking with the dogs and the fear of Something Big coming toward me.

I brought my gun to my shoulder, keeping the bead toward the ground as I’d been taught. I saw horns then. Massive horns spreading from a serene brown head. I remember it now, only because its mouth was not open and it struck me that if I were running for my life, my mouth would be wide open and drooling. This animal running in front of me wasn’t at peace, but he was much closer than I was.

In that moment, I panicked at the demonic serenity of it all and in that panic, I raised my gun too quickly, placing the bead of my weapon slightly in front of the awestriking horns.

The buck saw me. He saw my panic. He knew it for what it was: death. In that moment, that wise creature turned from me and disappeared into the woods.

I fired once.

Twice.

Three times.

The dogs howled and shrieked and Something Big fell face first into the dirt, crashing head over tail into the underbrush toward its sickening end.

I was elated. I’d managed to hit the buck! I was going to hold his horns in my hands and my father was going to take a photograph to send to my Momma and Nanny as if to say, “Look at this boy who once held a rabbit. Look how he holds the King of the Forest now. Look how he provides for us.”

The dogs let up, but only for a moment. I began to look for blood so I might begin the work of finding that Something Big that just tumbled into the brush.

Then Something Small cried out nearby. Until I die, I won’t be able to rid myself of that sound. It echoes in me. Sometimes louder than others, but it echoes all the same.

It sounded like a baby cow yowling for her mother’s milk. It came from nearby. I knew what it was before I saw it, though I’d never heard a fawn before. In that terrible moment, I realized I’d never truly heard any deer, much less listened to them.

The habits and training my father and grandfather gave me forced my legs to move through the trees toward the sound. The sound wasn’t just crying anymore, it was the sound of kicking. Desperate kicking. The fawn saw and knew me long before I saw and knew it. And I saw that it was terrified by what it saw:

It lay red and heaving against a fallen tree, brown against the brown earth and brown leaves and brown shit spread all around it. It was dying. It was brown and it was down. Unfortunately, it was far from dead.

It was alive. It was vital. It was staring at me with the wide eyes of a creature too young to die, which could arguably be said about every creature alive today. I felt then, in locking eyes with my victim, it was young enough to not know his mother yet. Too young even to know himself. 

I saw myself in that dying fawn then, whether I wanted to or not. And I now knew, too, I would have to kill this thing that looked like me if I had any shred of decency left in my body.

I was on my knees, sobbing. I don’t know when I fell down, all I know is my knees buckled at the fear in this animal’s eyes. At the sight of myself there in my friend’s eyes. Because, I realized, those were the eyes that looked at me now. Not the angry eyes of an enemy, but the confused and terrified eyes of a friend.

I stood with no small effort. I remember leaning on my gun to push off the ground because my legs were too weak to manage on their own. I don’t say this for sympathy. I say it in an attempt to unravel the truth of killing for myself and the truth is this: in the moment one kills, one feels all the thoughts one had yet to think. And that feels terrible. Killing feels terrible, even if your mind does not yet have the thoughts to know why. My body regretted my decision for years before my mind figured out why I regretted. Take that truth for whatever it’s worth. It surely wasn’t worth the life of that fawn.

Again, I fell. Again, I stood with no small effort. I remember stumbling a bit as I neared the dying fawn. It was kicking at the ground with its front legs in short fits of pure fear and adrenaline, though there was nowhere left for it to go. It was flailing against the fallen tree now, trapped by horrific circumstance. I had broken its back with my errant shots. Somewhere nearby, I later found out, this fawn’s mother lay dead, or still dying, I’ll never be sure. She was the Something Big behind the buck that I saw tumble end over end into the underbrush after I missed The King of the Forest. I ended the Queen with my second shot, though I wasn’t able to be with her in the end so I’ll never know how exactly she ended because I crippled her child with my third shot and had to reckon with that immediately. Whether I was ready or not.

So, whether I was ready or not, I ended her child’s life with my fourth, then fifth shots. I will spare you the grisly details of those final moments. The details are my pains to bear and would prove to be unnecessarily painful for you, dear reader.

All that was left as a testimony to my crime that morning was a shattered jawbone that my father helped me pry from the dead fawn’s broken head. At the time, he made some wisecrack to try and lighten the load on my heart, but I wasn’t able to hear it and so I can not remember what he said. 

All I knew is the jawbone must be recorded. Hunters in Virginia use jawbones to record the truth of their kills for the state government. A jawbone will tell you how old and how large an animal was. A hunter is not allowed, by law, to kill thoughtlessly. A hunter has a duty to his community to reassure them that the killing was, if not warranted, at least considered very seriously. After the kill is properly recorded, hunters may then strip the meat from the body and cook it, freeze it, or give it away as they see fit. They may save a part of the animal as a “trophy” though I’m now beginning to think they are not trophies, but reminders.

Reminders that it is possible to live off the land. Reminders that it’s possible to kill for food. Reminders that it’s also possible to kill for the wrong reasons. For communal glory, for trophies, for bragging. A deer’s head on a wall means many things to many people. For me, it means respect and humility. 

“There, but for the grace of God, go I,” says the deer staring at me with glass eyes. 

“There, but for the grace of God, go I,” says the fawn staring at me with tearful eyes.

It’s a lesson I won’t soon forget. It’s a lesson I thank my father for every day. It’s a lesson I wish I could thank my grandfather for, though that sweet, confused man is now gone Home at the time of this writing. I wish I could tell him, “I wish you never told me ‘if it’s brown, it’s down.’” Or, maybe it’s more honest to say I wish I had never listened.

---

So, listen, I made a promise to you at the start of this story and I feel I should deliver on it. I said there was a joke at the end. Well here it is:

“I have two ends 

with a common link,

with one I sit,

with one I think.

Success depends

on which I use.

Heads, I win.

Tails, I lose.”

• A cross stitch my mother gave me to hang in my bathroom that my girlfriend made me take down because, apparently, shitting yourself is nothing to joke about. Especially in the Holy Cathedral of the Porcelain Throne where guests may be tricked into laughing at the Holy act of sitting and listening, when they could very well be standing and shitting themselves at that exact moment. Thankfully, our parents taught us all better. I have yet to find anyone with any real reason to protest the Holy Teachings of the Porcelain Throne. Though, given recent events, I can’t put it past us.

—-

Here’s a song with beautiful words from James Baldwin to sit and listen to, then to stand and listen to, then to dance and listen to in case my essay has failed to bring you solace or catharsis, my dear reader.