Stories of the Hunt - Short Story

Literary Review, Summer, 1999 by Alex Mindt

Every father is a con man. How else did the "walked to school in three feet of snow" routine come about? Maybe there's something in the chromosome that propels men to erect personal mythologies, some genetic pull towards tall tales. To some it's as simple as starting on the high school football team--not starring, no stories of great winning moments, just starting--when in fact they stood on the sidelines unhooking the straps of their shoulder pads to avoid a rash. To others it's more complicated--whole fictions rise from the ashes of their youth. Every one of my friend's fathers had either been the homecoming king, the lead tenor in a local doo wop group, or a minor leaguer who "almost made it to the bigs."

My father took it to another level. His myths weren't just revisionist history, they were part of his everyday life--in the way he popped open the refrigerator, how he twirled the screwdriver before placing it on the head of the screw. My father was a method actor, not content to merely play the character he had created. He became him. I had no idea that he was conning anybody, that he was pulling a great domestic James Dean. I believed him to be the man he appeared to be. And because of this, he was infinitely more exciting than Joey Rutherford's father who drove a taxi and played darts in a league down at the U-Turn Tavern. And Don Ray Shelton--whose dad worked in the lumber mill--always wanted to spend the night at my house so we could watch my dad clean his guns and get ready.

He'd fold up his hunting gear, stuff his backpack and walk us through the itinerary. "First Mayfield and Dunkirk meet me at the South fork and they hop in the jeep and we take off up past Devil's Thumb and into the dark and piny, where the road ends and we hike in." It always began like this. The meeting point figured prominently in his stories, and the names of these men I never met. For some reason I didn't think of this at the time. Hell, I was eight years old. Who thinks of such things? And the fact that my dad never brought home any venison never mattered either. He'd occasionally lug in a head mounted on cedar with the antlers vaguely pointing upward. This was enough for me. My mother never let such things into the house, so Don Ray Shelton and I would sit up in the attic with a flashlight and poke their marble eyes and dried tongues.

For some kids it's dinosaurs, for others it's baseball cards or chemistry sets. For me, it was always hunting, deer hunting, and the more interest I showed, the more my dad embellished, from the cleaning and prepping to the loading and aiming.

When I turned twelve, I began shooting at Coke cans on a stump out at the land fill. I was a good shot, better than Dad. I-[e would talk about his damned glasses or the medication he was currently taking--tetracycline or some vitamin that was throwing him off and shake his head. This was the first step, I would later figure out, in the great unmasking of my father. I didn't know it at the time. I just took him for his word, although part of me did feel sorry for him. The first pangs of pity a child feels for a parent can almost overwhelm, but like any twelve-year-old I shoved them back into the great denial cavity of my brain, and I told him if he'd get a new set of glasses he'd be smacking those cans in no time fiat. He eventually got new glasses and his shooting didn't improve, while I was slugging holes in every Coke can in Snohomish County.

One night I heard my mother talking to my dad about an upcoming hunting competition over near Spokane. She was reading about a cash prize for the biggest buck, and a weekend of male gathering. I was shocked to hear her mention my name. "You know what I was thinking?" she said. "What if you took Walt this time?"

"What?" My father sounded annoyed.

"I think he's old enough now. You know how much this would mean to him."

"Oh, Jesus," he said.

I remember standing outside their bedroom door, my body perfectly still. Once my mother was on my side, I knew I had won. I was finally going to go into the wild with my father. I had spent years trying to win her over, but the funny thing was, Dad kept arguing with her.

Buck's Big Game Journal was a small hunting magazine published twice a year by an old bald guy named Buck Macguire in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It was full of hunting tips, grandiose stories and pictures--black and white photos of various kills, and big game caught in outrageous situations. The back page featured the winning photograph, usually some dead moose or elk with its antlers stuck in a tree or a fence. But the one I remember most vividly is the one of a white-tailed deer tangled up in a clothes line. "Still Alive!" the caption read.

This photo has stayed with me, I think, because of the story I've created behind it. Margaret--my name for her--comes out one evening to get her clothes off the line, when she sees this 150-pound buck kicking and whipping his head. Margaret then runs into the house and gets her husband Mike to come out and take a look. Mike goes out and says, "Oh my God!" and runs back into the house to get a camera, of all things. What people think in such situations astounds me. So he gets the camera and slowly closes in on this wild animal. Before he knows it Mike has taken the picture that will win him first prize in Buck's annual contest, a picture that will enable Mike and Margaret to buy the dryer they always wanted. No, more clothes line tot them! Here's what the picture looked like: deer antlers, like huge, wooden fork tines, rising out of a pair of boxer shorts, and the deer's eyes looking hopelessly towards the camera between flowered panties and two argyle socks.