David Vann - Goat Mountain

I could see the bullet hole in the side of his thigh, a small, loose hole in thick muscle and hide, and a bigger hole in his lower back where the bullet had exited, tearing through spine and then muscle above. White bone, blood, and darker meat.

Smell of a deer not like anything else, a stink from glands near the Achilles tendons, a scent for marking territory. Musky and overpowering.

I leaned in low and close and grabbed on to the rifle, but it wouldn’t budge. The buck heavy. He knocked me in the head with his horns, but only a sideswipe.

Hollow. That’s how his horns felt. No substance to them at all. Things imagined and sprung from air. Nothing to fear from an animal, made only of what I could tear through with my bare hands. So I came in low again and grabbed the bale of the rifle and tried to dislodge.

The buck heaving and striking at the earth and snorting, and all was held in place, immovable. So I pulled at his leg instead, but when I let go, it sprang back. Dead, unfeeling, unresponding, all nerves cut, but still held together by muscles like springs. I tried grabbing both legs and pulling, heavy, and the buck screamed again, tongue arched in pain, and it was too much.

I fell back in the dirt and just lay there. The sky a deep blue, rounded dome above us, a vacuum into which all was taken away, every sound and pain and thought. I was breathing hard, panicked. The two of us lying here on this ground.

You need to finish that animal. It was my father’s voice.

I looked up and saw him standing beside Tom.

I can’t get my rifle.

You need to finish that animal now.

The buck’s head swaying back and forth and a low moaning coming from him, a sound of fear, two men standing just uphill and me on the ground behind. A proximity impossible in his world, the same as if we found ourselves before our gods, all that we imagine materialized in an instant, all made real. And no way to run, legs frozen. Neck low and flat, hiding from the sky.

I crawled closer to his back, where half a foot of the rifle’s barrel stuck out, and I tried to grab that barrel, but it was pressed against the earth by all his weight and wasn’t moving.

So I tried to roll him. I grabbed his hooves on the uphill side and swung them in an arc high to twist downhill, but the weight of him was enormous and unlikely and his legs so stiff I couldn’t get them to point even straight up. I had them over my shoulder and was pushing hard, like some beast into the yoke for a plow, but he was pushing his front hooves downhill, twisting the opposite way, refusing to be turned. As if he were trying to run away from the men, facing down that fire road.

I dropped his legs and just stood there breathing hard and he faced again uphill, tried to pull himself toward my father and Tom. Nothing he did made any sense.

Shoot him, my father said.

I can’t, I said. I can’t get my rifle.

I’m talking to Tom. Shoot him, Tom.

Nope.

Fucking shoot him right now.

Nope. This is your own clusterfuck. I’m no part of this.

My father grabbed at Tom’s rifle then, his hand catching the barrel, but Tom held on. The two of them up close, almost like dancing, all four hands on the rifle that stood like a needle pointing straight into the heavens. Slow turns of the dance in yanks, a needle controlled by some random magnet below but always remaining upright. A needle that would shift over the surface of the earth searching for something, for some element we knew was missing, something not yet discovered but its presence felt.

My father with his eyes closed, a diviner of this footwork, mouth open in what was more disbelief than determination, hanging on, but Tom had his eyes open and he kicked my father in the knee.

The needle tilting as my father caved to the side, no longer pointing, all divination lost, and Tom kicked the same knee again and my father let go of the rifle and went down, landed on his side in the dust and Tom backing away.

Get off me, bitch, Tom said.

You don’t know, my father said. You don’t know anything.

I know all I need to know.

You don’t know what this is like.

Yeah, I feel real sorry for you. You’ve been such a good person and done all the right things, how could any of this have happened?

Well I have done the right things. I’ve been a good father.

And we have the proof right here.

My father on the ground not far from the buck, and he rose up to kick the buck’s horns. A swinging kick from the side, and the buck’s head jolted and he lowered his antlers and tried to face my father but my father kicked again from the side.

The buck braced on his forelegs, a wide stance in the dust, and raised up his chest, swung those horns on his thick neck. But my father was quick, swung his boot from the other side now and clocked the buck again.

What the fuck are you doing? Tom asked.

If you won’t give me your rifle, this is all that’s left.

That’s just stupid. You can’t kick a buck to death.

Watch me.

My father crouched like a wrestler and stood close to the buck with his hands ready and grabbed those antlers as they swung, grabbed both big forks and kicked down through the center, kicked his heel into the buck’s nose.

A great roar from the buck, as if he were some other kind of beast, mythic and brutal, half giant, and he yanked his horns upward and my father was thrown back again into the dust.

Footfalls of other giants coming to help, as if the buck had called his kind, a crashing through brush, a summoning, snapping of branches, and my grandfather emerged, holding his rifle high. A beast himself.

Why is that buck still alive? he asked.

It’s not, my father said. It’s about to die. Stay out of this. And he rose to his feet again and held his knife this time.

That buck belongs to your son. He has to kill it.

Suddenly there are rules?

There have always been rules.

God you’re full of shit. I don’t know how I didn’t know this about you before.

He’s going to kill that buck.

And how’s he going to do that? His rifle is trapped under the buck.

How did that happen?

How the fuck should I know? My father turned back to the buck and crouched with his knife and grabbed at the horns with his other hand.

The deafening boom of my grandfather’s.308, shot into the ground. Ears gone blank and smell of sulfur, evocation of hell at our feet, and the buck writhing and screaming high-pitched in horror.

My father shrank to the side against the brush, just instinct, and I was up against brush too, and Tom also. All of us wanting cover.

He has to kill it, my grandfather said. It’s his to kill. That can’t be changed.

OBLIGATION. WHAT’S REQUIRED OF US BY GOD. THE ORDER of things. We sow what we can, but god found Cain’s offerings inadequate. And nothing more that Cain could do. What if it’s not possible to please god? No offering sufficient, but an offering required nonetheless.

That buck was what my family required, and yet it wasn’t sufficient. No celebration. But my grandfather made sure it would be my kill.

I circled the buck from lower ground. Head turning, hooves digging, trying to face me. Tiring, bleeding out, coming closer to some dull recognition.

On hand and knee I crawled across that dirt, shoulders ducked close to the ground, and when I was so close my face was almost touching the hide of his back, his head and antlers yanking, trying to see me, I leaped from all fours and wrapped my arms around his neck.

Thrashing, risen up from the earth, that neck still alive. Every beast made for man, put here for him, but of course that’s a lie. The buck fought for his own dominion, roared and shook his horns and yanked his neck and tried to throw me off. What I knew was that he wanted to live. Something I could never have felt for the dead man, the pull of a trigger too easy, a trigger something that makes us forget what killing means. But in my hands I could feel the pulse of the buck’s neck, the panic in him, the terrifying loss, the impossibility that anything could ever be just, the tragedy of our own death, incomprehensible, and the will in us to disbelieve. In killing, I was taking everything. And what I destroyed could never be remade. I knew that and reached for my knife.