The brush became only thicker and more difficult, as it always does. And I thought of rattlesnakes, of course, beginning to panic. Trapped and held in place, trying to ram myself through, head yanking around to look in every direction at once, skin on fire from the oak, the sun burning down and no air to breathe. Where my feet stepped, I couldn't see.

Duration. What nature offers us is duration, the promise that when we panic and are trapped and want to be anywhere else, that moment will extend and continue and grow and become only worse. This world invented for reasons that didn't take us into account, but we forget that and so we underestimate.

I panicked and reversed direction, as we do. Tried to go back the way I had come, dragging the rifle behind me now. But what I had pa.s.sed through had become more impa.s.sable, each branch and thorn accelerated in its growth, and before long I had veered off and was on no path and no longer sure of direction.

No compa.s.s in fear. The world spins and tilts and cannot be held constant. Trapped and also lost, and snakes everywhere. Our first fear, the serpent, with us from the beginning, the source of dread, the external form of what we feel writhing in our hearts.

I reversed direction again, lunging for the fire road, veering and lost in new brush, pushing through with my rifle. Scratched and raw and consumed in heat and fright until my hand with the rifle hit open air and I pumped my legs and pushed through and was born onto the fire road, released.

I felt the buck before I saw him, felt the recognition and charging of every muscle, and I was already pushing down on the bale, levering a sh.e.l.l. He was sideways to me, no more than a hundred feet away up the road, rear haunches compressing and head going low for the spring, the sun behind me and every hair on his gray-brown hide visible in this late light. A big three-pointer lit up in the sun, just as I had imagined the day before, become real now, thick horns undeniable, large black eyes and a soul.

His eyes looking at me for only an instant then turning and he threw himself forward into air and brush, thin lower legs and hooves angled back, rippling of muscle, a beautiful symmetry and power, and my rifle was already up at my shoulder and I aimed without the sight, aimed only by feel and pulled the trigger without any decision as he dissolved into brush and only the back half of him remained and the rifle kicked against me, an explosion and smell of sulfur and some great shock to the rear half of him like the hand of G.o.d, some terrible blow that swept his haunches sideways and pulled him back from the brush and flattened muscle and shattered bone. The back half of him thrown down into the dirt, and the rest of him came after, screaming. No different from a human voice. Screaming and his head back, voice raised to the heavens in pain and confusion and rage. High-pitched, no beast, no bellowing, but human and frightened.

Dragging himself toward me, front legs digging in, head ducking and chest raising as if he would stand, but each time the rest of him failed to respond. The back half of him made of lead, only a weight to pull across the earth. He screamed again, and he did not understand what had happened. He wanted to turn around but couldn't, head yanking to the side, and every effort brought him only closer to me.

14.

DID CAIN HESITATE? IN THE FIELD WITH HIS BROTHER, wearing the hides of Abel's sheep sc.r.a.ped bare, and Cain a tiller of the ground, his crops found wanting by G.o.d. Rage as they walk through the furrows he's planted, and he's carrying a stone, and without any thought at all he steps behind Abel and smashes that stone against his brother's skull. This part is easy.

But Abel is still alive. One blow isn't enough. Abel's mouth open in pain, eyes closed and blood in his hair from where the stone has crushed bone and torn flesh. He's on his side in the loose dirt, hands and feet numbed but clutching at the earth anyway, attempting to crawl away in the oldest of instincts. And Cain standing there with the stone in his hand.

The rage in him is gone. Flimsiest of emotions, a cover and never itself, a betrayal. Cain feels tricked. But it's too late now to go back. And so he has to kneel down over his brother and see his brother's face as he brings the stone down again, and this time Cain is shielded by nothing, this time he knows who he is. And here is where he may hesitate. It may be a long time before he brings that stone down, and it's in this moment we can know Cain. The momentum of his life, everything out of control, everything misunderstood and recognized too late, that's how we are descended from Cain. All that was instinctual suddenly bearing consequence, our animal nature betrayed by consciousness.

The Bible has nothing to do with G.o.d. The Bible is an account of our waking up, an atavistically dreamed recovery of how we first learned shame in the garden and first considered ourselves different from animals, and Cain was the first to discover that part of us will never wake up. Part of us will act according to instinct, and that will never change. And one of our first instincts is to kill. The Ten Commandments is a list of our instincts that will never leave us.

I stepped away as the buck crawled toward me. Front legs pulling at the ground, trying to turn but only coming closer, dragging down that fire road. Heavy breath in close, eyes rolling, the smell of him, and then that scream again, eyes lidded and head up, high-pitched wail of every pain that had ever been, limitless and unendurable. Discovery that half of him no longer responded, half of him lost, maimed, and never to be made whole again. Unable to flee, crawling closer to the end.

Smell of hide and sweat and blood and fear. Blood caked with dust, red and then brown, hind legs tangled and dragging. The fire road narrow, thick brush leaning in, and no escape for either of us to either side.

The buck coming closer. Fueled by panic, hooves working, those antlers white-tipped and ready to gore. I needed to step backward faster, but I felt frozen. The brush closing in, this long alley narrowing.

His forehead raised up in a ridge, muscle and vein beneath his hide, jaw clacking. Paired hooves, twin wedges of bone striking at the ground and pulling. And he tried again to rise, long neck ducking and charging and that wide chest coming free of the ground, up on his forelegs and then falling again.

Great exhales, snorts into the dust, and he was mired in place. I could tell some part of him wanted to stop, just lie down and wait to die. Some part of him knew it was over. I had felt nothing in killing the poacher, but this was different. I could see what the buck felt, the catastrophe, all lost, no hope of recovery, the end of a life. I felt that end. We hunt the largest animals because they are the closest to being us.

But he pulled again with his forelegs and raised his head and crawled toward me, dragged himself closer, and I stumbled backward and fell, sprawled out on the ground before him, and I was crabbing backward pushing with my hands and heels at the dirt and he was close now, moving faster, crawling over my rifle, which disappeared beneath him, and his head yanking down as he advanced, swinging those horns.

This is the way I still see him, gray-brown hide in that late sun, each individual hair, all created in unison, a landscape of muscle and bone and blood beneath the surface, leaving ripples. The sound of his breath, hot heavy blasts, and the heat and smell bearing down on me, and I had forgotten his pain, forgotten he was maimed, forgotten what was happening here, pushing at the dirt trying to escape, and then he screamed again, a scream broken by intakes of breath, and he shook his head back and forth as if he could free himself from the pain, wring it from his body, and this was unbearable. I rolled to the side and got to my feet and ran down that fire road, ran hard and did not look back until I was a hundred yards away and safe and he was no longer near.

But of course I was still on this road, and so was he, and I no longer had my rifle. The shadows long, half the road gone, and the breeze increasing, last heat of the day. The two of us on this slope.

Nothing to do but walk toward him again, and what would happen when we met I didn't know. Then Tom appeared higher on the road, and he was armed and I was not and no one else was there to witness, and I wondered whether that slug might come now, all things sped along in our lives, impatient.

But Tom only stood watching. No celebration for killing my first buck, no hoots or whoops. I hesitated, afraid of both Tom and the buck. The buck still crawling down toward me, his head dipping and rising. This fire road overgrown on both sides and beginning to grow in the middle, brush rising between the tracks. The buck snagging on this, held back, and I thought at first his legs were tangled but as I came closer I saw my rifle trapped beneath him, caught up in his dead legs and sticking out to the side to snag.

My rifle covered in blood and dirt, and the buck kept pulling but the snag turned him in a slow circle in the middle of the road. No longer headed downhill but crawling to the side, head b.u.t.ting into the brush and his back to me. Haunches flattened, unresponsive.

I walked close and didn't know what to do. The buck was trapped now. His hind legs and the rifle tangled in brush in the middle of the road and his antlers caught in brush at the side. His front legs still pulling at the ground but only digging now, raising dust. Blowing with the effort, heaving and sucking at the air.

Tom only fifty feet away, the buck between us.

How do I get my rifle back? I asked.

Not my problem.

Well have you ever seen this before?

Nope. Everything with you is something new. You're the devil's own private piece of work.

Just shoot him for me.

Nope. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to watch.

The buck had stopped digging. He was swaying in place, the front part of him moving forward as if he'd rise, then falling back, then moving forward again. Smell of fear, an actual smell, something rancid and maddening, something that could make you want to grab his neck in your teeth and just bite through.

The rifle buried beneath him and only the stock and bale visible on the other side, caught in a clump of brush.

I pushed at his rump with my boot, felt the hide slide over muscle. Dead flesh but he must have felt some movement, because he thrashed at the brush, freed his horns.

I knelt down and reached over him to grab for the bale of the rifle. Panic. He yanked his head and the horns came close and I fell back. Antlers with wide forks on top, dark brown and ridged. His eye rolling in fear and rage. He couldn't reach, couldn't fold himself far enough. His hooves slipping in the dirt, trying to lever his head back farther.

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 G.o.ds, 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.

f.u.c.king shoot him right now.

Nope. This is your own cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k. 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, b.i.t.c.h, 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 f.u.c.k 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.

G.o.d you're full of s.h.i.t. 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 f.u.c.k 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 h.e.l.l 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.

15.

OBLIGATION. WHAT'S REQUIRED OF US BY G.o.d. THE ORDER of things. We sow what we can, but G.o.d found Cain's offerings inadequate. And nothing more that Cain could do. What if it's not possible to please G.o.d? 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.