‘Ham shot,’ said Harlan. ‘Can’t be sure, but he could go far.’
Paul looked from the rifle to his fingertips and back again, hoping that the blame for what had transpired might be found in damage to the sights, or a visible weakness in his own hand. There was nothing to be seen, and later he would often wonder if that was the sign, the moment when his body began to fail, when the process of contamination and ruination commenced, as though the cancer had sprung into being in the seconds between squeezing the trigger and firing the bullet, and the error had been caused by his body spasming minutely in sudden awareness of the first cell being turned against itself.
But all that came later: for now, all Harlan and Paul knew for sure was that they had caused a mortal injury to an animal, and they had a duty to end its suffering. A pall had been cast over the day, and Harlan wondered how long it would be before Paul went hunting again. Not that season, certainly. It wasn’t in Paul’s nature to return to the woods and prove that the miss had been a one-off. No, he would brood over it, and consider his gun, and practice some on the range at the back of his house. Only when he had racked up bull after bull would he consider aiming once again at a living animal.
The buck left a clear trail for them to follow, dark red blood and panic excrement splashed on bushes and leaves. They moved as fast as they could, but both were older men now, and the pace quickly wore on them. The buck, disoriented and in agony, was not cleaving to any known trail, and it seemed to be making no attempt to cut behind them to familiar ground. Their progress slowed. Soon they were bathed in sweat, and a low branch gave Harlan a bad scratch to his left cheek that bled into the collar of his shirt. It would need stitches, but Paul pulled a couple of adhesive strips from the first aid pack to hold the cut together, and eventually it began to clot and the bleeding stopped, although the pain made Harlan’s eyes water, and he thought that there might be a splinter buried in the wound.
The woods grew darker, the branches meeting above their heads to cut off the sunlight. And then the clouds came, and what little light there had been was suddenly obscured, and the air grew colder around them, all warmth now gone so quickly that Harlan could feel the sweat cooling upon him. He examined his compass. It told them that they were moving west, but the last known position of the sun gave the lie to it, and when he tapped it again the needle shifted position, and west became east, and after that the needle didn’t spin exactly, not like it did in those fantasy films that they showed at the movie theaters in summer, but it refused to remain fixed.
‘You keep that with your knife?’ asked Paul. A knife could throw off the magnetism of a compass.
‘No, I never do.’ As if he’d make that kind of amateur error.
‘Well, something’s up with it.’
‘Ayuh.’
Harlan and Paul knew that they were heading north, though. Neither of them suggested that they should turn back and leave the buck to its fate, not even as the day died, and the foliage became denser, the trees older, the light dimmer. Soon it was dark, and they resorted to flashlights to guide them, but they did not give up on the animal. The blood was not drying out, which meant the injury was fatal, and the buck was still suffering.
They would not leave it to die in pain.
Ernie Scollay interrupted the tale.
‘That was my brother’s way,’ he said. ‘Harlan’s too,’ he added, although it was clear that his focus was on his late brother. ‘They weren’t going to give up on the buck. They weren’t cruel men. You have to understand that. Do you hunt?’
‘No,’ I said, and I watched as he tried to hide a kind of smugness, as though I had confirmed a suspicion he had of me and of my innate city softness. Then it was my turn to add something – ‘Not animals.’ – and maybe it was petty, but there was some small pleasure to be derived from watching his expression change.