His Last Hunt

The stroke that had not killed him had certainly not made him stronger. For weeks the children took turns, hovering at his bedside, examining the beeping machines, and anticipating, in hushed tones, his imminent demise. He hadn’t died, and that had presented a dilemma. After more hallway discussions, and several visits from experts, they came to him in a united front. Jeff, the oldest, had done the talking, while the others had nodded gravely behind him. He would need a lot of care. None of them were capable of offering him the care or facilities he required. This was the very best they could find. He couldn’t tell them what he thought of their plans, but when the wheelchair accessible van had driven down the long tree lined drive, and pulled up at the post and beam lodge, he was relieved to have been wrong.

Six months later, he had to admit, it really was the best place the kids could have chosen for him. The amount of delight the staff expressed when he was able to move pebbles in the Zen garden was a little embarrassing, but he would have put up with anything for the woods. The lodge was surrounded with woods – real woods, not mowed golf greens with a few stunted trees dotted across it. He did everything the nurses and therapists and advisors and companions asked of him, and then they let him take his walker, and shuffle his half dead body across the smoothest sand paths ever seen to sit beside the trees.

For three hours every afternoon he would sit on a split log bench and listen to the squirrels scold the crows. He felt as if the real him with his memories and his knowledge and control of the right side of his body had been locked in a cage in his mind, but sitting near the trees, and watching the seasons change, could loosen that trapped man’s chains somehow. He noticed everything. He knew which trees were healthy, and which were not. He knew where the mice were storing the scraps they had pulled from the dumpster. He knew when things had begun to go wrong, but there was no way he could warn anyone.

Nora, the occupational therapist, always came to collect him from the bench. She would walk beside him at a snail’s pace, as he would drag his rebellious right foot, then lean on the walker to lift and move his good leg. It was maddening, but she always gave him her most cheery smile, and chattered away to him as if she had no reason to move any faster. The second day he spotted a carcass he had managed to draw her attention to it. Her words had been casual and foolish, but he had seen the concern in her eyes. He realized her seeming ignorance was a feint for him. It was stupid, and unnecessary, but when he looked at his unrecognizable body, he understood. She couldn’t know who was locked away inside the cage in his mind.

The next day, Mrs. Carson was in uncontrollable tears at breakfast. She had permission to keep a small lap dog as a therapy animal, and it had gone missing. One of the companions had let it out before lights out, as they did every night. It had not come back. The dog, or what was left of it, was lying on the edge of the tree line. He watched it for three hours before Nora came to collect him. It took another several minutes before he could make her understand. The little shriek that escaped her mouth before she buttoned down her reaction told him more than her words.

Friday was always a strange day. The week staff were closing off their weeks, and turning things over to the weekend crews. The doctors and therapists were mentally already on the weekend, and the residents were either dreading another lonely weekend, or anticipating visits from family. Fridays he usually had the path and trees and the grounds all to himself, so he was surprised to see three armed men walking the tree line, examining the brush and undergrowth. His bench was gone. He had drag/shuffled his way and now there was no bench. His good leg was beginning to tremble. His bad hand was beginning to cramp around the walker. He had nowhere to rest. No one had told him the bench would be gone. Oh when had he become that old crippled man disabled by a change in routine?

He felt Nora’s weight against his side, before he realized she was there. She slipped her tiny arm behind his waist and asked if he needed some help getting back.

“I knew where you would be, and I knew the bench was gone. I’m sorry no one told you.”

Then she looked up at him and smiled, that sweet, winning smile she had, and they kept moving. He shook his head. That smile wasn’t so charming when she kept shoving a toothbrush into his withered right hand, but out here it seemed different. The yellow translucent leaves clinging to the birch trees along the edge of the forested area were trembling, and his eyes kept moving up to them. They meant something. He knew it. The voice in the cage, the real him, knew what was wrong, but it was like he couldn’t hear the answer. It was like that caged him was yelling through sound proof glass and he wasn’t close enough to read lips. The shaking leaves were important.

Three men with guns were standing with their backs to the woods, watching him walk away. They were clearly concerned about the lightweight blonde’s ability to get the old man back where they thought he belonged. He wondered how effective were three armed men looking the wrong way, and he fell. She was stronger than she looked. He had to grudgingly give her credit when that partially dead right leg gave way and he crumpled against her. They both would have collapsed, but she grabbed the walker and braced herself against it. Then the screaming started.

It was hard to tell where the animal ended and the man began. They heard violent cracking of bones, and he began to realize that it wasn’t the man on the ground screaming. He was beyond screaming now. The two companions were a different story. One was desperately trying to take a shot that wouldn’t endanger his colleague’s life. The other was running and screaming. He had dropped his rifle at the edge of the path before streaking past them, almost toppling their fragile hold on stability. The last man standing took one fatal look at his fleeing comrade, and the beast felled him with one swipe of his paw. Then it turned back to the pile of flesh at its feet and began to feed.

He had that walker turned around faster than he knew he could move any more, and Nora didn’t put up any resistance. She was reaching for the radio all staff carried, and yelling into it as they inched their way toward the carnage. As soon as he had seen the motion and the attack, it had been like a box he didn’t even know was hiding inside his head had sprung open, spraying his damaged mind with information. He shook his head, trying to sort and process the memories. He remembered what the beast ate, where it slept, how old it likely was, and that this was actually a small one. He knew, without trying, where its heart and lungs were and in what season it could be harvested. He remembered the taste of animals like it and could picture, beneath that moving pelt, the lines that marked the boundaries between roasts and chops and steaks. He remembered it all in half a heartbeat, but he couldn’t remember what it was called. The name had slipped from the memory box and was taunting him, like a naughty child at bed time. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t tell anyone any way.

Nora had a small first aid pack with her, but the tattered man trying to inch away from the beast eating his friend wouldn’t be fixed with an alcohol wipe and some butterfly bandages. The old man knew that they didn’t have a moment to lose. Now, while the animal was pacified with its prey, they could kill it. If they waited, they would all die, but he could say nothing. Those wax lips and that wooden tongue would be the death of them all here beneath the trembling birch leaves. He looked at the abandoned rifle, now within reach as they closed the gap at an agonizing crawl. He knew how and where to fire it, but that wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t pull the trigger with his gnarled, powerless right finger, and he couldn’t sight with his cloudy, drifting right eye. As he looked at the weapon, he was startled by Nora’s petite hand closing over it.

She turned the walker, and propped it against his bottom, helping to leverage him and give him the strength to stand. Then she expertly checked the weapon, chambered a round, and stepped away from him, silently. The animal had reflexes faster than an old man. At the click it lunged, but the slam and burn of the bullet made it double back on itself. It fell, then stumbled up, then shook its head, and reeled sideways and backward, crashing into the undergrowth. She leaned the rifle against the walker, and moved to follow the puddles of blood that had spurted out along the beast’s track. The old man grunted as his half brain tried to yell at her to stop. She turned, and he thought she had understood, but she just smiled.

“I used to shoot raccoons on my uncle’s farm all summer as a kid. This was bigger, so scarier, but easier to hit.” She winked, and walked away. This time it wasn’t the effects of the stroke that had him rooted to the spot. He was truly scared, for the first time in a long time. He couldn’t tell her to come back for the gun. He couldn’t explain that what she had shot was a different from a raccoon as her pet dog was from a wolf. He couldn’t do anything, but pick up the rifle that he knew he couldn’t wield, and stumble behind her. It was complete madness. He knew it was. Even the half of his mind that was still active knew that a crippled old man and a petite young woman alone in the hostile woods was a death sentence.

The moaning man at his feet was focused only on retaining as much of his own blood as he could. The old man struggled out of his shirt, and handed it to the wounded man, pointing, with difficulty, to the large abdomen wound. The man understood. He desperately pressed the shirt to the gaping tear, but said nothing as the old man shuffled away.

Nora was walking casually toward a pile of fur tucked into a swampy hollow when he shuffled his way close enough to watch. He leaned heavily on the tree to his left. It was a challenge to handle a weapon safely, while bracing one’s entire weight with the same hand. This would be true for anyone, he thought, wryly. It was particularly true for someone who considered eating spaghetti challenging. He was breathing hard, and it was hard to focus, but he was pretty sure the lump of fur was rising and falling, slightly. He was certain that she was moving too quickly and to confidently toward that fur that had just clearly moved.

Her shriek was otherworldly as the dying animal lashed out. It’s enormous (I’ve seen bigger, said the other him, inside the mind cage) claw ripped the inside of her leg from thigh to knee. The creature was struggling against its own blood loss and weakness to get at her when the old crippled man fired into its skull. He didn’t know how he had crossed that last few yards, but he knew that at point blank, it didn’t matter if his damaged right eye couldn’t focus on the sights. He slid his back down the tree closest to him, until he came to a sort of managed fall, and then crawled on hands and knee. He took the tiny pocket knife they let him carry, a memory of whom he had once been, and sawed open the beast’s throat. Then he wrapped his undershirt around Nora’s mangled leg, tied it with her belt, and closed his eyes.

He was woken by paramedics shouting at him. They were asking him where he was injured, and what his name was. The police were there. Animal control and Department of Natural Resources were there arguing over the carcass. His beautiful forest was filled with loud talking, and his vision kept filling up with paramedics looking at his pupils and trying to get him to respond. He couldn’t see Nora. Angrily, he brushed their faces away, and pointed to the alert bracelet on his wrist. It was the only way to tell them not to expect any words from this shattered man. He craned his neck, and searched. He couldn’t see Nora.

They carried him away in a stretcher. The walk through the trees that had seemed to take him hours was done in minutes. The walked past the body bag and carnage of the first victim, and down the familiar sand path, now marked by so many booted feet, and wheeled vehicles. They kept looking for his injuries, and he couldn’t tell them that none of the blood was his. They didn’t turn to enter the lodge through the double glass doors, as he expected. Instead they walked around the end of the building to the front drive, where dozens of vehicles were converged. He assumed they were on their way to an ambulance, but he had caught sight of familiar faces. It was Nora. And his son Jeff. The old man pointed wildly, and grunted with frustration until the poor paramedics carried him over.

Jeff was red in the face, but his voice was quiet and measured.

“It was shear recklessness. He is your patient. He is a non-verbal stroke victim.”

She was lying on a stretcher, her leg now wrapped, and immobilized. “I know. I was reckless, and unprofessional. I am expecting to have my license suspended, or even revoked.”

“NO!” The words had exploded past his wax lips and wooden tongue with such force it surprised even him. He reached a gnarled, half dead hand to hers.

“Good. Kill.” he forced out. “Saved. Us.” Then, more quietly. “Saved. Me.”