Buck Shy

Free-range dogs weren’t that rare in rural Maryland in the 1970s, but the idea of it made me nervous. Moose and Mimi, my dogs growing up, never wore a collar. I remember how they ran alongside our family’s three-wheeled golf cart. My father and I would drive into the forest near our house to do some target practice with empty cans. The dogs would keep up, their tongues hanging out. I worried about their feet getting caught in the tires, and I worried about them getting lost.

As we drove, my father regaled me with stories about how he and his Papa cut the road through the forest together—for snowmobiling and hunting. I listened intently to his stories of adventure, though my eyes were always fixed on my dogs.

Every animal my father had taken came with a story. There was the one about the bear who walked up while he was skinny dipping in a stream and stole his clothes. He had to walk back to the Reservation, where he was staying, buck naked. Later, as a parting gift, one of the hunting guides made him a belt buckle from the base of an elk’s antler. On the back, a knife inscribed the words “Chief Bare Bottom.”

I never understood how my father could claim to love animals, yet shoot them. And he never understood why I wanted Moose and Mimi to sleep in my room. “Why would you want those dogs up in your bed? They’re covered in mud and lake water.”

Maybe they were, but so was I. This was before screens hijacked childhood—I spent my days playing outside. Much as I begged to have them in my room, the answer was always no. Once, in the middle of the night during the worst thunderstorm I can remember, I snuck through the house, waited for a crack of thunder, clicked open the laundry room door, and ran fast as I could on tip-toe back to my bed—the freed dogs bounding after me. I thought for sure we’d get caught; dogs don’t understand tip-toe. I lay there, sandwiched between their warm bodies, no longer afraid of the storm that raged. When the lightning lit up my room, I could see their moon-pie eyes, heavy with sleep, deeply content. If Moose and Mimi weren’t scared, neither was I.

I wasn't like him...

I thought we were going to shoot at cans, or to hit the bullseye on our paper targets like we usually did. My father stopped the cart and pointed to a tree in the middle of the field, beneath it was a group of deer, eating fallen apples. The silence of that moment was unbearable. I knew better than to even whisper one of the ten or so questions circling in my head. Were we going to shoot the deer or shoo them away and use the tree for hanging our target? He’d never taken me hunting, and I was grateful for it.

I could tell his mind was racing. He stepped out of the golf cart and reached into the black wooden flatbed. In slow motion, his rifle appeared—a high-powered, high caliber, long-distance kind of rifle that made my .22 Winchester look like a toy. One thing I did know was that the sight of that rifle was going to make Moose and Mimi run home. They hated the sound of gunfire. My dad would chuckle watching them run off, but I worried. Would they make it home? Why couldn’t we do something that didn’t involve scaring off our dogs?

“Grab your rifle, little E. You’re gonna get your first deer.”

I didn’t want this. I wanted to be back with Moose and Mimi, curled up watching Ultra Man and Speedracer. I stumbled climbing out of the cart, my foot caught the rim and I landed hard; the deer sprinted into the woods. I thought my nightmare was over but my father seemed to know exactly where they were headed.

I followed him into a part of the forest I would never dream of entering, thick and thorny, seemingly unpassable. He passed through that tangled mess of vegetation like a golfer striding up to collect his ball from the hole. I followed in his wake, privately rooting for the deer to escape. But my dad was too good.

And there he was, the buck, standing no more than thirty feet away. Staring at us.

My father already had his rifle trained on the animal’s neck but didn’t fire. Instead, he nodded for me to raise mine. He put a finger to his lips and mimed the bolt action as if to say, “do it slow and quiet.”

My father nodded for me to shoot. Terrified, I took aim at the buck's rib cage, a sickness washing over me. I wasn't the son he wanted me to be, and I knew it then and there. Time stood still long enough for me to inch my aim above the buck’s head. The sound of that single gunshot echoed for what felt like minutes. The deer bounded away. My father’s face told the story much better than I ever would. It wasn’t so much disappointment as it was the realization that I wasn’t like him. He said nothing.

When we got back to the cabin, Moose and Mimi were waiting on the front step. My father left me in silence to park the cart in the wooden A-frame shed. Moose jumped in back then up onto the passenger seat. Mimi ran alongside. I drove slowly, careful of her feet, and of her all-out joy.

I thought maybe if I caught a big fish off the end of our dock, my Dad would be impressed. Down to the water I went, the air thick with the smell of pine and lake mud. I cast my line and Mimi’s gaze locked onto the very point where the fishing wire disappeared into the water. Ears up, head cocked in that ever-inquisitive way dogs have. I sat on the dock allowing the soles of my shoes to tap lightly against the surface of the water. Mimi sat next to me, patiently waiting for a fish to appear.

Moose stood in the muddy shallows, every once in a while barking at a bird or passing boat. I was content to stay out there all day with my best friends. I caught a small green sunfish and let Mimi take it into her mouth. Her bite was soft. Drop it, girl. Drop it. And she did, right back into the water it went. We watched it swim away. ~

When I take my daughter fishing, she always asks to hear the story about Moose and Mimi and the sunfish, and the buck I sent away. We have two dogs, Harvey and Hobbes, they make the rounds at night, going from one warm bed to another, eventually settling where they will.