I remember resting my head against the window of Dave's car. The glass was cold against my forehead. An inch from my eye, rivulets of water marched past, jerking in the wind, like nervous soldiers. I was cold, wet and I was tired.

We were coming home from a day of fish counting, a government make-work job we held for a few months to avoid collecting welfare. It was November and had rained, non-stop, it seemed, since late August. It was a cold, wet, stinking job that involved walking miles of river each day in that rain, discovering, identifying, taking samples of, and cutting in half dead, decaying salmon carcasses. We cut them in half so we didn't count, identify and sample them the next day, or the next.

November days here on the west coast of BC suck the light out of your inside, especially if you have to work in the bush. The rain beats down endlessly, day and night with a hiss like frying bacon. It's cold, and thunders down in huge, thick drops that strike with a malicious constancy. It washes any joy you might have, it dilutes it, and steals its colour, it leaves a lost feeling, a longing and confusion in its place. It makes you wonder if happiness ever existed, or if it was a cruel dream you vaguely remember.

Dave and I were driving back from the river in the late afternoon, just at dusk. Approaching cars had their headlights on, reflecting long yellow points in the slick pavement. The windshield wipers streaked those lights, diffusing them, the rain on the windshield soaked up any warmth leaving them as grey as everything else. The radio was playing quietly and we sat there not speaking. We had walked, side by side all day through the dripping cedar forest. At first, like always, we talked a lot, but  the day would wear on and the topics would wear out and become exhausted along with us. We would move slowly away from speech. Discussions became shorter, until, with the unending hiss of the rain in the water we would retreat into grunts, nods, gestures, and finally silence. Cold and wet, stinking of decaying fish. I don't think our thoughts even spoke inside our heads.

"What the hell.."

Dave's voice opened a door into my stupor. Even though he said it quietly, speech was such an alien sound right then that it shocked me. I looked up and saw forms on the roadway half a mile ahead, just below the crest of a hill

The shapes moved in the gathering gloom, they worked in such a way that it was easy to tell they were out of place, something was wrong. A car took form with its hazard lights flashing.Two dark outlines, stark on the pavement gained form as we slowed, and eventually stopped.

A man in a suit, looking confused was one. He stood  among glittering shards of headlight. Plastic chunks of signal light and grille were scattered among them.

A deer was the other. It lay there illuminated now by Dave's headlights, a doe. Her front legs scrabbled desperately on the wet asphalt while she tried frantically to drag herself upright. Her right rear leg was snapped like a branch, it's jagged ends stark white and thrust obscenely through her skin. Fresh blood ran from the wounds, smearing in the water on the road. Her breath came in hoarse gasps and darker blood ran from her nose and mouth.

Dave and I stepped out. We were filthy, stinking, wet, long haired and bearded. We walked up silently to the scene and looked around us. Our boots crunched in the glass scattered about. The man in the suit, our age but as different from us as a martain would be, it appeared as though a day of work would kill him. He looked up suddenly, seeing us for the first time,  frightened, he started to explain.

"It just ran out in front of me, I couldn't stop.. it  just ran out.."

Dave broke our silence, he did what he could to comfort him, he was shaken and scared his fashionable tie plastered to his shirt, his wet hair stuck to his forehead. He was standing there helplessly in the rain. Suit Guy kept trying to explain and Dave kept nodding, kept telling him it was okay, kept calming him.

I stood and looked at the doe, she was trying to drag herself back to the forest, back to the quiet, wet, cool forest she was born in. Close enough to see the hiding branches, close enough to see escape and smell her home. Her hopelessly ruined leg keeping that place distant, her pierced lung making her gasp, in short bloody breaths and not allowing it to swallow her up. Dave's voice and the driver's were a soft echo in the distance as I looked at that deer. I stared at her, knowing what had to be done. The understanding dawning on me excruciatingly slowly.

Suit guy would be no help. Dave looked over at me, and down at the deer, then back up at me again. Our eyes locked, a conversation passed in that instant. Dave's eyes widened and his lips compressed, he got a bit pale. It was in that instant that I knew without any shadow of a doubt that the deer had to be killed. To wait would be to torture it. We were too far away from anything more merciful, it had to be killed, and now.

I knew Dave well, and was certain that he couldn't kill her, the only thing I wasn't certain of was that I could.

"What are we going to do" asked Suit Guy.

I have to hand it to him, most others would have jumped into their car and taken off long ago, he stayed.

"The deer won't live another two hours, the only thing to do is kill it" I told him much more calmly than I felt.

"How?" he asked, his voice whispering, just barely audible over the hammerblows of rain.

My right hand slipped to my belt, hanging just past my hip, there, toward the back was the soft leather sheath. It held the Christmas present my girlfriend gave me last year. Four inches of lock-blade knife, wickedly sharp hung, folded in on itself, waiting.

"You're not going to just kill it, are you?" he stammered, looking from Dave to me and back, fear and revulsion growing in his eyes by the second. "Maybe we should call someone, the cops, the SPCA or something"

"Look buddy, IF they come out for this all they'll find is a dead deer, it won't live much longer and it'll suffer the whole time." I told him

"Just get in your car and leave, we'll take care of everything" Dave said. He looked at me, fear and confusion in his eyes, as if to say "Won't we?"

Suit Guy fell silent.

"Maybe you should go" Dave said to him, his eyes never wavering from mine.

In their own little world my fingers pulled the snap that held the knife in place, I brought it out and flicked my wrist, hearing the blade slam into place. Suit Guy flinched and looked from Dave to me and back again once more. Horror growing with the realization.

I knew I had to move before I thought about it much more, I swung my leg over the scrabbling deer's back and grabbed her chin in one motion. Her wet fur was smooth under my hand, her body was warm, I looked into her huge eyes and saw the flames of terror there, I saw the bright shining spark of life, I saw her wishing to escape, to wake up from the nightmare, I heard her try to scream but only cough more frothy blood. She knew what was going to happen, she had smelled carnivores before, she knew what a predator was as only a herbivore can. I pulled her head up, drawing the skin on her neck tight and drew the knife across, hard and fast, before I could think any more.

I'll never forget the "Whissss" it made as the flesh drew apart, and the convulson that coursed through her as the pain struck. Her breath gasped sharply through the parted trachea.

I had missed.

Hardly any blood came, just the hoarse rasp of air through her ruined windpipe. Tears sprang from my eyes and I'm sure I cried out when I saw what had happened. My hand was sticky with what little blood there was, her hair clung to my hand. I pulled the neck tight again and drove the knife in once more searching for the artery I knew was there somewhere. She lurched again, her front feet beating on the stones and macadam. The second time I found it, as I drew the blade across again there was a splashing sound and a thick, crimson stream coursed out. Her kicking quickly became twitching, and just as quickly became stillness. I looked at her eyes again and saw the grey opacity that replaces life.

I crouched there, panting, wanting to puke. I looked up at Dave, he was pale, his lips were pressed tightly together. His eyes were huge.

"Oh my god !" wailed Suit Guy.

I looked at him, unreasoning fury blinding me. "Get-in-your-car-and-LEAVE" I said to him softly, enunciating every word carefully.

"But.." he said.

I was crouching over the dead deer, the knife still in my hand, blood bright on my jeans and the sleeve of my mackinaw. The smell of it, fresh, overpowering everything else.

"FUCK OFF!.. NOW! " Shouted Dave, his face gone from the pale of horror to purple with fury in an instant.

Suit Guy's dress shoes slipped on the slickness of the roadway as he retreated to his car. His wheels spun in the turf as he took off.

As my heart rate slowed, and my breath stopped coming in rasps and sobs I watched the pool of bright blood dilute in the rain, from crimson to burgundy to pink, then finally to the dark grey of the road, gone, washed away.

Dave and I silently dragged the carcass to his car trunk and drove it to my father's house. He had been a hunter in his youth and there was no reason to waste good meat. The cleaning, skinning and butchering would go on without me.

Dave went home. We parted without words.

I got into my car and drove to pick up my girlfriend, pulled into our friend's driveway and walked to the door. Suddenly I was exhausted beyond words it was everything I could do to raise my hand and knock.

She opened the door with a smile as always. Alarm and horror replaced her smile instantly as she saw the blood that covered half of me.

"We found a deer hit on the way here. I had to kill it" I heard myself say, as if on a TV somewhere else.

I looked into her eyes then, they were large like the doe's, bright with life and love, flaming with worry, confusion, and a thousand questions.

Her hand slipped into mine, smearing some of the blood on her clean, soft skin.

"Let's go home" she whispered.

I  rested my head against the window of the car. The glass was cold against my forehead. An inch from my eye, rivulets of water marched past again, jerking in the wind.
 
 

01/08/09
 
 
 

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