BUCK FEVER

Sets in after the Fourth. See them huddled round rusting pickups. Quiet and earnest in hardware store aisles. Calling bullshit at tall tales relayed amongst Fresh Air Bar-B-Que's communal tables, sawdust piled underfoot, woodpeckers hammering old pines across way deep on into Indian Springs and further on Flovilla. See it in the eyes. In the way they carry themselves. Hear it in every simple sentence spit from lips. Hands wrung. Shoulders slouched. Beaten by long summer days slowly giving way. Come Septemeber starts conversation. It's the rack and break and quick survey of the worn table. Deer hunting is a yearly preoccupation. Season never ends. And if you're capable of hitting a pie plate with an Easton from thirty yards out you can squeeze in treasured urban area and add some weeks to your kill time. Here come the trail cam photos. Amongst gaggle of coon and fox and possum and squirrel. Amongst trees heavy with leaf. From the margins of wood and front and center and so close its just a big black nose and two headlight eyes glown green as Mountain Dew slurpee. He's in velvet. Lookit that rack. Wait til fall. He's big now. But when he packs on fat... Drop tines like split yardsticks. So long as he stays to the wood and don't get hit. Jiminy Christmas I'd hate to scrape him off the street.

Fill feeders. Secure stands. Grease guns. Take up archery this year. Start with hay bale. Few yards away til confidence grows. Cicadas pulse. Sky cloudless and sun unforgiving and high. Hear the truck traffic roar by on 16 and 36 and 42. Heard about that horse trailer t-boned last night. Doe and two yearlings frozen footed, eyes glowing, legs set still unmoving. Killed the driver. Took him apart like a kid does a doll. Left his head in a ditch. Horses broken legged, dispatched by cop's service weapon. Heard the taps one two. Run a crown midst that pie plate. Imagine it a buck broadside set still for that one shot perfect and true. Hear the maples and oaks restless in autumn, leaves singed brown and dried and brittle as family Bible pages.

Sometimes they bring em to you. The trophies of old. Deer hair standing out from their skull caps like broken wire. Racks old and yellow as dogteeth. They'll tell you the stories. Never have to ask. I got a beer if you're needin. Small Igloo cooler behind the seat. Truck rumbles over Watkins Park & Pool Road. Busch Tallboy cold as December creek. Stops the truck. Seen him yonder. Split those two transformers there. Like a statue. Still. Not movin. Pulled the deed to find out Tilden Weskley own that land and I shown up on his doorstep with two Ball Jars of pickled eggs and 12 pack beer and we drink an eat our way into gentleman's agreement. Up a tree three weeks later and took him down open sights. Thought first shot aint on mark an I jack the round out and fire gan. Waitin never easy. Jiminy Christmas seem a year or more. Find that blood trail and walk it. Seen him on his side like he asleep, life run out him in blood. Blood redder than a dog's pecker. Aint seen blood that red.

He holds the horn from the cap and does not smile when I snap the picture. His eyes are set deep and blue and shot with blood. Blue as the August sky. He's a close talker and I smell the handslaps of Brut and the beer he had for breakfast and the dip he's let sting his lower lip for the last half hour. He's a discreet spitter. Sucks it up into a teardrop and sends it out like a watermelon seed. Never known anyone that deft with dipspit. Never will. He gives me a Ball Jar of eggs. Cowhorn peppers green and orange and red at the base. Dozen quail eggs shucked out their shells and set in malt vinegar. Aint nothin like a cold beer and one of them eggs, he says. He turns to the door. Looks out the window. Looks down at the two sets of horn in his hands. Trucks pass slow and awkward through the light. Won't be long now, he says. Aint nothin worse than buck fever.