The Huntress, Part Three

The man hears the lever and breech, he looks up and this time sees her. It would be a “hunting accident.”

Like him, she is hungry. Unlike him, she is not criminal.

She sees the fear in him, she sees the greed.

Greed.

She snaps the safety on. And turns and walks away. Steady. Let him live with it. It is early and there are other deer in the forest.

The man watches her until she is gone, then starts gutting the buck.

They will always know.

It is a small town. She and the man will see one another from time to time and she will always see the hunger and fear. He will always see the huntress.

She makes her way up the mountain, and crosses over a stone wall. She materializes out of the woods and walks the moss covered clearing past the church by the road and melts again into the cover. The farms and the people are gone but the church stands well kept and painted white, it stands against the trees. The moss feels like pillows under her feet. She will marry in this church, her daughter will marry in this church, but this is unknown to her. She will be mourned in this church.

She is the one in the family who always comes home with game. This is her source of pride and she will stay out until it is done, even though it will be further to get it home. Up Cotton Mountain, she walks slowly quietly higher and colder, looking at the sky she estimates it is noon.

There is sign, deer have yarded up at the edge of a field where lightning started a fire and the trees burned and the thin soil eroded and it’s been sixty years but still no trees. There are blueberries and wild rose now with bright red hips and the deer know. She follows tracks but is upwind of where they go, so circles around to a place where a farm also went with the fire. The cellar hole is all that remains, the foundations, granite blocks are impervious to fire and time. But not ice. Again and again water started with the tiniest crack in the front step, froze in it and split it apart, now an inch gap. She marvels the slow strength of ice.

There is a place where the earth is always wet, a spring, and apple trees were spared. The deer will be there and she will come from down wind.

Thick grey clouds drift close and spit snow.

And she sees them.

And moves in without a sound, low in the brush and wind, and in the cold she can see their breath. It is close range. Four thin streams of cloud sweeping away.

Again the fluid motion comes and she stands and snaps off the safety and the deer know. And she is breathing and hot, feeling the taking of life, the edge of utter confusion. There is no thinking, rather in the realm of instinct she makes her choice. It is a young two point buck and her shot, the second of the day cracks and hits in its ear.

This shot her father did not hear. He does not wonder about her, it is not too late yet.

The young buck drops and as the others scatter she considers taking another. But she can carry only one and the carrion eaters would find the second before she could get back.

Life’s clarity has already faded from the animal’s eye and the tongue hangs out.

She puts her knife in the buck’s throat to bleed it.

The blood steams, it smells clean and rich. The first and the last, the huntress tastes it, the salt.

It bleeds.

Her knife is from Sweden, a gift from her aunt, it is sharp as a razor. Her aunt got caught smoking cigarettes in an outhouse in Sweden. Thinking of this the girl giggles, oh Dear Aunite, the moment’s relief from killing is welcome. With the tip of the knife she carefully cuts around the anus and then up the belly to the throat. She cuts the esophagus and windpipe. She works and reaches and pushes the lungs and entrails out. They are warm, they steam.

She will keep the heart and liver, the remaining entrails the carrion eaters will get. The stomach contains acorns and apple. The offal will be gone before the next day’s light.

Life to life, earth to earth.

She wraps the heart and liver in a piece of oil cloth brought for this purpose, and washes the blood from her hands and knife at the spring and sheaths the knife. The sound of the snap on the small strap of leather which retains the knife in the sheath reassures her. Her job is well done, now there is the carrying. She rests and eats the cookies and cups her hands into the spring. The water is clear and tastes of stone. She ponders her location and checks her rifle. The chamber is empty.

She rises and hoists the carcass and drapes it over her shoulders. Despite her being all muscle, the weight is all she can handle. She squats and picks up her rifle. And starts for home.

Home is five miles away and darkness comes early. It is in season and so she will walk the roads and maybe someone will come by and offer a ride.

Her father will hang the deer in the barn and be pleased. That night they will eat the heart. The next day her father will butcher the carcass and the huntress will hunt and kill again.

Gordon Bunker