I expected the Chinese man, this Jimmy Carter, to laugh, but he didn’t respond at all. He seemed to have no idea of the displaced magic of his name. Grinning in a blank way that rattled me. Maybe the man was stolid, or had picked the name out of the Yellow Pages. Conner’s face said, Get a load of this crazy-ass chink. The other Chinese stood listening in the snow. Shovel wormed his head into my lap.
Finally I asked him, “Are you doing good business?”
“Oh yes. A great season in the Smokehole Canyon.”
“We heard on the radio.”
“Yes, four hundred pounds. A monster! John McCrory there told me a joke. He said, ‘What do you call a farmer who raises goats and sheep?’”
“What?”
“A bisexual.”
We laughed. I said, “I thought you were going to say, ‘A bigamist.’”
Jimmy Carter let out a great air-rattling belly laugh. “Oh my,” he said, wiping tears with the heel of his hand. “That’s good. Like a Mormon. Who killed this bear?”
I would reveal the boy’s lie. Or make his father deny it. Shovel began to tense and whimper in my arms. I nodded my head at Andy, about twenty feet away. “Guy over there on the tailgate,” I said to Jimmy Carter. “The fat one in the orange. He went into a cave after it.”
Andy could hear. He shot me a frightened look. He knew.
“You don’t say?” Jimmy Carter asked. “Which one? I want to congratulate him.”
I’ve thought of this moment lately, of what I should have said — or more appropriately, not said. At the time, I couldn’t have known I would drop out of law school, answer the call, go to seminary. My church is in walking distance of the building in which I once read law before throwing it over. When I made a name for myself, the conference gave me a large church, passing over older clergy, for which I’m not loved. Now I’m caught in the same snarls I would have been had I become a politician: Dad’s revenge. I didn’t know it until my trip to Dallas. I went there to argue with the troglodytes, southern bishops who would defrock us. The issue was homosexuality; some of us had presided over such marriage ceremonies, against official policy, admittedly making a spectacle of ourselves. I hadn’t done so myself — not brave enough — but I was there to advocate for those who had. I stayed in a brightly lit hotel. I told the kindly people of Texas, No, I have not yet seen the grassy knoll. Across the table, these men hated me. Useless. Dad would have charmed them, accomplished something. My failure is punishment come down upon me.
“Guy with the red beard,” I said, gesturing. “He killed it.”
Andy sat back on the tailgate. The blush returned to his face. He looked at me. He looked at Conner. Jimmy Carter made a beeline for him.
Turning to me, Conner gave out a clipped, mirthless laugh. “This’ll do,” he said. “This’ll do.” I saw the flashing in his eyes. He approved.
Andy was saying miserably, “No, no, my son got it.”
“Oh, my apologies. They say you shot it.”
“Well.” Andy looked at his ankle as if it would speak. “I don’t know.”
“My apologies.” Turning now to Bud, Jimmy Carter said, “Congratulations on your first bear. This one is truly impressive. It is a great beginning. Second-nicest we’ve seen today.”
Bud mumbled his thanks.
“You went into that cave?” Jimmy Carter asked. “You bear hunters are crazy. You could have been killed! Tell the story. Go ahead.”
When Bud didn’t respond, Jimmy Carter thought he’d insulted the boy. He backed up, gesticulating. “No, I do not mean to say you are stupid or anything, necessarily. I am floored by your bravery. I could never do a thing like that. Truly. I am.”
Tossing a beer can in the snow, Andy spoke up. His face was pinched. He gave his son a look that could chisel granite.
“Yeah, that’s right. By God, he risked his ass.”
The other hunters passed one another glances. Miners, mechanics, outlaws. They were realizing the truth of the matter: a whisper in the blood told them so. They could break down engines, run bulldozers, live with comfort in their own skin. I wasn’t one of them, with their easy aggression, their jokes, their settling of scores. It’s no wonder I prefer the company of women. The dam of ice had breached inside. Immediately I felt regret.
My stepbrother called out, “You done a good job, Buddy!”
Shoulders hunched, the boy crammed himself into his person. Dissolving.
Jimmy Carter saved the day, asking mildly, “Do you plan on hunting tomorrow?”
“Not now,” Andy said, then cussed his ankle and his luck. “I got work tomorrow. Boss is gonna flip. Don’t even want to think about it. These boys will all be out.”
“Yeah, I got to get me a bear this season,” Conner said. “Heading overseas and all. I’m going into the Marines.”
This was news to me.
Jimmy Carter wished him the best of luck. “Speaking as one who chose his citizenship, I can say I appreciate your service more than most.”
The first flag-waving year of that televised war, before it soured, when the scene was grim for our party. Dad sulked. “Start a war, win elections. Might as well not field a candidate. Just take our ball and go home.” Several months after the hunt, when Conner was still skulking around the county, I asked my dad about it. Dad said, “My God, how your brother lies. Can you imagine him listening to a superior? He’s a little chickenshit chickenhawk. I finally drove him to the recruiter. He wouldn’t get out of the car.”
Conner shook Jimmy Carter’s hand and said he appreciated the hell out of it. “I need to do me some fucking before I go. Patriotic, are you? Got any daughters?”
Jimmy Carter laughed again. “Only sons.”
“Are they pretty?”
Andy hooted. “I’d give a arm and a leg to be that age again. I’d hop after them on the bloody stumps.”
After bidding the Chinese goodbye, we skinned the bear down to red flesh and white sinew, soon to be rendered into hams. A naked bear is too human for words. We lifted yellow blankets of fat and piled them, where the hounds rolled and gobbled and burrowed in the mounds. Bud threw in and worked hard, trying to make up for being himself.
I hated to pull my red arms from the carcass, because it warmed them so. Soon we’d saw off the head, and the sow’s body would drop into the bed with an axle-shaking thump.
“Sorry you didn’t get yours,” Conner told me after. “Keep the faith. You’ll get him. This storm coming, we’ll call it a day. Andy like that, too.” Soon he’d fly across the waters and become a russet smudge on the sands, his face a void. Eyes, gone. Jaw, gone — at least, that’s what I pictured at the time, before I knew it was just another lie. I wanted to tell him not to go. Maybe he should have gone. Get him away from this tar pit of a place. Could the military have fixed him? Yet I preach that war is unspeakably wrong. He grabbed up the leg of a yelping bluetick and examined the paw. “Cut all to hell. This hard crusty snow is like knives on their pads.” The dog licked its feet, which had turned the snow to a pink slush, as if we’d broken a watermelon for lunch.
I checked Shovel’s stitches and noticed him bleeding a bit about the ears, but then he ran off to slurp some snow. I was ready to go home. Someone shot a whiskey bottle sitting in the ditch. It disappeared in a cloud of glass and a cheer went up.
When it happened, we were discussing who’d take home the tenderloin, the finest meat. You take it. No, you. Shovel whimpered at my boots, fell, and began to seize.
I clamped my hands on the dog’s head and called out. Warm blood trickled over the webs of my fingers. I used my thumbs to parse the skin. Shovel shrieked in a way you don’t expect from a dog. He bled from the mouth and the nose. A swollen brain, something ripped and bleeding beneath the skull, where the bear’s teeth had punched through. Shovel bucked, eyes rolling. Something so disturbing about the sick-animal thrash against my arms.