Authors: Harvey Smith
Weapon slung over his back, Jack followed his father to the garage. As he pulled the garage door down and twisted the handle, he wished his mother had come to say goodbye.
Big Jack stowed the rifles over the rear window, maneuvering around in the cab on his knees, causing the springs in the seat to groan and grind as he shifted his weight. He checked the ropes holding the tarp one last time, cackling like some mad Santa inspecting his sled. Satisfied, he pulled himself up behind the wheel just as Jack was climbing into the passenger seat.
“Alright, boy,” Big Jack said. “Let's hit the goddamn road.”
Still sleepy, Jack watched through the windshield as the houses on his block slipped past.
In keeping with one of his rituals, Big Jack stopped for chocolate milk and doughnuts at the onset of the hunting trip. Tichacek's was popular with his fellow plant-workers, who frequented the place several times a week on the way to work. Hopping down out of the truck, he hitched up his pants, which were immediately dragged low again by the large knife now hanging from his belt. He spat into the parking lot. “Keep an eye on the truck. I'll be right back.”
Jack watched his father enter and pass along the front window. A long bar stretched the length of the room, where men sat on stools. Most of them were dressed in the same attire his father put on five mornings a week. Waitresses drifted around, filling up coffee cups and bringing out plates of fried eggs, bacon and sausage, delivering them to the tables scattered through the restaurant. One end of the bar was reserved for patrons picking up batches of doughnuts in paper bags.
Big Jack leaned on the counter, chatting with the plump waitress taking his order. He wore a camouflage jacket with a hood over his t-shirt. The inner lining of the jacket was bright orange, like a traffic cone. The camo was supposed to prevent deer from seeing him by breaking up his outline; the orange lining was supposed to prevent other hunters from shooting him to death by mistake.
After he paid, the waitress passed him a couple of bags. They talked for a few more minutes before he headed for the exit. The bells on the front of the shop jingled as he emerged. Sitting in the truck, he and Jack ate a couple of doughnuts each and drank from half-pint containers of chocolate milk.
“Those fuckers are jealous I'm goin' hunting.” He cackled, with flakes of sugar raining down from his whiskered lips. Jack laughed with him. The windows fogged up, so Big Jack started the engine and cranked the defroster to max.
“That's Shirley,” he said, once the glass was clear again. Through the windshield, he indicated the woman who had waited on him. “She's a pretty good ol' girl.” He looked at his son confidentially. “She likes me a lot.”
Unsure of what to say, Jack smiled and tore off another chunk of doughnut.
The ride out to the deer lease was long. Leaving the Gulf Coast behind, they moved into the stark, gray-green landscape of East Texas; sparse pastures dotted with long-faced cattle, scrubby woods and endless highways flanked by barbed wire. They passed through dying towns, composed mostly of feed stores, traffic lights and gas stations. Big Jack chain-smoked throughout the drive. Occasionally, he listened to the truck's AM radio, tuning in some country music station. He left it on through the first half of a high school football game, re-broadcast from earlier in the season, before the signal finally failed.
Jack felt nauseous, breathing the cigarette smoke, but the air was too chilly to leave the windows down. He stared out the windshield most of the time. Beyond the glass, the world was a blur. After a few hours, he retrieved another doughnut from the white paper bag, careful to leave one in case his father wanted it.
They stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen in Halletsville. Sitting in a booth, they drank Dr. Pepper from Styrofoam cups.
Big Jack pointed to one of the cups. “We make this shit, you know…” He dipped a steak finger into a small tub of gravy then into the pool of ketchup next to his French fries, leaving a milky blot in the ketchup.
Jack looked surprised. “Y'all make Dr. Pepper at the plant?”
“No, goddammit, boy. We make the stuff that the cups are made out of...” His eyes rolled up in his head as he gestured across the room. “None of these people would be drinking these Cokes if we didn't make the goddamn Styrofoam.” He stuffed the steak finger into his mouth and chewed.
Jack nodded and pretended to study the cup in awe. Watching his father across the tabletop, he took a bite of his enormous burger. The Dairy Queen dining room was surrounded by windows. Sitting next to the glass, there was a chill and he pulled his jacket closer to his body. Alternating between fries dipped in ketchup and his burger, which was smothered in mustard, Jack's mouth was awash in salty, tangy tastes. Periodically, he slugged down a few gulps of his Dr. Pepper to rinse it all away. A few people left the dining room and a puff of cold air pushed its way across the table. Eventually, he opened up the cup, tearing the plastic lid off and munching on the crushed ice.
When they were done, Big Jack went to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee to go.
Jack went into the restroom and locked the door. He peed and splashed water on his face at the sink. Someone had scratched a girlfriend's name into the mirror and someone else had written “sucks dicks” in black marker on the wall next to it. Reading the words gave Jack an erection. He stood there for as long as he thought he could, enjoying the privacy. Relaxed, he leaned into the counter top and studied his face in the scarred mirror before rejoining his father in the truck.
“I thought you must've fell in,” Big Jack said. The engine took a while to get going and then they moved out onto the narrow highway.
It was roughly noon when they reached the lease and the temperature had dropped sharply. The sky was bright and clear, with cottony clouds stretching across the vastness. A dirt road ran from the highway, leading deeper into the property. Eaten away by flash floods, the grade was uneven, pitching the truck from side to side. They turned several times onto smaller roads, following a course that Big Jack seemed to intuit his way through.
When they stopped at a gate, he sat behind the wheel while his son went out to open the gate, in keeping with an age-old Texas ritual. Standing in the cold, Jack braced against the wind. He un-looped a chain and walked the gate open. It squeaked as it swung out. He searched the corrugated aluminum for a handhold free of spider webs and held the gate in place as the truck rolled forward. The tires crunched on the gravel road then buzzed like tank treads in a war movie as they hit the parallel pipes of the cattle guard. Once his father had driven through, Jack walked the gate closed and re-looped the chain. He trotted over to the truck and jumped into the passenger seat, hurrying to get out of the cold. As he slammed the door, Jack and his father grinned at one another, excited by the temperature. The wind whistled against the triangular windows near the dash.
“This is huntin' weather,” Big Jack said.
Half a mile later, they arrived at the lodge, an old house standing in a stretch of prairie. The paint had long since peeled away, leaving the place bleached and ghostly. Bloody streaks of rust marked the tin roof and an open porch wrapped like a jawbone around two sides. In varying states of disrepair, mismatched lawn chairs were scattered along the porch.
Swinging around in a fishhook arc, Big Jack pulled up to the rear of the house and killed the truck. A fire-blackened barrel stood a dozen yards from the back door in a ring of scorched earth. The house sat on blocks and no step led down from the back door. It just dropped.
“Goddamn, finally here. I work all year long for this shit.” Through knee high grass, he walked to the house with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. His boots echoed as he stepped up onto the porch. Looking out across the prairie, he studied the stark landscape while the wind moaned through a jagged hole in the overhang of the tin roof.
Closing the door to the truck as quietly as he could, Jack leaned into it until the latch popped. As he came closer to his father, the wooden floor creaked, flexing under his weight. Following the direction of his father's gaze, he looked across the expanse and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“Two thousand acres,” Big Jack said quietly. He dropped his cigarette and turned back to the house. The spring on the screen door produced a long, rusty yawning, like a piano dying. He handed the door off to Jack and turned the antique ceramic knob. They entered the old house and stood just inside, looking around. The place was used only once each year for hunting season. It smelled like an attic, the odors of someplace once inhabited by people but now the domain of mice. Several couches and a ripped recliner sat in the living room. Situated at the far end of the structure, the kitchen gave access to the back door and its perilous drop. Several bedrooms and a single bathroom opened up off the living room. With each step, the floor groaned like the timbers of a ship.
“Let's get a fire going,” Big Jack said. “Then we can unpack.” He went over to the stove and inspected it, rattling the cold porcelain grates. “Gotta light the goddamn pilot…” He flipped on the gas and looked around before discovering the pilot light underneath. Crouching then rolling over onto his side, he struggled to get a wooden kitchen match lit before reaching in deeper beneath the stove, blindly attempting to ignite the gas.
A sheet of flame emerged from beneath the stove. Wide-eyed, Jack watched as it rolled around his father and across the wooden floor, moving slowly, as if someone had overturned a bathtub. It stopped a foot short of Jack.
Big Jack screamed as the flames flowed past him. “LORD GOD!” He jumped up and shook his head like a dog emerging from a lake. Bringing his hands up to touch his face, he ran them over his whiskers, patting himself. “Holy shit, boy.” Doubled over, he blinked and exhaled hard. “I didn't know it'd do that.”
Jack saw that it was okay, that his father was smiling, so he chuckled. His father rarely hit him any more, but his brooding anger and outbursts kept Jack wary. “That was squirrelly,” Jack said. “But kind of cool, too.”
The two of them went back outside and started unpacking, moving their gear into two of the bedrooms. After a couple of loads, they took a break in the kitchen, standing at the stove, warming themselves. Watching his father as he held his hands over the flames, Jack remembered Boss Hog. Sadness rose up within him and he went back outside, into the cold.
Carrying in the last load from the truck, Jack walked around in the room he'd chosen before dropping his bag. There were a few beds set up in both rooms, including some bunks with rusty frames. The place could sleep up to eight or more people, depending on whether anyone shared a bed.
On a windowsill in his room, Jack found a ten inch centipede, dead and long-desiccated. He let his eyes take it in then prodded the red-brown husk, made up of wide, flat segments. Losing interest, he turned away and hefted his bag up onto the bed.
Big Jack called out from the next room. “The others oughta be here in an hour or two.”
Jack stopped moving, listening closely.
“…John-David is coming and Ricky. They're bringing their boys, so you'll have someone your own age to shoot the shit with.”
Jack closed his eyes and his stomach lurched. He knew these kids. They were four or five years older. He remembered them holding him underwater in a drainage ditch, forcing him down until he went wild with panic, thrashing like an animal. They only let him up after he inhaled a lungful of muddy water. Lying on the wet grass, he choked for ten minutes. Another time, they wrapped him in duct tape and sprayed roach killer into his eyes. “Great,” he called out.
Once they were settled, Big Jack started a pot of coffee and the two of them sat on the porch. Jack broke sticks into smaller pieces and dropped them at his feet in a pile while his father chain-smoked, throwing the butts of his cigarettes off the front end of the porch. They peered across the tawny open space stretching before them.
Staring at the same patch of dry grass, Jack saw nothing of interest at first, until he realized that he was looking at a jackrabbit. One moment it was just dead grass and brambles, the next the unmistakable form of a jackrabbit. It crouched, its fur so perfectly matching the colorless prairie that the rabbit was almost invisible. The wind blew through the field and he whispered to his father, “Look at that jackrabbit.”
“Where?” Big Jack was excited and childlike.
Jack pointed, directing his father's eyes to the right.
“I see it,” Big Jack said. He licked his lips. “I oughta go get my rifle.”
Jack blinked hard and his pointing hand dropped a few inches. He watched the rabbit, unsure of how to respond. It stood upright then froze, holding the position with dead-serious patience.
His father shifted his chair backward and the jackrabbit took off in a blur of gray and tan, vanishing into the windblown grass. Big Jack chuckled softly. “Yeah, you little motherfucker, you better run.” He spat toward the edge of the porch and nearly made it.
Jack watched the spot in the field where the rabbit had been, saying a prayer for it without words.
A few hours later, after they'd eaten a few sandwiches made from potted meat and Wonder bread, Jack cocked his head. “Someone's coming up the road.” They walked to the back door and dropped down into the dirt behind the house as two more trucks pulled up.
“Well, goddamn,” Big Jack said. “John-David got himself a new truck.” With reverence in his eyes, he turned to look at his son. “Look at that goddamn thing.”
John-David and Ricky were in the first truck, the newer one. Their sons were stuffed into the second. At seventeen, the oldest of the boys was driving. Pulling up in a cloud of dust, both vehicles stopped near Big Jack's battered black truck. All four doors opened at once and slammed together after everyone piled out.
“Goddamn,” Ricky yelled. “It's fuckin' huntin' season.” He was short, but heavily muscled. His hair was the color of dirty straw and his beard was curly.