Deer Camp Gone Wrong, a short novella
(Part 1)
He paused in the moment and scouted the bayou; re-familiarizing himself with the area and present time. Trying to clear his head, he stood up to stretch. There was no sign of life around except for the butterfly fluttering about his chair. He wondered for a moment if he was dead. The thought didn’t scare him. “Everybody’s got to go sometime.” He mumbled in a whisper.
Once again, he was attentive and on the lookout for buck deer. He felt as though he’d dozed off for a minute. Sitting in his metal chair, noticing the rust he thought, “I need to take better care of this chair. It’s been good to me and mine arse.”
A squirrel was perched on its hind legs, looking at him with its head cocked like a curious dog. “Hey squirrel.” He said. His mind was racing. Thoughts were bouncing around in his head like crazy balls bouncing in a concrete room. He leaned his head back against the pecan tree and drifted to the past.
The snow melted as it landed anywhere near the fire pit. The wide open field- stone fire pit was decades old. It had character. The parking lot was graveled and orderly. A sturdy rail led from the bottom of the stairwell up to the screened porch that was lined with racks of buck deer from the past. The roof was tin and made a beautiful sound when it rained. The four rooms inside the camp were all utilized to their utmost capacity. An open great room led to a small kitchen that was fully equipped with out of date equipment. The two bedrooms each had dual bunks, so eight could sleep comfortably with beds to themselves. The bathroom had running water, but it was not called the reeking shitter for no reason.
The camp house and grounds reminded him of his grandfather and his buddies, probably woopin and hollerin around the fire, drinking whiskey, or maybe, moonshine. “Shit, I kinda like you guys.” Saul said reaching for another log to throw on the fire. “Ya’ll know how to party!”
“Hell yea.”
“Yep.”
“Yee haw!” The three young men said nearly in unison.
Late nights at deer camp were often a thin line somewhere between fun, dangerous and just plain stupid. Buster, the dog sniffed as if there were a magical dust in the air that tickled his nose. He always got so excited to be at camp, like a puppy. His aging was noticeable each year after the long weekend. He would limp for a week and sleep about twenty hours in a full day. Saul wondered if the old members had dogs running around playing sniff butt with one another.
“Hey, ya’ll think any of the old guys, like Great Grandpa Earl and his buddies ever got high?” Al asked.
“Well hell yea. People been gettin high for years.” Then Al exhaled a thick strong smelling cloud of marijuana smoke. He took a deep breath, stood up from his chair and walked around the fire to his older brother. J.R. leaned forward, accepted the joint; no words were said and he took a drag. “Good people smoke, since like…before Ghandi and folks like that.” J.R. said while at the same time exhaling a thick cloud of smoke from his hand rolled Lucky Brand cigarette.
“Hell no! I think Granpa’d roll over in his grave if he knew my older brother was out here giving me da pot.” Al joked in his best gangster voice.
Al had been to deer camp every year since he was four years old. He was a master with most any weapon, be it shotgun, rifle or bow. He’d rather participate in target shoots than hunt for game. Skeet and traps shooting were his favorite, but he also showed his rifle a skill by consistently shooting a half-dollar at ranges over fify yards.
“Hey Al, you remember the time you killed your first deer? You cried.” J.R. said, starting to laugh. “You’re a puss. P.U.S.S. — puss.” He laughed and doubled over as he spelled out the word.
“Shut — up.” This time Al’s dialect was native hick and long draw. “You’ve been trying for seven years. Did you break a mirror or something?” Al snapped back at his older brother sarcastically.
J.R. made a quick move and before Al knew it, he was in a headlock, and on the receiving end of an uninvited noogie. “Quit, J.R., that fuckin hurts.”
J.R. noogied his little brother’s head even harder, smacked him in the back of the head, pushed him and said, “You could use a good ass whoopin this week, Lil Al.”
It got late into the night and the snow kept falling. It fell at a constant speed and the flakes were pearly white and shimmering. They sat in the chairs by the fire, drank bourbon whiskey and burned wood to stay warm.
“Is it true, that all the flakes in the whole wide world have unique shapes?” Al slurred a bit, his draw heavy, and it was evident he was drunk. “Hey, let’s do something crazy.” Al stood up from his metal chair, staggered a bit towards the fire and continued, “Let’s go burn the rival deer camp’s deer stands. The ones close to the gravel roads.” Al’s hands were waiving in the air like a southern baptist preacher spitting fire and brimstone. The more words he said the more his speech slurred.
J.R. was leaned back in his chair, sunglasses on — in the dark. The gray streaks in his beard shown bright, reflecting the fire light and snow caught in his whiskers. His hair flipped up from his round-billed leather hat. He looked at his younger brother and said, “Are you crazy, man? That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“Come on puss. P-u-s-s.“ Al started to mock and taunt his older brother. “Puss, you’re scared. Step it up, leave a legacy, do something crazy.”
Nothing was said for what seemed like an eternity. Al dozed off and Saul was drunk. J.R. leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and his glass of whiskey gripped tightly between his thumb and fingers.
“O.K., fuck it. Let’s do it, but just one. Let’s burn that big son of bitch, right on the fuckin gravel road. I hate that bastard. I heard that dude hits his old lady and when his mamma said something about it, he whacked her. Now how in the hell are you gonna hit yo momma?”
Now, J.R. seemed to have taken Al’s gangster voice and all of the sudden had a burst of energy. “You drive Paco.” J.R. looked at Saul with a blank, almost scary stare.
“Hell no! I ain’t driving anywhere.” Saul replied. Then he stood, turning his back to the two brothers and made his way back to the camp house. “Hell no!” He said again without turning back. The last thing Saul heard was something J.R. said to his little brother. Saul turned towards the two brothers once he got up the steps and through the screen door of the front porch he saw J.R. grabbing the back of his little brother’s coat and moving him towards the jeep. He said something about, showing him p-u-s-s-.
J.R. and Al tore down the road in the old, blue jeep and then there was peace and quiet. Saul climbed to the top bunk, opened a bottle of pills, chased one with the last of his whiskey and fell asleep.
“Wake up Saul, wake up!” J.R. was frantic and Saul could barely see him from his drunken state of sleep.
“Where’s Al?” Saul replied, still mostly asleep.
“He’s in the jeep. Come on, grab your shit.” J.R. was already out the door with an armload of gear.
“What? What’s wrong?”
J.R. stopped just outside the door, turned and said slowly and emphatically, “Get your shit & go home. The fire department is on their way. We accidentally set the pine grove afire. It’s blazin, man, it’s blazin. Go through the pastures and use the back gate. Don’t worry about locking it; me and Al will be right behind you. I’ll come by tomorrow and explain. Now hurry up.”
Buster was awake and Saul loaded his dog and gear into his truck. He drove down the hill, through the pastures, still trying to shake his drunken sleep. Saul opened the gate, drove through and made his way down the gravel road taking the back roads all the way home hoping to avoid any sight of law enforcement.
Arriving at his home, he unlocked the door, went to the bedroom and woke his girlfriend, Leigh Anne. “We had to shut down camp early because of some stupid crap J.R. and Al were getting into. No big deal, I’d rather sleep hear with you, in my own bed.” He stripped, climbed into bed and faced away from her, wide-awake, wondering what had actually happened.
The next day was beautiful. Saul woke early, after only sleeping for an hour or two. It was seven in the morning. He went into the kitchen and found Leigh Anne making breakfast. The sun shone bright through the kitchen window framing the baby blue skies and white fluffy clouds.
Saul and Leigh Anne had been together for several years and had lived together for the past seven months. “J.R. called early, sounded as if he hadn’t slept. He wanted you to call him soon as possible.” Leigh Anne said in a suspecting manner.
His thoughts immediately turned to the night before. The entire night was a bit hazy. “He better not be messin with me.” Saul mumbled.
“Who, J.R.? What did ya’ll do last night?” She asked, without looking up from her mixing bowl. “I don’t know. They just woke me up and told me to go home, they weren’t mad or anything.” “Well, you’d better call J.R. He sounded a bit crazy.”
The phone rang. “Yellow.” Saul answered the phone with his usual greeting, which he thought was stupid because it’s a color greeting, but still did it anyway. “Saul, this is Al. J.R. is in jail. They came and got him about five this morning.”
“Shit man, what happened?”
“You don’t want to know, man. It was hell. We lit that damn deer stand and…”
Saul interrupted. “Come on over and tell me exactly what happened. Leigh’ Anne has breakfast, she’ll fix you a plate and we’ll talk.”
“Man, Saul, it’s bad, man, it’s real bad. We really fucked up this time.”
“Just come over.”
“Alright, but I don’t know if Miss Leigh Anne needs to hear this, man, it’s bad.”
Saul assured him everything would be o.k., then hung up the phone. “Is everything O.K.? Was that J.R.?” She asked.
“No, J.R. is in jail. Al’s coming over to tell me the story, we will be on the front porch”
“Not a problem, are you in trouble?”
“No. Not yet.” Saul layered his long underwear with coveralls, a wool coat and a knitted toboggan. He went outside, sat in his rocking chair and rolled a cigarette. He lit it and took a long drag, then blew out the smoke. Halfway into his cigarette, Al came driving up the gravel drive in the old blue jeep. The same jeep he and J.R. left camp in the night before. He was not speeding nor was he driving like a madman, which was the way Al usually drove. He parked, got out of the jeep and strolled towards the house. He was wearing a ridiculous hat turned backwards, baggy jeans and sunglasses.
“What in the hell are you wearin?” Saul said with his eyebrows angled downward.
“They might be after me. I’m hidin out for now.” Al was looking around as if someone were stalking him.
“What happened? And turn your damn hat around so I can take you seriously.” Saul said to Al shaking his head. “You look ridiculous”
