A Deer Camp Tale

     Bill gasped against the cold as he let the cabin door close behind him. He realized that he had forgotten his lunch, but decided against going back inside. No sense in taking a chance on waking anyone up, as he really didn’t feel like talking. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged to the thermometer nailed to the side of the woodshed. He removed the glaze of frost with a mitten and peered inside:  14 degrees.
     He sighed and let his flashlight play among the trees and outbuildings before beginning his trek. Between two of the trees was bolted a 4 x 4 post, and from it hung two does and three fair bucks. His efforts weren’t represented, for the third year in a row, and as he walked he felt the old feeling creep into his mind. It wasn’t the excited anticipation he had felt on opening weekend. No, this feeling had a sort of dull-edged pang to it; almost like hunger, as if he would actually have to depend on the deer he had not yet gotten.
     He didn’t need the flashlight, but he used it anyway, keeping its beam focused on the ground. The landmarks were familiar even in the dark, and he remembered his father’s words:  “When you come out of the big woods, head due west through two stands of popple until you cross a marsh. From there you can see a tall white pine standing alone, and forty yards northwest of that tree is my stand.” After a long walk Bill reached the pine and glanced at the band of stars stretching across the sky.
     “Thanks, Dad,” he said out loud, but the words sounded hollow even as he said them. Bill climbed the steps to the stand, hoping the scrape of his coat wouldn’t alarm a deer. He settled in and listened to the trees groan with the cold. At least it isn’t windy, he thought, as he loaded his rifle and waited for shooting light to come. He knew already what kind of day it would be:  The sun would never really rise at all, and changes in the sky would occur so slowly they would be almost imperceptible. Ink-black would become less so until he could make out the long stalks of trees in the distance, and then gray would come in lighter and lighter shades until midday, when the whole process would be reversed.
     Around 6:40 Bill raised the rifle and found that he could see well enough to shoot. He then began the routine he had followed since opening morning. He moved his eyes, and only his eyes, from left to right and back again in long, agonizingly slow sweeps.
     Left to right, right to left. Left to right, right to left.
     Nothing was moving in the cold, except a chirring pine squirrel and a junco which flitted between the trees.
     Bill’s feet began to freeze. He withstood it as long as he could, until finally he descended and stamped his feet until he could feel each individual toe. He climbed back up into his stand. Left, right. Right, left.
     His eyes stopped at the remnants of his father’s old stand. The treated posts he had helped his dad carry in looked as good as ever, but the tarpaper roof was scattered in warped and faded fragments, and Bill could see through his binoculars that squirrels had cached pine cones underneath a piece of the angled roof.
     He began to wish that he had retrieved his lunch after all.
      How long has it been now? Bill wondered as he looked at the debris. Twenty-five? No, twenty-six years? Yes, that was it—twenty-six years.
     His father had gone out to hunt on the last day of Bill’s third season and had never come back. Bill tried to remember specifics, but only a few pieces stood out from the swirling, gray collage.
     “Windigo,” the bartender had said. It was a couple of seasons later, and young Billy was in the charge of his uncle as the hunters sat at the bar after the night-before-opener fish-fry. “A mythical creature… flesh-eating; said to prey most on those with weak or distressed minds, who would then become windigo themselves.” He went on in lurid detail until Billy’s uncle interrupted.
     “Quiet with that windigo crap, Frank,” he said, as he slid Billy another soda. “Don’t go scarin’ the boy.”
     The others laughed, and Billy laughed, too, but they had been hollow laughs, and for years he was afraid as he sat on stand. Windigo? It was one thing to dismiss the notion when you were perched on a barstool surrounded by booming giants; yet another when you were alone in the Chequamegon and beech leaves rattled in the wind and you had to admit to yourself that maybe you weren't so sure.
     And then, when Bill had been twenty or twenty-one, he heard the word again. They’d been driving, Billy and Roger and Ogre and the rest; joined by an Ojibwa who watched over the cabin and sometimes took part in the hunt. The drive ended a stone’s throw from Bill’s father’s stand, and the hunters stopped to rest and plan the next push. Bill squatted on his haunches in the snow, sharpening his knife, and he saw the old man jerk a thumb in the direction of the stand, scan the surrounding timber, and say simply:  “Windigo.”
     A premonition of noise interrupted Bill’s thoughts. He cocked an ear and brought the rifle to bear against his chest. A pine squirrel hopped into view, sounding for all the world like a deer, and Bill resumed his reverie.
     He could see how the windigo myth was able to develop and grow during starving winters. What had it been like, as cool became cold and cold became sub-zero, to endure an endless stretch of foodless days; to watch bellies become distended and then shrink back against gaunt ribs? And when hunger caused men to go insane, and to resort to cannibalism and murder in their madness?
     Bill felt he knew, at least on a very limited scale. After all, he had hunted for days without seeing anything, and his stomach growled in sympathy. The gray, green, and white of the woods screamed “Empty!” at him from dawn to dusk, with the message getting louder every minute.
     And madness? What had his mother said? Your father wasn’t right those last couple of years before he disappeared…
     Now he could see that that had been the case. But his father had not been unkind, and Bill could remember moments when his father would flash a rare unguarded smile, and slip back into his own skin for a second.
     And me? Bill thought. I am my father’s heir. His wife had noticed long before he had, and had made an appointment for him. He had canceled the first, and then the second, but now, from the perspective of his deer stand, keeping an appointment seemed like the right thing to do. And I will, Bill told himself—right after deer season.
     Ach, what am I thinking? At least I’m in the woods, and not at work. Quit being so glum. He shook his head as if to allow the bad thoughts to fall to the ground. He resumed his vigil, and descended twice more to restore feeling to his feet. He forced himself to stay on stand as the hours passed, saying, “Just ten more minutes,” and when that period ended, “Just ten minutes more.”
     Nothing.
     Darkness came early in the timber, and when Bill could no longer see he climbed down and headed toward camp.
     He wasn’t looking forward to getting there. He hadn’t been feeling well anyway, and now all this time with the same group of guys had set his teeth on edge. What is it those tour promoters say? Seven fabulous days and eight fun-filled nights? Near the first stand of popple Bill stumbled off his trail. He swung the flashlight through the trees and noticed a track.
     Another track? Out here? That’s odd. In all his years Bill had only seen two people not of his party, and they had been a couple from Chicago who had become lost while snowshoeing. They had looked quizzically up at the orange blob perched in a tree, and the woman asked hopefully, “Trailhead near here?” Bill knelt over the tracks. They were huge. His own feet were large—size thirteen—and these were well beyond that. There was no discernible tread mark, and the edges were smooth, rounded, and rimmed with ice, as if the snow had melted and then frozen hard again. Well, he told himself to dispel his uneasiness. You have to be damn dedicated to get in here, but it is a public forest.
     He walked faster just the same, and was sweating despite the cold by the time he saw the cabin light glinting through the trees.
     The old Ben Franklin in the corner of the room glowed and popped with the birch and popple he had cut and split, and he stripped off his long johns before crawling into the musty sleeping bag. That was the thing about deer camp:  it was either so cold your bones ached, or so damned hot you couldn’t stand it. He sighed and shoved his feet to the end of the bag with a violent kick.
     “Man, Bill,” Ogre said. “Why you goin’ to bed so soon? We still got poker to play, and you never did tell us whether you saw anything or not.”
     Bill didn’t feel like saying anything—always Ogre with that petulant voice—but did before he could stop himself.  
     “Didn’t see a damn thing. Ten hours on stand, and not even a button buck.”
     “Nothing, eh?” Robert said. “The Mighty Hunter.”
     Bill seethed at the insinuation. Old Fat Bob—like he was any better. The thought made Bill want to laugh. Hell, on opening day he had come back to camp for lunch and had found Bob standing over the stove in his underwear; scooping corned beef hash out of the skillet with his bare hands. Never even made it out that morning.
     Bill kicked his feet again and made himself as comfortable as he could.
     The whispering began:
     “What, is he just feeling antisocial tonight?”
     “Tonight, hell—he’s been that way all of camp. Don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
     “Problems at home, maybe?”
     “Maybe. But if you ask me, he’s acting like his old man did just before it happened.”
     “Oh, quiet about that, Andy,” the camp patriarch said. “He ain’t nothin’ like his old man was, and I don’t wanna hear anything more like that as long as we’re up here.”
     Thank God, Bill thought. At least Roger was sticking up for him.
     Ogre let loose a long, plaintive, tremulous fart, and guffawed for a solid minute over it. The others laughed, too. Maybe that’s the problem, Bill thought. He had come into camp the evening before opening day, and when the whole crew was present they had cracked open a fifth of bourbon. Then the old stories and the liquor-warmth made him feel close to the others. But now… after days of the same jokes and the same smells and the same losing hands… Perhaps deer season acted in different ways upon different people. For some men, Bill thought, the experience stripped away a year’s worth of the crap that came with earning a living and restored good animal nature to their souls. For others, perhaps the days worked on them until the nature part was removed, leaving only animal.
     That’s it, Bill felt. Ain’t my fault I’m in the mood I’m in. Sometime later the card players retired, and he finally fell asleep in the spaces between the dueling snores.

     From the depths of the dream he could see himself sit upright on the mattress, as if steeling for a dash to the outhouse. But the dream-he didn’t move further; just looked intently out the window as if waiting for something. The luminous face of the alarm clock below revealed the time:  2:15.
     Bill could feel the depth of the figure’s sadness, and as he watched an apparition’s face filled the window. The face was gaunt, with skin stretched tight over hollow cheeks. The creature’s eyes appeared dead deep within their sockets, and it opened a chasm of a mouth to reveal shrunken gums over impossibly long canine teeth. It was the windigo, and Bill realized that in order for it to reach the window it would have to be at least eight feet tall.
     The dream-Bill did not appear frightened; did not move at all; just nodded silently when the windigo spoke:
     “It is time.”
     The dream-Bill jumped to the floor and padded to the rifle rack. He picked one out, walked to the nearest sleeping form, and prodded it awake with the muzzle. The form leapt up and fumbled for the kerosene lantern.
     “What the…?” Ogre demanded; blinking against the light as he backed slowly toward the door. “What the hell are you doing?”
     In his dream Bill could feel the man doing the mental calculations:  Is that rifle loaded or not?
     Other forms began to stir, and in an instant all were wide awake, staring at the large hole at the end of the rifle.
     “Put the gun down, Bill,” Roger said. “I’m your friend.”
     The dream-Bill leveled the rifle at the men and they disappeared through the cabin door, knocking over furniture as they went. A lantern smashed and a puddle of kerosene caught, flared, and then burned itself out.

     The grating of the alarm dragged Bill from the depths of his dream, and before he was quite awake he shut the clock off with a flat slap of his palm. Man, what a dream, he thought as he dressed by feel in the dark. There was no noise in the cabin—not even snoring. The words of his father played in Bill’s head:  You can’t kill a deer by sitting in camp.
     It was warmer outside, and a cloud ceiling concealed the stars. Bill turned on his flashlight and stared at the ground. Tracks leading into the woods stretched out in a wide radius from the door. Well, Bill thought. That’s odd. Still, you gotta go; you gotta go. And the outhouse seat was notoriously cold.

     A grainy snow began to fall as Bill waited. It built in volume until the whole woods seemed to emit a soft hissing noise. Bill listened, aware that the night’s sleep hadn’t improved his mood. He felt blacker than ever.
     It came at first light, furtive like a deer; all there-it-is and there-it-isn’t and shifting form. When it got close enough Bill could see it for what it was:  the windigo; the creature he had seen in his dream. It moved fluidly, and he was astonished that such a horrible entity could be so graceful. In one giant bound it leapt to the crotch of a neighboring tree. It glared at Bill and uttered cries which sounded like sobs.
     It occurred to Bill to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation, and he realized he wasn’t even afraid. He glanced impassively at the rifle laid across his lap. He did laugh as he realized he had forgotten his compass. Like that’s going to do me any good…
     The creature crouched to spring.

     It was Sunday, the final day of deer season, and the men of the camp stood outside of the cabin staring into the trees.
     “I hope he never comes back; doing what he did,” Ogre said.
     “I don’t think it was loaded,” another chimed in, and on it went until Roger put an end to the talking. The men stood; shifting nervously and wiping runny noses. The bare trunks of the swaying popples glowed silver in the afternoon sun, with the glow and the wind fading as sunset neared and the cold came on.
     “C’mon, let’s go inside,” someone suggested, and the men shuffled in through the door. Later, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the search copters faded into the distance, and the last light winked off in the old cabin. A snow began to fall, white and thick and heavy; and the woods put its secrets to bed for the long, dark winter.