The Bible has nothing to do with god. The Bible is an account of our waking up, an atavistically dreamed recovery of how we first learned shame in the garden and first considered ourselves different from animals, and Cain was the first to discover that part of us will never wake up. Part of us will act according to instinct, and that will never change. And one of our first instincts is to kill. The Ten Commandments is a list of our instincts that will never leave us.

I stepped away as the buck crawled toward me. Front legs pulling at the ground, trying to turn but only coming closer, dragging down that fire road. Heavy breath in close, eyes rolling, the smell of him, and then that scream again, eyes lidded and head up, high-pitched wail of every pain that had ever been, limitless and unendurable. Discovery that half of him no longer responded, half of him lost, maimed, and never to be made whole again. Unable to flee, crawling closer to the end.

Smell of hide and sweat and blood and fear. Blood caked with dust, red and then brown, hind legs tangled and dragging. The fire road narrow, thick brush leaning in, and no escape for either of us to either side.

The buck coming closer. Fueled by panic, hooves working, those antlers white-tipped and ready to gore. I needed to step backward faster, but I felt frozen. The brush closing in, this long alley narrowing.

His forehead raised up in a ridge, muscle and vein beneath his hide, jaw clacking. Paired hooves, twin wedges of bone striking at the ground and pulling. And he tried again to rise, long neck ducking and charging and that wide chest coming free of the ground, up on his forelegs and then falling again.

Great exhales, snorts into the dust, and he was mired in place. I could tell some part of him wanted to stop, just lie down and wait to die. Some part of him knew it was over. I had felt nothing in killing the poacher, but this was different. I could see what the buck felt, the catastrophe, all lost, no hope of recovery, the end of a life. I felt that end. We hunt the largest animals because they are the closest to being us.

But he pulled again with his forelegs and raised his head and crawled toward me, dragged himself closer, and I stumbled backward and fell, sprawled out on the ground before him, and I was crabbing backward pushing with my hands and heels at the dirt and he was close now, moving faster, crawling over my rifle, which disappeared beneath him, and his head yanking down as he advanced, swinging those horns.

This is the way I still see him, gray-brown hide in that late sun, each individual hair, all created in unison, a landscape of muscle and bone and blood beneath the surface, leaving ripples. The sound of his breath, hot heavy blasts, and the heat and smell bearing down on me, and I had forgotten his pain, forgotten he was maimed, forgotten what was happening here, pushing at the dirt trying to escape, and then he screamed again, a scream broken by intakes of breath, and he shook his head back and forth as if he could free himself from the pain, wring it from his body, and this was unbearable. I rolled to the side and got to my feet and ran down that fire road, ran hard and did not look back until I was a hundred yards away and safe and he was no longer near.

But of course I was still on this road, and so was he, and I no longer had my rifle. The shadows long, half the road gone, and the breeze increasing, last heat of the day. The two of us on this slope.

Nothing to do but walk toward him again, and what would happen when we met I didn’t know. Then Tom appeared higher on the road, and he was armed and I was not and no one else was there to witness, and I wondered whether that slug might come now, all things sped along in our lives, impatient.

But Tom only stood watching. No celebration for killing my first buck, no hoots or whoops. I hesitated, afraid of both Tom and the buck. The buck still crawling down toward me, his head dipping and rising. This fire road overgrown on both sides and beginning to grow in the middle, brush rising between the tracks. The buck snagging on this, held back, and I thought at first his legs were tangled but as I came closer I saw my rifle trapped beneath him, caught up in his dead legs and sticking out to the side to snag.

My rifle covered in blood and dirt, and the buck kept pulling but the snag turned him in a slow circle in the middle of the road. No longer headed downhill but crawling to the side, head butting into the brush and his back to me. Haunches flattened, unresponsive.

I walked close and didn’t know what to do. The buck was trapped now. His hind legs and the rifle tangled in brush in the middle of the road and his antlers caught in brush at the side. His front legs still pulling at the ground but only digging now, raising dust. Blowing with the effort, heaving and sucking at the air.

Tom only fifty feet away, the buck between us.

How do I get my rifle back? I asked.

Not my problem.

Well have you ever seen this before?

Nope. Everything with you is something new. You’re the devil’s own private piece of work.

Just shoot him for me.

Nope. I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to watch.

The buck had stopped digging. He was swaying in place, the front part of him moving forward as if he’d rise, then falling back, then moving forward again. Smell of fear, an actual smell, something rancid and maddening, something that could make you want to grab his neck in your teeth and just bite through.

The rifle buried beneath him and only the stock and bale visible on the other side, caught in a clump of brush.

I pushed at his rump with my boot, felt the hide slide over muscle. Dead flesh but he must have felt some movement, because he thrashed at the brush, freed his horns.

I knelt down and reached over him to grab for the bale of the rifle. Panic. He yanked his head and the horns came close and I fell back. Antlers with wide forks on top, dark brown and ridged. His eye rolling in fear and rage. He couldn’t reach, couldn’t fold himself far enough. His hooves slipping in the dirt, trying to lever his head back farther.

I could see the bullet hole in the side of his thigh, a small, loose hole in thick muscle and hide, and a bigger hole in his lower back where the bullet had exited, tearing through spine and then muscle above. White bone, blood, and darker meat.

Smell of a deer not like anything else, a stink from glands near the Achilles tendons, a scent for marking territory. Musky and overpowering.

I leaned in low and close and grabbed on to the rifle, but it wouldn’t budge. The buck heavy. He knocked me in the head with his horns, but only a sideswipe.

Hollow. That’s how his horns felt. No substance to them at all. Things imagined and sprung from air. Nothing to fear from an animal, made only of what I could tear through with my bare hands. So I came in low again and grabbed the bale of the rifle and tried to dislodge.

The buck heaving and striking at the earth and snorting, and all was held in place, immovable. So I pulled at his leg instead, but when I let go, it sprang back. Dead, unfeeling, unresponding, all nerves cut, but still held together by muscles like springs. I tried grabbing both legs and pulling, heavy, and the buck screamed again, tongue arched in pain, and it was too much.

I fell back in the dirt and just lay there. The sky a deep blue, rounded dome above us, a vacuum into which all was taken away, every sound and pain and thought. I was breathing hard, panicked. The two of us lying here on this ground.

You need to finish that animal. It was my father’s voice.

I looked up and saw him standing beside Tom.

I can’t get my rifle.

You need to finish that animal now.

The buck’s head swaying back and forth and a low moaning coming from him, a sound of fear, two men standing just uphill and me on the ground behind. A proximity impossible in his world, the same as if we found ourselves before our gods, all that we imagine materialized in an instant, all made real. And no way to run, legs frozen. Neck low and flat, hiding from the sky.