Domination. To hold a heart in the air still warm and take a bite from it. Proof that all was created for us, for our use. An assertion repeated and echoing through time.

I sank my teeth into the wall of that heart and it was so slick and rubbery I had to push it hard against my face. My teeth not made for this, not sharp enough, so I shook my head as I bit, tore at the muscle. My knife dropped and the heart held in both hands, and I was made a beast again, eyes closed and jaw working and the taste of blood and flesh in my mouth.

Now you’re a man, my grandfather said.

Now you’re a man, my father said.

I let that heart drop and roll away and I chewed until I could swallow, and I felt my life had begun. Eleven years old and now a man, blood all down the front of me. The sun fallen and the shadows darkening and the night a great embrace, a connecting of all things.

16

THE BEAST IS WHAT MAKES THE MAN. WE DRINK THE BLOOD of Christ so we can become animals again, tearing throats open and drinking blood, bathing in blood, devouring flesh, remembering who we are, reaching back and returning. We reassure ourselves. The Commandments impossible, and we can only fail, so we need this reassurance every Sunday that who we are has not been lost.

I swallowed that heart and was made whole. A generation completed, able to stand now before my father and grandfather. But there was more still to do. Dominion not yet complete. What made the buck a man needed to be removed also, and this the trickiest part, especially in failing light, darkness falling quickly.

I picked up my knife and knelt before his crotch, pulled at a leg to spread him wide. Continued the cut from his belly down farther now to his anus. Grabbed his balls and pulled, then sliced in close with the knife, flung the balls into brush, scattering him into oblivion. Flayed that hide away across his inner thighs and pulled the sheath off his penis, leaving only the inner stump of it, thin and rat-like, all hide gone.

The flies thick now, small satellites in the faint light, a madness always to their sound, creating an urgency in me. I carved down through muscle toward the pelvic bone, careful slicing. I needed to find the bladder and not rupture it. Urine would spoil the meat.

I didn’t understand how the bladder had become hidden away like this. What was the plan or reason? I carved but was not able to reveal it. Reached in with my fingers carefully behind the meat and in among the bones, a place distorted by feel, and searched blind, hoping it would be small and could be pulled out through the hole for the penis, but it was large and full and still warm.

My face in close, the flies landing on my cheeks and neck and I couldn’t see what I was doing, darkness thickening and my hands buried inside the buck, but finally I was able to free the membranes around the bladder and felt it relax into my hand.

I cut carefully around the anus, then pulled everything out through the hole: the colon, bladder, and penis, which I had to push down into its own smaller hole with one hand while I pulled with the other, thin rat’s tail disappearing.

I carried the entire assembly in both hands carefully and dropped it into the brush, away from the meat. Then I returned for the lungs, scooped out the frothy mess and tossed it into the brush handful by handful, feeling along the ribs for any I might have missed.

Well, my father said.

Yeah, Tom said. We should get the truck.

So the men left me. They walked up that fire road, apparitions receding, darker blots against the general darkness, and I was left alone. Scooped my hands in along the walls, but all was smooth now and drying out. My hands constricting as the blood dried on them, a tighter second skin.

I stood beside the buck and looked up at the sky, a deep blue, the stars appearing, north star low and bright. I was a man now. This fire road and slope a holy place, the sacrifice made, rituals performed. But it was better than that. I wish I could return to that moment. A new beginning, a kind of innocence, the old life and self burned away. Isn’t this what we all want? And how many times do we experience it in a life? The moment never lasts long enough.

All was whole. This place I stood the only place, and this buck on the ground beside me my buck, and I had done what was required, my work finished, and the only light from this deep blue and the stars, no sign of other humans except this road, a swath cut into the brush, but if I could forget that and erase it then I could have been standing in any time, and this hillside and even the sky above belonged to me. I remember I spread my arms wide that night and felt I could extend infinitely. If I closed my fists and pulled inward, I could warp mountains, collapse ridges. All of this world within my grasp.

That night was mine. The men would walk up the fire road, take the fork to the sugar pines and the truck. We’d drive to camp and hang my buck head down alongside the dead man and I’d flay the hide from around the hams and punch my fist between hide and meat. I’d do this in lantern light, and dinner would be late, and I’d fall asleep exhausted. I hadn’t slept during the afternoon nap or the night before. I lay back against the earth and could feel myself drifting off already, sleep an enclosure, muting all, but then I heard the truck start up, muffled and far away.

I stood and felt dizzy. No food, no water, no sleep. And the struggle with the buck, having to wrestle and cut through his neck with my knife. Shoulder sore from being slammed against the ground. Poison oak spreading everywhere, a plague. I kept scratching, and that only made it worse.

I could see the tops of high trees far away illuminate for a moment in headlights. Trees farther up the mountainside, above the glades. The growl of the truck very faint. This ridge a kind of bow, blocking my view and burying sound, distorting sound to the point that the truck seemed only more and more faint. And then I saw white on treetops again farther up the mountain, and this was not right.

The cutover to this fire road was at the top of the glades, not higher. The headlights should not have been facing away. They should have been sweeping the air above me and backlighting the ridge and the sound coming closer.

What are you doing? I said aloud. The sound of the truck no longer constant but only momentary, interrupted, fading.

They were leaving me. My father and grandfather and Tom were driving back to camp without me and without my buck.

I searched for my rifle, found it still snagged, freed it and wiped the dirt and blood on my jeans. Then I ran up that fire road, no moon, very dark now, the road a slightly lighter black against darker black, an image against my eyelids when I blinked. No hope of catching them, but I ran anyway because there was nothing else I could do.

Heaving up that hill, legs burning, scraping against brush at the side then veering until I was at the top of the bow, where the mountain fell inward and the road leveled out, and I saw the white of the headlights far away on another slope, faint illumination of brush, and a wink of red.

I levered a shell into the.30-.30 and fired at where I had seen the taillights. I didn’t think about it. I just fired. I was so angry. And the rifle kicked back hard against my shoulder. Not something I had felt firing at the buck, but now I knew the full jolt of it, unprotected by the thrill of killing, and my ears blanked out and I smelled sulfur and the truck kept moving, unaffected.

I stood there breathing hard. I couldn’t hear a thing, only the static of my own head welling up.

Marooned on this hillside, abandoned by my kind. The dark bulk of the mountain rolling beneath me. The brush all around a malevolence, watching and waiting.