Not one of us could speak. I had never seen anything more beautiful. The bright meadow beyond, and the fall off the edge of the world from there, the source of this breeze as the mountain dove and we could see only blank air and other mountain ranges lost in the distance. The dead man in his slow spin before us somehow able to pull that distance toward him and able to tilt even the ground beneath us, collapsing all.

My father had seen nothing. He glanced back only to check that the man’s head was high enough above ground, and then he wrapped the rope around the tree several times, careful not to let it slip, and tied off. Get one of the sacks, he said.

It wasn’t clear who he was speaking to, but Tom and my grandfather didn’t move, so I went to the truck, reached behind the seat and saw my rifle. I put my hand on the stock but then grabbed one of the burlap sacks beneath and pulled it free.

My father was tying the man’s arms up to his sides. He tried wrapping, but that was slipping down, so he let the arms fall and tied one wrist, brought the rope up through the man’s crotch and led to the other wrist, cinched it tight, the man with one hand at his crotch now and the other at his butt, as if covering himself from view, a modest dead man caught without any clothing, except his jeans were still there.

The dead man’s behavior could not be accounted for, but my father slipped that burlap sack up over him and he was lost from view and no longer to be considered. Except that somehow hanging there in a sack like the carcass of a buck he became even larger in my imagination and I could see his open mouth and eyes and his look of pure wonder at the world. His skin had become whiter, and he was taller.

The sack was not long enough to cover his boots. My father kept heaving upward on that sack but it was at its limit. He’d have to tie around the man’s ankles or shins, around his jeans where the chains bit in, and these yellow-brown work boots would remain for all to see.

You can’t leave his boots showing, my grandfather said.

I’m aware of that, my father said.

Anyone could see it’s a man, not a buck.

I get that, Dad, my father said. It’s not a brilliant fucking insight you’re sharing with me.

We’re going to prison for a long time, Tom said. All of us. Except maybe the one responsible, since he’s a boy.

How about shut the fuck up, my father said.

Yeah, because I really owe you. You’re doing so much for me here. Thanks for being a great friend.

My father knelt down and pulled up on the man’s head. Then he looked at me and said, Come here.

So I knelt before the dead man and pulled his head against his chest. The burlap rough, like the weave of tree bark, and the man’s face hidden but I knew his mouth would close as his chin hit his chest. It won’t matter if you cover the boots now, I told my father. Because he’ll only get taller in the night, and then his boots will stick out again.

My father looked down at me, and I could see for the first time that he was not a handsome man. His chin too fatty on an otherwise narrowing jaw, and his nose too bony. His eyes might even have been too close.

My father returned to his work, tying that sack around the chain above the man’s boots. Done, he said. And thanks for the help, everyone.

We all stood back and looked at the man hanging there upside down. Even in burlap, it looked like a man. You could tell he had shoulders and his head pinned against his chest. You could tell those were boots at the top. A man learned to sleep upside down, wrapped in rough burlap wings larger but essentially the same as the wings of any other bat. Underneath, a body white as chalk. Waiting for nightfall.

Good enough, my father said. Time to set up camp.

So we pulled at that mattress that was darkened now on top and we carried it to one of the ancient rusted box springs and flipped it over, leaving the clean side to face the sky. This bed was for my grandfather, who had a bad back along with all his other ailments. The rest of us would sleep on the ground.

My father helped Tom carry the wooden crates of canned goods and plates and utensils to the tables beside the sink. They weren’t speaking or looking at each other. Tom’s face in those glasses could have been a boy’s face, someone my age. Dark hair, not receding like my father’s.

I hung the lanterns at the table. I carried my bedroll to a place between the trees where I always slept, level ground and pine needles.

Tom fixed lunch, as he always did. Just bread and lunch meat and cheese set out on the table, ketchup and mustard. We all sat on the benches, my father and grandfather on the uphill side, Tom and I being pulled slightly backward by gravity on the downhill side. The table had never been level.

Each of us with our hunting knives, long wide blades. My grandfather cutting his sandwich into strips like jerky. No place mats, just the stained old planks of the table and our knives etching into the wood as we cut. The blades thick on top, channeled, curving at their ends into narrow points. Each of our sandwiches cut differently, my father diagonal, Tom in simple half, mine in a cross, four pieces. And when we finished cutting, we stabbed our knives into the table so that they all stood on end, four pillars among the lunch fixings. Every time we came here was the same, except this time we didn’t talk. No one had anything to say. Cicadas turning the air into clicks and a pulse. Flies, the large horseflies that could take a nasty bite out of wrist or ankle. We moved only to chew or to swat away the flies, and we all looked down at the table.

The pines above us moving in the breeze and then silent again. The water at the basin. The growing heat in the meadow, radiating into the trees and shade.

Well, my father said, and he rose and walked away to his bedroll farther back in the trees.

My grandfather opened a pack of Saltines and crushed a handful into a tall plastic cup. He poured milk over them and ate with a spoon.

Tom got up without a word and wandered off to his bedroll, and I listened to my grandfather chew. Sopping and smacking sounds. Middle of the day and nothing but the insects inclined to move.

Well, I said, and I walked to my bedroll, an old green army sleeping bag that was too hot to get inside. I lay on top and looked at the pines against a bright blue. All vision moving toward the center, the pines rushing toward the blue but also remaining in place, as if they could constantly shed shadows of themselves, streaming off into the sky but never becoming any less substantial. All the world a kind of vapor drawn from what would not change.

The ground I was on could have slipped anywhere along that mountain, and could have caved in to any depth or seemed to cave. There were four points of us, and a fifth hanging, and all the rest only background.

5

WHY IS IT THAT WE HUNT? ISN’T IT TO RETURN TO something older? And isn’t Cain what waits for us in every older time?

When we woke late in the day, it was to prepare for the evening hunt. The air freshened, no longer heavy and dead. A promise at the end of every day, a quickening. The shadows of the trees extending beyond measure, smooth dark strips all angled in unison. Each yellow blade of grass in the meadow aligned also, inscribed, etched into existence, and the tallest of the ferns along the creek casting primeval banded markings across a mirror of water.

The breeze in the tops of the pines had increased, and this gave urgency to our movement. My father and grandfather and Tom gathered their rifles and shells, canteens and binoculars, dark jackets and hats. Voiceless shapes in that forest, each grim and intent, awakened from the shadows.

We could have been any band of men, from any time. The hunt a way to reach back a thousand generations. Our first reason to band together, to kill.