Boone
I take a moment to stand perfectly still and listen.
My ears don’t turn like those of a horse, a dog, or a deer, but they’re acutely aware of the noise around me.
It has taken me years to perfect this fucking skill—three and a half, to be precise.
But the practice has paid off.
Not only is my hearing so well defined that I can hear the deer I’m hunting eat grass about eight hundred meters away, but my sense of smell kicks in and tells me it’s a young one, maybe about two or three years old. The older deer tend to have a stronger smell. In all my time up here, I haven’t quite worked out why this is so.
My theory has to do with good old vanity.
Yep, sounds crazy I know, but animals are just as keen to look and smell good as us, humans. Okay, so there’s no make up, nor plastic surgery, nor expensive perfume, but I have seen animals do some crazy shit to come up looking their best.
Last fall, I watched a young bear roll in the dirt before jumping into the water. He repeated this process several times before drying off in the sun. Intrigued by this and seeing how great he looked afterwards, I tried using gravelly dirt to wash my own hair, but I wasn’t that impressed with it.
Anyway, as the animals get older, I think they spend less time on their grooming habits and, therefore, smell more.
With my mind reasonably calm, I open my eyes again and keep striding upwards. Deer tend to graze in the higher, more exposed parts of the mountain, as opposed to lower down, among the trees and lush green grass. A survival mechanism, from what I know of their habits.
Five strides on and I stop again.
Something else was there on the mountain, something other than my dinner. I frown and strain to make sense of the signals I’m picking up. But I can’t make sense of the noise, which seems more like the static a radio makes between two channels, and when in need of tuning.
A swarm of bees can make that kind of noise, too, but I can’t smell honey. The smell of honey and bees go hand in hand.
Slowly, I keep going. I’m exercising caution to make sure I don’t come across someone or something I don’t want to.
If, heaven forbid, people have strayed into my territory, I don’t want to fucking run into them. I left city life behind several years ago, and I’d rather not have it visit me.
I like my privacy. I don’t want nosy do-gooders snooping around. If what my senses are picking up are human, I’m out of here. I shake my head, as if to clear away an annoying insect.
However, the pitter patter of memories refuses to be stopped. Suddenly, my head is filled with pictures of burning buildings. I can hear people screaming, sirens wailing, and I smell smoke.
I stop.
My chest heaves.
It’s as if I’ve stepped back in time, and picked up where I left off.
Another fire alarm goes off, another daring rescue is staged. Some survive the ordeal, others don’t. Not all the fires could have been prevented, but then again, a lot of them could have.
Corruption combined with poor building practices left many people fighting for their lives. Of course, I could never prove any of it, but those of us who worked on the front line saving poor innocent souls, knew what the fuck was going on.
Money always changes hands to hide that sort of stuff. And if you do speak out, you start watching your back every step of the way.
It’s only when I start grinding my teeth that I realize my fists are clenched and my jaw is set.
Take a deep breath, I tell myself and practice some meditative breathing.
But it’s no use. Those unwanted pictures keep playing over and over in my head as if someone’s pressed the repeat button.
And then I see her.
Margot.
The woman of my dreams, the one I had to let go because of family.
I laugh. I may even have laughed out loud. A bird flies out of a tree and off into the distance.
What a joke.
We both come from money. We both come from terribly ambitious families. And our families can’t stand each other.
They both would do whatever it takes to make sure the other one doesn’t get ahead.
I can’t stand the fucking competitiveness. As far as I’m concerned, there’s enough in the world to go around for everyone.
I mean, fuck—how many fucking millions does my family need? How many does her family need? Margot and I were on the same page. We were just happy to be in each other’s company.
The night her life was threatened still haunts me in my dreams. I was lucky to save her from the burning building. The thanks she gave me will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It has to—since I won’t ever fucking see her again.
Remembering that I won’t see her again breaks my heart every time. I would give away the family fucking fortune just to see her face, her smile, her eyes, and her ass.
She’s got the best ass I’ve seen on any woman.
Stop.
My feet stop moving. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the light brown fur.
There’s my meal for the next few days. I slow my step and try to take deep breaths. If the animal were to spot me now, it would run far away and over the next mountain.
Timing is going to be everything. I need to fucking time this right.
To concentrate on my timing, I need to stop dreaming or drooling about Margot.
It’s in the past. Let it go.
But I can’t.
Her ghost haunts me all the time. It’s worse than if she died. I’ve got no corpse to mourn.
On the contrary, I’ve got nothing to mourn, other than the way our families are toward each other.
Okay, so there’s more to this than meets the eye. I mean she might not even like the idea of living out here with me if I ever saw her again and asked her. But then again, maybe she would.
When we were together at college, she was like my best friend.
Maybe I should write to her?
I should fucking stop thinking about her and focus on the deer. It still has its head down, foraging for food.
To get close, I need to be super quiet.
I glance around. The wind blows from the other direction.
It won’t pick up my scent until I’m nearly upon it.
By then, it’ll hopefully be too fucking late.
My knife is in a little pocket on my camouflage pants. Once I’m closer, I’ll be able to pull it out with one swift movement.
I plan to cut the animal’s throat. Give it a quick and painless death. I don’t like seeing animals suffer.
I can’t stand the hunters coming up to shoot for sport. In fact, those words—“shoot for sport”—should be outlawed. Shooting an innocent animal, an animal who can’t defend itself is brutal murder, not sport.
I shake my head again.
I was never going to get any dinner this way. Too much fucking navel gazing and philosophizing wasn’t good for anyone, and it was, especially, not good for me.
Gingerly, I inch forward. By now, I’m almost on all fours, blending in with my surroundings. From my estimate, the deer is about twenty steps away. It’s not close enough for me to lunge myself at it.
Ten more steps.
Dinner—sorry, I mean the deer—lifts its head. It’s sniffing the air, turning his head away from me to its left.
The ripple through his body tells me it heard something. I heard it, too.
It’s a low grumbling, the kind that thunder makes. My eyes scan the sky above us before moving to the horizon. Blue sky as far as the eye can see.
Of course, thunder isn’t the only thing that makes that noise. There’s something else, something far more dangerous.
Landslide.
I straighten up. The grumble increases. My right foot steps on a twig.
Snap.
Now the deer’s ears twitch, and I realize I’ve got less than two seconds before it’ll take off.
Just as I’m about to throw myself onto the animal, I see half the side of the mountain ahead of me come loose and crash downward.
At the same time, I hear a blood-curdling high-pitched scream.
It was a familiar scream. I’ve heard screams like that before.
Only people who fucking fear for their lives scream like that; it’s high-pitched and ear piercing.
The deer takes off, and so do I. Without thinking, I race toward the sound of the cry for help. All of my rescue instincts kick in, and suddenly, I’m on auto-pilot.
There are no thoughts of hiding from this person who’s obviously in danger.
Time to save someone’s life.