To Hunt an Elk

He first spotted the Elk as it bent down to drink the freezing water, and it ran slowly past while its broadside faced him. It was alone and it knew it and so did the man. He was hidden behind a line of trees and shrubs with branches that bent with the weight of the snow like worshippers in prayer. The man raised his rifle and set the butt against his shoulder and eyed the scope down to behind the shoulder of the Elk. He breathed deep and held the gun steady. They would eat yet. Adrenaline pumped through his veins and into his head and heart and his heart raced and he steadied his breathing and calmed it. He reckoned to kneel to brace his aging shoulder against the gun’s kickback, and he did so. He knew the sight was true just as he knew that there was no food and that there may just be no more Elk and that he needed this. The adrenaline returned, and he forced its retreat. The Elk lifted its head from the stream and the man ducked behind a stripped shrub. Above the barren branches he could see the antlers adorned on its head like a crown. He counted the points and he thought he counted twelve but he wasn’t sure. The Elk dipped its head again and the man rose slightly and steadied his footing and set the gun back again. He felt for the trigger, and he set his foot back behind him to a hold to prepare for the recoil. He breathed and his chest rose and he held his breath and he held the gun. He pulled back and as he did, he set his weight to his back foot and his back foot fell through a rotten log and the man fell on his ass and his ears rung from the shot. He cursed. Back to the stream, there was no Elk, and he cursed again. He pulled the bolt back, and the casing fell next to a fallen branch, and the bullet casing hissed and steamed out of the snow. He felt in the front pocket of his coat, and he found the .308 rounds there as he placed them, the cold brass against his freezing fingers. He took one out and set it into the bolt and loaded it into the chamber.

Now he came upon the stream and he found the trodden snow where the Elk had fled and in the snow he saw patterns of red. He sat there then, wondering. He knew there that the Elk would be gone and that it would take days on days of trekking through the wandering woods and even then, once he caught it, it would take a day to field dress it and then several days to come back and with the heavier load of the meat on his back. He knelt to the stream and lapped at it like a dog. It was freezing and it stung his tongue but it was refreshing. He stood there for a time, just thinking. But he knew, he knew before, and he knew now that there was no going back without that Elk. Laying eyes on the animal condemned him to hunt it until either it was dead or he was. And it was so and the man knew it and perhaps the Elk knew it too. He stood and he tracked the Elk’s steps as it ran into the wood line every few feet a drop of blood that stained the snow. Above, a broken branch hung and swung as the wind blew against it like it was an entrance into some dark world, beckoning him to enter, and so it was. And he did.

Behold, Theseus.

The snow continued to fall and by now with each step he took, his leg broke through to the knee into that white powder. It was two, three days on this track, and he thought that only now was he gaining. He knew he had struck it in the leg. The blood continued for the first day and after that it disappeared, and he followed broken limbs and the hoof markings in the falling snow. Now though, these signs were becoming much more common. The man was cold and he was hungry. He was living off cold cans of beans which he had packed, and those were running thin. He had not seen the Elk since the stream, and he was beginning to think that maybe he just imagined it, but he knew he didn’t imagine it, and he was just looking for an excuse. The terrain was becoming steeper, and he knew that there was a mountain ahead, and he prayed to some deity that it did not go up the mountain, but prayers are no good when there are no more deities.

That night, the man camped under an overhang of stone. He built a fire using twigs that had been kept underneath the rock and were dry, and he used this fire to dry the other branches he had broken off dying trees. He took the tarp out of his backpack, and he unfolded it and set it behind him against the stone to reflect the heat. He sat there eating the last of his beans in silence. The wind above him whistled and carried itself off tumbling and twisting in the dark from unknown places to places even worse, and he sat there listening. The dark expanse in front of him of woods and woods beyond, and he wondered when the cold would end. He cried. He called out to God, and the only answer was the wind and that's the only answer that would come. Behind him he knew she sat cold in the home stoking the fire as its embers burned orange and died and she sat there hungry and shivering. There was no food and it was getting harder and harder to come by and he knew that soon there would be none and that made the times all the worse. He snuffed his tears away and told himself to stop. Ahead was the Elk and with the Elk salvation and that’s all that mattered.

That night he dreamt that he was caught in a land of stone. Walls rose high around him, and he wandered aimlessly through this strange land, an argonaut of no meaning. He held in his hand a piece of coal with which he would mark the way he had already come. Night came on him, and he felt along the cold walls, and he came upon a turn and there he saw two flames burning on torches and a nameless beast slumbering in his chamber. A miasma of death and decay rose into the man’s nostrils and the beast woke and two pale eyes like the eggs of spiders watched him as saliva fell from his drooling mouth. The huge nostrils of it flared as it smelled in the dark. Dark fur and long and muscled arms reached out like a man and the man trembled. The beast moaned, and it lumbered into the deep dark depths, and he woke.

He found the Elk the next morning; its antlers caught in the branches of a bramble bush. It called out in fear as it saw the man approach. It’s dark, coal-like eyes staring at him. The snow covered its back like a cloud of heavenly foam, and it fell from its side in clumps.

“You got caught.” The man said.

The Elk pawed the ground like a bull going to charge, yet the man knew how pitiful the attempt was. It shot out its back leg and waved its head around, yet the bush would not let it go. The man approached.

“You are a beautiful creature.” He held his knife in his hand. He pat the Elk on the neck and shushed it, the last two creatures in the world entire regarding one another in this barren place. The man stuck the knife inside the neck of the Elk, it thrashed about but the man held its head as he cut the knife out, blood painting the bush and his hands and the earth. The Elk kicked once, twice. It huffed, and it gurgled, and it lay still. The man looking upon, tears welling in his eyes.

It took the rest of the day to dress the Elk. He had to cut the bush down to begin with and maneuver the head out of the pine ridden branches. He came away with the head unstuck and his hands bleeding. The Elk’s tongue lolling about like a leech looking for someone to latch on to.

He cut off the testicles and sliced across to the anus, and he cut across the abdomen. He found the seam for the back quarters and cut across there and did the same for the front as well. He did this quick and sloppy, and he ripped the hide from across the pelvis. Across the neck he cut and lifted the great flap of hide onto the snow, the blood-soaked skin glinting off the sun. He rolled the Elk to the other side and cut in symmetry. Soon the hide was off, and he bundled it up and set it against a rock in the falling snow.

He quartered the meat now. He was freezing and shivering and wished it could all be over. Soon he was packing the meat into his bag, and he held the hide wrapped in itself tied to the top of his backpack. He would begin his journey home.

That night he would sit cooking the testicles in the fire. The meat popped and sizzled and the aroma rose around him and he was poking it with a wet twig he had found. The snow had calmed around him and above the stars hung in their cosmos like gods ex nihilio. Above was Orion and Taurus. She was born under these stars and he remembered that time. He remembered that time and thought on that time and he slept.

Theseus was to fly a white sail for his father to signal he had lived from the journey through the labyrinth and had slain the minotaur. However, he forgot this rule and flew a black one, which meant he had died. His father, Aegeus, overcome by sorrow and grief threw himself from a cliff to be united with his son.

The wolf cloaked in white approached the man as he slept near the dying embers. He had come from across these mountains lonely and hungry in search of a lost voyager in the last frontier of snow. The worn paws tore trenches like he was some god of primordial frost. The fire danced on its nose in pirouettes of flame, and the molten logs shone in his coal eyes. The bag lay under the man's arm and the wolf acted in accordance with the laws set before him eons before and took it and left only the pelt.

The man stood outside the cabin just looking. She was inside he knew and he wondered if she saw him out there through the windows but he reckoned she didn’t. She’d have run out by now. All he held in his arms was the pelt and his rifle. He looked to the frozen sky with the frozen sun. Can you tell her? Can you muster the courage to admit it? Could you dare stare into those poor sunken beloved eyes and tell her that you failed her? He could not answer. He held in himself a charge that did not have a verdict. He knew now that there were no more Elk. Just as there were no men. They had all been frozen in homes and warm sanctuaries that no longer existed. There was no hope and he knew there was no hope and he hoped that she didn’t know. He now stood at the vestibule of false hope or true despair, and he couldn’t decide if he could crush that poor spirit inside that log cabin sitting nestled by the crackling fire. Inside he would be taken charge and he would have to stand trial to a creature he was more afraid of than god. Can you watch as she starves and watch her skin stretch on her bones like a rubber skeleton? Can you watch as she withers and decays with each passing day without food? Can you? Will you?

He made his peace and walked through the doors.