Tossing and turning, I looked at the clock next to my bed. It was four o’clock in the morning. In a few minutes, my dad would be coming in to wake me up. It was a cold Saturday in October, and it was deer season. Anticipating deer hunting with my father kept me from a restful sleep. This time, it would only be my dad and me. Usually we would go with my grandfather and I would be green with nausea from my grandfather’s cigarettes and the hairpin curves of the Tollhouse grade. “Today is going to be great!” I thought, as I waited for my dad’s entrance. Everything had been laid out the night before. All I needed to do was to wash my face, brush my teeth and throw on my clothes. We had to hurry if we were to be in the forest before sunrise. Hearing my dad in the kitchen, I got up by myself and got ready. My dad was filling the thermos full of hot coffee. This would be handy when we were on the hunt. I always looked forward to hunting with my dad. Only in the last couple of seasons, had he let me come along. I was ten now, so I figured he thought I was becoming a young man and could hunt with the men. How I wished that this would be the day that we bagged a deer. I had never been with my dad when he shot a deer. Never had I given much thought about actually killing an animal. I could handle it. I was becoming a man. My dad would even let me have some of the coffee, unbeknown to my mom.
Quietly, we locked the front door and loaded the 1950 Willys Jeep. We buckled up, and headed for the Sierras. The radio didn’t work and it was cold and drafty inside the cab of the jeep. The whining noise of the transmission made it hard to hear each other at faster speeds. It was ok. We would have plenty of time to talk while we road hunted the miles of abandoned logging roads.
As we planned, were right on time, and with time to spare. We had made it a tradition, the season before, to stop by Angelo’s Bakery in Shaver Lake, to get a crunchy (cinnamon roll like pastry) and a bag of cinnamon bears. These were a chewy red candy in the shape of a bear. They were my favorite and my dad knew it. Any nausea I felt from the rest of the drive, quickly slipped away after few of those tasty bears.
The sky was turning purple, and the outline of the pines took a greater contrast. My dad put the clip that held the bullets halfway into his rifle and laid it across the two of us. If we saw a legal buck, he could put a round in the chamber and be ready to fire in a couple of seconds. While some hunters would drive with a loaded gun, my dad was more cautious. The lighter the morning became, the more the forest revealed its self. We could now see into the shadows and through the trees. An early morning frost settled on the meadows and all was still. Nothing stirred. Not even a chipmunk.
Something wasn’t right. Usually, we would have seen a few doe and fawns, but the morning showed us nothing. Could the deer have moved to a lower elevation because of an upcoming storm? Could they have a sixth sense that enabled them to evacuate early? We talked about these theories while sharing a cup of coffee from the thermos’ lid. My dad suggested we try a new mountain and encouraged me to not give up hope. I had over a half bag a cinnamon bears left, so all was good.
Patterson Mountain was large and dark. The forest on this mountain could swallow up a hunter. Several hunters in the past had become lost in this terrain and some were never found. This mountain was also known for big deer and lots of them. As we drove, I found myself thinking about my uncles telling stories on the holidays of their deer hunting successes on this very mountain. The sudden braking of the jeep, woke me from the spell I was under. The gun was slowly lifted from our laps and my dad studied a group of deer near a thicket of trees. At first I didn’t see them. Slowly, my vision made out the outlines of the animals and they came into focus. I was taught to look for the horizontal lines of the animals’ bodies. This trick made them stand out against their camouflage. “Are there any bucks?” I whispered while praying there was one. “I can’t tell. One has horns, but I can’t see a fork,” my dad whispered back. A buck had to have a forked horn to be legal. My heart began to pound with a nervous excitement. I glassed the deer with my Sears and Roebuck binoculars I was given the Christmas before. I couldn’t see any horns on any of the five deer. The buck my dad was watching through his scope was behind the others and out of my view. Disappointed for the both of us, my dad’s gun was lowered and was placed back on our laps. He looked over at me and I was grinning from ear to ear. Even though he couldn’t shoot, we were both excited at the mere possibility of actually bagging some game. I imagined how at Christmas, we could tell our story about Patterson Mountain, and the respect we would receive from grandfather and uncles.
We stopped for lunch on a sunny area of a large rock outcropping. We sat near the cliff and watched below for any movement amongst the low growing manzanita. This was such a great day to be with my dad. We were sharing a family tradition that we could talk about for the rest of our lives. We made white bread and salami sandwiches (another thing we hid from mom) and drank water from my dad’s military canteen. The warmth of the sun felt good on our faces as we sat on the cold slabs of granite. We always made sure to never leave any garbage behind. When all was put away, we headed back to the jeep to road hunt for the rest of the afternoon.
Midday was not the best time to spot deer. My grandfather always said that the deer would bed down in the middle of the day and come back out in the late afternoon. It was only 1:00 p.m. and we had a few hour before we would expect to see any deer. To fill the time, we explored logging roads that were new to my dad. He had only hunted this mountain a few times with my grandfather. Without having to be quiet, we talked about school and my friends and about me going to the hunter’s safety course when I turned twelve. We had almost forgotten about the crunchy we bought at Angelo’s. I reached to the back seat and brought it to the front. It was delicious.
The deeper we drove, the more ominous the mountain seemed. Every once in a while, we would pass another hunter in a jeep, who would wave to my father and he would return the gesture. After about an hour, we turned onto a road that led to a campsite. In the center of the camp was a pickup and camper completely burned. We stopped and walked up to the burned wreckage. The smell of freshly burned plastic and wood still permeated the air. “This just recently burned,” said my dad in a somber tone. “Let’s go,” he said and we walked back to the jeep. “How do you think this happened?” I asked. “I don’t know,” my dad said, rather perplexed. We drove a couple of miles and ran across a forest ranger. My dad asked him if he knew anything about the burned camper. The ranger looked down to the ground and then straight at my father. He told him that a nine-year old boy had been hunting with his grandfather. While the grandfather was at the campfire, an explosion occurred inside the camper from the butane tank and the little boy was trapped in the fire and burned to death. At that moment, I pictured the latex gloves I had stepped over on the walk back to the jeep and realized they had been worn to remove the body. I’m not sure if the Ranger knew I was in the jeep with my father because I sat perfectly still. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even speak. My dad patted my knee and neither of us spoke.
To break the silence, my dad asked me if I wanted another cinnamon bear. I shook my head, no. We drove again with only the sound of the low gears of the transmission. Our hunting trip had ended.
As we reached the halfway point on our way off the mountain, we saw a familiar face, driving in a jeep and coming towards us. Both jeeps slowed and stopped along side one and other. It was one of my uncles, and he was smiling like he had just won a jackpot. He boasted about finding this burned out camper and taking some half burned guns from inside the burned shell. He was so excited about replacing the wooden stocks and getting a couple of guns for free. I couldn’t look at him. My heart began to pound again, but now with total rage. How could this man do such a thing? What about the poor burned boy and the helpless grandfather, who watched as the camper went up in flames? What about the mom and the dad and his brothers and sisters? What about the boy’s friends and his teacher and all the people who loved him? He was only nine years old. He was a young boy like me. Tears started running down my face. I was trembling and could not help it. “Is he ok? my uncle asked my dad. “He’ll be alright,” my dad told him, though never telling him about what the ranger had told us. I was so ashamed to be that man’s nephew. All I wanted to do was to go home. No longer did I want to kill a deer or anything else. I just wanted to go home. Without asking, my father drove us off the mountain. As I stared at the floorboard of the old jeep, I felt my head start to nod as the events day finally consumed me. The last thing I remember before falling asleep, was my dad saying, ”I love you, Son.”
Many years have passed since that cold October Saturday. My father and I didn’t talk about that day very much, and over the years, it became a distant memory. Sometimes however, when the skies are clear, I can look to the east and see the granite faces of the Patterson Mountain’s western slope. If I stop to look long enough, I can find myself again on that mountain, remembering myself as a ten year old boy who went hunting with his dad as a child, and came home that day, a little closer to becoming a man.
