And God Blessed the Seventh Day

December 12, 2010.  Sunday.

Situation:  Yesterday afternoon, about 2, while I’m working in the music room, Moi came back from her day of hunting (we both had to work last night).  She doesn’t say anything when she walks into the kitchen, and I know this means that she hasn’t gotten anything.  I stop my work and go into the kitchen to make a late morning stir fry, and to listen to what she has to say, because I know after she pours herself a glass of wine, she’ll have a lot to say.  “I had a shot at a doe today,” she says, “but I just couldn’t bring myself to kill it.  If I’d been seeing more doe this year, I could have done it.  But I don’t know, I guess I was just thinking conservation.  I’m a BFF – big fuckin’ failure,” and she flops her arms in an apologetic manner.  “Are you mad at me because I wasted all this time, and didn’t come home with anything?”  I’m busy trying to get my food together and have trouble paying attention to her.  “No.  I’m not mad at you,” I say.  “I went out there today,” she continues, “with the resolve to come back with something, to shoot a doe if I had too.  It has to be the right situation for me to shoot a doe.  If I see one with fawns, I won’t shoot it.  When I’ve shot doe in the past years, it’s always been a bad thing.  One time I shot one and when I went up to it its mammary glands were spilling milk all over the place.  But I was resolved, if the right situation came, to shoot one.  The right situation came today, and I had a good shot at a doe, but I still didn’t take it.”  She’s saying a lot more, but like I said, I’m trying to fix my brunch.  I tell her about seeing cat prints on the plank yesterday, and ask her if they could’ve been from Squeak. “No, Squeak was up in my bed all last night,” she says.  “A BFF,” she goes on, “that’s what I am.  No meat for the freezer this year, I guess we’ll have to eat chicken all year.”  I tease her that perhaps she hasn’t been getting enough testosterone as part of her hormone therapy.  “No,” she replies, “it actually has more to do with estrogen,” and she says something I don’t catch about taking estrogen.  “There’s usually only a short window when I’m willing to shoot something.  If the right situation doesn’t come along then, then that’s it.  You know, I’m only telling you this, but this year I prayed to Matt’s mom that if the situation was such that only one of us could get a deer this year, then let it be him.  When Matt got one on the first day this year, I thought, well there you go – he’s the one who got a deer.  I was so happy he got one.  All these years, since I started hunting, I’ve gotten a deer, and Matt’s been having trouble.  And I want him to feel like he’s a good provider for Jazz and all that.  This morning,” and I scrape my food out of the frying pan onto a plate, “since this was the last day, I prayed to Blue to bring me the right situation – he, you know, always liked it when he had scraps of meat and fat to eat from deer hides – and, what do you know, the right situation came along.  About 11:30 this morning I saw about ten doe passing along the ridge, but I didn’t even bother picking up my gun.  The right situation came along, and I just let it pass.”  I move into the living room, and Moi starts telling me how in getting up into the tree stand that morning her gun barrel got filled with snow and how the red light on her viewer was not working because the battery was low, and a bunch of other things that I can’t quite all take in.  She asks me again, “Tell me the truth, are you mad I didn’t get a deer?”  I tell her that it would’ve been nice if she had gotten one, but if she didn’t, that was alright.  “You know,” she says, “I think I just like being out in the woods.  You see a lot.  You know – in your walks with Mway, some time you should bring a lawn chair with you.  You’d be surprised what you see when you sit outside for a while, what comes along.  Or maybe some time take a walk without Mway.”  Like most Sundays, work all day.  Come back, it’s dark.  No walk for Mway from me today.