I tell you what. Walking in from the stand, it started getting dark. Cold, man, and I hadn’t seen a thing except a couple of fox squirrels capering around a pin oak. A few times I’d chunk acorns at them to scare them off. Directly, though, here they’d come again, ’round and ’round the tree like stripes on a barber pole.

I decided to cut off by the creek on the way to the truck to look for signs. You should have seen that persimmon tree we planted a long time ago. That tree was just lit up orange with ’simmons. Pretty. I was too busy looking at them things, messed around and slipped in some rotten ones. Shhhooooop! Down I went. Heard my left knee give a little crack like a twenty-two. Besides hurting, it felt like when you wrench a chicken leg out of socket. Gristly-like.

As I was getting ready to sit up and pull my leg straight, I heard leaves move. Laid still and then, like in some movie, saw an upside down deer head bend over me. Big thing. Had time to count nine points. He had some fresh bark strips caught on one horn like tinsel. So he’s over me, checking me out the way Boots used to do you when you’d lay in the floor by the tv.

When he got close he chuffed in my face like a horse would. Deer breath is…strange. Kinda like cow-eating-hay breath, but sweeter. Probably from all that corn I strewed around the stand. All I could think of was that fellow from Dermott ‘was stomped to death by a deer right by his truck, years ago. The game officer had said when they found and killed that deer, there were little pieces of the man way up on his haunches and neck from stomping so hard.

I closed my eyes when he stood back up, just in case. Then he was gone, just strolled off like “Ha-ha, Old Man, you won’t get me today.” Now get this, he stopped to eat a couple of persimmons before he left. I declare. Then I picked up my gun, used it for a crutch (hated that), and hobbled back to the truck. That’s when I called you.