St. Hubert's Stag

By John Richard Lindermuth

As John Donne said, and Hemingway repeated, "No man is an island." Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to accept that truth.

For the Keller family, the lesson evolves from a deer hunt which forces them to confront secrets that have separated them from one another and the truth for years. Why did Jake Keller rebel and decide he needed one last deer hunt?
Why had Andy, his son, suddenly quit hunting?
Who was responsible for the death of Andy's younger brother, Paul, and why had Paul broken the old man's rule against drinking on a hunt?
Why had Janet, Andy's wife, laughed hysterically at Paul's funeral?
What was the source of the enmity between Jake and his boyhood friend, Clyde Grumbine?
Why did everyone in the valley fear the black buck and why did it seem to haunt the Keller family?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 14, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595776672

John Richard Lindermuth

A retired newspaper editor/writer, John Richard Lindermuth is also the author of Schlussel?s Woman, and has published articles, stories and illustrations in a variety of magazines. He is currently librarian of the Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, Historical Society.

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ST. HUBERT’S STAG

John Richard Lindermuth

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

ST. HUBERT’S STAG

All Rights Reserved © 2004 by John R. Lindermuth

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

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ISBN: 0-595-32869-5

ISBN: 978-0-5957-7667-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

For my father, who taught me the way of the hunt

And

My mother’s optimism

And

The patience of my children

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

According to tradition, Hubert, patron saint of hunters, was so devoted to the chase he neglected his duties.

One day, a stag bearing a crucifix between its antlers appeared and threatened him with eternal perdition if he did not reform. Chastised, he entered the cloister and, ultimately, fulfilled his destiny.

CHAPTER 1

A twig popped as the animal shifted its weight and Jake Keller spied the deer under the low canopy of an oak off to his right.

The old man’s vision was nearly as poor as a deer’s and the half-light and ground fog and jitters that brought water to his eyes didn’t help. So, he was not surprised when it was his ears that located the deer. Sound had halted his passage, stopped him dead in his tracks and with the rifle half raised to his shoulder, and it was sound that found him the deer, a sound as familiar as the tick of a clock. The snort of a deer catching wind of him and sneezing in distaste. Keller knew it was close, watching for him even as he searched for it, both of them peering round in the dim light, eyes seeking some movement, ears straining for sound.

Silhouetted trees on either side of the hollow shut out the weak light of the rising sun and wreathes of mist floating off the stream shrouded the draw. Keller sniffed and thought he detected a trace of the musk a Whitetail gives off when nervous or excited. The damp air was heavy with a mingling of scents—the buttery odor of decaying humus, the tang of pine, the acrid stench of oak. The smell might only have been in his imagination. Still, the man’s hands quivered, his heart quickened its pace, his throat went dry and his eyes watered again. Steady, fool, he cautioned himself, you never got buck fever before and there’s no reason for it now.

A crow cawed in the distance and Keller cocked his head. That wasn’t the sound that had stopped him but it was quickly followed by the one that found him the deer.

Nervously, the buck paced, straining its dim vision to locate the man, ears erect and twitching, snorting now at every other breath, blowing to rid its nostrils of the man-stink. Keller grinned as he saw the buck had foolishly trapped itself in a position with only one avenue of escape. Thick, tangled walls of cat-brier and laurel hemmed it in on two sides and, on the stream-side, a high, eroded bank prevented escape. The only exit was to come past him. Keller raised his rifle and waited.

The buck, an old and grizzled warrior, snorted once more, threw back its antlers and lunged. The buck came running, passing on his left, not more than fifty yards away. A perfect shot. Keller sighted and fired.

The Whitetail somersaulted, skidding its front against the earth. Then, with a sudden and painful display of exertion, the deer pulled itself erect, stumbled into the brush and was gone.

Keller’s rifle, as old as he, had jammed after the first shot. By the time he expelled the spent cartridge and chambered another, the animal was out of sight.

Belly-shot! Sonofabitch! Keller growled, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the brown leaves at his feet. Belly-shot! Never had he made such a poor shot. Sure, the light was poor. Sure, he’d been rattled (hadn’t even expected to see a deer so soon let alone one with a rack that big. Jeez, had to be at least a twelve-pointer). But, hell, there weren’t adequate excuses for a shot like that. He didn’t know whether to blame himself, his ancient rifle or the circumstances. Voicing a string of profanity released the tension a little, though it didn’t entirely dissipate his anger.

Sighing, Keller settled with his back against an oak, sinking down carefully on creaking old legs, then flopping heavily the last few inches.

Propped against his tree now, Keller sighed again and shook his head. Nothing he could do now but wait. He would wait a half hour until the wound began to stiffen and loss of blood forced the deer to rest. Then he would follow its spoor, easily discernible by the spattering blood of a stomach wound, to where the creature hid. Then, he would complete the kill.

He wasn’t one of those city-slicker hunters who were all over his mountain these days, fools who never even took their rifles out of the case let alone practiced before opening day and who blasted away at anything that moved and who were more interested in drinking beer and bragging to one another down at Molly’s than they were in hunting. They belly-shot deer; plenty of them. Keller had found some, too late to do them any good.

If a hunter didn’t track a belly-shot deer and finish the job, then the animal would crawl off to some secluded place and suffer a long and painful time before death. That wasn’t going to happen to his deer. Sureshot Keller had killed a lot of deer in his time, but no one could say he had ever purposely left one to suffer.

Still, Keller had to admit, his priority now was not compassion for the animal he had crippled. He had to dispel this discontent he felt with himself. He had failed in his ability as a hunter, and this hurt him most of all. Not many understood what it meant for him to be identified as he was for so many years. Paul had, because it was the same with him. Jake doubted if Andy and Janet did. Leda had understood him from the beginning, and he had loved her for that as much as anything else. She’d known he was a hunter. And, he had not lived by his profession, but for it.

Jake Keller, the hunter. That was how everyone in the village knew him. Some called him lazy behind his back and said he might have prospered if he’d worked his land as hard as he hunted. Mostly, the men envied him and the women were glad their husbands weren’t like him.

He was a hunter. It was as certain a fact as the rugged mountains surrounding the rural Pennsylvania valley where he lived. He had supported his family by farming. But, it was only when he was in these mountains pitting his wits against some wild creature that he lived his true profession. That’s how it was, and he’d been proud of his reputation.

That’s how it had been, he thought, and now it was gone. He’d refused to listen when Andy tried to tell him. But, what would he do now? A man is his vision of himself and when that’s taken away, can he continue to exist?

Now, having belly-shot a deer, crippled it, when he should have killed it clean with one humane, accurate shot at that distance, now Keller could only wonder—was he still a hunter? Or, instead, was he only an old man who used to hunt?

CHAPTER 2

The sun rose higher, lighting the sky above the trees with an orange glow, burning away the mist in the draw. The forest was quiet. The echoing of his shot, reverberating off through the woods, had intruded upon the birds greeting the dawn that morning and carried away with it their song and their presence. There was no sound now save the imaginary whirr of silence. The pungency of plant life and vegetable mould hung thick in the still air. The silence hung over Keller like a shameful commentary by nature on his failure.

Sometimes, if only in his dreams, Keller felt young again and infused with all the hope that entailed. Mostly, he had only to glance into a mirror to have that delusion dashed. Most of the time there was really no hiding from the truth. Yet, that did not prevent his trying. The hunt, this hunt, had been one such attempt.

For anyone else, even for himself under other conditions, there would have been less guilt in the failure to make a clean kill. It would have been easy to blame the circumstances of the shot. A simple misjudgment in the dim light and the fog. A sudden, unexpected leap—common enough with a spooked deer—that put the bullet in the stomach rather than the shoulder where he had aimed. A faulty sight on a rifle that had been used many more years than its maker intended. There were ample excuses, and good ones, for any man who did not want to accept the blame for such a bad shot. But, not for Jake Keller who had long ago, in his boyhood, earned the nickname Sureshot and who had always lived up to it.

Jake knew where the blame lay, though he was reluctant to admit it—even to himself.

Nothing before had made him accept it. Losing Leda and seeing his friends go, one after another; that had been them, not him. He’d been able to lie to himself, discount the signs—the loss of hair, blurring of vision, the aches and pains that came overnight in places where none existed before, and his teeth getting loose in their sockets and falling out until he had only a few left with which to chew his food. Why, even after his heart attack, hadn’t he bounced back as though it were nothing more serious than a cold? And, he could still outwork any man his age and many a good deal younger. Still, he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Now he knew—what Andy had tried to tell him, what his body had been telling him even longer. Just as it happened to the animals, so it had happened to him. The thing he feared most. Age! Age, the destroyer, had caught up to him. It was tearing him down, had been for some time without his being aware, or, more truthfully, being willing to acknowledge.

Why had he been so blind, so stubborn? So unwilling to admit what was obvious to everyone else? Why must it be proven this way?

Keller asked the questions and felt a deep sense of shame. It was the shame that can only be felt and understood by a man who has failed in the one thing he prides himself on most. It was not simply the belly-shooting of a deer, but the fact it had never happened before. It was this, finally, that convinced him. And, with this knowledge of the inevitable fact, his image of himself slipped beyond hope of recapture. Keller felt pain now, more excruciating than any he had previously known, though it was of the mind and not the body, and, bitterly, angrily, he realized in the inmost fibers of his being that it was the little failures in life that squeezed the spirit out of a man. His poor shot, the wounding of that deer, which would not have warranted a second thought from many others, for him constituted the final, significant turn of the screw.

Beyond question, he knew now he was not the man he once had been and there was no turning back.

Bitterly, Jake recalled the argument last night. He had been in high spirit when he came in to supper. He always felt good the day before the opening of deer season. This time it was special because, after two years of enforced rest and no hunting, he felt fit enough to go again. Janet was humming as he came in and the aroma of her fresh baked bread hung sweet and heavy in the room. Nipper sat at the table with his Dad, bubbling over with school talk and gossip from his mates about how their dads were all going to bag the biggest buck anybody in Independence ever saw. And, somebody had even seen the black buck again up on Bakeoven.

Jake whistled a little tune as he washed up at the sink, everything in God’s heaven and earth seemed fine. The lightning struck when he made his announcement just after Janet brought the last of the hot, steaming dishes of food and sat down at table with them.

There’s no way you’re going hunting by yourself, Andy said, flatly.

Good, then you can come with me.

No. I can’t, and you know it. I got the store to look after.

You haint gonna go broke closing that store for one day. Won’t be nobody to buy anyway. Everybody and his brother will be out in the woods.

I’ll come with you, Gramps, Nipper said, forgetting his father had forbidden thought of his going any time soon.

Shoosh, Nip. I’m talking to your grandfather who knows Doc Baskin said he could have another heart attack if he exerts himself.

I haint talkin’ about exerting myself. I just want to get out in the woods and bush-walk. Don’t matter if I get shooting or not.

Now damn it, Pap, when are you going to get it through that thick head of yours? You’re too old to go traipsing through the woods anymore.

Goddamn it, Andy, you act like I was a hundred! I never felt better in my life. I can out walk any man in this valley. Always could. I can’t just hang up my gun and quit like you did.

I hung up my gun because I have responsibilities—something you never did know much about.

The sting of those words had been as physical as the prick of a thorn in tender flesh. Jake had felt a flush come over him and he’d shot back, Your Momma and you kids never starved because of my hunting. Did you?

That had been the end of the argument for Andy. He’d never been one to stand and fight. He preferred to retreat and sulk. Jake reasoned maybe he knew his father was too stubborn to back off when he thought he was right. And, Jake had been certain he was right. Now he could regret having ruined what started as a good evening, the distress he had brought down on Janet and Nip, and, even, going against Andy.

Yet, he couldn’t be certain he would feel the same were it not for the gutshot deer.

Keller rose to his feet in disgust. Checking his rifle, he started off to find the wounded buck.

CHAPTER 3

Wearily, shaking itself and snuffling, the buck rose on wobbly legs from its bed in the leaves. There it stood, head cocked, ears laid back, nostrils flaring, searching for the sound or scent that had disturbed the catbird perched on