What Our Dad Told Me . . . Before I Killed Him

By Patrick Berlinger

What Our Dad Told Me . . . Before I Killed Him is both a biography of my dad as well as an autobiography about myself, along with our immediate family, relatives, and many friends. It focuses on how our good, Christian, positive family went downhill from 1979 all the way through current times. It heavily involves a demon named Abaddon, who convinced our dad that he, Abaddon, was an angel who gave our dad a ministry of judging other people for the sins in their lives, including the judgment of death by praying for people's deaths, but then even killing many people himself with guns when God didn't kill them. And that ultimately meant our family, ourselves! But when our dad started to kill our mom, I ended up killing him. But then I was sent to prison for that, and so I also wrote about the legal system, being in prison for several years. I also followed all of that up with seeing our dad again, years later, delving and mulling about whether that was spiritual answers, or just mental problems of my own. So be it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543431476

Patrick Berlinger

I have always been an avid reader of books, and likewise, I have always wanted to write books of my own as well. In fact, when I was just five-years-old, my older brother, who was twelve-years-old then, started writing his first book ever, along with drawing all of the art-work, and he had me excitedly help him do that, at least as much as I could at that age. When we finally finished both writing ad drawing that story, I was totally hooked on doing that for the rest of my life. I have written 9 books, publishing one so far.

Book preview

What Our Dad

Told Me … Before

I Killed Him

Patrick Berlinger

Copyright © 2017 by Patrick Berlinger.

ISBN:                   Softcover                         978-1-5434-3146-9

                            eBook                              978-1-5434-3147-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by Zondervan Corporation.

Rev. date: 06/24/2017

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Contents

Part I.   The Early Years/Our Antebellum)

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

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Part II.   Ipso facto

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Part III

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Part IV

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Part V

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58   EPILOGUE

This book is

dedicated to the precious memories of our beloved mother.

This is a true story. I have written about who did what to whom, as well as, at least hopefully, why we all did what we did. So it is chock-full of both villains and victims, because there were many of each. In fact, many people were both. And because of all of that—and long before my publishers told me that I would have to—I changed the names of the characters to protect the innocent. Which also protects the guilty… I suppose. Well, so be it.

What Our Dad Told Me… Before I Killed Him

Part I

(The Early Years/Our Antebellum)

Chapter 1

Our Dad’s ’69 GMC stepside pick-up rolled slowly in second gear through the softly falling snow. His truck’s fire engine-red body brightly stood out from the crisp snow, while it’s white cab blended in. It was late November, 1979, and we were on a deer hunting trip. We were in McGaffey forest in northwest New Mexico—the state, not a country; we’ve had to point that out countless times over the years.

I am Patrick Ricky Berlinger, and I was seven-years-old then. My brother, Colton, was fourteen, and our Dad, Garret, was forty-two. Our wheels made new tracks in the freshly-fallen snow as we drove along a primitive road through the otherwise silent forest. We had left our camp before sunrise, and it was still darkish as we headed towards a ridge that we had scouted the day before.

I was sitting in the middle of the bench seat, eating corned beef hash out of a can. I had lazily heated the can on the fire, but then it had been too hot to hold. So I was holding it in a gloved hand, while trying to hurriedly eat right out of the can with a spoon. It was great to miss school and go hunting for a whole week, but we hadn’t seen any deer yet—just tracks from them.

However, as our Dad’s younger brother, our Uncle Mark, would say, Deer tracks make mighty thin soup. He would also say, One shot on the target is worth more than many shots in the general vicinity. We appreciated all of his wise words, for he had many of them. And most of them were likewise humorous. I guess a spoonful of sugar… and all that.

While I ate, and the tires quietly crunched through the dark whiteness, my mind went back to the night before when we had huddled around the campfire making our supper. That had been somewhat of an adventure in itself . . .

*   *   *

When people normally camp out, they have to just rough it when it comes to food. However, our dad enjoyed the challenges that cooking in the wild provided. And that night before, he decided that we should all pitch in to bake chili with cornbread in a Dutch oven. So we dug a deep hole and filled it with coals by burning an entire pine stump in there. Then I opened three big cans of chili with pinto-beans, pouring them into the cast-iron pot.

Meanwhile, our dad was mixing a good-sized batch of corn-meal batter from scratch in a big bowl with a whisk. Then he poured the corn-meal batter on top of the chili, before putting the lid on top of the oven—which was basically like a steel pot with a heavy lid. In the meantime, Colton had been digging about two-thirds of the hot, orange coals out of the hole.

Then our dad used the semi-circular handle on the pot to lower the Dutch oven into the hole, placing it on top of the remaining one-third of the coals. Followed by Colton shoveling the rest of the coals around the sides of the oven, as well as over the lid, leaving just the very top of the handle sticking up above the brightly-glowing embers.

Then I put several shovelfuls of the loose dirt on top of the coals to keep in their heat, so that the corn-bread on top of the chili would slowly bake beneath the dirt. Without even the glowing embers, muchless the former fire, our quickly cold camp plunged from dim to darkness. We did have a lantern, which surely would have lit the site, but our dad had declined to turn it on.

While we waited for the Southern/Southwestern-style grub to bake, we had time to kill, so we just kicked back, laying on the ground, looking up at the star-filled night sky, and wondered at the vast beauty above us. We did some normal star-searching for the North Star, Big and Little Dippers, Orion’s Belt, so forth and so on, succeeding in finding most of them, in spite of the tree canopy.

After we had been gazing upwards for awhile, our dad quietly told us, You know, this gives me an opportunity to tell you boys about something that is very important to me. Colton and I dropped our eyesights down to look at him, but he was still staring as if transfixed to the glory barely visible through the tops of the trees.

Without looking at us, he said, "And—well, hopefully anyway—it will also become important to both of you boys as well. So here goes: As I see so many of the stars and the planets, and think of the moon and the sun, plus all else in our galaxy, as well as all of the other galaxies, I can’t help but think about how God—in all of His power and wisdom—created everything in His universe.

"And then I think about how God not only created everything, but He created the whole universe inside of Himself. I gasped at that. Our dad didn’t seemed to notice as he continued, You see, guys, it isn’t that everything exists outside of God—or away from Him. Because there can’t be life without God. He is life. And He created all of life with His own life. So God not only created everything with Himself, He also created everything within Himself.

So picture this— And he raised both of his hands in the air over his chest. Then he said, With His own hands, God scooped his own insides together into clumps and then He rolled them up like making snowballs. And our dad charaded those hand gestures as he continued, "And that was how He made each and every one of the planets, stars, moons, etceteras.

"And as He had concentrated His own matter—so to speak—into all of those physical, celestial bodies, it thereby left open space around each of them. And that explains what we now call space—as in Outer Space. And God’s unimaginably infinite size accounts for all of the—at least seemingly—limitless space in the entire universe. And it is all both of Him and in Him. So that is why that is very important to me. Can you appreciate that, boys?"

By then, both Colton and I were staring at our dad as if transixed—just like he had been staring up at the heavenly bodies in the night sky. He glanced at Colton, then at me, and seeing our expressions, he shyly smiled with surprised satisfaction, before summing it all up by adding, "So everything that exists—including each and every person—is made up of God, Himself.

"So God is everything. But that doesn’t mean that everything is God. And he wagged a finger at both of us as he continued, That doesn’t mean—like in the Native American Religion or with the old Druid beliefs—that we are to worship things just as if they are God. Nuh-huh! We only worship God, Himself, by His names only. Not His creations. Even though they are made up of Him. Do you see what I mean, boys?"

Colton—seeming somewhat dumbfounded after all of that—half-mumbled, Uh, yeah. I- I see what you mean, Dad.

But I was speechless as I was still trying to picture in my brain all of what our Dad just told us. It was all new to me, and I just wasn’t able to fathom it. Then I finally found the words to mutter, Um, sure, Dad. I think I do understand what you mean. But it ain’t easy. I mean—geez loweez!—that was a whole lotta new, big stuff for just a first-grader to grasp.

Colton had recouped enough by then to add, Yeah, that was a lot to comprehend, and yet it was all very eye-opening and interesting, too. So I’m glad you told us all of that, Dad.

Then I added, Yeah, thanks, Daddy.

To which his earlier half-smile turned into a full smile, and then he aw-shucksily said, Well, I’m just glad that we had this perfect time and opportunity for me to share all of that with you guys. At that point—probably more to ease his own embarrassment at our appreciation—he distractingly said, Well, by now I guess we should go ahead and pull that oven out of the coals to check our chow to make sure it doesn’t burn, hunh?

Yeah, we should, Colton excitedly said.

Oh, yes! We definitely should! I extatically exclaimed.

Chuckling at our hunger-induced zeal, our dad got up and finally lit the lantern. As it’s relative brilliance illuminated our immediate surroundings, I started shoveling dirt off of the coals, followed by Colton shoveling the coals off of the Dutch oven. Then our dad leaned over and used both gloved hands to firmly grasp the handle, before sucking in his breath and struggling to lift the hot, iron pot out of the orangish-grayish embers.

It was steaming in the cold air as he set it on the ground away from the coal hole. Colton scraped the remaining coals back in with the rest while I put new wood onto the old coals as well. They burst into flame quite quickly, and then we finally started to warm up after having been laying down in the cold dark for a while. We gathered around the Dutch Oven expectantly with our stomachs growling.

As our dad took off the lid, we all ooh’ed and ahh’ed at the sight of the golden-brown crust of the delicious-looking cornbread. We each dished up deep bowls of the luciously-smelling chili with over two-inch thick cornbread baked right on top, before we sat down on our sitting logs to start eating our made-from-scratch-in-the-wild quisine.

*   *   *

Back in the truck that next morning, we knew that the by then six-inches of snow would be great for seeing new tracks that day. We pulled off of the road when we finally got to the ridge that we wanted to hunt that day. With our pre-hunt excitement rising in all three of us, we got out of the truck and stretched from the not really long, but slow drive.

Then we shouldered our gear. My dad and my brother shouldered their guns, and I put my backpack on, because I was too young to actually hunt. In New Mexico, you couldn’t get a hunting license until you were at least ten-years-old. And you had to have attended a hunter safety course—along with having the State-issued certificate of successfully completing it.

I had done that when my brother had taken it, and the main things that had affected me had been the videos of hunters who had gotten lost or stranded, and had developed hypothermia from the sub-zero temperatures. Some of them had taken off their clothes and had ran around through the woods and snow—even hiding from park rangers on snowmobiles who had been looking for them.

So I always made sure that my backpack held survival gear that would be a big help if we ever got lost or stranded like those other hunters had. I also carried our lunches so that we wouldn’t have to go back to the truck to eat. And I felt like I was at least a potentially important person on our hunt—even though I wouldn’t actually be hunting with a gun for three more years.

We followed surely new deer tracks in the snow all morning. Then we took a break around midday to eat and rest. We ate boiled eggs and Vienna sausages with saltine crackers. Then we just kicked back for a bit to recoup from trudging around in the woods all morning. We sat on rocks to keep from having to sit in the snow. It wasn’t comfy, but what’re we gonna do?

After a bit, our dad said, Do you guys see that thorn bush over there? And he pointed.

We both looked where he was pointing, and then Colton said, Yeah. Why?

Our dad said, "That particular thorn bush is not native to these woods. It’s from the more desert lands of the Navajo reservation. That’s why when you see it, you know that it’s probably a Navajo gravesite. And that’s because Navajos would deliberately plant those thorn bushes over the graves of their fallen warriors to prevent any animals from digging up the graves.

"Along with the warrior, they would bury his bow and arrows, and any pottery he might have had with him, plus his medicine bag. By now, the arrow shafts will have rotted away just like the medicine bag and it’s contents. Plus the pottery will probably be broken down into shards or broken pieces; that’s what shards are.

But the shards and however many arrowheads there were still have to be there. And if you two will just scoop away the snow and then scratch around in the the dirt somewhat, you’ll probably find those things right there around that tell-tale thorn bush. So I say you boys should do exactly that. What d’ya think?

In retrospect—purely emotionally, and without actually thinking about it at all, Colton and I immediately and excitedly hustled right over to said thorn bush and dropped to our knees on both sides of it, scooping away the new snow and scratching away down into the dirt with our bare fingers. We discovered nothing in the first few inches, but our adrenalized energy kept us at it.

I found some pottery shards! Colton called out. We both looked at the tringles, etcetera, as he rubbed the moist dirt off of them and we saw ancient, faded black and off-white shapes that zig-zagged and stair-stepped their ways over the shards in what had to have been hand-etched decorations at some point by someone thereby practically timeless in history. We both even more excitedly dug yet deeper.

I finally found some pottery shards, too! I yelled out, thinking even less about my volume than my more-than-numbing fingers in less of a mind-over-matter situation, and in far more of an emotions-over-physical nature.

I was peering at what might have very well have been an at least symbolic lightning bolt in white on black on a larger shard when Colton yelled, Wow! An arrowhead!

I forgot about the probably beautiful, historic lightning bolt as I scooted on my knees over to my brother to stare at his arrowhead. It was about an inch-and-a-quarter long and only three-eighths of an inch at it’s widest, so it was both long and thin, as well as very sharp. Colton said, Wow! This one is so cool! I couldn’t’ve hoped for a better one.

But then he added in somewhat of a subdued tone, Even though it could’ve been a bit wider… to—you know—look more like the popular ones we always see.

I wasn’t set back one bit, though, so I blurted out, I want to find an arrow head of my own! And I scooted back over to my original spot to dig deeper.

Now I found one! I yelled after a bit more digging. But it’s a little one. Ouch! But it’s a sharp one. Man, it’s tiny!

Our dad asked me, What shape is it, Patrick?

I told him, It’s triangular. And I took it over to proudly show it to him.

He took it, squinted closely at it, rubbed it in his finger tips, and finally said, It is indeed a triangle. In fact—it’s practically an isocillies triangle. And that’s probably a bird point, Patrick. That’s why it’s so small. And he handed it back to me.

I took it back, felt it like he had, smiled, and said, That’s fantastic! I like it.

After we had dug a lot more, and found dozens of more artistic shards, as well as—most importantly—a total of five arroweads—I had found two, and Colton had found three—he gruntingly muttered, "I think this is a whole pot of pottery! It’s not broken up like all of those shards. Patrick, take over for me here. My fingers are freezing from digging all of this dirt so far."

I took over, carefully scratching around the opening of the pot, digging deeper into the dirt around it. Then, Hey! I called out, "There’s another hole on the side of the first one. It’s another opening. That’s weird—isn’t it?"

Lemme see, Colton said—with his voice sombering up mysteriously. Uh-oh! Do you see what that looks like, Patrick? I looked even closer at it. And then he blurted out, Those two holes aren’t from a pot. They’re eye holes! It’s a skull!

Chapter 2

Instantly forgetting about both of the formerly important shards and arrowheads, I called out, What do we do, Dad? And I was frozen far more in shock than from the temps of either the air or from the dirt.

Well, since you’ve already started on it, he surprisingly, almost casually said with a dismissive wave of one of his hands, I’d say you guys might as well finish digging it out. And then he added, I mean—that’s pretty rare—you know?

And so we did what he said to do—simply because he had said to do it—natural fear notwithstanding. We worked side by side at the same time, almost gently removing dirt from around the skull. Neither of us said anything while we worked. It took us at least half an hour to dig out the whole skull along with the jawbone—which had seperated—but we finally did it.

Colton shakingly stood up and held the skull in both hands to look at it face to face. I reached up and held the jawbone with it. We both just stared at it—still without saying anything. I emotionally felt like not even breathing, but I instead was breathing very hard after all of that strenuous work—so physical over emotional, I guess.

It was the first, and thereby only, human skull that either of us had ever seen, so we just stared at it, trying to think and grasp what it meant. I didn’t know about Colton, but I felt more than a few shivers run all the way up and back down my spine—up and down repeatedly. But I have to admit—that even though it was from a heckuva lot of fear, it felt even more like excitement!

Maybe, even probably, feeling similiar to myself, Colton made himself quietly say, "I can’t believe that I’m looking right at a skull. This is so crazy, bro!"

He had never called me bro before, and hearing him say that made me feel cool for the first time in my young life. So even more emotions added to both the fear and excitement. Feeling fueled with a rush of all of those extreme emotions, I found it hard to speak as quietly as he had as I deliberately also said, "I know, bro. It’s so strange to think that this was a, a person—a real live person.

"And this skull was inside of his very face. I mean—dang!—he looked out of these very eye sockets! And now we are looking right into his eye sockets—after however much time. How historical! It’s kinda like time has stood still over maybe centuries. And now he’s some-sorta brought back to life—like raised from the dead—you know what I mean?"

Colton nodded and seriously said, "Yeah. He was a person who lived a long time ago. Like you said—however long ago. But his skull is still here, and now we’re holding it and looking into that man’s real face."

I was curious by then about how our dad felt about the whole thing, so I asked him, "Hey, Dad. Have you ever seen a human skull like this before this one?"

He replied, No, Patrick. I sure can’t say that I have. This is a first for all of us—like a moment shared—you know? But—hey!—we really should be getting back to the deer hunt now, fellas. He got up from where he had been sitting on a rock and leaning against a pine tree trunk, and then he said, After all of this business, we’ll need to try to forget about it and focus instead of hunting again.

Pursuant to that—I slowly asked him, So-o how should we carry all of this stuff for the rest of the day? I mean—I know that you guys will need both of your hands to carry your guns, so should I just carry it in my hands… or, or what?

Our dad thought for a couple of seconds, and then he said, Well, why don’t you just put the skull in the hood of your jacket, so that it’ll rest behind your head. And then you can put the shards and arrowheads in your jacket pockets. That way, your hands will be free, anyway.

Okey-dokey, I replied—because that all made sense to me. Then I added, You sure have all the answers, Dad. I guess that’s why they pay you the big bucks, hunh?

He didn’t say anything to me, but he both grinned and chuckled, so I called that a win. In the meantime—Colton put both the skull and jawbone into the hood behind my head. And it felt really weird—more than just creepy—to me to have his skull so close to my skull—like it was trying to look over my shoulder at my face, trying to see it’s digger-upper—it’s taker.

It definitely felt like an invasion of my personal space. But then again, we had more than invaded his personal space by digging his skull out of his grave. So I was sure that I more than deserved the overwhelming guilt that I felt—from my brain right down to the bottoms of my feet. I tried to ignore it, hoping that an out of sight/out of mind factor would kick in.

Meanwhile—Colton and my hands were almost frozen from digging out all of that cold dirt, so we put on our gloves, so that we could finally warm up our numb hands. Our dad stepped off into the woods again, and we fell in step behind him—at last getting back to the deer hunt that we might as well have forgotten during our at least nefarious, maybe even downright evil grave-digging.

But as we hiked as quietly as we could through the forest—while keeping our eyes peeled for deer—I couldn’t help but feel that that out of sight/out of mind factor was just not kicking in. Because while my body still felt both the size and weight of the very human-feeling skull right behind mine, I also could undeniably feel a very real human presence right along with it.

As we walked, and I couldn’t remotely stop thinking about it, I realized that since my birth, I had not had another person so close to me—muchless a dead person. So it was undoubtably a strange sensation, and negatively so. I didn’t know if it was just my imagination—merely thinking about more than there actually was—or the realization that there—in fact—was more to the skull than just what we saw.

But interrupting my thoughts after we had hiked another hour or so, following some deer tracks through the snow, our dad said, You know, Colton, this would be a good time for you to go over to the other side of this hill to see for yourself if any deer who know by now that we are tracking them are trying to double-back on their trail and come in behind us.

So my brother did. It was something that he had to do a lot when we were hunting. It was then that I was glad that I wasn’t the older brother. I didn’t want to be going off by myself—especially not with the possibly spirit-attached skull tantamount to breathing down my guilty neck. So my dad and I just followed the tracks, getting closer and closer to the deer that we knew we were stalking.

We knew that we were getting closer to the deer, because their piles of droppings were getting warmer—even steaming in the more than chilly mountain air. Now, I know that that is graphic, but that’s hunting for you. And I am committed to making our total experience as real as possible. So just bear with me, please, as I take you step-by-stinking-step through our hunt.

As we neared our deer—the very deer we thoughtfully referred to as ‘our’ deer—we were getting excited. The fresh wind was in our faces—just like it should be when you’re tracking animals. Then I finally saw a deer. I immediately knew from it’s antlers that it was a buck—a male deer. My heart first skipped a beat, but then my heartbeat quickly sped up, and I caught my breath with a gasp.

There’s a buck, I breathlessly whispered, and my dad was already taking aim. Just then, the buck startled alertly, looking up quickly in our direction. He started to bolt, but my dad squeezed the trigger, and as the gunshot echoed through the mountains, the deer dropped to the forest floor. We hurriedly walked towards the fallen buck as it reactively kicked a couple of times, but then was still.

There was an unbeatable thrill at that moment when we had finally done it. We had finally killed what we had been thinking about all year, and hunting for four straight, long, difficult days. But after so many tracks and so few deer, we finally got one. So—yeah—it was thrilling. But then I started feeling differenty at nearly the same instant. In fact—I even felt the opposite.

I felt sad for that deer who had just been living freely, but then had loudly, horribly, and painfully lost his life. When an animal pees and poos as it dies, it’s humiliating and just so pitiful for them—even though they don’t know about it. Ignorance is bliss in their case. However, we hunters, and thereby killers, are unfortunate witnesses to the creature’s ipso facto misery.

But I couldn’t say anything about it, or else my brother, and maybe my dad, would say that I must be gay, or at least a wuss. And I couldn’t have either of them misunderstanding me like that, so I just kept my thoughts and feelings to myself and manned up—though I was a boy—to get the job done. I steeled myself to just do what I had to do without lamenting the facts.

Get those hooks out of your backpack, my dad told me, taking charge of the situation.

There were two, S-shaped, double hooks, that were pointed on one of the ends, so that the sharp points could be inserted between the ‘shin’ bones of a deer’s hind legs, hooking around the ‘ankles’. Those hook ends were two-and-a-half inches wide. The unsharpened, rounded hook ends were for hooking over tree branches, so they were four inches wide.

Both S’s were made of strong steel, so that they could support the weight of even an elk, and they would certainly hold a deer—even though our buck was a big one. I got both hooks out of my backpack while my dad took out his—literally—buck knife and cut slits in the bottom of the deer’s hind legs—just above what would be the ankles.

GIve me the hooks, he said without looking up.

I promptly handed them to him, and he slipped the two hooks into the slits that he had cut in both of the hind legs.

He stood up and asked me, So are you ready to lift him up, Ricky? You gotta know he’s gonna be pretty heavy.

I really didn’t know if I was, but I immediately said, Yeah, I’m ready.

So we each got on a side, grabbed hold wherever we could, and then he counted down, Three, two, one, then he said, Up we go!

We both grunted and lifted the still-warm body up—more him than me—and then we hooked the larger hooks over a branch of a pine tree, letting the dead weight of the deer hang from the branch by it’s back legs until it’s antlers were about a foot off the ground. He looked like he was in suspended-animation—like he had simply stopped in mid-leap through the underbrush.

‘Oh, my bad gravy!’ I said to myself. And then I thought, ‘He looks—well, he was majestic. So this is tragic that his life has been cut short in the very prime of his time. Now, I know that we don’t hunt for thrills, for sport, and certainly not for trophies. We honestly hunt for primal reasons—just to eat. ’Cause if we don’t kill animals, then we won’t eat any meat; we simply couldn’t afford it.’

So I wouldn’t let myself feel guilty, but I couldn’t help still feeling sad for the lone deer. Nonetheless—I deliberately countered all of that by saying something else entirely.

Whooe! I exclaimed, exhaling loudly after we had succeeded in suspending the deer. Then I almost breathlessly added, That big, ol’ buck sure was heavy!

It sure was, my dad agreed—already breathing hard. Even though all of that had just been the beginning, and we—mostly he—still had so much more to do, he just stood there for a minute, looking at the hanging body—as if he was judging the extent of what all he had to do, and at least trying to prepare himself to do it.

I took advantage of those few quiet moments to seriously say, Say, Dad—wasn’t that strange for us to come across this deer all by itself when they’re usually—if not always—together in bunches or even herds?

He slowly turned his gaze from the deer to myself, and he looked into my eyes with a surprised expression. He also slowly told me, I have to admit that I’m surprized that you picked up on that. And you’re. That was strange. In fact—it was very strange for him to be found all by himself. But I’m thinking that he might very well have let himself be found by us, so that the does, uh, in his life—ahem!—could get away from us.

I thought about that for a second, and then I asked him, So you mean that this buck deliberately sacrificed himself to even be killed by us—just so that the other deer could get away and keep on living?

To which my dad grimaced his face and replied, Yes. I do believe so. Because—of course—they don’t know that we aren’t going to kill does—muchless fawns. As far as he knew, we are predators who were out tracking them and getting closer to them, so he ultimately decided to sacrifice himself for the sakes of all of the others’ lives.

Wow! I quietly said, pondering what that meant. Then I added, So he was prob’ly their leader, and he did what he had to do for the herd to survivedefinitely their hero, wasn’t he?

Yeah. He was heroic, my dad solemnly said—like he actually respected that individual animal for what he had so selflessly done. And then my dad almost reverently added, So this deer saved his family’s life, and now—A, B, C—he will also save our own family’s lives—the very way that God intended when He created each of us.

He didn’t say anymore, and I didn’t either, but I thought that it had turned out that I wasn’t alone in my thoughts and feelings. In fact—I had probably gotten them from my dad. So while I knew that I still had to keep my ‘true self’ from my brother, I didn’t have to be secret—muchless silent—with our dad. And even though I didn’t know the words at the time—nonetheless, in retrospect, my dad and I might very well have been two peas in a pod.

I was very glad about that. But anyways—after all of that—he took his buck knife again, and he cut the throat of the buck, letting him bleed out while we stepped back, so we wouldn’t get blood splashed on us. Then he cut into the lower belly—which was higher up—and made an incision all the way down the stomach.

He then cut all of the intestines loose, and each of the internal organs loose as well, letting them drop into a big, sloppy pile on the ground. It smelled unbelievably awful, and I desperately tried to not even gag—muchless throw up. While I walked around, trying to breath, I finally noticed that the sun was already down by then, and the woods were starting to get dark.

This deer was really bad timing, my dad said, shaking his head with another grimace. Then he added with not much more than a grumble, It’s far better to get a deer first thing in the morning, and then we’d have all day to get it back to the truck, and out of the woods. But now we’re stuck trying to get it out at nighttime. But there’s nothing we can do about the timing now, so let’s just go ahead and get it back down.

Carefully stepping around the entrails, we lifted the buck up, and unhooked the legs from the branch, then laid it down on clean ground.

Grab a set of antlers, my dad said, and let’s aim back for the road.

The buck had fourteen points on the antlers. Some other guys would say that it had sixteen points, but my dad didn’t count the two eye guards. He never did. But they gave plenty of hand-holds for dragging it along the ground—which we had to do.

So we did—at least we started to—but as soon as I took my first step, my right boot slipped on some pine needles, and I fell to the ground with an Oof!

Whoa! You all right? my dad asked me.

Yeah, I’m all right. I guess, I grumbled, wanting to rub my hurt buns, but refusing to do so in front of him. Instead, I just looked at the bottom of my boot to see that it was smeared with slime from the guts that I thought I had avoided stepping in. No wonder, I grumbled again.

Got guts on your boots? he asked me.

Yeah, I almost whined.

He half-grinned, and said, Sounds like your pride got hurt more than your bum, hunh?

Yeah, prob’ly, I muttered, not wanting to admit that it was probably true.

While I sulked on the ground, my dad scripturually said, In the Bible, it perhaps ironically says that ‘Pride goeth before a fall . . .’

To which I sullenly responded, "Well, pride certainly doesn’t come after a fall. I can tell you that for sure."

And he laughed at that. He was evidentally enjoying my mishap far more than I was.

But then he said, Gimme your hand, holding out one of his to me. I’ll help you up.

Okay, I said, reaching my hand to his.

He helped me stand up as he said, Upsy dazy! But I didn’t laugh. Then he added, You know—that phrase started out when a guy fell like you just did, and then he said, ‘Oops! A daisy!, as he found himself laying on the ground looking right at a flower."

I finally laughed out loud like he had, picturing that in my mind. And he laughed again, too. And then—as we chuckled—I went ahead and rubbed my hurtin’ butt—while acting like I was just wiping dirt off of my pants. After which we grabbed the antlers again and set off dragging the buck behind us, hoping to at least make it back to the road before it got too dark to see. But darkness was falling quickly.

As we struggled along, breathing hard and fast—he said, "On the night that it snows, it’s cold; it’s thirty-two degrees—which is the point of freezing. But the night after it snows, it really gets cold. Below freezing—down to give-or-take zero degrees. So tonight’s definitely going to be very cold. I just wish I knew where Colton was, and he knew where we are.

I hope he can figure out where we are from that shot—even though it was just one shot. You know—for safety-sake—I’m gonna fire three more shots up into the air to hopefully give him a sense of our location. And he did just that, with the shots echoing off into the