3. Walter

Walter lowered the stock from his shoulder and un-winked his eye. The cordite smoke hung in the windless air like a blot of bird shit on a clean pane of glass.

The buck hadn't died right away; it was still kicking out its last. They do that sometimes, Walter knew, before they shut down entire. Echoes of the shot rumbled distant. The peal of the gun diminished into a murmur of assent, speaking to the heart of the hunter.

Waiting for the throes to stop -- a single kick from one of those hooves can split a man's brain-pan as it were a grapefruit, he'd heard -- Walter did a few things. He took off a glove and scratched his ruddy brown moustache, smelling the leather scent remnant on his trigger finger. He checked his buck-knife to see that it was sharp; it was. The kicking stopped. The animal would still be breathing. Walter decided it was time to take care of it, and began to cross the two hundred or so yards that separated them. Hell of a way to meet somebody, he thought.

He found the deer next to a tree that looked so goddamn much like twelve-point antlers. How in the hell. The doe stretched its neck up, its eyes deep and watery as a woman's, taking in the sight of him. Walter saw the fight go out of the quiet creature. He made it go quick.

The next day, he shaved his moustache.