Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

The Jeep pulled to a stop in the damp leaves, the soft sounds of light rain gently tapping the roof. Darren turned the engine off when he spotted Ed’s old Bronco about ten yards closer to the clearing. He smiled – he couldn’t be more excited. His oldest friend turned and began to walk towards him through the early morning mist.

“Hey, look who escaped,” Ed whispered, his voice low to keep from alerting the forest’s creatures. “I almost can’t believe Kat let you come.”

“Two weeks left of hunting season, and one month until the wedding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Darren slung his pack over his shoulder and double-checked his rifle. He hadn’t been hunting with Ed in God knows how long, at least a year or two he reckoned. He pulled on his bright orange beanie and smiled, “I hoped you’d wear the stupid hat with the ear flaps.”

A grin slipped across Ed’s face and he pulled something out of his coat pocket. With a flourish he placed a large flannel hat on top of his head and let the fuzzy ear flaps flop down. Darren snorted. “Oh, you know I can’t miss if I wear my dad’s lucky hat.”

The two friends hugged each other and began their slow pace into the darkened forest.

It was early in the morning, just shy of 4:30, when they crept up on the elevated deer blind that Ed had set up a week before. They made sure to walk as softly as possible over the dead leaves that covered the ground, each boot padding and probing for fallen logs in the dark.

Once they were seated and covered with a camouflage blanket, Ed offered a steaming thermos to his friend. It smelled lovely, a rich dark roast that hinted at chocolate and warmed Darren up even before he took a sip. He was content now, even if they didn’t spot any deer.

“Do you think the rain will let up anytime soon?” he asked between sips.

Ed frowned a bit and looked at the remaining canopy overhead. “Weather report said it should peter out in the next few hours, maybe a bit after sunrise.”

“I mean, I’m not complaining or anything,” Darren said. “I’ve got at least fourteen layers of clothes over my thong, so I’m pretty cozy.”

“Underpants? How passé. I’ve been commando for weeks now.”

“Is that something you picked up at the shop?”  asked Darren, “Is it easier to hack up a hog when you’re free-balling?”

“Hey now, butchery is a delicate art that requires artful delicates,” smirked Ed, “And I just don’t have the money you have for fancy undies.”

Darren couldn’t stop smiling. He knew he was supposed to be surveying the area surrounding them, looking at the forest floor for a buck to shoot, or a bear to avoid, but it felt too good to be out here. Felt too comfortable.

A silence settled in, the tapping of rain on leaves filling the void. The air felt thick, the damp forest smells catching Darren and bringing him deep into his thoughts until Ed’s voice broke the reverie: “How’s Kat doing?”

He flinched. He knew that Ed didn’t like talking too much about Kat, what with their history. Still, if he brought it up…

“She’s doing good, man. Keeping busy.”

“I don’t see her at the shop anymore. I set aside lamb chops for her a few times, and then she kinda stopped coming in,” Ed sighed.

“Yeah, well, you know how she is,” said Darren.

“Not anymore, I don’t.”

In the distance ravens bellowed.

“…I think she doesn’t want you to feel awkward around her anymore.”

Ed turned to face Darren, his face trying to mask his indignity. “Why would I feel awkward around her?”

Darren exhaled something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Because you, you know, had a thing for her.”

The platform creaked as Ed straightened up. “That was years ago, before you two started dating. Before you even knew her.”

“Yeah, but still. You can’t fault her, y’know?”

“I can, actually,” Ed hissed. “She led me on for months before banishing me to the friend zone to help her move apartments or change her oil. It’s insulting that she thinks I should be the one to feel awkward when she ditched me.”

A wind came from the south, jostling the branches of the trees and sending a deluge of drops down from the boughs.

“Ed, do we have to have this talk? Now? I really just wanted to…to be out here like the old days and just enjoy hunting.” There was a plea in the tone of Darren’s voice, like a rope slipping through grasping hands.

A few more moments of silence passed. Darren listened to Ed’s steady breathing, could almost hear the wheels in his mind turning furiously.

After what felt like weeks, Ed broke the silence.

“Do you know what I’ve learned as a butcher?”

Darren chortled and cocked an eyebrow. “How to cut pork belly?”

“I’ve learned to trim. To quarter. To break down a dead body into something that is treasured by customers, leaving them the choicest cuts of meat they could hope for.” Each word was deliberate and measured.

Ed continued, “It’s an artform, really. To dissect the meat, the muscle and tissue, from the off cuts, or the joints or the tendons, it’s painstaking and requires concentration. It’s been done for hundreds of years, for almost every culture. And it’s built on one principle: separate what’s good from what’s bad.”

“Yeah, you’re a Beef Van Gogh, and that’s why I love you for it,” Darren joked airily. He was feeling a little goofy despite the subject matter. 

“I guess that’s part of why I brought you here, Darren. To separate the good from the bad.”

Darren giggled.

“I started with your coffee, drugging it in a strong enough flavor to mask it.”

Darren’s eyes blinked as his head began to swim.

“And now that you’re up here, alone, with me, I can start quartering the bad from Kat’s life. I can take away the fibrous tissue and leave her with a choice cut who has loved her all this time.”

The knife slid easily into Darren’s stomach. He gasped, and Ed drew close to his ear. “You took her from me, Darren. You took my happiness away and forced me into the friend zone.”

Darren looked into Ed’s eyes, and blinked away tears. “But…we all agreed? You, me, and Kat…it was unanimous…you were going to be my…best man…”

Ed gave a short laugh, a quick joyless exhale. “Well, now it looks like the wedding’s off.”

The world spun ass over teakettle as Darren lurched to his side and tumbled from the deer blind. He impacted hard onto the soft forest floor, his breath exploded out of him. He rolled in the ferns and the dirt and the leaves, his body in agony and his lungs screamed for air.

Ed’s footsteps clanked as he descended the metal ladder, and Darren felt something deep within him crack though the drug-induced fog, past the searing pain of the knife wound, even past the ache in his heart. It was a frantic, primal urge not to give in.

Darren’s fingers gripped down into the muck as he pulled his battered body forward.

“You won’t get far,” Ed said in a sing-song tone, “you’re drugged, you were stabbed by a pretty awesome filleting knife, and you’ve probably broken a few bones.”

Darren tumbled and slid down a small wet incline, the tall grass flecked with rain and blood and mud. He gripped small thin branches and hoisted himself up despite his spinning vision that wanted him to go back down. He began to lurch forward on unsteady feet.

At last Ed hopped from the last rung onto the ground. He cracked his knuckles and then swung his rifle around. Darren could hear him chamber a bullet.

“They won’t find you,” Ed hollered, “I know these woods better than almost anybody, and in time the bears will find you severed into steaks and gorge themselves before winter sets in.”

The dead tree groaned as Darren slammed into its trunk. He felt the warm blood seeping through his gloved hand that tightly squeezed his abdomen. He was lightheaded, his vision full of stars. Near his head the waterlogged bark shattered as a gunshot echoed.

“Damn!” yelped Ed, “I thought I’d have you dead before the sun came up, but now I wish it’d rise so I could see you a bit better!”

Everything looked the same to Darren: no path, unfamiliar trees, barely any light. He began to feel a chill down to his bones, and his thoughts felt gummy. It was as if his head were filling with helium and floating away. Another gunshot rung out and a patch of ground to his right exploded. His body was full of contradicting desires to sleep and to run and to fight and to cry, but he kept teetering forward, kept his staggered pace away from his former best friend.

Then his left leg buckled, and he collapsed. Darren’s face nearly bounced off of the ground and planted itself into the earth. He tried to moan, tried to gasp or retch or do anything, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

The rifled click-clacked as another round entered the chamber. It was near now, and he heard Ed’s breath coming in huffs. “Holy shit, you got far!”

Darren rolled onto his back, caked in mud and leaves and grass. He could barely keep his eyes focused, but he noticed Ed was smiling grimly beneath that ridiculous hat. Darren limply kicked his feet into the muck, trying to shuffle himself away with the last of his strength.

“Just accept it, dude,” Ed said with a shrug. “I know and you know it wasn’t unanimous: Kat would never want me to be at her wedding. Why did you lie?”

Darren wailed meekly, like a tired child fighting a nap. “B-because…I didn’t care what she thought – you are my best friend and I wanted you there!”

“I wish you had that same conviction and never dated her to begin with.”

Ed pulled the rifle up to his eye and sighed.

Behind him the brush rustled. Ed paused to look over, squinting in the pre-dawn darkness. A small bear cub tumbled out of a nearby thicket, sneezed, and looked at him. Ed chuckled, brought the rifle back up, and took aim at the bear.

Suddenly small trees splintered as the cub’s mother charged out from Ed’s blind side. It smacked Ed with a paw the size of a frying pan, claw marks gouged into his face. His back audibly cracked as he smashed into a tree, his rifle spiraled into the grass and ferns.

Then the adult bear was upon him. It mauled him, snapped at him with jaws that could crack a bowling ball. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Just as quickly as it started, it was over. The cub and the bear ambled off into the forest as the sun began to peak through the trees. Darren could hear them make their way into the distance, further and further until there was no sound except the birds beginning their songs.

He lay back into the mud as he began to black out. One last time with his friend. One last hunt.

Kat asked him to stay home with her. As he drifted away, he wished he had.