Hun(stop)in

I'm sorry brothers. I was gone because I met a man on a road near Sparta and we went hunting. Except he said, "Hun(stop)in." Swallowing the T in "huntin'". No sign of an apostrophe at the end.

I spent two days visiting the Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bike Museum. It portrays human history as a progression from bicycle to spaceship. And Deke Slayton is the center of it all. He was an astronaut from the area. Sebastian. I wish you had been with me. It is your kind of thing exactly. You could have written a good poem.

For my two days at the museum, I was the first person there and the last person to leave. I asked for special appointments to stay later. This seemed to make them nervous. So I decided to drive my car away from Sparta. Go somewhere else. I wasn't reading the blog. I was too busy.

I was driving along a road. My car started running out of gas. So I parked it on the shoulder. There were woods around. I turned off the car and got out. There was a man in camouflage standing about ten feet away. He was sitting behind a bush and looking at me.

"I can see you," I said.

"Dang," he said.

"What are you doing?" I asked him.

"Huntin'," he said, except without the T or the apostrophe. I noticed he did actually have a rifle in his hands.

"Are you allowed to hunt here?" I asked him.

"Nope," he said. "This is military land here. Big base nearby." He stood up. "My names Walt," he said.

"Hi Walt," I said. "Horace."

"Pleased to meetcha," he said. I agreed with him. Then he said, "You ever hunt?" I shook my head no. "Wanna learn?" he said.

"No. But I could walk with you," I said.

"Can you move silently amidst the underbrush?" he said.

"Yes," I said truthfully.

"Then follow me."

I followed him and we moved silently further into the forest. It was grey outside. Cold. I had put on my lined coveralls. We walked for about fifteen minutes. Then he dropped to one knee. I looked ahead of us. There was a deer maybe fifty feet away from us.

"Dang," he said. "Dang." The deer perked up its head. Walt knelt there for two minutes. Maybe three. The deer and us were very still.

"Can't do it," Walt said. He seeemed to be in great pain. "Can't. Mother. Friggin. Do it," he said. "Sorry bout the language," he added. The deer started bounding away. Walt jumped up and threw his rifle after it. The gun hit a tree about ten feet away and got stuck in the branches. We looked at the gun dangling there for a bit. "Better that way," Walt said.

"You're an unusual hunter," I said.

Walt laughed and looked at me and said, "Dang right I am." Then he sat down on a log and started crying. He said, "MotheraChrist." Very tenderly.

I stayed where I was. I looked at him and the big tears rolling down his fat cheeks. He didn't seem that old, maybe 30s. He took his camouflage baseball hat off his head and wiped his face and then let the cap dangle between his legs. He continued weeping. I was filled with love for him. "My dear brother," I said. "You are carrying great sorrow in your hands."

He didn't say anything, just kept staring at the ground and crying. So I decided to keep talking. "The world is swollen with grief," I said. "One bit of this grief is enough to undo any of us. And no soul on this earth is untouched by it. It is a leaden weight pulling down on the heart of all mankind. And it weighs heavy as we receive the wounds of this life."

I was stung with pain. "Oh, these wounds!" I said. "They are more than enough for us. But listen! They will drive us to despair and nothingness and inane philosophies if we are not worthy of them. But what makes anyone worthy? What does that even mean? I don't know. But so great a suffering only approaches making sense when we always, always keep in mind the great forgiveness of God, which lies sleeping, immense and incomprehensible, at the heart of the universe."

"His forgiveness is closer than your sorrow. It is flowing through you more than your blood," I said.

He stopped crying for a moment, then said, "Those are nice things to say." Then he started crying again. I stood there watching.

He cried for more than a day. I stood with him. Then I brought him to my car. He refused to get in. So I put him in the trunk. Sparta was downhill, so I put the car in neutral and we rolled. I stopped in front of a motel. I openend the trunk and took Walt out. I walked him inside.

I gave the clerk a bunch of money. "Here," I said. "This is Walt. Let him stay here until he's better."

"Um..." said the clerk. "This'll last maybe three days."

I said, "Whatever." The clerk looked at Walt.

"What's wrong with him?" he said.

"Actually, probably nothing," I said. "But everybody needs rest sometimes."

I stayed in that town until today, when I drove to Tomah. I didn't see Walt again.

Leo, I'll come bail you out.


In His Most Holy Name.

Horace.