The Ranger - Ace Atkins [38]
“Sheriff Beckett had been talking to her,” Lillie said. “Was he assisting you in any way?”
Tuttle shook his head, reaching for the door handle of the truck, the black exhaust wreathing his legs and face. “That must’ve been a whole other matter.”
The sheriff’s office didn’t get the call till late that Sunday, but it didn’t take long before the whole town heard the story of the twin boys on that first weekend of deer season, riding four-wheelers and raising hell through the eroded hills and woods of their daddy’s five hundred acres. Both of them had on matching camo Mossy Oak gear and brand-new pairs of Cabela boots. They’d packed rifles and plenty of ammo, bottles of Mountain Dew, and beef jerky in case they got hungry, and a fresh can of Skoal that the older brother, older by a whole five minutes, kept in his own back pocket ’cause he’d paid for it.
This was their second time out that day, heading out to hunt with their daddy at dawn and then out again after church, barely able to contain themselves as they kicked off their loafers and ties and slid into their boots and camouflage, not really giving a damn if they killed a deer or not, because there was plenty of time for that. This was just being able to run the woods like crazy without having to answer to anyone. Because, as the younger brother had said, “When a boy is fourteen, he’s got to be turned a little loose. We ain’t kids.”
They found the clearing and tree stand where they’d been earlier, seeing those young does and a fawn, practicing that silence with their daddy, waiting for a buck to enter that clearing, step inside that ring and sacrifice himself. But instead, a doe had sniffed something, heard a creak of the wood in that slapped-together lookout, and darted off down the trail. The older brother knowing the deer would come back, bringing the buck with them.
They both plugged in some snuff and sat on their haunches, looking into the wind. The younger brother crashing together a pair of horns that they kept on the dusty floor. He crashed them together again and again, knowing that a buck couldn’t resist the sound of a fight, and, goddamn, neither saying that word out loud but both of them thinking it, here walks up the prettiest twelve-pointer they ever saw, thick-necked and proud. The younger brother let the older get the shot, moving up the barrel and finding a line in the scope. But he could only pull that trigger with shaking hands, the bullet leaving with a mule kick, scaring that big boy away, knowing there wasn’t no fight, only a couple kids up a tree house.
“He’ll be back.”
“No he won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“He hadn’t gotten big by bein’ no retard.”
They dug into their sacks, a couple pieces of jerky washed down with the Mountain Dew, turning their bottles into spit cups and not talking at all, because there wasn’t a hell of a lot that either boy could say that would surprise the other. They waited for the buck to return for a good couple hours, trying the horns again, crashing them together like bone cymbals and sitting back on their haunches, waiting for a tick of sound. By then the night had started to fall, maybe a good thirty minutes past when they’d said they’d head home. And so they packed up their gear, laying their hunting rifles back into their padded cases, and wandered back down to the four-wheelers with their heads lowered.
“You see that?”
“What?”
The other craned his neck and veered off to the right, just off the side of the wide, cleared field, making his way to an old dead pond that someone had tried to start way before they were born but gave up on, the water not having a source or a place to go. Cypress had taken root in the shallow water, and not a living thing thrived there except for some turtles and snakes. During the summer the whole thing would just dry up, and they’d find footprints of deer and raccoons that padded across the open space.
The twins both walked closer, both of them pulling their rifles from their cases and walking slow and steady to the big