Ernie Carlson had been hunting Bambi for one hour and forty seven minutes. Heat and sweat covered him like a fever although the woods he tramped through
were dense and shady, with only a few stray rays of light sneaking down through
the dead, thin branches of the evergreens that surrounded him. Pine needles and crunchy brown leaves lined the soft soil under his feet. He wondered how those leaves had gotten there, on the ground in the middle of a
bunch of evergreens. He wore a green camouflage hunting jacket and dark brown Carhartt pants
purchased just before he drove the ten hours from Bloomington, Minnesota, to
this place, a small plot of forest 200 miles south of Pierre, South Dakota. A sign sat near the dirt driveway that led to the landowner’s cabin boasting “Welcome to Manville.” On the sign there was a silhouette of a woman sitting, chest out, like the ones
truckers have on their mudflaps. The owner, Carl DiGidio, a former barman, opened his small cabin to Ernie and
the only other hunter present that weekend, a convenience store clerk also from
Bloomington, who introduced himself as Digger. The previous night—while DiGidio and Digger sat on the porch passing around cans of Budweiser and
bug spray, telling stories and cackling late into the evening—Ernie lay awake on his bunk in anticipation of the next day’s hunt.
Walking slowly over the pine needles and feeling the soft ground give under his
new boots, laced to the top, Ernie snaked around the trees with the care he
thought a hunter should have. Carefully analyzing each step and movement, ducking under branches, his
shoulders brushing against the prickly pine needles. He had a kerchief in his breast pocket that he used to wipe the sweat from his
brow. Like his companion Digger, who stayed abreast about fifteen yards to his left,
he smoked cigarettes relentlessly.
This was the first time either of them had been hunting.
At dinner the previous night, DiGidio spoke of a small brook that curved like a
ribbon through the twenty acre plot of evergreens. He also spoke of a clearing in the dense woods, a place where sun shone down to
the ground, where brown, crisp grass would rise up to their waists like raised
arms swaying at a rock concert. DiGidio advised the two men to wear pants because the grass would inevitably
cause their legs to itch.
Digger hadn’t brought any pants. He wore blue mesh jogging shorts and a plain white T-shirt with a V neck along
with a Minnesota Twins baseball cap backwards, his shoulder-length red hair
careening out over his ears and neck. A bright red fu manchu ran up and across and then back down over his mouth—a red awning to a cavernous tunnel, one that seemed to spew mindless drivel at a
conspicuous rate.
***
Ernie’s job as a stockbroker in Bloomington afforded him more money than he could
spend. A single guy only five years removed from college and college poverty—keg beer, ten pound jars of pickles bought in bulk—he found himself making well over $200,000 a year, wearing expensive suits with
pinstripes and hundred dollar ties. He lived in a condo with matching furniture and light fixtures and curtains. But these things only took bits of his time and money, the rest of which he put
in a Savings Account and invested in the stock market, not knowing what else to
do with it. He was an SUV-driving imposter. A man with a toothbrush that had to plugged in. A man with a shower rack that contained unopened bottles of conditioner and
cream rinse that promised to give his hair a beautiful and full shine right on
the bottle.
On advice from his boss, Jerry Wilkinson—who drove a cherry convertible Stingray on sunny days and a fully-loaded Denali
on rainy and snowy ones—he joined a country club. “A place to meet other guys like you,” Wilkinson said, “a place to make connections that might turn into business.” Ernie, although he had never golfed before, had never really wanted to, joined
right away.
***
The two hunters slid out like water running down an umbrella through the woods,
curving down and deeper into the brush. Ernie stopped flat when he heard Digger, approximately fifteen yards away,
making a “Psst” sound, obviously directed at him. A bit startled, Ernie stopped and began looking for the origin of the noise, for
his partner in the hunt. His back muscles tightened and he became nervous for the first time. He saw a pale forearm shoot up over a green branch, waving back and forth. “Psst!” Ernie began walking over to the protruding forearm. About halfway there, Digger’s whole body shot up from the space, an agitated look on his face. Ernie hadn’t realized Digger was crouching. “Man. When I signal you, you’re supposed to hustle over!” Digger was speaking in a hushed shout that undoubtedly strained his smoky
throat. He shook his head as he tried to get Ernie’s attention. Ernie didn’t add any hustle to his step.
He looked left and right as he walked over to Digger, who had crouched down
again, hiding. Ernie slumped a little, just in case. He didn’t see anything.
Digger motioned with his hand for Ernie to get down.
“Dude,” Digger said, still crouched in a squat, eyes darting left and right into the
dense woods, “I bet this chick’s gonna be so hot.” As he said this, Digger raised his eyebrows and smiled wide. He had said this at least ten times since they met the night before and had been
set free on the land by DiGidio, who lit a cigar and told them to “Have fun out there, boys, but please, act appropriately. As appropriately as you can, anyways.” The old man chuckled after he said this.
“What? Did you see something?”
“No. Just practicing.” Digger looked around again and made a hand gesture like one of the cops on NYPD Blue, which, along with dozens of other television programs, he mentioned he watched
religiously. He then took ten quick steps forward, stopped, and crouched again. Ernie didn’t follow.
Digger thought this indicated Ernie wasn’t familiar with his hand signals. “Guy, look,” Digger said as he scratched a sizable red rash on his leg. Ernie had noticed the rash the night before, but didn’t have the gall or the desire to ask about it. “When I do that, that means you follow after me. Come on, this is supposed to be fun, right?” Digger smiled as he said this.
Ernie took his kerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead
and the back of his neck. He walked up to where Digger was still crouching. “Look. Why don’t we have a beer or something?” They each had six packs of beer provided by DiGidio in the cooler section of
their packs which also held two packets of yellow paintballs and an extra air
compressor for their paintball guns, which each man carried like a soldier in
front of them.
Ernie put down his paintball gun and removed his backpack, dropping it on the
ground with a thud. Digger flinched, then recoiled. Ernie pulled a beer from his pack and opened it.
“Hey,” Digger said before Ernie could drink, “Mind if I borrow one of your beers? I don’t want to mess up my pack up yet. I’ll hit you down the road a bit. We’ll trade off.”
Ernie reluctantly handed him the already opened beer, then opened another one.
He didn’t want to tell his companion how to act—it was a vacation after all—but he wasn’t enjoying Digger’s youthful exuberance so far on the hunt. “It’s not like she doesn’t want us to find her, right? I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it?”
Digger, still crouching, looked up at Ernie—standing in his hunter’s garb in plain view—and shook his head. “If you have no imagination, that’s fine. I’m not going to teach you how to vacation.” He looked around suspiciously again. “I’m going to keep moving forward. I’ll catch you later, muchacho.”
With this, Digger took three large gulps of beer and started jogging off to
Ernie’s right. After about twenty yards, he planted hard on his right foot—exactly where Ernie had been standing before Digger made him pause—and cut directly forward. He was sprinting, holding his half-empty beer in one hand and his paintball gun
in the other. His backpack shook from side to side on his back as he ran.
Ernie was left behind, his things scattered on the soft floor of the woods, an
open beer in hand, out of pursuit. He was alone. And Digger had stolen one of his beers.
***
At first, the mahogany lockers and walls of the Cherry Hill Country Club seemed
an interesting and new place for Ernie. He enjoyed eating there, in his suit after work, watching the women in their
tennis outfits with towels slung loosely over their shoulders walking through
the parking lot, sometimes with children waggling at their sides. He even relished the older folks, men with gray hair and bulging stomachs that
drooped out of their sport coats eating filet mignon and drinking Gin and
Tonics with their blue-haired, over make-upped wives. Generally, he looked at these men as a potential projection of his future self,
the one with spoiled grandkids and a brand new golf bag every couple of years.
Even in the locker room—his most uncomfortable place at Cherry Hill due to those same gray-haired,
drooping-bellied men walking around naked like ancient Romans at a bath house—he felt okay, only because he saw how terrible those men were and thought of
ways he could improve himself once he arrived at their position. He’d still have a belly, but a smaller one, one that described him as serious and
well-kept, but likeable and laid-back, and without the incessant nudity. He’d eat right and remember how his eyes darted from the ceiling to the floor and
never in-between and wrap a towel around his waist on the way from his locker
to the shower and back.
In the beginning, his membership at Cherry Hill was something—another accessory, nothing life-changing—but something. Another accoutrement in his life, a life that seemed to be proceeding with
success and stability. He liked it. But he couldn’t golf.
His swing was skewed from the get-go, his palms sweaty on the rubber grips of
his custom-made Ping clubs, his feet too jumpy, too shaky, his balls skimming
off the immaculate grass in front of him and barreling forward like a
cannonball or shooting off to the rough and into the trees like missiles fired
at the wrong target. The golf pro there told him to keep working, but over two years, he still hadn’t broken a hundred. Instead of patience, his golfing demeanor slanted more towards wrath and his
scores only catapulted higher to the point where he became known as a
first-class hack by the other members of the club. Because of this, it was hard for him to find people to play with.
***
Alone now, Ernie continued and found bigger trees, no longer just evergreens
with prickly branches, but large, thick oaks that seemed to reach up to the sky
like his office building, like giant pillars. He figured these trees were where all the fallen leaves had originated and was
impressed they had traveled so far, all the way over to the start of the woods
near DiGidio’s cabin, where there were only evergreens. How, just a few weeks ago, all of those leaves had been blown off branches this
far away and floated over to a foreign place where they didn’t seem to belong at all, where they looked different from everything else,
settling down into the ground, making the soil so soft.
Ernie kept moving over the soft dead leaves further into the woods, when he
heard the faint sounds of moving water ahead of him. It was the brook DiGidio had mentioned. He moved towards the sound.
