Where I'm Calling From

the lobby of a bank.
    Of the other two, one was considerably the older, with a full head of curly gray hair. He was smoking.
    The third, though not so old, was nearly bald on top, but the hair at the sides hung over his ears. He had on logging boots, pants shiny with machine oil.
    The barber put a hand on top of my head to turn me for a better look. Then he said to the guard, “Did you get your deer, Charles?”
    I liked this barber. We weren’t acquainted well enough to call each other by name. But when I came in for a haircut, he knew me. He knew I used to fish. So we’d talk fishing. I don’t think he hunted. But he could talk on any subject. In this regard, he was a good barber.
    “Bill, it’s a funny story. The damnedest thing,” the guard said. He took out the toothpick and laid it in the ashtray. He shook his head. “I did and I didn’t. So yes and no to your question.”
    I didn’t like the man’s voice. For a guard, the voice didn’t fit. It wasn’t the voice you’d expect.
    The two other men looked up. The older man was turning the pages of a magazine, smoking, and the other fellow was holding a newspaper. They put down what they were looking at and turned to listen to the guard.
    “Go on, Charles,” the barber said. “Let’s hear it.” The barber turned my head again, and went back to work with his clippers.
    We were up on Fikle Ridge. My old man and me and the kid. We were hunting those draws. My old man was stationed at the head of one, and me and the kid were at the head of another. The kid had a hangover, goddamn his hide. The kid, he was green around the gills and drank water all day, mine and his both. It was in the afternoon and we’d been out since daybreak. But we had our hopes. We figured the hunters down below would move a deer in our direction. So we were sitting behind a log and watching the draw when we heard this shooting down in the valley.”
    “There’s orchards down there,” said the fellow with the newspaper. He was fidgeting a lot and kept crossing a leg, swinging his boot for a time, and then crossing his legs the other way. “Those deer hang out around those orchards.”
    “That’s right,” said the guard. “They’ll go in there at night, the bastards, and eat those little green apples.
    Well, we heard this shooting and we’re just sitting there on our hands when this big old buck comes up out of the underbrush not a hundred feet away. The kid sees him the same time I do, of course, and he throws down and starts banging. The knothead. That old buck wasn’t in any danger. Not from the kid, as it turns out. But he can’t tell where the shots are coming from. He doesn’t know which way to jump.
    Then I get off a shot. But in all the commotion, I just stun him.”
    “Stunned him?” the barber said.
    “You know, stun him,” the guard said. “It was a gut shot. It just like stuns him. So he drops his head and begins this trembling. He trembles all over. The kid’s still shooting. Me, I felt like I was back in Korea.
    So I shot again but missed. Then old Mr. Buck moves back into the brush. But now, by God, he doesn’t have any oompf left in him. The kid has emptied his goddamn gun all to no purpose. But I hit solid. I’d rammed one right in his guts. That’s what I meant by stunned him.”
    “Then what?” said the fellow with the newspaper, who had rolled it and was tapping it against his knee. “Then what? You must have trailed him. They find a hard place to die every time.” “But you trailed him?” the older man asked, though it wasn’t really a question.
    “I did. Me and the kid, we trailed him. But the kid wasn’t good for much. He gets sick on the trail, slows us down. That chucklehead.” The guard had to laugh now, thinking about that situation. “Drinking beer and chasing all night, then saying he can hunt deer. He knows better now, by God. But, sure, we trailed him. A good trail, too. Blood on the ground and blood on the leaves. Blood everywhere. Never seen a buck with so much blood. I don’t know how the sucker kept going.”
    “Sometimes they’ll go forever,” the fellow with the newspaper said. “They find them a hard place to die every time.”
    “I chewed the kid out for missing his shot, and when he smarted off at me, I cuffed him a good one.
    Right here.” The guard pointed to the side of his head and grinned. “I boxed his goddamn ears for him, that goddamn kid. He’s not too old. He needed it. So the point is,