Kansas

I stepped out into the clean thin air at the Denver Airport. The sun’s rays seeped into my clothes and warmed my skin. The sky in front of me was sprinkled with small clouds, which floated above hills and mountaintops. I was excited to be in a new and beautiful place. I had never seen mountains so large or beautiful.

Together, my father and I had three large items of luggage. One bag for our clothes and shoes. The other two for the guns: my muzzleloader and my father’s 20 gauge. After two years of waiting, I had been approved for a permit to hunt mule deer in Kansas. We were going to drive from Colorado to Kansas. We stacked our bags in the shuttle to go get our rental car, a bright red Dodge truck. After packing our things tightly in the small cab of the truck, my father put an unfamiliar address into the GPS and we pulled out of the lot.

The drive from Denver to McCracken, Kansas took about three hours. Out the window the mountains sat solid on the horizon, squeezed in next to one another, crowding the land. Their jagged edges appeared smooth and fluid from such a distance. Despite the beating late summer sun, they were capped with snow. Towards the base of the mountains, trees sprouted up and the landscape became less varied; no more rocks and snow and sharp plummeting faces--just thick green forest. The mountains were breathtaking by any measure.

As we drove, the mountains turned to valleys and hills, rushing by in a haze of deep green grass and blue alfalfa. Hills became occasional lumps on the ground. Land around me slowly became less appealing and increasingly sad. The land and sky met at a point beyond my view. The fields that lined either side of the highway were covered in corn or tall grass or milo. The ground had begun to dry as we passed the Colorado-Kansas state line. Along with the corn, the grass stood somewhat tall, causing the world around me to seem a little less flat.  But the milo had been harvested and cut short with pointed, hardened stalks. The field pushed till the end of the sky and my heart longed for some finality in the horizon. I stared out the window passing by identical fields scattered with the occasional oil drill. A tenseness crept into my throat and chest as we drove farther into the dismal farmland; despite the open empty fields, I felt trapped.

Every once in awhile a town would pop up. A few buildings congregated around a water tower and field on each side. The siding of the houses was usually falling off or moldy. Yards were gray and the grass was cut short, often littered with faded plastic slides and children's toys.

For the first time in miles we drove up a hill and by a reservoir. My heart jumped as I opened the window to breathe in the damp fresh air coming off the water. The sun bounced off the ripples that the wind made on the surface. On the other side of the water were a few trees. I smiled as I gazed upon the reservoir, uncharacteristic of the dry brown land--an oasis. But soon enough the reservoir was gone and the land was dry again. The Hudson River and the valleys of New York, of home, seemed painfully far away.

We drove a while longer. The landscape repeated itself over and over: brown, dry, flat, brown, dry, flat, small town, water tower, brown, dry, flat. The deeper we got into Kansas and the closer we got to our destination, the fewer little towns we saw. Instead, there were small wooden shacks. “They are condemned,” my father told me, “someone was probably making meth in them at one point… or probably still is.”

I pictured a man standing inside the disheveled structure, his face wrinkled and skin dotted with moles. He was bent over stained lab equipment measuring and pouring different substances into a beaker. There were small gaps in the gray splintery wood through which a sharp stream of cool sun might offer a light for this man to work by.

I shook the image out of my head and looked at the town approaching me. We turned onto the main street, which was unnecessarily wide. The road could have comfortably fit three cars side by side but it was empty. There was a gas station and a hardware store and a few other buildings whose windows were broken and the walls falling down. At the end of the street we took a left down a dirt road to our final destination and pulled into the driveway of a decent sized house with a large garage.

We were met by large a man with a face as red as our truck and a smile wider than his belly. He hugged my father and looked at me and shook my hand and introduced himself as Shawn. He said to my dad,  “You got a beautiful girl here. Let’s she if she can shoot.” 

I was offered a beer, which I refused, as my father went to set up a target about 100 yards out from where we stood. Before I could load my gun, another man, just as happy and red as Shawn but larger, hugged me and told me he hadn't seen me since I was a baby. I don’t remember his name.

After some catching up between my father and the other men, they urged me to practice. So I did. I have been hunting and shooting for most of my life so naturally I am a decent shot. But given that shooting is a male dominated activity, I was used to my abilities being doubted. When my shots were on target and consistent, Shawn and the other man, to say the least, were surprised. They looked at each other, raising their eyebrows approvingly. The other man laughed as he told my father, “I wish my son could shoot as good as that,” something I was used to hearing. I was congratulated by a rather overzealous slap on the back from Shawn and another offer of a beer, which I again refused. 

We soon left Shawn's house to go and get settled at the place where we would be staying for the next few days. Our truck rumbled up the empty road to a quaint Victorian house with a screened-in porch. Some of the houses around were similar while other mobile homes squeezed themselves in between the yards of more permanent structures. No one was outside. Cars sat in the driveways of homes but there was no noise or movement. Shades were drawn and lights were off. I felt eyes staring upon me without ever seeing a face. I felt as if I were being judged without even knowing who was judging me.

Inside we got settled. I brought my things to my room, which was in the corner of the house. I quickly changed into my hunting clothes, putting on camo and clunky hiking boots. I met my dad in the kitchen for a quick snack, then we were out the door again. As I walked to the truck, I again felt as if the entire world were observing me from behind curtains, whispering and commenting on every aspect of my person. I was somewhat excited to hunt and shoot a deer but more than that, I wanted to go home and never return to Kansas ever again. At the very least, I wanted to go back into the house and hide, but I needed to shoot a deer because I knew my father would make me come back every year until I did.

We got to Shawn’s and immediately went out to hunt. We drove up along the same flat land as he talked to my father. I sat quietly in the back, watching the fields lament out my window. I slouched deeper into my seat, scanning the fields while letting my mind wander. We would drive to one field and look. And another and look, keeping our eyes peeled for brown antlers, which would peek out of the corn, or a brown body on the tall grass. We saw nothing.

The air got cooler and the sky turned into a pink and orange swirl sprinkled with thin clouds. As the darkness rolled in, the edge of each field seemed closer to my eyes and I began to relax. In the dark, the world seemed closer to me. We ate dinner with Shawn and went home.

That night I refused to sleep alone. At fifteen years old I insisted on tucking myself into bed with my father. The people in the houses around me could see through the walls and into my dreams. When I fell asleep I dreamt about the man in the condemned house, but instead of making meth he was making a cake. It was gray and blue and decorated with mold and black dots of frosting. I woke up to an alarm, my throat was dry and I could feel my pulse coursing through me. I tried to shake off the dream but I couldn't rid myself of the hollow feeling it left me with. 

The second day was the same. Driving and looking and sometimes sitting and waiting, still seeing nothing. We were driving along and suddenly Shawn slammed on the breaks. He told me to cock my gun and follow him. We both saw the deer in the distance--the largest deer I had ever seen in my life. His body resembled that of a small horse, well fed but strong. His antlers twisted up well above the tops of the corn. My heart raced and hands shook.

He was on top of a small hill about 230 yards away: I am a good shot but not that good a shot. Shawn told me to go ahead of him. My knees felt weak from excitement as I tiptoed through the dry corn stalks, stopping every few moments to make sure I had not alarmed my target.  Every step was crucial. The yardage finder read 198 yards; I would have to aim steadily, shoot through rows and rows of tall corn, and account for his being on a hill. I wasn't that good. Then the wind picked up. I heard it come up beneath me and rustle through the dried stalks and flow through the fibers of my jacket. It pushed my smell up to the nostrils of the buck and alerted him. A shot was out of the question. Even if I hit him, I would likely wound him and end up with nothing. I watched his brown-gray coat glint against the sun as he bobbed up and down through the corn. My chest became hollow as I realized that the odds of seeing that deer again were slim to none. 

I dragged my feet against the dirt through the rows of hard stalk. I stepped over some barbed wire and back into Shawn's truck.

“Fuck, that would have been a record breaker,” my dad sighed.

“Brother I know. I seen you shoot, Willa, you coulda made it. Woulda been a good’un for sure. Shit, I’d adopt you if you shot that fuckin’ buck. Proud father I’d be.” Shawn rambled on about the last few big deer they’d seen there while we drove.

We continued for the rest of the day, trying to find a deer for me, with no luck. As we drove home the sun was sinking below the hill in front of me, painting the sky in orange and pink, clouds again swirling with the wind.

There were two days left of the trip so we hunted hard the next day. We woke up early and drove. The long empty dirt roads wound around the plain fields and towards the horizon. The road took a sharp turn and pulled us into a wooded area. Green trees absorbed the sun and created deep shadows below them. As the wind fluttered through the leaves the sunlight flickered past them and onto the tree trunks and onto the grass covered ground. We pulled through the forest and into a field of green. As I looked out the window, I saw that the field was completely covered in wild growing marijuana. In the middle of the field was another rundown shack. You could see inside: walls covered in vines and spray paint. Into my mind flashed the man, his skin grayer than before; this time he smiled at me a toothless and demented grin.

“Smells like college,” my father snapped me out of my thoughts.

The rest of the day we saw more dry grass and brown flat fields. We drove a few towns over to get lunch and then headed back out. It was the same thing. The land flowed by me without interruption and without a deer. It was getting dark and cool. My eyes drifted towards the other horizon where blue turned to a deep indigo. I felt the pressure of time getting to me. With only one more full day to hunt, missing the opportunity at the first deer stung even more. I just wanted to get my deer and get out. 

As we headed back to the house, the land slowly began to rise into a hill. A fence surrounded an old house, likely abandoned like many of the others. Paint was peeling and door hinges falling off but it was far from a shack. It had two stories and a porch with tiered molding. Three deer bounded out from behind it.

“Shawn, stop. Look at that buck,” I said after spotting a buck among the three deer. I got out and quietly cocked my gun. Shawn whispered to me as I shut the door, that the one buck in the group was a 135 yard shot. I rested my gun on the bed of the truck and looked through the scope. The wind was coming from my left and the shot was far so I adjusted up and to the left to accommodate the wind and distance, aiming about three to five inches from the shoulder blade. I couldn’t miss. I wanted to shoot this deer and be done. Behind the body of the buck I could see the green of the long grass. Small bugs danced around his large dark eyes. The air was beginning to cool and steam was wafting from his nostrils with each breath. As I lined up my crosshairs I saw the rise and fall of his chest.

He flinched when I pulled the trigger, then dropped to the ground. The deer around mine scattered over the hill and past the fence surrounding the house. My father jumped out of the passenger door and wrapped me up in a hug. We smiled at each other, knowing that we had something to show for our trip. “What a shot Willa, I mean… I’m proud.” My hands were shaking as were my legs, and my face was painted with an unwavering grin. I was glad because he was proud but happier because I was done with Kansas forever.

I heard the grass brush against my boots. Crickets silenced as my father and I drew closer. I approached my buck, which lay twitching on the ground in front of me. An intense feeling of shame overtook me as I realized my shot had not been accurate enough to kill him immediately. His nostrils flared as he sucked air into his collapsing lungs. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth, wetting the dead grass. His dark eyes were frantic and circled in blood. I reloaded the gun and cocked it. With the cold steel barrel placed on his neck, I pulled the trigger.