One-legged Al and one-legged Ted shambled into the woodlands.
Daybreak was coming, and they wanted to make the deer blind before sun up. The titmice were echoing; the robins long gone. It had been a warm, dry season in northern Michigan.
When they arrived, Ted placed a bullet on the window ledge of the blind. “That’s all we’re gonna need,” he told Al. “Just one of them. Right there.”
Al gave a half-smile. “Sure hope so.”
Al had seen a big six-point buck the evening before around sunset. He had the beast in his sights. But he allowed it to sulk into the timber line. He didn’t want his hunt to be over in one day.
A truck driver by profession, Al hadn’t met many people since the accident on his rig that cost him his right leg. The other leg eventually gave way due to Al’s ample girth. He’d been home-ridden, wheelchair-bound, unable to do many of the old things that make a man’s life worth living.
Then he heard about Hunt 2 Heal, a nonprofit that supplies 100% free, and 100% accessible, hunting weekends for the disabled.
The feeling was too good to take the buck that evening, Al figured. The scent of mulch and pine. The warm breeze blowing from the northwest. The companionship of his guide Ted, another a one-legged former truck driver. This was more than a hunt for Al.
So here again was the buck this morning, wandering the cornfield with its nose held high, about 150 yards out. Al raised his rifle, aimed with his shooting eye afflicted with a blind spot. He fired. The beast buckled then bounced into the scrub.
Ted, with a good strong left leg and a stiff right prosthetic one, hobbled off to find it. But the buck wasn’t there. A sense of dread came over the hunters. It is unthinkable to leave a wounded beast in the woods.
Ted radioed Josh, the gamekeeper.
Josh was a rooster of a man. Bearded and tobacco-stained. He had four strong limbs and an abiding sense of nature. He saw a blood splatter in the carpet of dry, red oak leaves, then dropped to his knees and started to follow the tracks on all fours like some breed of bloodhound.
Cold and not of much help, Al and Ted rode back to the lodge to wait for word, not a right leg between them.
A quiet pallor permeated the lodge. Coffee was sipped. Oak logs hissed in the hearth.
Another couple was staying at the lodge. Rebecca introduced herself as Greg’s caregiver. Greg was out in the woods, hunting in the southern blind. Rebecca was Greg’s wife, but referred to herself as his caregiver.
Their marriage was better now, she said bluntly. There was a need and a reason for her in their union now. Before Greg’s cataclysm, there wasn’t. Now her purpose was Greg. Rebecca didn’t so much as bother with make-up anymore.
Their marriage was all but over five years ago. That’s when she jumped in the car and headed home toward Kansas. She was blocked by a blizzard in Des Moines, and she got herself a hotel room for the evening.
Greg had been calling frantically, and eventually Rebecca answered. As he pleaded with her to turn around and come home, Greg drove into a Mack truck.
“The Lord works His will,” Rebecca said. “I wouldn’t take any of it back, you know.”
And with that, Rebecca offered a pocket prayer book.
Minutes later, a call came in from the woods to Carson Nyenhuis, the creator of H2H, who was still lingering in bed.
Carson had come up with the idea of converting the family acreage into a disabled hunting lodge, after suffering his own catastrophic motorcycle accident. During those first few weeks laid-up in bed, with the ceiling drawing closer and closer, the epiphany came. Hunt to heal.
Carson answered the phone. His legs were spasming uncontrollably, as they do most mornings, like a cricket on a griddle.
It was Josh. He asked Carson to bring a pistol. The buck was still alive in the undergrowth. Carson massaged his legs into submission, pulled up his trousers, lifted himself with great effort into the electric wheelchair, retrieved his gun, and rolled out into the woods.
The buck was healthy, perhaps 2 ½ years old, not quite dark in the pelt. Seven points, not six. It was a fine, handsome animal. Josh put it down with a bullet behind the ear. Then he called Ted up at the lodge.
The group arrived in an oversized golf-cart fitted with a wheelchair lift. There were Ted and Al and Al’s wife Lora, who chastised Al for his marksmanship. There were Randy, the cook, and Jim, the guide who’d once broke his back.
Al surveyed the buck from his wheelchair and smiled bittersweetly. “I’m sad it’s over.”
Then again, there will be nice venison for Thanksgiving. And memories to remind a busted man that he is still a man. And that there is a good woman beside him to help him be a better man. And that’s how it goes in the woodlands of Michigan.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools.
