A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
Here was a false thing: the way he had to follow Robert along the tramped-down path through the back field and the birchwoods that he'd walked countless times, as if Robert alone knew the way. As if Robert was Clark, or Jonathan. Or Revere himself. Bossy, important. Commanding Swan over his shoulder, “C'mon. This way. And keep your eyes open.”
Swan did as Robert said. For here he was hunting. Carrying his heavy rifle the way Robert carried his, barrel slanted toward the ground. As Revere had taught them.
Hunting: it was playing at being a man, mostly. Hunting was what men did, older boys and men. Swan tried to think that this was something he wanted, this was good; Clara was always pleased, when one of his brothers invited him to come along with them, or even spoke kindly to him.
Little bastard. Pisspot. Mamma's baby Swan-Swan were words of Jonathan's muttered out of the side of his mouth that Clara did not hear. Swan tried not to hear them, either.
Now Robert was saying, in an undertone, “C'mon, Steve! You're so damn slow, I'm gonna piss my pants.” It was a senseless remark, like most remarks uttered by the boys. Yet you had to smile, sometimes you had to laugh. It was what you did.
Robert was keeping up a fast pace, it seemed just to make Swan stumble. If Clark and Jonathan had been there, Robert would have fallen behind, too. It was all a game, Swan hated it. It was boring. But it was dangerous, too. He dreaded the rifle going off. Robert could raise his rifle barrel at any time, and shoot. Revere had said that no firearm ever caused injury to any hunter, only careless huntsmanship. Swan shaped that word with his mouth, cautiously: huntsmanship. You walked with the barrel lowered, and your head raised. A hunter is always alert. A hunter doesn't talk any more than he needs to talk. A hunter keeps his eyes open.
Revere had taken Swan out target shooting three times. He'd never taken Swan hunting for he had no time now for hunting, he said with regret. Revere had positioned the rifle in Swan's arms, the stock against Swan's thin shoulder. The barrel was so heavy, Swan had trouble keeping it erect. And the stock against his shoulder was loose. Revere warned him only once that the kick would “hurt like hell” if the stock wasn't snug against his shoulder but he had not repeated the warning and so when Swan pulled the trigger, the recoil felt like a horse's kick, making him cry out in pain.
Revere had said, See what I told you, son.
For there was never anything that Revere told Swan that was not crucial for him to know. Even if Revere told Swan only just once.
How to position the rifle, and how to sight along the barrel, through the scope; how to bring his trembling finger against the trigger; how to breathe, in and out and in and out and on the expulsion of breath to press the trigger.
Press, not jerk.
And don't shut your eyes.
“Steven. Open your eyes.”
That was childish behavior, shutting your eyes. Stupid behavior. Swan knew, and was ashamed.
Hours of tramping in the back fields, in the woods. In the marshy soil by the creek. Gnats had gathered on Swan's sticky face, his eyelids and lips. He was out of breath, trying to keep up with Robert. “C'mon! There's some damn old vultures by the creek,” Robert was saying, over his shoulder to Swan, crouched, like the two were in a war movie, “I like to puked seeing them picking apart I guess it was a raccoon or something, that'd died, a few days ago.”
Swan remembered that Revere had told them not to shoot vultures, only just hawks. Chicken hawks. Weren't vultures scavengers, and necessary? A scavenger was a creature that fed upon the dead, and helped keep the earth clean.
Homo sapiens was the name of man. Mankind. In the book about animals Swan was reading, there was little mention of Homo sapiens. If there was a reason for Homo species on Earth, it was not stated.
Swan wished that Robert would decide to stop hunting and turn back. So far they had sighted nothing except perching birds, and not pheasants. But Swan could not be the one to suggest that they quit. If he did, Robert would tease him. Robert would tell Jonathan, and Jonathan would tease him. Baby Swan-Swan oh how's Mamma's big baby!
He would hide away in the hay barn reading for the rest of the day. When he finished one book, he began another; when he finished that book, he began another; but when he finished that book, he returned to the first, not wanting to forget it. So he was always reading, and rereading. It was a comfort to him. The book he was reading now was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which he could not decide was real, or made up. Also he was reading The Call of the Wild and Klondike Tales by Jack London, his favorite books. The pages were bent and soiled from Jonathan, who'd read these books before Swan. Jon had a nervous habit of picking his nose and wiping it on his hands, or on the pages of books, soiling them. Swan was disgusted by such a habit yet hadn't any choice except to read the books.
Now Robert was saying, over his shoulder, “Your ma was teasing Clark about that Siefried girl, how come your ma doesn't get mad—doesn't she care?” Swan hadn't been paying much attention to Robert when he talked like this, rambling, vaguely complaining, or bemused; when they were alone together, Robert confided in Swan, as he would not have otherwise. Swan's silence, his way of turning things over carefully in his mind, drew Robert out. “Our ma was lots different. She'd tell us there was something bad about it. But your ma—”
Lately, when they were alone together, Robert had begun to talk to Swan about his mother. Swan thought of this vanished woman as the mother-who-was-dead. Mostly, no one spoke of her in his and Clara's hearing, ever. When Robert got in such a mood, Swan said very little. Robert sometimes talked, too, about their father: his words for Revere were he, him. Always when Robert's tone became aggrieved and wondering, the subject was Revere.
“See, he never hit you yet. He's hit me lots of times. Not to hurt, just to—” Robert wiped his face, frowning. Then he grinned. “Jon's got it worse, lots of times. Before you and your ma came here. 'Cause of Jon's ‘smart mouth,' he calls it. And Clark! Yeah, he's hit Clark. Once I saw Clark bawl.” Robert laughed, and Swan saw the flash of the boy's front teeth: a rodent's teeth, a squirrel or a rabbit, some creature they might be going to shoot this morning.
Robert seemed to be asking Swan something, but what? He hated tramping like this, dragging this heavy gun. Wished to Christ he could toss it into the creek and be done with it. Run back home to the hay barn, to his hideaway.
Robert said, wistfully, “You're real lucky, Steve. I seen him sometimes, the way he looks at you.”
Swan knew: all that Revere wished for him to learn was important, and he would learn it. For it was just the beginning of what would make him different. Clara was always saying Learn from him, from all of them. All that you can, learn.
When Swan had said he didn't want to kill anything, not pheasants, not rabbits, not deer, he hated even target practice in the pasture behind the barns, Clara had pressed her forefinger hard over his lips. She'd shaken her head, sternly.
So Swan knew: he must learn hunting, if only to move beyond it.
He would learn, and he would grow up as quickly as possible so that he wasn't weak, and his brothers couldn't boss him around. He would be a man like Revere. He would learn more than his brothers would learn for he would work harder, and he was smarter. Clara laughed with him in secret, yes he was smarter.
Smarter than the lot of them. “Reveres.”
One day, you will surpass them.
It was one of Clara's new words: surpass. Where she'd gotten it from, a radio program, an article in the Sunday newspaper, or Judd, Swan did not know. But he felt the thrill of it: surpass.
Tramping through the pasture, at the edge of the woods, Robert led the way yet spoke to Swan over his shoulder, constantly turning around in his crouch, as no serious hunter would do; as no adult man would do. More and more he was talking, in that way of bafflement and bemusement as if he were thinking aloud. Swan hoped that Robert would talk loud enough to scare away game. Turkey vultures, that were not shy birds, could be scared away by loud-enough
“D'you like them? Those Fluvey girls? ‘Lynette Fluvey'—that's her name? On the bus, she's always sittin up by the driver like she's flirting with him—”
Swan, swatting at gnats and mosquitoes, made no reply.
Damn he hated this! Trying not to think about shot birds, shot “game.” That mess of bass the boys brought back from the river, perfectly round wide-open staring eyes your own face could be reflected in, if you got that close—something you would not want to do. And the white paper-thin flesh at the mouth torn by the hook … And the pheasants and the chickens, their own chickens, dead and ready to be picked of their feathers, with that warm sickening odor rising about them as Mandy worked, whistling. The guts in the bucket. They put the chickens in the oven and browned them some and there they were, right on the Sunday table with its white tablecloth and the candlesticks Clara had bought in Hamilton, everything clean and fancy—and in the middle of it the dead chicken, roasted. Out came their guts, which were changed for stuffing now and spiced up, and their hearts and liver and gizzard and whatnot, and everyone's mouth watered.
Swan spat sideways, like a man. He tasted something ugly in his mouth.
And sometimes it wasn't all the way roasted but would be red and run red, thin trickles of watery blood that got into your potatoes. When they had steaks it did that sometimes. Revere ate that blood, picked the soft helpless meat up on a fork and ate it, and so did Clara, whose teeth could eat anything, and all the boys, who were always hungry, and anyone who was a guest. Only Swan sat there alone and stared and felt his stomach turning over, getting itself ready for what was coming. In his mouth the strands of meat were each vivid and clear; the patches of gristle, fat, muscle, stray flecks of bone. It was all real and all alive. Clara had said, shivering, “What if the heart comes alive and starts beating in your mouth?” and they had all laughed, even Revere had laughed a little. Only Swan had sat there staring as Clark ate the heart. Of course he might be crazy and he had better shut up about it. Clara had told him that.
But …
But if he had to kill something he would do it and get it over with. He was ready. He would never be more ready. If a bird flew up he might as well shoot, he could close his eyes at the last moment. He would let Robert tell him what to do. And Revere had already told him. So when he pulled the trigger it would not really be he himself who did it, but his father or Robert, someone else.
“You think it hurts them awful much, to get shot?” Swan said.
“They don't feel nothing.”
“Should you shoot more than once?”
“I'll tell you everything to do,” Robert said, embarrassed. He was maybe unused to all this—this questioning and talk about what he had done for years without thinking about. He kept glancing over his shoulder, back into the woods, as if he hoped Jonathan or someone was running to catch up with them. At first they had walked stiffly, alertly, but as time went on they began to relax. Swan thought that maybe nothing would happen after all. It could be put off to another day. Around them everything was quiet except for the high invisible birds and the insects, invisible all around them. Swan liked the woods. He liked the sunlight falling sideways, breaking up into patches, showing the moss and the mossy fallen logs as if picking them out just to be shown—things you might miss if you didn't look carefully. Robert walked right through some wood violets. His feet left marks on the humps of moss and broke down weed flowers, and he did not bother to notice how everything smelled: the end of summer, the beginning of fall, with hot winds coming up from the lower valley, rushing up the slopes toward the mountains and unloading on them the rich complex odors of sun-blasted weeds and clover and sweet peas. Swan liked all this. When they came out to the edge of the woods they could look back and down, they could almost see the house and the barns off there in the distance a few miles away—but maybe they weren't seeing them at all, only imagining. It was hot now, outside the cool of the woods. “Christ,” Robert said, wiping his forehead. “Everything is sleeping and hid. They know enough to stay out of sight when it's hot.” He whispered. Swan liked that; he liked the thought of the birds and animals sleeping, hidden, smart enough to stay out of sight.
Suddenly there was a sharp crack!—Robert had raised his rifle, and fired. The shock of the sound reverberated through Swan, he felt it like pain.
“Damn dirty old vulture. Lookit the bastard!”
The enormous black-winged bird had fallen from the crook of a tree about twenty feet away, and was now flapping and struggling in the underbrush. It was emitting high-pitched bleats like those of a car, a lamb, a human baby. “How d'ya like it! Nasty old thing!” Robert was pushing through the underbrush to get a second shot. Swan backed off, feeling sick. He was hoping he wouldn't vomit. Robert fired again, chortling, “Holy Christ lookit the mess. Guts.” A wildness seemed to have come into Robert, of a kind Swan had never seen in his brother before.
Swan turned to run blindly away. He crouched in the woods beneath tall evergreens, on a grassless needle-strewn earth out of which numerous toadstools had grown. He forced himself to stare at these: cool pale gray perfectly shaped toadstools. These, too, were living things. Poisonous, he'd been warned. You could break off a small piece of a toadstool, chew and swallow. And then?
Robert was calling him. “Steve? Hey—”
Swan remained crouching, hidden. Not far away in the underbrush there was a crashing sound. White-tailed deer fleeing in panic.
“Don't let him shoot the deer. Please, God.”
Robert caught up with Swan, breathing quickly. Swan cringed as if expecting Robert to shoot him.
But Robert said, almost somberly, “Hey. We don't need to tell him about this, O.K.? That it was a vulture.”
Swan nodded quickly. Though he knew who him was, and guessed that him knew everything his sons did, somehow.
Robert said, “He ain't gonna find it, he'd never come here. Anyway it's some old garbage bird. Who cares!”
Overhead in the trees smaller birds were calling frantically to one another. Jays, starlings. Cardinals. Possibly they understood that something had been killed, shot out of the air. One of their own, though a gigantic creature with a wingspread of seventy inches.
Swan said shyly, “You picked it off real good. The first shot.”
“Yeah! Guess I did.” Robert wiped his face on his sleeve, pleased. The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of shooting a defenseless creature, was still in his face that glowed, Swan was thinking, like a balloon face. “Fucker's so big, it'd be hard to miss. Hate 'em!”
Robert spat sideways, like a man.
Swan wanted to ask could they stop now? But Robert was fussing with his rifle. That look in his face, Swan knew there was more hunting to come. The turkey vulture was just the beginning.
“Next time, you take the first shot, Steve. You got to, sometime.”
This was intended as a kindness. The way boys poked one another in the arm, not to hurt but to make contact.
They walked on. Swan's head had begun to ache. The rifle was damn heavy, no matter it was a handsome gleaming weapon of which Swan should have been proud. His arms pulled at their sockets. Gnats, mosquitoes. Crossing a meadow and the sun blasted them. Swan's eyes ached as a flurry of dragonflies sped before them gleaming and glittering like bullets, and he was sleepy in his feet drifting into that certain mood of his thinking it would be best to hide here in this wild heat-drenched place where except for Robert no one knew who he was. If he could hide here, like a wild creature in the woods. If nobody knew his name. He would surrender even his books that he loved, if he could escape those adults who knew him as Swan, and as Steven. As soon as they left the woods, there were foothills in the near distance, and beyond these hills the mountains, covered in dense evergreens with stands of white birches here and there. The vast sweep of land was a comfort. Even hunters' loud voices and gunfire could make little impact. Any sudden noise, it was immediately forgotten. Swan smiled to think that the land was something th
“Steve? See the hawk?”
A hawk, circling above. Another hawk. And still another.
Often you saw them, chicken hawks like these, circling in slow lazy sweeps, not one but several. The hawks were hunting, so maybe it wasn't wrong to hunt them.
Sometimes they killed barnyard fowl. They'd been known to attack barn kittens. Any small creature, hawks could prey upon. So maybe it was a right thing, a rational thing, to shoot them out of the sky.
Robert was urging, “C'mon, try! That one's an easy shot.”
Swan lifted the rifle blindly. He hardly sighted along the barrel, sweat was making his eyes sting. His finger groped for the trigger and as Robert urged him on, excited, impatient, he breathed deeply but pulled the trigger on the intake of breath, and the crack! of the rifle tore at his head, and the stock of the rifle kicked his damn shoulder hard as a horse. Swan whimpered in pain, opening his eyes to see the hawks still circling, unperturbed.
Now Robert tried, but missed. Running after the hawks, not watching where he was going, rifle barrel uplifted, he fired another shot, and still another. “Shit! Goddamn fuckers.”
The hawks were gone. No more lazy swooping, they'd disappeared from view within seconds.
Swan said hesitantly, “We can try again, Robert. Tomorrow.”
“Fuck tomorrow! You fucked up. You made us miss.”
Sullenly Swan murmured, “I did not.”
“You did ! Fucking baby.” Robert shouted at him, red-faced with an adult, mysterious fury. Swan stared at his brother thinking that Robert hated him, and he'd always thought that Robert had liked him.
At least, hunting seemed to be finished for the day.