A Gay Man Goes Hunting
The Bear and the Slaughterhouse Boy
Jack’s shoulders finally relaxed — just a little — as he put the truck into gear and gravel crunched under his tires. Lingering fear tinged with a fetid whisper of rancid animal fat gave way to the soft, clean, familiar perfume of autumnal forest.
He couldn’t see a damn thing!
He shuddered, deciding his boyfriend had been right. What a stupid idea this trip was. Jack could picture his cozy apartment back in NYC, Greg putting on classical music and sipping a nice Bordeaux. He could hear Greg’s nagging voice. “Are kidding me? A hunting trip in the wilderness is just another exercise in masculine vanity for you. Aren’t you ever going to grow out of that?”
Jack gunned the gas, squealing onto the dirt road, headlights throwing streaks of yellow onto ruts bordered by impossibly tall trees. No moonlight could spill through the virgin forest he had to navigate to find his way back to his shabby motel at the Crossroads.
Those people he’d just left! Damn! Surely they didn’t live in that — whatever-the-hell — Shack? Shed? Slaughterhouse?
He’d had a hell of a time finding the shack in the first place. GPS didn’t know about half the roads out here. Searching for the butcher, he hadn’t spotted a single light. No moon, no warm-kitchen glows. No harsh blue-steel security warnings. Nothing. He might as well have been threading though abandoned mineshafts with a flickering candle for company.
So now he sped away too fast, desperate to be gone. Right before the sickening meat-thump, right before Jack realized he’d slammed a kid into the ditch, his thoughts wandered back to his chrome-bright Manhattan kitchen, a world away.
“Jack, phone!” hollered Greg.
“Heya, Dad, what’s up?” mumbled Jack into the receiver, wiping his hands clean of the sushi rice he’d been rolling.
“I’m on pins and needles. Forget what today is? I’ve been expecting a call.”
“Call, what…, um … Happy birth… No! That was last month. I flew up for it!”
“Whoa, slow down there, son. I’m talking about the bear hunt. You haven’t checked the DNR site yet? Lottery was today. After five years … you finally GOT your tag!”
That had set the agenda for the summer. No way was Jack not going to use the bear license he’d won. To huge eyerolls from Greg, he spent weekends at the range waking up his dormant rifle skills, coming home stinking of gunpowder and nervous sweat.
Greg wasn’t mean about it, but he didn’t get it. “Come on, man. You’re a total city mouse. Bagging a good deal on a bottle of French red is about as hunter-gatherer as you get. And food? Two weeks of blue plate specials instead of sushi and French bistro? You’ll waste away, Miss Thing.”
Jack squinted and shrugged. Grunted, “I’ll manage.”
“Ha! You can barely “manage” the food in P-Town off season after all the decent chefs fly home.”
“Look, I was raised out there in the country, remember? I had a pet coon when I was nine. I said I’ll manage.”
“Huh, you say so. Just don’t take your Armani, baby.”
“It’s for my dad, OK? He lives for this shit. He’s already got a guy scouting for us. I haven’t seen him this geeked since I was a kid and he was playing Santa. Just let me do this in peace, please?”
But now Jack was pulling away from the slaughterhouse alone. No Dad. The old man was flat on his back, laid out with an infection. He’d insisted that Jack take the rusted work truck and rattle the 12 hours up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the ancient Crossroads Inn, where no cell phone signal could penetrate.
Thump!
The steering wheel shook Jack hard. He hadn’t even noticed the small figure, a blur of color streaking through the midnight forest, until he tumbled into the ditch.
On the long drive up to the Crossroads, Jack chatted in brief phone snatches with his boyfriend, who’d resigned himself to supportive boredom. Jack didn’t mind Greg’s lack of enthusiasm; bright autumn sunshine made him cheerful and ready to share. “You’d never BELIEVE all this, Greg. I didn’t know so much total wilderness was LEFT up here. I haven’t passed a town or a house in over an hour. Hell, I haven’t see a car in like 20 minutes.”
“Don’t break down, then.”
“I know, right? And don’t get off the main roads. I mean, seriously, nobody fucking lives up here. Hey, honey, maybe you and I can come back one day with a tent and have a romantic … you know? Don’t laugh!”
…
“Greg? Greg?” Jack sighed. No signal.
An hour later, bouncing through potholes in the parking lot of the crumbling hunting lodge that was the Crossroads Inn, Jack still had no signal. Great, he thought, a week with no phone, plus I’m apparently staying at the Bates Motel.
He checked in fast and picked up the rotary payphone at the bar. He glanced around at faded forest murals, mounted animal heads, and barstools covered in cracking red vinyl. He wondered briefly why the enormous granite hearth was cold. Why no crackling flames welcoming crowds in from the chilly air? Where were the hunters, loggers, miners, and their families who must once have filled this cavern of a room with warmth and cheer? Only a bustling trade could have paid for all this dusty stone and oak.
He shook his head and dropped some quarters in the slot, wondering how anyone lived without cell service.
“Hello, Glen? Glen Miller?”
“Speakin. Who’s this, then?”
“Jack, Mr. Miller. My dad found you on the Net. I just made it to the Crossroads.”
“Huh. Good. Too late to set up tonight. Take them directions I emailed and you stop by after breakfast. We’ll get you ready for tomorrow night.”
The next morning found Jack jostling in the cab of the gaunt septuagenarian’s pickup, rattling just a couple miles down the road to where the guide had chosen a forest clearing.
“Been doing this long?” asked Jack, trying for small talk.
“Long? Yup,” agreed the grizzled farmer, not meeting Jack’s gaze.
“Like it?”
This time the old man just flinched, like someone had threatened him, so Jack gave up.
They slipped through dewy cedar forest, the old man pointing out the faint game trail Jack would have to follow later — on his own. Finally, the man started to speak, in clipped words. “I come down here every day ’bout dawn. Just before. Put them donuts — jelly donuts — under them logs there. See em? You climb up and tie your stand right up into that tree. Right there.”
Jack stared at the tree. Bare cedar from the ground up to the first branches at about 20 feet. The baited logs were a good 25 feet from the tree. Perfect.
The old man kept talking, voice a cracked reed. “You get up in that tree round bout two, three in the PM, hear? You climb on up and you wait for that sun to start to sink and you wait for that bear. He comes in, you wait til he’s real busy with them donuts, then you do your business, hear?”
What you just began reading is fiction, though loosely based on a real hunting trip I took a few years ago. There’s more to come, but this is a long short story, not a novel, so not too much more. I should specify that only the story’s beginning is based on a real hunting trip. The end? Woo! I sure hope not. I’ll leave that for readers to judge as they wonder if this wild story is more about exploring masculinity or having scary fun.