The Widow in the Deer Stand

“My name is Marlene. The man who built this stand was my husband. He died a year ago last March, and he left this eighty to me. I pay the taxes on it. Cody is my nephew.” I poured the first cup. “He does not own a foot of it, and until Thursday afternoon I did not know there was a soul hunting out here.”

Nobody said anything. The creek ran.

The man took his glasses off and wiped them on his sleeve and put them back on, and I saw his jaw working.

“Ben,” he said quietly. “Open your action.”

The boy unslung his rifle and worked the bolt back. The man did the same with his own and leaned them both against the cottonwood, a good ways from the ladder.

“Ma’am, I am sorry,” he said. “My name is Mark. I would not have set foot out here. I want you to know that. I’ve hunted thirty years and I have never once been on a man’s ground without his say-so.”

“I believe you.”

“We’ll go. We’ll go right now.”

“You’ll have a cup of coffee first,” I said. “It’s twenty-two degrees and I carried three cups all this way.”

He looked at me a long moment. Then he nodded, and the three of us stood around that stump in the gray light like people at a church coffee hour.

I handed the cups around. The boy held his in both hands.

“Do you drink coffee, Ben?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “But I’m going to.”

That was the first time I had laughed out loud in I could not tell you how long.

Mark did not laugh. Mark was getting angrier by the minute, in the quiet way of a man doing arithmetic.

“How long has he been doing this?” he said.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“He told me he had a fella from Fremont coming Monday, and two brothers out of Lincoln the back half of the week. He told me he ran bowhunters in October.” He set his cup down on the stump. “He told me he had people out here last year. I found him through a man I work with. I gave him my boy’s lawn mowing money in a parking lot in Columbus, and he shook Ben’s hand and told him his uncle would’ve liked him.”

I looked out at the timber for a minute after that.

“I have a receipt,” Mark said. He got his billfold out with his gloves on and found it, a sheet off a feed store notepad, folded in four. He handed it to me.

Rec’d of Mark, $600, 2 hunters, 2 days, opening weekend, my place on Beaver Creek. Cody.

My place.

It was the same careful hand as the sign.

“I want to keep this a while,” I said.

“You keep it. Ma’am, I’d like to know where that cafe is.”

“I’ll show you. But not yet.” I screwed the lid back on the thermos. “Season opened ten minutes ago. That boy has been waiting on this since the first lawn in May, and you have paid for a day of hunting. You’re standing on this ground right now with the owner’s permission, and that’s all the law asks of you. So I’d say you ought to hunt.”

Mark shook his head. “I’m not hunting your place on a lie.”

“It isn’t a lie now. I just told you the truth and then I asked you to stay.” I looked at Ben. “Did you pass your hunter safety?”

“Yes, ma’am. In April.”