The Deer Camp I Opened For Him

He worked the pump handle twice. The water came up.

“Huh,” he said.

That was the most I had ever gotten from Kurt. I took it.

The others came through the afternoon. Tony with two cousins and a case of pop. Lyle’s son with a deer cart.

Old Bob Lindquist from the co-op, who was eighty-one and only came to play cribbage now. By dark there were twelve trucks and two campers in the clearing and a dozen orange coats hanging on the pegs.

Nobody asked where Dennis was. I could feel all of them not asking.

He came at a quarter after six. I heard the truck, and then I heard Amber’s voice outside, because she had driven him up. I had not known she was going to.

She did not come in. She opened his door for him and handed him his cane and the silver thermos, and she kissed him on the cheek and got back in and drove away.

He came up the porch steps one at a time with his hand on the rail. He stood in the doorway with the thermos under his arm and looked at the room. Clean floor. New mattresses. Twelve men at the plank table with bowls in front of them.

The cabin went quiet. Not one of those men said a word.

“Just come up for supper,” Dennis said finally. “I’m not staying.”

“There’s a bunk made up for you,” I said. “Bottom one, by the stove. In case.”

He didn’t answer that. He hung his coat on his peg, the first one by the door, and sat down at the head of the table, and Tony got up and put a bowl in front of him.

He ate two bowls of that chili and a piece of cornbread. He did not ask who made it. He did not have to.

Every man at that table knew who had opened the gate and burned the mattresses and cut the oak. You could see them knowing it, the way they passed things down the table to me and called me by my name.

Bob Lindquist said, to nobody in particular, “Best chili this camp’s had since Jean’s,” and spooned up some more.

Dennis’s spoon stopped for a second. Then it went on.

After supper the cribbage boards came out and the cards and the radio with the Badgers game. Dennis sat by the stove with his leg up on a chair and did not play.

Around nine, I saw Lyle lean down and say something in his ear, and I saw Dennis shake his head, and then nod.

At ten he took his cane and went into the back room and lay down on the bottom bunk by the stove in his clothes. He did not say good night. He did not say he was staying. He just stayed.

I set my alarm for four-thirty and was awake at four. When I went into the back room with a flashlight, Dennis was already lying on the bunk in his orange coat and his orange stocking cap, boots on, cane across his chest, staring at the bunk above him.

“Ranger’s warm,” I said. “If you want to go.”

He swung his legs down slow and sat there a second with his jaw set while the knee figured out what was happening. Then he stood.