The Last Watch: For this old hunter, one final foray afield promises to last forever in the great beyond

The camp was empty as the old man watched the November dawn approach over the trees. The others had already left in the dark by flashlight. They were waiting quietly now for the hunt to begin near granite ridges, green swamps and game trails. He had shown most of them how to find those places, where to stand, which way to look, and when to shoot. Then as day broke, he set the dogs loose to run deer to them, as he had for many others before their time.

He was too old now himself to go to the woods and hunt. His legs had become weak first. Then his eyes went. He tried to keep hunting, but felt tired all the time. That’s when he knew something was eating away at him. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that. So, he stayed behind at camp.

It was his job to keep the fire going and clean up and cook lunch before the men returned from hunting. He emptied the warm bacon grease from the cast iron fry pan into a jar. Then he lifted the metal coffee pot with his name scratched onto the side to see if there was one more cup left. He sat down at the big wooden table in the middle of the room and stared at the crumbs and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts while he drank his coffee.

The old man thought about how his name would be scratched on the back page of a newspaper one day, then on a piece of stone. He didn’t care about that. He just hoped someone remembered him when they looked at the scratches on the coffee pot.

It was a long time to wait for the hunt to come around each year. In the past, he would begin to miss it only weeks after it had ended. Then he learned to use his memories to help time pass until November arrived again, allowing him to return to the woods whenever he wanted. It didn’t matter where he was or what he was doing. He only had to release his imagination to be there. It was easy, too, because he had paid close attention to all the details and rituals over the years.

He knew a deer was near as the autumn woods went quiet

He had always thought he could go back to the woods again each November to keep the memories alive and make new ones. But now that he couldn’t, he had to work hard to rely on the same old ones.

Visitors and hunters looking for lost dogs would be dropping by soon. The old man used to enjoy talking to them, but now he hoped they wouldn’t come. They would see him alone in the camp and ask why he wasn’t hunting.

And even though he would never hunt again, he knew he could never sell his guns. He wasn’t ready to give them away, either. He had watched that happen before and it upset him and everyone else at camp. He could still hear the quiver in the voice of a man he once hunted with when he handed his grandson his knife and said, “This is yours now.” As the boy cried, his older brother refused their grandfather’s rifle and ran outside.

Sitting alone, the old man looked around at the empty gun racks and unmade beds and bloodstained boots placed near the woodstove to dry. There were deer antlers mounted on the walls, and plenty of pictures framed and taped and pinned here and there. He stood in front of a Polaroid of himself as a young man in an orange coat kneeling in the woods behind a deer, holding up its head by the antlers. He stepped forward and looked closely at the face in the photo. He was tired that day, too, but it felt good then. His smile was as big as his shoulders. He sat back down at the table and thought about how that was the face he still saw sometimes when he looked in the mirror.

Then he heard the fly.

It was at the window by the stove. Numerous other flies were piled dead in heaps along the window sill, but this one kept buzzing as it flew up from the pile and into the closed window before falling down, over and over. Just one wing seemed to be working.

“You won’t last long, but you’re not going out with a whimper,” the old man said out loud. He looked at the fly swatter hanging by a nail on the cupboard, but decided it wouldn’t be right to use it. He admired the fly. It was a fighter. Like him.

Early that morning, the old man had gone outside to see the hunters off. As they walked over the first ridge, one of them looked back and returned his wave. Now he was looking out the window waiting for their return, and soon saw them coming back over the same ridge. Two men were dragging a deer. He knew the ritual—the other hunters would be walking in front of the men if the deer was a doe, but this time were walking behind, admiring the stretched out animal.

Smiling, he took out the knife his grandfather gave him that teary night all those years ago and stepped into the sunlight. He was going to help the boys skin the buck, and be part of the final ritual of the hunt.

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The old man went to bed early that night, and as his head hit the pillow, he closed his eyes one last time and returned to his favourite part of the hunt—waiting alone in the dark at his watch, when the approach of dawn can seem like an eternity. It’s as though time stands still, holding its breath as night silently withdraws into the shadows, giving way to the break of day. In that moment, the old hunter heard a dog howl in ecstasy, signaling to the men and deer that the hunt had once again begun.

He followed the baying of the hounds in his mind’s eye as they pursued the deer around cedar swamps, over granite ridges and into the tall pines near the beaver dam he had been watching. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed, though it could have been an hour or more. The old man existed only in the moment now.

He knew a deer was near as the autumn woods went quiet again, and soon he heard the unmistakable faint snap of a twig, then another. He looked over his right shoulder and saw the deer, its white chest rising and falling as it recovered from the chase that was about to end, and prepare for the drama about to begin. At first glance, the buck seemed immersed in the green-grey gloom of the tangled woods, looking more like the faded apparition of a deer than a real animal. Then as the old man raised his gun, the buck suddenly charged him, gathering speed and power with each leap and bound.

It was his favourite place in those sacred woods

Later at camp, he told everyone how the buck’s rack tilted and swayed like the outstretched wings of some giant bird in flight. “I could see his powerful heart and great spirit.” He remembered his heart pounding, too, his blood racing as the hair on his neck stood on end and the sweat from his brow ran down his cheek. But he could not recall his finger squeezing the trigger or the sound of the gun being fired or the recoil of the butt against his shoulder.

They must have heard me shoot, he thought to himself as he told his story. But no one said they did. Instead, one of the men said, “We all miss. It’s part of hunting.”

Then the others told their stories about how they, too, had missed the same unkillable buck named the “Ghost” that had crossed the beaver dam he was watching that morning. He had heard the tales many times before, but listened anyway because somehow it always seemed like he was hearing them for the first time. And he liked to watch the men’s faces become brighter and younger as their voices became more excited.

The old man remembered he went to bed early that night, too, and fell into a deep sleep without dreams or nightmares, and how breakfast was prepared and eaten quickly with little talk so the hunters could get back to the quiet woods before daylight. He stood at that same watch again, trance-like in the dark, marvelling at how it seemed he had never left. It was his favourite place in those sacred woods. He called it the “Last Watch” and wanted his ashes to remain there. He could not remember the last time a hunter had been so deep in the forest.

As he stood on watch, he thought about day and night and the time between, and how it comes and goes in shadows and light, and how it reminded him of life and death. Then the old man heard the unforgettable sound of a twig snapping, then another, as he turned his head once again towards eternity.