 (...) Extract ( see text ) killed my first deer at age eleven. Rainy Night unfin September 1978, at White Ranch, hunting extensiónde My father flew from Alaska each fall forYour hunt. He was in his late thirties, dentist like his father, yearsof disappointment that lead to his suicide. Grimly, back hair, thin and strong, impatient. But it was not always there así.Había hunted since childhood and had always known to be casual, a funny. Whenever there again, I could see every year registered in the place, amazed at who had come into being. At eleven, however, I could pensarsolamente on who would be myself. Kill my first deer was unainiciación. California law said he was not authorized to kill unohasta who was twelve, but family law said I was ready. I imagined slipping sigilosamenteentre pine and scrub to kill my first piece, but the end desemana was rainy, so hunt directly from the truck. Parecíainjusto, even at age eleven. The deer would stand under the trees inthe rain, corridos from the bush. I was standing in the box lacamioneta with my father, holding the jumps and jolts. And when I saw alciervo, mostly hidden by a group of half dozen árbolesdelgados, I immediately felt pounding in the temples. Fever deciervo "we called it. The heart beating like a hammer, not breathing. Elmomento to kill something big, other mammal, which can sentirindividual, that time is not the same as any other. Call it dediferentes-brutal ways, wrong, irresistible, natural, unnatural-peropara me it felt like something straight from Faulkner, the blood flow andthe be part of something, the love for my father. That was the greatest moment demi life until then, the time to be tested. saw two points on one side of the antlers delciervo, making it legal to shoot. I put a cartridge in the chamber and levantémi rifle, but my father put a hand on his shoulder. "You have time," he said. "Support UNCOD. " So I knelt down in the box, left micodo leaned on the edge of the truck more stable, and pointed Through sight, lined with deer's neck. I could not hit alciervo behind the palette, because his body was hidden by the trees. Sólotenía the neck, long and thin. And Lamira moved back and forth. slowly exhaled and squeezed. The rifle disparóy the neck and head came down. I never even noticed the recoil nila explosion. I could smell the sulfur, jumping over the edge of lacamioneta and running toward the deer. My father screamed that erasolamente for when you kill a deer, and this time it was for me, and entoncesmi cried uncle and my grandfather, and I screamed as he ran between loshelechos and fallen trees and rocks. Lunged to the site and saw entonceslo. (...) He smiled, quite happy and proud, disenchantment todosu gone, all his impatience. This was his moment than mine. turned thirteen this fall, after the hunt, and saw very little of my father. For Christmas, he estabateniendo problems I did not understand, cried herself to sleep alone in lasnoches. I wrote a strange letter about inutilidadde repentance and make money. In early March, I asked if I wanted to live with Ela Fairbanks, Alaska, during the next school year, eighth grade. I queríapasar time with him, but was afraid of disappointment. I was afraid, too, of the boys he had met in Alaska, who were already taking drugs alos thirteen. I really wanted to say yes, but I could feel unaterrible feeling for what might be in Alaska. So I said quena. Two weeks later, my padrellamó my stepmother in California, where she had moved after sudivorcio. He was alone in Fairbanks in her new home, unfurnished, the idusde March, cold, sitting at a folding table in the kitchen deldía final. His second marriage had broken the same way they had hechocon the first being affair with another woman. And now my stepmother seguíaadelante. He had found another man and intended to marry him. My padretenía other problems that I would learn later, including the IRS [2] Quelo pursued for tax evasion in South American countries, unsuccessfully gold investment and a tool magazine, a sinusitisque unbearable pain relievers could not alleviate, added to all the blame and ladesesperación and solitude, and my stepmother said: "I love you but I will not stir without you." She was working in an office and could not hear well. Tuvoque hide the phone behind the door and ask her to repeat foulbrood had said. So he said again: "I love you but I will not vivirsin you." Then he put his .44 Magnum revolver at his head, a calibrecomprado, as the .300 Magnum for grizzly bears, capable of bringing down a shorter distance and pulled the trigger. She heard the sound of dripping cuandolos fragments of his head fell off the ceiling and fell on lamesita folding. (...) I think that I will never entendersiquiera that year. I told everyone that my father had died of cancer, and did not go to see a therapist. I had a real conversation with anyone. Encambio, shot things, the terrible weapons as a substitute. A year dela most basic brutality, a year that I was lucky to have escaped anyone sinlastimar. (...) still love my father, aunveintinueve years after his suicide. The feeling has not diminished paranada not faded with time, but I have nothing with which to connect. Sipudiera sustain his .300 Magnum now, would he to me, some memory máscercano, some echo of walking with him through the oak and apples, raise the rifle to see it above his head as we crossed losmatorrales? If I remember that gun, if I really concentrate on it, puedorecordar sunlight on the curly brown hair of my father, concentré, his crooked smile when he saw me. But more than that, I can casirecordar I felt at that moment, what it was like being there with him, hunted with him, how he was feeling part of something. My father was what I connected with the world. |
David Vann. USA. Alaska. 1967.
Photo: David Vann and his father.
translation: Luis Barbieri, whom I thank for this beautiful text.
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