For the two hunters on the saddle, the canyon pulsed with life. Each picked a clump of nearby broom grass and sat. They raised their binoculars to their eyes simultaneously, as if on cue. Others they’d hunted with had noticed this idiosyncrasy in the pair—Kevin’s father found it especially hilarious—but the two seemed impassive to any ridicule and seemed altogether unaware of the quirk.
“Venado,” Mondy said almost immediately.
“¿Donde?”
“Abajo,” Mondy said. “Low in the canyon, debajo del árbol grande—el verde.”
“Shit, Mondy, there’s a thousand green trees in that canyon.”
Though their tones were flush with the excitement that comes with sighting game, still they whispered.
“Where?” Kevin asked again.
“Big tree, man, right down toward the bottom.”
Kevin was reminded of the futility in following Mondy’s spoken directions. He glanced over and tracked the line of Mondy’s binoculars where it ended slightly north, up canyon, at a clutch of juniper trees.
He raised his glasses and almost at once picked the all-but-transparent forms of the two animals out of the grain of the slope. The camouflage, the uncanny cryptic coloration, of the Couse Whitetail always stunned him. Even in the open, these tiny, mouse-colored deer—a big buck weighing little more than a hundred pounds—were difficult to see with even the best optics.
The two deer, feeding, picked their way into a mesquite where now only the hind end of the smaller one could be seen.
“Doe and a fawn?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know. The bigger one—I looked for horns. ¿No hay, pues?”
“Doe and a fawn, I think.”
“The one was big,” Mondy said. “Big chest, like a buck. But I think you’re right.”
“Yeah,” Kevin allowed. “Like a buck, but bald.”
They sat the canyon an hour longer and glassed up seven more deer, three doe-fawn pairs and a small fork-horned buck high in the canyon under a mature oak, on whose acorns the young deer fed. The buck was too small for either of them to consider.
“I think I see three points on one side,” Mondy offered hopefully.
“He’s a piss-ant two point,” Kevin assured. “A dink. You’re welcome to go after him, if you want.”
Mondy sighed and lowered his glasses, touched his chin philosophically. “No,” he said, “I think I’ll let him grow up.”
“Good,” Kevin said. “Fat as you are, little bastard look like a jack-rabbit when you dragged him down the mountain. Be shameful and tacky, downright untoward.”
Mondy sighed again. “Have I given you an ass-kicking yet today? Because you’re in definite need.” He paused, and Kevin knew what was coming.
Mondy reached for his rifle, shouldered it, and with some effort found the deer in his telescopic sight. “Untoward,” Mondy said, peering through his scope. “I bet you got that word from me.”
“I read it somewhere.”
“Most fancy words,” Mondy said, “you get from me. You use my words all the time and don’t even know it.”
Kevin didn’t deny this. Armando Luna had an admirable vocabulary, though along with his penchant for big words he bore an embarrassing tendency toward malapropisms. During a heated conversation on evolution, of all things, with Kevin’s mother, Mondy had used the word relative when he meant relevant half a dozen times. And though Teresa McNally was perfectly aware of the misuse, she was gracious enough to not so much as smirk. At the hands of her son, however, Mondy suffered greatly for such language errors. Luna never failed to use conscrew when he meant construe, which Kevin first corrected then derided, and he could speak no more than two or three sentences with his nouns and verbs in perfect agreement.
“If I could hit him from here,” Mondy suggested, his rifle still trained on the small buck across the canyon, “it would make it worth it—bragging rights, man.”
“Hell, Mondy, that’s over five-hundred yards.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Mondy said, lowering the rifle and stroking the butt almost affectionately. “A little too far for my .243.”
“Shit, you couldn’t hit that deer with a .338.”
“There you go, disrespecting your elders again. I’m pretty sure it’s about ass-kicking time.”
“I’ve never seen you hit anything over two-hundred yards but the one time, and that was an accident.”
“Details,” Mondy said. “You gabacho white eyes, so concerned with fucking details. You know, you’re being kind of a little punk today.”
Kevin was quiet a moment. “How’d you meet Jolene?”
Mondy shouldered his rifle, looked through the scope again. “You know, here and there. I don’t even remember anymore.”
Kevin looked at the ground.
Mondy lowered the rifle, looked over at him. “Opportunities come around,” he said. “You’ll see.”
They had planned to hunt south as usual but lingered in this first good canyon just past an hour. The cue to get up and move on was usually given by Kevin, and the older man had always conceded this, an unspoken custom of their friendship. For some reason, today, Kevin wanted to take in this canyon a little longer.
And now, over three decades later, as he sat in his air-conditioned office, where he normally worried over the petty vagaries of the English department he headed, his mind had suddenly traversed those many years and dropped him onto a hillside a hundred miles south. He glanced out his office window, which neatly framed Sentinel Peak near the Tucson Mountains. Pima College was a nice place, but he found himself longing for the excitement that attended the sharp morning air and dawn light of that canyon in the Escrobarra, where he could go tomorrow and still find deer.
Even with his back to the door, Kevin could feel Julie’s presence behind him. He swiveled in his chair, reminding himself to look the girl in the eye and not let his gaze drop below her neckline. Julie had been the office work aid for the past seven weeks, hired that fall by Norma, the department secretary, though Kevin would not have hired the girl simply for the way she dressed. She never wore a top that didn’t sport a bit of cleavage nor a skirt that didn’t allow the distraction of her young legs.
“Yes, Julie?”
“Norma just called. That lady was over in Student Services earlier asking for you.”
Kevin glanced again toward the window.
The girl tilted her head, squinted. “Seems like she’s lost. Are you sure she’s not crazy or something?”
“No,” Kevin said. “She’s not crazy.”
“They told her your office hours, but she didn’t come here. Norma saw her sitting at the campus Starbucks drinking coffee. Do you even know her very well?”
“I know her quite well,” Kevin said. “And she’s not lost.”
Olivia Hallot sat in a corner booth, a cup of black dark roast steaming in front of her. Kevin knew she had spotted him immediately, but she didn’t let on as she continued to survey the young people moiling about over afternoon snacks of scones and bear claws. Except for the obviously dyed auburn-red hair, Olivia