The man was hunting deer. He was not wandering the forest with a gun, as would appear in the absence of any deer or even tracks thereof, he was hunting deer. To admit otherwise would make him feel foolish and so he continued walking softly through the snow-lit night, searching for tracks and wondering if he would be able to shoot a deer should one appear. In a way that would make him feel more foolish. He hadn’t decided and it troubled him. Of course deer are good at sensing trouble. They know to walk on the Southern slopes where the snow is thin and on rocky ground where tracks can only be smelled and to avoid trouble. So the man walked alone with his rifle and his thoughts as the moon set behind the trees and the snow took on a bluish glow. The forest gave him a wide berth and watched him pass from the safety of painted shadows.
He didn’t feel cold, although he supposed he was, he wasn’t hungry although he carried food, and soon he found he had forgotten about tracks altogether until he came across his own, left there an hour and a half before. He realized then that he had let the terrain guide him, walking wherever was easiest with little thought to direction, and the crafty mountains had quietly turned him around and tried to expel him. This also troubled him. He had hoped this trip would clear him of troubles, a romantic notion he saw now. And he felt foolish and frustrated and did not at first see the deer, standing still as stone on the edge of a clearing across the valley, not one hundred yards away.
He unslung the rifle, still undecided and troubled over his own doubt. He unslung the rifle because all the reasons for and against balanced exactly and when that happens it is always better to do a thing and know for sure. He crouched behind a fallen tree and lay the rifle barrel across the trunk. The buck had not moved and for a moment he thought it was only a remarkable shadow until it gave a low snort and he saw the steam rise from its muzzle. He sighted the rifle and slowed his breath and though his troubles did not leave him, they stepped aside for a moment. His breathing stopped and his heart slowed and on the third interval he took his shot the way a man steps off a high ledge into black water.
The buck continued to stand perfectly still and the man’s troubles prepared to rage back in at him, twice as mean at having been deferred pointlessly. Then the buck dropped to one knee, turning its head in his direction, though it is doubtful he could be seen behind his log. It stayed that way a while longer then its remaining legs folded slowly under it and the short, sharp puffs of steam stopped coming from its muzzle. The rifle shot continued to echo through the night as the man tested his water and found there were no rocks waiting to crack him open, and the troubles were less sure of themselves and stayed away to discuss it. And still the rifle shot echoed.
The man became aware the sound was growing, reverberating from the mountainsides and coming, it seemed, from all directions. No longer a forlorn echo making futile copies of itself, but a growing roar, a deep shriek following close behind, and the man was confused. His troubles deserted him in cowardice and he looked about franticly for the source of the hellish noise and now there were other sounds, sharp cracks from his left and when he turned that way a glaring light bore down on him from above.
Japan Air 595, a charter flight full of corporate secretaries bound for Banff and a mountain holiday, came down on him dragging one wing, already on fire, through the tree tops as its pilots tried to regain control to the end. Its gleaming alloy belly passed over him in an instant which did not seem to pass, so that he could see the rivets in its panels. It disappeared from his sight in a roaring cloud of snow and smashed branches and sank into the valley, clearing a swath through the trees, and for a micron of time everything was as before, the buck lived and his troubles were close by and familiar. Finally the rumbling pressure wave of the plane’s final impact rose up and passed over him, chasing the forgotten rifle shot down the valley until all was quiet again. The man could see across the valley but not into it and when he looked across it was as though nothing had changed at all. Except the deer was gone, the snow there unmarred.
He made his way down into the valley, following the trail of smashed trees, climbing and clawing his way. The air was sick with the smell of kerosene and hydraulic fluid. Some of the trees still stood and were hung with debris and the odd secretary, one still strapped in her seat, another completely naked except for her shoes. And when he looked around he saw they were on the ground too, all around him, mixed in with the shattered timber and the brightly coloured contents of 319 suitcases so that he could only see them one at a time. A face, a hand, an arm pointing brokenly at him from under a pile of branches. The man sat down in the snow, the sun would come up soon.
They didn’t notice him at first as he didn’t move. He had left his rifle where he’d fired it and there was nothing else to indicate he wasn’t a passenger except that he was wearing boots and a heavy coat, but the searchers refused to notice this, as the thought of a single solitary survivor amidst the carnage appealed to them. They loaded him into a helicopter, obviously in shock as he would not speak, but otherwise remarkably unharmed. Surely a miracle. And the man was transported away from his troubles and he went on to another life and was not heard from again by anyone who had known him.
The searchers watched as the helicopter took him away and they thought to themselves surely this was proof of the unfathomableness of everything and possibly proof of God Himself. Perhaps it symbolized hope. But they weren’t sure and as the sun rose higher and the crows gathered they started to think it was a romantic notion and began to feel foolish and apprehensive. They took these troubles away with them like stones in their shoes.
