He had a horrid and exhausting night with only intermittent dozing. He remembered his youth when it was impossible to sleep the night before deer opening. That wasn’t it this time. It was the prospective prison sentence, if not ten then at least seven years. He kept waking from vivid dreams of trying to fly-cast in the bone dry Jackson prison yard. His stomach knotted and he got up several times for a shot of whiskey. He thought that most people sent to prison had nothing to do except commit more crimes. He had to think he was different, but maybe that was just false hope. How could the law consign his final years to prison when he needed trout fishing to live? The local judge was a hanging judge in sex cases, a devout Baptist who thought sexuality was verminous. He could expect no mercy from that quarter. Diane might offer to help pay for a lawyer, but he viewed it as a waste of her money. Deep in the night watching the fireplace flicker he knew very well he was doomed. An open-and-shut case. Goodbye river. Maybe he would die on a prison cot as if it mattered. They had a special section for felonious lawmen but what did that matter? It saved you from being murdered by other inmates when you probably no longer much cared.
He gave up trying to sleep at 5:00 a.m. It was hopeless now that he had seen his future totally disappear. He got up, stirred the fire into a warm blaze. He was taking part in the ancient but senseless art of deer hunting. On opening day you got up and breakfasted very early and then sat around a couple of hours talking and waiting for daylight. He could remember dozing at the table while his father and friends talked relentlessly about the hunts of the past.
Sunderson made a pan of fried spuds, a pan of sausage, and four scrambled eggs wishing he had a dog to share the bounty. In the first pale light he saw a large buck near the edge of the fence and the river. He could have tilted a window open and shot it but he felt pretty good and didn’t want to start the day with a cheap move. That could come later if necessary. He ate most of his breakfast and left the rest out for visiting coyotes along with last night’s steak bone.
He heard shots from not that far north on the river. He could see clearly now because the light was growing stronger. A small button buck, so called because its horns were mere nubbins and had not yet grown into a spike horn, failed to clear the fence, three strands of barbed wire where it was loose near the cabin. The button buck failed the jump and became horribly entangled in the barbed wire. Sunderson cussed and took his combination pliers and wire cutters out with him in his flimsy summer robe. According to the thermometer it was near zero and his feet were cold. The deer was a mere boy but lashed out at him furiously with its sharp hooves so that he couldn’t get close enough to cut it out of the entanglement. It was hopeless indeed and the little deer was cutting itself witlessly on the sharp barbs. Sunderson cursed and vowed to cut down the meaningless fence that day. Why give a fuck about his yard at the cabin when he didn’t care at home? The deer got more entangled and Sunderson went inside and got his rifle, the only possible solution. He shot the boy in the heart but hated it to be the deer’s last memory of earth. He spontaneously turned the rifle barrel on himself, feeling the coldness against his forehead. He moved the barrel upward a ways because he didn’t want to make a mess but not so far upward it would only be a grazing shot. He pulled the trigger and fell beside the dead deer. In his mind he was fishing a river and his lovely ex-wife was sitting on the bank with their picnic basket reading a book as usual.