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whole thing was a blur after that, like a video in fast motion. Instead of going back to the lodge to get his mother, he ran toward farm buildings he’d seen from high ground in the woods. The farmer, a big man in a red flannel coat and a cap that said CAT DIESEL on the front, called EMS.
    His mom arrived at the hospital and he felt worse than he ever had in his life. She hugged him, buthe couldn’t look at her. Didn’t know what to do or say and that’s the way it had been since he walked out the back door of the lodge with his dad to go hunting.
    Owen McCall died on the operating table. The broadhead had severed an artery before piercing his lung. He’d lost too much blood. The surgeon telling Luke he didn’t think they could’ve saved his dad even if they’d beamed him into the operating theater right after the accident. Luke wondering if the doctor was talking like a Trekkie to impress him.
    He had to meet with a sheriff ’s deputy, too. Luke, his mom and the deputy, whom his mother seemed to know, met in the surgical waiting room. The deputy took his Smokey the Bear hat off and placed it on the end table next to him. He had a sweat crease where the hat gripped his head.
    Luke told them what happened in straightforward sequence, leaving out the part about getting buck fever. What difference did it make now? The deputy wrote everything he said on a notepad in a leather case. He could feel his mom’s eyes locked on him during the interview, boring into him like lasers. He never looked at her the whole time. When he finished, the deputy, whose name was Bill Wink, closed the notebook that had an embossed westernsheriff ’s badge on the front and fixed his gaze on Luke’s mom.
    “I’ve been hunting most of my life and I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
    “What’re you saying?” his mom said.
    “Mrs. McCall, I’m saying it was a bizarre accident.” Now he looked at Luke and said, “I know you’re hurting, and I feel for you, son.”
    Luke watched him put his hat back on, finding just the right position, the brim an inch or so above his eyes, the hat the same dark brown color as his shirt. The pants were light brown and had a dark brown stripe that ran down the legs. Luke couldn’t imagine wearing a uniform like that, but Bill Wink looked good in it, with his Marine haircut and muscular arms and his black leather gun belt, the handle of an automatic, a Glock—it looked like—ready to draw.
    Out in the hall, Luke heard Deputy Sheriff Wink talking to his mother in hushed tones.
    “The DA said it was an accidental death during the act of hunting. It is not a criminal case. It does not rise to the level of criminal negligence. The boy was licensed to hunt.”
    Luke couldn’t believe they’d actually considered something else. What’d they think; he tried to kill his own father?
    Then there was the visitation at Lynch and Sons, a place where Luke had been a dozen times for funerals of grandparents, uncles and aunts and now his own father. It seemed like hundreds of people came up and talked to him, and he couldn’t remember one thing anyone said. People young and old shaking his hand and hugging him. All he wanted to do when it was over was be by himself.
    He had a clearer recollection of being at the gravesite, watching the casket being lowered into the ground. His mother would look over at him, but he couldn’t make eye contact with her. He felt too guilty.
    After the funeral, he went in the basement and smashed his bow, the Darton Apache, on a structural steel post in the furnace room, breaking it in two pieces and then four, knowing it could never be repaired and vowing he’d never pick up another one again as long as he lived.
    He didn’t believe in God after that,’ cause it didn’t make sense. How could this happen? Why’d God let it? He hurt inside and started drinking to feel better. Found a bottle of schnapps in the liquor cabinet and poured it in a white plastic flask he bought at