Read Quiver for Free Online Page B

in the distance.
    The canopy was high and thick, and it was dark as they followed the deer tracks upslope toward the trees. His dad stopped and pointed at deer poop, slick and green and still steaming.
    “They’re close. Remember what you used to call it?”
    Luke didn’t know what he was talking about.
    “Gucks. You’d say, ‘Daddy, I got to go gucks.’” Owen looked at him and grinned. “It’s the perfect word, isn’t it?”
    “How about Grandma? I’d tell her I had a stomachache, she’d say, go sit on the toilet and do some popsie doodles, or popsies.”
    “Like we were living in a Disney movie,” Owen said.
    Luke liked that.
    “The pros, like Del Keane, put their hand in it, tell you what Mr. Deer had for breakfast. Want to try it?”
    Luke made a sour face.
    They followed the tracks over a berm to a ridgetop that was littered with acorn husks, a sign that deer had been there. From the high ground, they could see the tracks continue downslope through a funnel of trees to a cornfield in the distance.
    Owen said, “Give me about twenty minutes, then head down. I’ll push them at you.”
    “How do you know they’re in there?”
    “It’s got everything they need: food, water, and shelter. Make your way to the edge of the tree line and be ready. You’re only going to get one shot. And that’s if you’re lucky.”
    Luke sat on a tree stump, the Darton Apache resting across the tops of his thighs, thinking how cool and exciting it was being out here. He scanned the woods with the twelve-power Zeiss binoculars, the sun rising fast now behind him. He caught glimpses of his dad in the distance, a dark shape, disappearing and reappearing through the trees. He panned right, saw something move, adjusted the sight, focused on a deer tail swinging back and forth. He panned left, saw a leg and followed it to the thickbody of a high-racked ten-pointer. The deer lifted its head, rumen drooling from its mouth, sensors on full alert. The buck snorted and stomped its hooves and took off, Luke trying to follow it with the binoculars. Losing it in the thick woods.
    He turned and picked up his dad again moving along the perimeter of the cornfield about a hundred yards away, the stalks at least a foot taller than him.
       
    Owen pulled two brittle cornstalks apart and entered the field. He moved along a row that was so straight he could see down a hundred yards, the result of GPS, now available on farm equipment—taking any guesswork out of planting crops in straight lines.
    The ground was pitted and irregular, puddles of water covered with a thin layer of ice that broke easily under his weight and made a sound like glass cracking. His boots were wet and soon heavy with mud, making it harder to walk. He carried a Browning Mirage in his right hand, the bow weighing a little more than four pounds with its quiver loaded with carbon arrows.
    Wind whipped through the cornfield, rattling the stalks that sounded to Owen like the percussive beat of a jazz tune, and bringing with it the intermittentreek of cow dung and skunk and the heavy smell of wet hay.
    He watched a hawk swoop in from a scattered cloud formation and dive like a fighter jet into the field and then soar back up with something squirming in its talons.
    Owen adjusted his Detroit Tigers cap, pulling the brim down to keep the sun out of his eyes. Although his body was heating up under layers of thermal insulation and camo, it was cold. He could see his breath. He went about fifty yards and listened. The wind blew and the stalks clattered. It was tough to hear anything else.
    He cut left through the field now, going against the grain, pulling stalks apart and knocking them down. It was the only way to cover a big area fast. He came to a stretch of field where the stalks were mowed down like a semi had driven through. He followed the path and heard them before he saw them: five deer, two big bucks and three does, stopping to eat corn destined for the farmer’s