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two.
    “One of the compensations,” she said, and waved her hand vaguely, “of all this, is aging comes a bit more slowly.”
    I nodded, as if I understood.
    Our long, rambling walks covered the same forest land I had walked many times with my father. My legs were just sprouting that year, and I was always rushing on ahead of her, and being called back.
    “Here,” she would say sharply. “Now look at this.”
    She showed me the paths the deer took through the woods, where rabbits burrowed at the edge of woodland meadows, ponds where the deer came for water, and the tracks and the droppings of fox and bear. Her teaching reinforced my father's. Then it struck me: one reason I was troubled was because of how similar their knowledge was.
    “Well, of course,” she said, when I told her this.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Thomas, the deer I help go on to die, someday, somewhere. Some die of hunger, some of disease,some by hunters. I can't reach them all, only a very few. Some die of grand old age. But they all die. Now, here is something important to tell you: I could never kill an animal. I guess I would say I can't even understand how someone could kill an animal, but I won't go on to say that hunters are evil or heartless or savage.”
    “But ...”
    She shook her head, quite emphatically. “You want a simple world, but don't you see the turmoil inside you? You love your father, and yet now you think his hunting must be evil. But think deeply. Why are you troubled?”
    “I ... I don't know.”
    “Do you love him?”
    “Yes,” I said quickly, and I was sure I did, and yet I ached.
    “Why do you love him?”
    I didn't know how to answer her. “He's my father,” I said simply.
    “Exactly!” She actually smiled, and slapped me on the back. “Now think.”
    I could think of nothing else. It was less than two weeks until my birthday. I knew my present was to be a new, cut-down shotgun, and a fluorescent orange hunting coat. I knew that on the morning of my birthday I was supposed to take that new shotgun, load it . . .
    I had a sick sense that I would simply go along, too afraid to resist. More than anything I was afraid that Iwouldn't be able to decide, that I would be in anguish until the last minute, until . . . what?
    I had this same nightmare, again and again. I would be walking in the woods with my father. I'd point at a deer, turning to tell my father, in a reasonable voice, “You see, I just can't,” and in a blast of smoke and fire the deer would fall. I would realize with horror that I had been carrying a shotgun the whole time, that I had fired. With the logic of dreams I would be once again lying on my stomach in the ravine, watching the deer fall, only now it was I who had shot it. I lay there, sweating, my heart pounding, waiting for Emma to come, to set things right. She never did. The deer lay stiff and cold, its glassy eye staring blankly at its killer. At me.
    I wanted to tell my father about the dreams, but I didn't. You have to understand about my father. He had such a commanding presence to me, and yet he was such a friendly, gentle man. He was the hardest person in the world to refuse, to argue with, to disappoint. I wanted to be with him and I wanted to be like him.
    Well, of course, I didn't know what I wanted. I wanted to be like other kids, like older boys who went hunting. I could see the logic of it. Many deer die of starvation when they're not hunted. Hunting helps control the deer population. The occasional poachers notwithstanding, the hunting season was closely monitored by the game wardens. I knew all the arguments in favor of hunting. I had heard them all my life.
    Also, there was the hunt itself: the men together, drinking coffee and laughing in the early morning, telling jokes, trying to keep warm. I would watch them out of my bedroom window each winter when hunting season came. They would be hugging themselves against the cold. I would see the frost of their breath as they