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talked and laughed. They would always start talking in whispers and end up hollering happily at each other, laughing, until they would remember that it was early, and their voices would fall, quiet laughter building more loudly again. Finally, they'd climb into two or three pickup trucks, and rattle away. Late in the day they would return, with more laughter and talk, full of stories of the day.
    To be a man was to be with them.
    Often, of course, at the end of the day, there would be a deer tied down to the hood of one or two of the trucks. The sight of the deer carcass always filled me with a vague, dark ache: the perfect awfulness of the dead body.
    “Coming up on the big day, little man,” my father said the next morning at breakfast.
    “Yes sir,” I said, quietly.
    He frowned a moment, drank the last of his coffee in a long swallow, smacked his lips, and got up to leave.
    “Is everything okay?” he asked. He leaned over the back of his chair, propped on his long, solid arms. The butt of his revolver stuck out from the wide leather holster wrapped around his waist.
    “Oh, sure,” I said, and shrugged.
    “Great,” he said, his voice flat, his face creased as he peered down at me.
    “Well,” he said, and then smiled and ruffled my hair with his large strong hand, and kissed my mother, and left.
    “Thomas,” my mother said quietly. “Come on now. You've been gloomy for weeks, and now you're never home. What is it? Is it something at school?” She reached over and squeezed my cheek between her thumb and forefinger. “Come o-o-o-on, you're driving me crazy.”
    I hated it when she did that, but I couldn't help but grin as I pulled myself away.
    “Do you think ...” I began, and hesitated.
    “Sometimes I do,” she said, “if I'm not too busy.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Do you think Dad would be really upset, I mean if ... I mean I'm supposed to go hunting with him, I know it's this big thing, this tradition, but . . .”
    “Oh, Tommy, what? Just say it.”
    “I was thinking, what if I didn't want to? If I just didn't want to go?”
    “But that's okay,” she said quickly. “You don't have to. Oh baby, Dad thinks you want to go. It used to be all you'd ever talk about.”
    My mother was right about that. Just the year before, all I wanted in the world was a gun of my own. So much had happened to me in the past few weeks; when I was eleven going on twelve I couldn't see how parents might see time differently, might notice some things in their children, remember somethings, and never see the changes as they came.
    “I don't know,” I said, and shrugged.
    “If you want,” she said, “I could tell him.”
    “No,” I said quickly, and I wasn't at all sure why.
    “No, I was just thinking.”
    It was cold and overcast that day, a bleak, early winter day that suggested snow ahead, short nights, hot chocolate, and days spent hunting.
    I walked slowly out through the woods, to find Emma.
    “I can't spend as much time with you, Thomas,” Emma told me, after we had walked a while. “Hunting season's coming. I need my rest. Anyway, I have some things I need to do.”
    “Things?” I cried, surprising her, I imagine, by how upset I suddenly was. “What things?”
    “Oh, the world,” she said, “things. I live in this little motor court and they're painting all the cottages this week. Heaven knows it's overdue, but I have to move some furniture about. And then my granddaughter is coming up from North Carolina ...”
    She shook her head. I stared at her. Even though she had told me about her family, it still hadn't really occurred to me that she lived somewhere, that she would ever have anything to do except walk these woods. “You have a granddaughter? How old is she?”
    She blew out a breath. “She's, what is she, twenty-six now? She doesn't know about me, about all this.You know, Thomas, people think I'm just a little bit odd. She wants me to move down near her.”
    “Move?” I think I almost