This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories (5 page)

“Oh dear,” she'd said, when his father first went out, “I don't like the sounds of this.” Then she got up and used the telephone herself, and Daniel heard her giggle a little into the phone in the other room—she was probably talking
to Cheryl—but in that way she had sometimes, when she didn't mean to be giggling.

By the time Daniel's father had got back, she was sitting at the table again, reading her magazine. She and Daniel looked up when he came in, and he seemed to remember something then, and put down the rifle, and went back outside. He'd leaned the rifle up against Daniel's mother's chair, which was closest to the door, and it looked silly to see it like that, next to his mother.

When his father came back he was carrying another gun, and he said to Daniel, “Daniel you can come too,” and then he extended his hand out with the gun in it, so that Daniel was supposed to get out of his chair and walk over to his father, and take up the gun.

He had shot a gun before. Many times. His father had taught him, and by now he had been out with his father for two deer-hunting seasons in a row, although technically he was supposed to wait until he was twelve. Sometimes his father had gone out for grouse with him, too, but he had still shot only in practice and never for real, even when his father had purposely held back on a shot he could have taken, and said, “This one's yours, son.” He would always just come up with some reason that it hadn't made sense to fire, but he didn't know why he did that, every time. It wasn't because he didn't want to kill the bird. He wanted to kill the bird more than anything.

“Oh, come on, don't,” Daniel's mother said, when Daniel got up to take the gun from his father, and put on his boots,
and follow him out to the truck. “This is not messing around, you know. I thought you just told us both to stay inside. That seemed like a plan to me.”

“You stay in,” Daniel's father said, and went out, so that Daniel had to shove his boots on quickly to not get left behind. His feet weren't all the way down into the boots when he started for the door, so they made him walk funny. His mother had got up and moved out onto the porch in her slippers. She was probably cold.

“You be careful,” she said, when Daniel waddled past with his feet not in his shoes, and his gun in one hand, outstretched, away from his body. “You be careful with my son,” she yelled, a little louder than she needed to, for his father to hear.

THEY DRIVE FOR ABOUT
three minutes, very slowly. Anna is concentrating hard on the road, and has her jaw set tight, her hands all tensed up on the wheel. Daniel lets go of the wheel after a while himself, and then watches her—frozen like that, not a muscle in her body moving—and yet moving—the outside world passing steadily. He digs back in his memory for some brief moment that would show him how all of this was inevitable in some way; that this was the way it was supposed to be with them. Some brief memory. Anything. From when Anna was small. If he can think of one thing, he will certainly share it with her, and then she will see the way he has always known her. And still knows her. And will.

But he can't think anything.

Then, after about three minutes are up, Anna pulls the car expertly off to the side of the road, and puts on the brake. “I'm done,” she says.

“But you're doing so well!” Daniel says. He brings his hand down briefly on her arm, which is off the steering wheel now, and lying in her lap. The movement is intended to be conciliatory, but it comes off more as a bit of a slap.

“
You
drive,” Anna says, as if it were a disgusting thing to do. “It's
your
car.”

Too late, Daniel realizes he has made a large, and irrevocable, error.

“Okay,” he says, quietly. “I will.”

ON THE MAIN HIGHWAY
, their guns on the rack at the top of the cab, Daniel felt happy in a way that he had not imagined he would when his father came back from the shed that second time with the gun. His father's dog, Sugar, was sitting in between them, peering eagerly ahead, out the front glass. Sugar went everywhere with his father. It was the usual thing to see his father returning from wherever he went with Sugar racing beside him down the drive. About a mile from home, where the road split and one way went in a loop back to the highway, and the other went to their house, Daniel's father always let her out of the cab and she'd run the rest of the way home. She could keep up, mostly—when Daniel's father didn't tease her and drive too fast. Once, his father had said to Daniel—when Daniel was
driving back home with him and Sugar and they'd stopped to let Sugar leap out, and race off, getting a head start on them—“Sometimes, I wish I could let myself out and run around beside myself for a while, I get to feeling so restless. You ever get like that?”

Daniel had said no, because he wasn't positive that he knew what his father meant, and didn't want to have to back something up that he'd made a mistake about. He did
think
he knew what his father was talking about though, and he was surprised because he'd thought that only small boys and not grown-up men felt that way.

Long before they got there, they could already see how packed the Knutsen place was. There were even a couple of police cars and a fire truck lined up along the side of the road so that Daniel's father had to park some distance away, though not as far as Cheryl and his mother had parked. They walked, from that distance, up to the main drive, where some of the Knutsen boys and a couple of police officers were standing around. Daniel found that, without trying particularly, he could match his father's stride. They were crunching along on the gravel shoulder, their feet falling in unison, so that the sound they made was like one man walking, instead of a man and a boy.

His father talked to a police officer for a moment, and spelled out his name, which the officer wrote down, then they headed across the field in the direction of the woods. They could see the men at various stages of nearness to the tree line, which was a good mile or so away. Some had
started off just minutes before, and so were up close, still large and distinct. He could still hear their voices, some of them. Others were almost to the edge of the woods, about to disappear. The rest were somewhere in between.

While his father had been talking to the sheriff, Daniel saw Cheryl come out of the barn, smoking a cigarette. She was talking to one of the Knutsen boys and looked upset. Everyone looked upset; it shouldn't have surprised him that Cheryl might too. But it did. He wondered what Cheryl was doing talking to a Knutsen, and then he thought it was interesting that it had never crossed his mind that Cheryl got sad sometimes, or that she knew anybody else besides his mother and him. He tried to catch her eye when she came out of the barn, but she wasn't looking at him. Her head was bent down into the collar of her big man's jacket and she looked kind of swallowed up in a way that all of a sudden made Daniel not want to talk to her anymore.

They had started out across the field. At first, Daniel's father had his hand on Daniel's shoulder, and then it was off. Sometimes, Daniel's boots got sucked into the mud where the ground was soft, and then he'd have to stop for a half second to squelch them out, and in that short time he'd fall behind his father and then have to double step to catch back up again. His father didn't speak to him until they got to the edge of the wood and then he said, “You stick close to me. You're not worried, are you? You can go on back, you know.” But Daniel shook his head. He wasn't worried. In fact, he had never felt so free of worry. It was like he had let
himself out to run around somewhere. He felt that light, and empty inside, but at the same time as if for the first time he knew exactly who he was—the precise limits of his body—and what to do.

Daniel's father nodded, and they entered the wood.

For a long time they wandered in what seemed like circles. After a while it occurred to Daniel that they might be lost, but then he didn't think they were. His mind drifted near the idea and then away, as if it too had begun to wander in circles. He no longer felt light or empty in the way that he had before. He had, he realized—uncomfortable and wet-footed—been returned to his body, and from that position could no longer detect relative distances—or the point at which one thing, like himself, ended or began. His feet had been rubbing for some time against the wet wool of his socks inside his boots, he noticed that now—he would not be surprised if a raw sore had already developed there. It was at the precise moment that he noticed that, that two things happened: the gun, which had until that point felt like an extension of himself, felt suddenly heavy in his hand, and he saw the buffalo.

It was bigger than he could have imagined, having only seen them from a diminishing distance.

“Shit,” Daniel's father said when, in another moment, he saw it, too. He grabbed at the hood of Daniel's jacket and kind of tugged at it. Daniel got down on the ground like it was a movie and they were the ones being shot at. “No,
get
up
,” Daniel's father hissed at him. “Back up, back up.”
He had his gun raised and he was shooing Daniel behind him with one hand. The buffalo did not see them, but was standing looking off into the closely grown wood as if at nothing.

“I got'm, I got'm,” Daniel's father said, and then the gun went off and the buffalo was gone.

Daniel realized that he had tightly shut his eyes and that was why there had been no progression. One minute he had seen the buffalo looking off into the woods, and then there was no buffalo at all. The trees were so closely grown that it seemed impossible that an animal so large could have squeezed through them and disappeared.

Daniel sensed his father's disappointment, although neither of them said anything. When the buffalo was gone, Daniel's father simply took down his gun, wiped off the muzzle, and then turned in the direction that Daniel was, without looking at him. “Come on,” he said. “Which way?” Daniel didn't know what to say. He hadn't seen the direction that the buffalo had gone, and then he wasn't even that sure if they should be running after it or away from it. He pointed straight ahead, and his father took off in the direction that he pointed.

When Daniel and his father got back home that evening they left the rifles on the rack because neither of them wanted to put them away. It would have seemed to be too outright an admission that it was over—that they wouldn't go looking for buffalo again. The next day they both had work or school, and probably by that time anyway, the
police and the fire department would have the situation under control and they wouldn't need volunteers anymore.

Daniel's mother was scrubbing the bathroom when they got back in, and didn't rush up to greet them as he'd thought she might.

“Catch a buffalo?” she said when they got in the door, in a voice that Daniel recognized as one that was capable of starting up a fight between her and his father.

“Nope,” Daniel's father said.

“Too bad,” Daniel's mother said.

“Yep, I sure wouldn't have minded having a buffalo to eat off of all winter, and neither would've you and neither would've Daniel.”

“Knutsen's buffalo,” Daniel's mother corrected him.

“Not if I shot it,” Daniel's father said. “Not if Daniel here shot it. That was the deal. Anyone could have had himself a buffalo tonight.”

“Too bad,” Daniel's mother said again, in that voice. “Yep,” Daniel's father agreed. He gave Daniel a wink, and then wondered aloud what they were having for dinner if it wasn't anything wild.

Later that evening Daniel went walking down the road toward the direction of the Knutsens' farm. He wasn't planning on going as far as that. He wasn't supposed to be out at all. But his mother and father were both in the back room watching TV and not paying him any attention, so he'd just slipped out. The night was cool and calm. It was like walking through a picture of another planet. The
air was that still—stopped, almost. He felt like he could walk on and on forever in that air, that it would offer no resistance—and that would be the good, and really the only, choice that he could make in his life. But then he thought about his parents. About how worried they would be for him, out there with the buffalo, if they realized he was gone. Reluctantly, he turned and walked back to the house.

But then, when he entered the house, he found that too was good. He found that too had been a fine decision—and he saw very clearly in that moment that he would never know what the right thing would be to do in his life.

WHEN HE IS DRIVING AGAIN
, Daniel tries to change the subject. He racks his brain for a subject that might interest Anna, but she is sullen with him now, and refuses to elaborate on any of the answers she supplies to the questions he asks. All her answers come out sounding like he is a fool to have to ask in the first place, as if of course there would be only one answer to
that
, and everyone would know it but him. Actually, he feels that way.

They aren't far now. In another mile or so, past where the Knutsen farm used to be, they will reach the junction and choose the road to the right. This will lead them to the old place, where Daniel's mother still lives. Maybe Daniel will tell Anna about how his father used to let Sugar off right there, to run. That, at least, would be something to say.

He wishes that Anna wasn't in such a rotten mood, it's
putting him in one too. But it's not her fault. He shouldn't have made her drive.

What he really wishes is that they—he and his daughter—could arrive at his mother's house happy and laughing, as if they were the most natural companions in the world—which they were. Which they were
supposed
to have been. His mother would see, then, that although some things had come to pass that Daniel himself or anyone else could not have foreseen—everything was going on anyway. In another way. Equally good.