Hunting Party

I have not brought this home for you to ignore, the man said. I’ve spent nine hours in the miserable woods with tree after tree in the way to fell this lousy deer, and you will cook it or I will make the most of our difference in stature. Could I not put this thought where it belongs, my faint husband? she said, eyes fixed, one on each of the two other pair in the room, the first, dead-glazed, the second with her wish that they were so as well: I cannot make much of something that lived as if it never considered itself anything but hungry and fearful, and this is what you’ve brought to our door, across the threshold and laid upon our table. Yes, I too am hungry, he promised, and there will be trouble. Trouble? she asked. I say again, again after eleven years: meat not worth the trouble, fool, trouble meat enough.