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How to Skin a Deer
- University of Wisconsin Press
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113 Mar tin Hyatt Iusu ally don’t admit it. But some times I miss him. Some times I really miss my father. I don’t know why I feel em bar rassed to say that. Maybe be cause I’ve al ways pre tended that it has not mat tered to me that I didn’t have him for long. And that it never mat tered to me that even when he was here, he was only half here. On the Oc to ber day he died, he was help ing build a house for one of Huey Long’s for mer body guards. My mother was in the kitchen shred ding let tuce for roast beef po’ boys when we got the call. Until the call, it was just an other day, around four o’clock after school. Ap par ently a short while ear lier, he had said, “Oh, God, here it comes,” and dropped dead of a heart at tack. I was eleven. j I spent many of the sum mers after my father died fly ing through the woods on three-wheelers with my cou sin Terry. We would spend the days rid ing and sweat ing through the Loui siana heat. And we would cool off in the pond. I never was much of a swim mer, but I liked being in the water. We stayed out late at night, sneak ing out and roam ing the gravel and dirt roads and open fields of Uncle Hezzy’s nur sery. How to Skin a Deer Martin Hyatt 114 On those nights, some times with other friends, we would lie out on the flat beds of trucks and stare at the moon, talk ing about girls and es cap ing in eighteen-wheelers or air planes. Sev eral sum mers later, I would get braver and get on a bus headed west. But at that time, I was con tent just to dream of break ing free. One day, while we were speed ing on a three-wheeler, we came across some of Terry’s un cles. I could smell it be fore I saw it. There was a huge deer hang ing from a tree. And they were clean ing it. The deer was sort of all over the ground and weigh ing down the tree at the same time. I had never seen any thing like it. I had never seen a deer so big or an an i mal so dead. And I had never seen men and boys con nect the way those guys were con nected. Even though there was ten sion in that fam ily, the same way there is in most, in that mo ment they seemed so united. There was peace. And I didn’t under stand ex actly what was hap pen ing, why they would kill such a beau ti ful deer, why they had to rip it more apart af ter ward, why I couldn’t truly be part of this group. And it made me angry at my father, that he hadn’t taught me about all of this, about any of this. That he hadn’t taught me how to hunt. How my uncle Ray mond had to be the one to teach me how to fish and how to trawl for shrimp. How my shop teacher had to teach me how to use a saw even though my father was a car pen ter. I couldn’t under stand why he had not taught me how to skin a deer. j When I was nine and ten years old, my father bought me a type writer. He bought me a dif fer ent one two years in a row. Those were big Christ mases be cause he was ac tu ally work ing or had got ten some money from the VA. Those years, besides the Sears type writer, I got a pin ball ma chine and a hand held elec tronic NFL foot ball game too. The kitchen table was where every thing hap pened in our house: food, poker games, fights, laugh ter, sad ness. And my father would play Porter Wag oner and Lefty Friz zell. And as “A Satis fied Mind” poured out of the speak ers, I would sit in one of the chairs at the table and type away. I would create and re-create sto ries. I would write story se quels to The...