Cougars in the Hills

Ted Morrissey

The five of them, husband and wife in the front seat and the three children packed in the half-seat behind, came in the old truck, a '67 or '8, down the slippery narrow road. Old quilts smelling of hounds and farm cats pressed upon the children. A Navajo blanket, once colorful now faded, formed a hooded cloak about the wife. The truck's engine rumbled steadily but its heater was spent. The husband had neither parts nor money to fix it. As if to punish himself, he refused the old army blanket and left it heaped on the icy seat between him and his wife; and he kept his coveralls half undone even though his wife had replaced the broken, gap-toothed zipper just last Sunday.

The two-lane road wound down, down, down between the dark hills. Falling rain-snow left a glaze that reflected the truck's headlights.

- How're ya doing? asked the wife, her voice partially muted by the blanket. The frozen cloud of her question hung suspended for a moment.

- All right. The husband hated to answer her, believing her only reason for asking was to help him stave off sleep, to keep herself and her children safe. He could no longer feel his feet and toes in their boots; would no longer have any finesse with the brake and clutch if he needed finesse. - All right, he repeated.

The husband had adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see his sleeping sons. The road behind didn't matter. No one was traveling it, would not be traveling it for days. The eldest boy, Eugene, twelve, was in the middle. Crumpled on both his shoulders were the twins, Carl and Bobby, seven. With the ridges of quilts, they formed a triangular mountain-shape in the backseat. Eugene's white-blond head was the mountain's snowy peak. The husband thought of skiing, of the virgin snow, of the crystalline pines, of sharp edges, of pathless journeys - always down down down, always faster faster faster. . . .

- Watch. ... !

The buck was there in the headlights, its great rack and underbelly whiter than the falling snow, its glassy black eye reflecting the truck's sudden approach.

The husband had nothing to do. But to hit it.

The jolt tossed the truck to the left, out of control. The right headlight was shattered. Then somehow, with still no brake applied, the truck righted itself and found the next curve, and the next. The husband had tried to see in the rearview mirror, What of the buck?, but the faces of the mountain were suddenly alert and frightened.

- It's all right, said the husband. It was just a deer. We're almost home. He thought of the great buck, injured and broken, but probably still alive lying next to the road waiting to die in the new snow. Maybe, once the children were home safely, he could go back, with his Remington, and do right by the animal. ... But there was no way; even with gravity the road was barely passable. It would be days before they could come up out of the valley. By then the buck would be taken care of, would be a coyote's meal, or a cougar's - there were still a few cougars in the hills. - It's all right, he repeated. We're about home.

The husband pulled the zipper of his coveralls up to his chin and stared hard into the streaks of white illumined by the truck's solitary beam.