On Sunday I was 30 feet up in a tree, minimum. It could easily have been 40 or 50. I had spent the half hour from 5:30 to 6 sawing limbs and slowly aggrandizing my altitude, as it were. It had been dark the whole while, so by the time I stopped (and the sun came up), I was higher than I'd realized. At that point, I turned around in my climbing stand, unfolded the vinyl cushion attached to the upper harness, looped the cushion's elastic-and-clips around the tree, and sat down. Grabbing hold of the rope tied to the lower harness, with much deliberation I pulled my .30-06 into the stand with me.
At 6:50 I saw my first deer. My stand was situated so that I was on the edge of an oblong clearing, stretching from far-left to near-right. Behind me was a ridge-line, lain fallow. Around me was a tenuous cusp of trees, only diaphonously separating the ridge from the clearing.
I am looking straight ahead. The sun is still low enough on the horizon to keep the birds quiet and the air frigid. I've sunk into a sort of stupor, where I can receive sensory input but not easily cogitate nor analyze. The clearing is an undefined gloom, where the hay bales and the grass and the tree-line are impressed on a single canvas, without depth or definition. Even the colors slouch together toward a uniform grey.
I almost catch a movement to my right. A good-sized doe is at 2 o'clock and at good speed. The hunting instinct takes over, the adrenaline rushes, and as my mind is active again, thoughts pile on one another: she's moving fast, almost too fast; I've got to get my gun up, but I can't have her see me; I need to check her with the binoculars first; no time for binoculars, she's on the move; the gun's up but my heart is violently concussing; crank the scope up to 9, there's enough light for it; alright, she's in the sights and---she's a spike.
According to Mississippi Law, legal deer are: non-yearling does and bucks with at least 4 points on their antlers, a point being defined as any antler protuberance which would hold a wedding ring. A spike--as the name would tell you--is a non-legal buck.
At 7:20 I hear a rustle-and-crunch behind me and to the left. More squirrels, right? They'd been at it all weekend, charging and jumping throughout the woods. But something's off: whereas squirrels will make an unholy racket, the noise I hear now is modulated and restrained, as if resulting from a lean movement, with no energy wasted. Most of the last two years I'd spent hunting deer either in early fall, when leaves were still on the trees, or mid-winter, when everything is bare. I associate deer with silence. As well adapted as the animals are, they have to touch ground--and when the ground is covered with dead leaves, they've got to make some noise.
I am in the tree line, and it separates the ridge from the clearing, but behind me the trees have made one tumescent advance up the ridge. In that cropping is a buck carefully stepping between skinny maples and over logs. Sometimes deer will size up a log, pause, and jump, but this buck's movement is deliberate and incremental. Too many deer have been harvested over the last three days for him to make himself untowardly known.
My binoculars are in my hands and he is not a spike. I can't tell how big, but I can see that his antlers don't stick straight up but bow out--minimum four-point, maybe six-point, who knows? My binoculars are down, my gun is up, but I can't find him. He's left the forest out-growth and is in the ridge's waist-high grass. He appears, he disappears, he's slowly climbing the ridge. For some reason, I'm having the damndest time coordinating my real-world view and the tiny sliver viewable in my scope. In an instant, the deer is again in the clear, twenty yards from the ridgetop. This is my last chance. If he moves again he'll be covered by another clump of trees and then he'll be over the ridge. The gun is up, I find him in the sights, the safety is off, for some cosmically-obscure reason the deer has paused, back to me, and arched his head high, showing me as good a profile as I'll see, I pull the trigger.
I don't feel so much as hear the gun. With no conception of anything outside myself, I immediately refocus the scope on where the deer was--nothing to be seen. In itself, that's not unusual. In all likelihood the deer has been shot and will spend his last moments in mad flight.
Earlier in the morning I'd dropped my cell phone from the tree, so I climb down to text-message my uncle and my father. I get back up in the tree to position where the deer had been with any local landmarks. I am down the tree and in the ridge, climbing to the spot where the deer had been. The grass is depressed--obviously, I say, this is the reason why I'd suddenly seen him; he'd entered a clear spot.
And the spot is clear still. No blood, no fur, no deer. My dad arrives, so does my uncle. I get back in the tree to direct them. I'm back down and staring at the ground again. We ponder a little while longer and finally decide that the altitude had something to do with it.
Nobody mentions that my 91-year old grandfather had killed a deer on Friday in the same spot where his 23-year old grandson had missed one.
After a time, my grandfather comes back to our minds--at ninety-one, to be alive and to have killed a deer. As we say, it's a thing worth remembering.
My approach to hallway chaos, if it can be called a planned approach at all, is an ad-hoc plan. If the noise sounds like the beginnings of a fight, I will usually enter the hall and try to break it up. If someone is hailing someone else/themself/a teacher/a substitute/an imaginary friend/an alumnus/a stray dog, it's 50-50 whether I say something or not. If someone bangs on my door, the odds are 3 to 1 that I open the door and try to identify the backside of the perpetrator as he hustles away.
Here's the crucial point: how I deal with things in the hallway really depends on my mood. If I feel good about my job and my role at school, I'll be more likely to enforce discipline; if I am questioning my existence and examining the futility of banging one's head against a wall, I'm less likely to bother with the whole charade.
Now the twist: The days where I'm more likely to hate my life are exam days, program days, hold-classes-for-hours days, and the-principal's-not-here-and-there's-been-a-fight-and-we-in-the-office-have-no-idea-what-to-do-so-we'll-just-sit-on-our-hands days. On these same days are students the most likely to misbehave. So for better or worse, on the days when I'm most needed to enforce discipline, I'm the least motivated to do so.
You should probably join the Teacher Corps because you want to; it's hardly ever a good idea to--for two years--do a thing that's against your will.
You should probably join the Teacher Corps because you're looking for a change; make sure this is the change you're looking for, though.
You probably shouldn't join the Teacher Corps because you're looking to force a change in yourself; however you were before MTC, you will be the same way during, except more so.
You probably shouldn't join the Teacher Corps if you don't like black people; this job has plenty of potential to unbalance you, and if you start too far from the center you might slide off the board altogether. You can repeat the same advice for "rural areas," "white people with Southern accents," "the Lost Cause," and "very tepid and marked support for the president-elect."
