The Truth About Antlers

The tides, reliable as the sun and moon themselves, swept in and washed away the debris and clutter each and every day. Ruthie and I went treasure hunting in their wake, scavenging along the coast for shells and bones and chunks of broken ledge rock. Once we built a fort made entirely of driftwood, smooth washed by the water and bleached white by the sun - it lasted for nearly the whole summer. We splashed in the randomly shaped tide pools, collected strands of kelp, spied on the colonies of tiny periwinkles and gathered every manner of shell and wildflower. One late August afternoon we saw a shadow just beyond the tree line - a six point buck, the most beautiful thing I thought I had ever seen, standing stone still and watching us with interest, showing no fear. We froze, hardly able to believe our eyes as the animal took one delicate step then another away from the shelter of the trees and onto open ground. His coat was the color of caramel with cream, his tail and belly white as the driftwood and his eyes a deep shade of brown. We watched him nuzzle his velvet covered antlers against a tree, lower his head to graze on a twig - then there was a sudden blast from the factory whistle and with one remarkably graceful and impossibly fast movement, he leaped back into the trees and was so completely gone that we almost doubted we'd seen him at all.

That was the day that I came to realize the truth about antlers. They were mounted pretty much everywhere, in the canteen and the barber shop, on Mr. McIntyre's wall above the ancient cash register, by the back door at my grandmother Ruby's where they were sometimes used as a hat rack. Watching the stag, I put it together for the first time - and was horrified. The concept of hunting suddenly and shockingly crossed the line from abstract to reality and the most beautiful, elegant, gentle eyed creature I'd ever seen could be at risk. It gave me nightmares for weeks, long after we'd left for the summer, and for a time I seemed to see to wall mounted antlers and killers everywhere. The dreams were bloody and terrifying and the suffering often woke me in tears.

When it comes to hunting, I haven't changed all that much since that late summer day. I've learned to block out the nightmare images and trick my mind with language - venison instead of deer, steak in place of cow - but if I let myself remember, allow myself to comprehend every day words like chicken, then the memory of the six point buck at the edge of the tree line returns with a clarity that breaks my heart.

Ruthie and I returned to the tide pools every day after that, approaching barefoot and low to the ground, but we were never to see the magnificent stag again. Instinctively, we told no one - if he'd been real, we agreed, it was better that the island men with their shotguns and traps didn't know. If he'd been a vision, as we sometimes told ourselves, then it was better that no one at all knew.