JD Clapp                                                                                                       

The Chosen Ones

The note simply read: I can’t do this anymore. The note led to texts, then calls, then family meetings. It had all piled up on the kid. First, the Army gave him his walking papers a month in. His parents divorced the same year. The year before all that, his asshole father conned him out of his inheritance. It would be a lot for any 22-year-old. 

The kid gravitated to me in bad times, and I had spent many hours with him in the field and on the water. With no other viable plan, the family asked me to buy them time, and the kid ended up in the passenger seat of my truck, an unplanned companion on a mule deer and cow elk hunt I booked long before.

The kid stared blankly ahead. He looked tired and sad, but we started the road trip over ten hours earlier. Hell, I was tired. Lost in my own thoughts, I let him be. 

I realized I was once a version of the kid. I knew his road ahead, understood his self-chosen obstacles. His way out would be more difficult than mine. He got dealt a shittier hand. I also understood even if he could pull himself out of the current spiral, as life rolled out in front of him, new and more brutal gut punches waited ahead. The ghost in the passenger seat always lurked.

###

We barreled east on I 40, the New Mexican plains rolling by. Late fall, the sun perpetually west, cast grainy shadows across tawny grass highlands spilling out into the expanse of a sepia tinged road trip. Patsy Cline served as our soundtrack to an otherwise silent film. It looked like flat easy country, but I knew better.

I sipped tepid gas station french roast from a styrofoam cup. He stared out the passenger window.

He finally spoke, “Pronghorn.” 

A small herd of antelope and cow elk rolled by just off the road. It was familiar. I was not of this place, but I knew it well enough. 

“How long till we get to the ranch?” the kid asked.

“I’d say we have another two hours. It’ll be dark before we get to Trinidad.”

The kid nodded. 

“You ok?” I asked.

“Something bad is going to happen.”

“On the hunt?” I asked.

The kid thought. “No. Something bad back home.”

“To you?”

“No. Like I told everyone, I couldn’t hurt myself even if I wanted to. I’m a coward…”

He paused and looked away. I thought he might be fighting tears.

He continued, “Something bad is going to happen at home.”

##

A Latina, about 22, his age, greeted us at the door. She was tall, athletic, very pretty, dressed in fitted jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a blue and white flannel shirt.

“Hi, I’m Maria. I’m the cook and caretaker. You must be Jake,” she said. 

“I am. Nice to meet you. This is Cam,” I said introducing the kid.

The kid said “hi,” looking at her for a second then at his feet.

We grabbed my gun and our bags from the truck bed.

“She is kind of hot,” The kid said.

”You should talk to her then. We are here four days.”

“Girls like her don’t talk to guys like me.”

“Mope.”

###

The next morning Brent shook our hands. He was a prototype western guide: genes of a mountain goat, cowboy handsome, 5 foot ten, 160 pounds of carbon fiber bones, titanium joints, and heavy-duty elastic band tendons. He sported light weight Danner boots and Sitka performance camo. I thought, the bastard looks like he’s running just standing there. Knowing what was ahead, I mentally rehearsed saying, “hold up for a minute, let me catch my breath.”

The kid sat down at the breakfast table, a heavy sigh his first sound. The scent of bacon and coffee filled the room, Maria busy clanking pans in the next room. I grabbed my first coffee, thankfully not the gas station variety, before Maria dished up breakfast. Brent followed universal guide protocol, filling his Yeti cup with coffee, swiping an apple, and dipping out to get ready. 

“See you boys in about 30.”

The kid stirred his eggs, my plate already clean. Tired of pulling teeth for conversation, I asked, “What’s the problem?”

“Our guide is sleeping with her.”

“Who?”

“The cook. Maria. He came out of her room this morning. I saw him.”

“Good for him.”

“I’ll never get the girl.”

“Probably not. Stop being a mope,” I said.

###

“Let’s make sure your rifle is on, then go look for a nice muley this morning,” Brent said.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“We have some nice representative bucks hanging around,” code for “there’s no chance of finding a 200-inch deer, and I hope you aren’t a picky pain in my ass.”

“I’m not picky. If it’s mature, I’ll shoot it,” I said.

“Awesome! I have a solid deer patterned. The last three guys I guided passed it up,” he said.

“I don’t care about scores. I mostly hunt for meat. This will be my first mule deer,” I said.

“Wow—Ok, this will be a great first muley buck,” he said.

We pulled off the road after a quarter mile. Brent walked away from the truck, put up his binoculars and look back at us. He moved a few yards, then pulled a two-liter soda bottle from his pack and set it down.

“What’s he doing?” the kid asked.

“He was ranging us. That’s 100 yards. I’ll take a shot or two at the bottle to make sure my scope is still on.”

When Brent was back at the truck, I sat and leaned against the front wheel, bracing my elbows on my knees. I shot once, hitting the bottle an inch or so higher than where my crosshairs sat. 

“I could never make that shot,” the kid said.

“Yes, you could. I could teach you right now in a few minutes.”

“That’s ok. Maybe later.”

I remembered using the same, “maybe later” ploy when I was his age to avoid any chance of embarrassment of failure.

We drove over, collected the soda bottle, and headed into the hills.

It was typical western style hunting. We drove dirt single track roads; Brent’s young and trained eagle eyes seeing animals we couldn’t. Brent would say something like, “too young” or “not what we are looking for” or “coyote” and drive on. 

Around 10:00 a.m. we stopped driving and began hiking. Brent led holding the shooting sticks, I followed with my rifle, and the kid trailed shooting video on his phone. We made our way into a dense oak thicket. Late October leaves, orange, yellow, shades of red, covered the ground; the air heavy with the sweet scent of decay and wet earth.

Brent stopped ahead of us. He held his hand up to the side, indicating we should stop. Brent glassed, put up the sticks, and motioned me forward. I signaled for the kid to stay put. I put the rifle up and Brent whispered, “120 yard straight ahead in that thicket. It’s the deer the I told you about.”

I found him in the scope, slightly quartering to us. Brent whispered, “See if he steps broadside. Give him a minute. He doesn’t know we are here. If you feel comfortable shoot him in the chest. Now or never.” Brent whispered.

I was solid. The kid loudly shuffled behind us. Now or never indeed. I shot and the .300 magnum caliber shell sent a thundering boom reminiscent of waves crashing on rocks echoing through the thicket. The deer bunched up and kicked his hind legs in the air. He stumbled forward, found his feet, then crashed off into the woods.  

“I didn’t hear the thwack. But I hit him,” I said.

My ears rang.

“You center punched him. Perfect heart shot. He’s dead over there someplace,” Brent said with a big smile.

The deer laid 30 feet from where I shot him. Clearly past his prime, his face had gone gray, his heavy body scarred from years of fighting, a 4 x 4 rack with antlers of average width, height, and girth. Brent looked in his mouth.

“He is old. Hardly any teeth. He wasn’t going to last this winter. He’s great first buck.”

“He’s perfect. Thanks for putting us on him so quick.”

###

On the way back to the lodge, the kid had grown silent again. He seemed agitated in the morning at breakfast, but I hadn’t been in the mood to ask him why. Finally, he spoke up.

“Last night I dreamt my dog died.”

“Is he sick?”

“No. He’s old but he was fine when we left.”

“Then stop worrying about it,” I said with an edge.

“You don’t understand. I see things. I dream things and they come true.”

“Well, I see dead people,” I said.

“You do?”

He missed the movie reference.

Honestly, however, I didn’t know what to say. The year before, my wife dragged me to a psychic. When the woman did my reading she said, “You are one of the chosen ones. You are blessed with future sight.” My wife was excited; I was not.

“Well, if he is old and dies, he had a great life. You can’t do anything about it anyway.” 

We were almost to Trinidad when my sister-in-law called him. I knew when he picked up. The strange part, the spooky part, I felt a pang of impending doom a few minutes before the call. He hung up, tears in his eyes.

“My dog died an hour ago.”

That night we sat in the great room by the fire. I decided the only way help him at this point would tarnish the “golden uncle” image he held of me. I’m not sure misery truly loves company, but company normalizes misery. I told him of my own struggles as a kid and young man. I told him it was my experience life never seemed to be simple or easy for long. There would by myriad obstacles, hard choices, regrets.

I told him there were also abundant good times ahead. It was just life and he needed to find a sane path forward, be it stoic or Zen or something else. Finally, I told him I was not worried about him. I knew he would be fine; I got through it, everyone faces obstacles, etc. But I was firm on one point.

“Stop holding yourself back through self-pity and doubt. Nobody likes a mope.”

We had a last drink by the dying fire.

He said, “I feel better. I feel a lot better.”  

###

After an unremarkable cow elk hunt, we headed home. The I40 stretched ahead, a black ribbon splitting endless fields to the south, and squat mountains to the north.

Someplace before Santa Fe, the kid said, “I do feel a lot better. But the psychic thing scares me. Seriously, I don’t want to know when bad things are going to happen.”

Thinking if it was good enough for misery, knowing someone who also had a bit of “the shine” as Steven King called it, might help. So, I told him about my visit to the psychic with my wife.  

“So, I am a chosen one too?” he asked. 

I laughed.

“I guess we both are,” I answered.

He nodded, looking peacefully out the window.

I turned up the music and Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” came on...

JD Clapp lives and writes in San Diego CA. His work has appeared in numerous outlets including Written Tales, Cafe Lit, Wrong Turn Lit, WhiskyBlot, Prosetrics, and 10 x 10 Flash Fiction Stories.