The Hanging Tree by Bryan Gruley Page A

anyway,” Darlene said.
    “No,” Gracie said.
    “We can’t just leave it here to die. Somebody might be able to help it.”
    “Not my mom, or her—just leave it.”
    “Her what?” Darlene said.
    “This is stupid,” I said. “We should tell someone. You’re going to be bragging about it anyway.”
    “Just wait, Gus,” Darlene said.
    I waited. The girls stood there watching the deer. Its eyes were closed again. Finally, I said, “I’m going to count my steps back to the road so the police can find it.” I turned and started walking back toward the bikes.
    “It won’t be the police,” Gracie said. “Gus.” She shouted it as I took big running steps up the hill.
    After I told Mrs. McBride that the deer was twenty-eight steps down Jitters Trail, twenty-three steps to the right, and fifty-three steps down through the trees, she picked up her phone. When Gracie heard her say, “Bucky boy,” into the phone, she punched me in the ribs.
    “Ow,” I said. “What are you doing?”
    “Butthole. I told you.”
    I looked at Darlene. She looked away.
    Four hours later, the deer was hanging antlers up from a joist in Gracie’s mother’s carport, dripping blood onto an oil-stained piece of cardboard. The fur around its neck was matted, and some had been worn away so that patches of pink skin showed through. One of the deer’s hind legs jutted out from its body at an unnatural angle that made me think of the day the winter before when my friend Jeff Champagne lost a skate edge and slid into the boards and broke a leg.
    I didn’t know what the smell was in the carport, but I knew I didn’t like it.
    A man named Ringles stood looking the gutted animal over. Blood smeared the “Matilda” tattoo on his left arm. He turned to Shirley McBride, who was leaning against a garbage can sipping a longneck bottle of Drewry’s.
    “See where he got me?” Buck Ringles said. He fingered a tear in the rolled-up sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Fucker jumped up like he was coming for me. Goddamn leg’s broken in two places, but the fucker would not give up.”
    “Buck.”
    “Oh. Sorry.” He grinned at Gracie, Darlene, and me. “Bastard would not give up.”
    “You going to try to get a license?” Shirley said.
    Ringles rubbed the gray stubble on one of his sunken cheeks. He was two heads taller than Shirley, skinny but for the belly that sagged over his belt. He and a cousin made their livings cleaning out septic tanks. Shirley had dated them both, off and on. For the moment, she was with Buck.
    “Don’t know,” he said. “You know, you can get a license if you hit one with your car. My ex-brother-in-law did it when that doe run into him up on M-32.” Buck touched the deer’s skewed leg. “This one looks like he got hit himself.”
    “Maybe your car hit it,” Shirley said.
    Ringles grinned. “Maybe.” Then his eyes brightened. “You think the DMV’ll let me have a license for strangling a deer in self-defense?”
    They both laughed.
    We had overheard him earlier telling Mrs. McBride how the deer had died. Buck Ringles had taken his hunting knife into the woods—“just in case,” he said—but was afraid that he might inadvertently cut himself in a struggle. He crept up on the deer from behind. When the deer suddenly turned and raised itself up on its front legs—“lurched,” as Ringles put it—Ringles clambered atop its back, removed his belt, and quickly looped it around the deer’s neck, pulling one end through the buckle and yanking with all of his strength.
    When the deer lost consciousness, Ringles jumped off and found a tree branch. He brought it down on the deer’s head again and again until he heard something crack and the head lolled over, limp. My stomach went queasy as we eavesdropped from Gracie’s bedroom, hearing Buck’s voice rise as he described himself swinging the branch.
    Now, as we stood marveling at the garroted deer in Mrs. McBride’s carport, Ringles reached beneath his