One Last Time
James Robertson was fourteen years old when the Virginia Game Commission began importing deer from other areas in 1926. Up to that point in his life, the animals didn’t exist in deep southwestern Virginia, where he grew up in Grayson County. He had been hunting other wild game since he was a boy, and his grandfather, John Robertson, had taught him to fish and trap in the local New River and its various streams and creeks. He was handy with a gun and knew the habits of woodland creatures at a young age. The white-tailed deer stocked into the area were of great interest to James from the beginning of their re-introduction to the region. He gained great prowess in tracking them, shooting them. And using every part of the animal possible, especially as he began his own family a few short years later, after marrying his young sweetheart, Sally Ann Wyatt, in 1930, when he was eighteen and she was only sixteen, running away together across the state line into North Carolina.
From the age of fourteen forward, never a year went by that James didn’t hunt, for necessity for many years, and eventually, as he grew older, more for sport. In 2005, at the age of ninety-three, James stood about 5’1”, was about as big around as he was tall, had traces of white hair on his otherwise bald head (with almost as much protruding from his ears), but had remarkable skin for a man his age. Judging on looks alone, he could easily have passed for a man in his seventies, compared with other geriatric members of the community. James’ age was betrayed most obviously by the thick Coke-bottle-bottom glasses on his face, that made his blue-gray eyes look like prized objects underneath a magnifying glass, bigger than life and strangely inquisitive. With his son Sonny parked outside in his beat-up Ford F-150 in the late-August afternoon sunshine, James ambled into the wildlife office to get the required licenses and permits for another hunting season.
Walter Ward, the young man on duty in the office, eyed the old man silently, looking over the empty forms James put down in front of him. “Mr. Robertson,” he started politely, “sir, I’m afraid we’re not gonna be able to fill out your paperwork for you again this year.”
James stared at him for a long moment through his large, round spectacles and scratched his ear absent-mindedly. “Why not? You’ve been filling it out for me for about ten years. Why not this year?”
Walter lowered his eyes, ashamed of repeating precisely what his supervisor said when the topic of James Robertson loose with a hunting license for another year had come up in conversation a couple of months earlier. It basically boiled down to the fact that the old man was too old to be trusted with a firearm alone in the woods. For his own safety, or anyone else’s. His supervisor had adamantly forbidden anyone in the office to complete James’ paperwork. “If he can’t see well enough to fill out the forms, then he sure as heck can’t see well enough to be toting a gun!”
James waited for a response, then asked again, “Well? Why not?”
“Well, sir,” Walter started slowly. He knew James Robertson well. The old man had been a fixture in the community forever. He knew Walter’s family well and had been steadfast friends with Walter’s own grandfather. James Robertson knew more about hunting and tracking and fishing than anyone that Walter knew. “Mr. Robertson, the truth is –”
“The truth is, you’re gonna stand there and tell me I’m too old to go hunting, aren’t you?” James puffed up at the young man.
The gauntlet had been thrown. Walter turned red with embarrassment and shook his head sadly. “Mr. Robertson, we just wanna make sure that you don’t get hurt.”
“Have I ever gotten hurt? I can tell you every hunting accident in this county in the past century, and I haven’t been involved with any. I know more about hunting than anyone!”
Walter nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, sir, I know you do. But the Warden says if you can’t fill out your own paperwork, then you can’t have a license. I’m so sorry.”
Part of him wanted to stand there and continue arguing with the young man. But he didn’t have the patience or desire to waste his time in such a manner. Instead, he looked at the young man once more in disgust, crumpled up the application, and threw it in the wastebasket on his way out the door. There was no use trying to convince Walter that he was perfectly fine to go hunting. In truth, maybe he wasn’t perfectly fine, but he was still able. He knew he was. Why did other people doubt his abilities to do what he had done for eighty years? It wasn’t just hunting. His oldest son and one of his daughters who lived locally kept trying to get him to move out of the apartment he lived in above the convenience store. Kept telling him that he didn’t need to be traipsing up and down all those steps to that apartment day in and day out when he went down to buy an RC and Little Debbie oatmeal cake in the store every afternoon. That he didn’t need to keep tending his own house at his age, that he was liable to forget something on the kitchen stove and burn the whole place down, blow it all to smithereens with those gas pumps out front of the store. Kept telling him that he was gonna fall in the bathtub and be stuck there for hours, or days, before anyone could get to him to help him. James was tired of people telling him what he didn’t need to do. It was bad enough coming from his own family, much less from a whippersnapper like Walter!
His son Sonny, in his late sixties, knew that something hadn’t gone well from the expression on his father’s face. Sonny was pretty much a carbon copy of his father’s short-and-round physique, but sported bushy brown eyebrows and a bushy brown beard that matched his scruffy dark hair and brown eyes. He stroked the left side of his bibbed overalls as the old man pulled himself up into the aged pickup and pulled his John Deere cap nervously down over his eyes a little, already suspecting what had happened. “Well, Dad, what did they tell you?”
James pouted and didn’t speak for a few minutes, waiting for Sonny to start the engine and head home. When it became clear to him that his son wanted to know what had gone down, he refused to look at him. Staring straight ahead at the side of the red brick building, he answered quietly, “They said I’m too old and they won’t give me a license this year.” His lower lip trembled a bit at the end. Then he set his jaw hard and said, “So I reckon I’ll just go home and die, since that’s all I’m fit to do now.”
“Now, Dad,” Sonny started, “that’s not what they meant.” Then he grew silent himself and started the engine. “You’re still fit to do lots of things.”
James remained stony-faced for the ten minutes it took Sonny to drive him back to the little apartment up over the convenience store. Sonny came around and tried to help him out of the truck, but James swore at him and would have no part of being assisted. Out of the truck, or up the steps. They walked into the stuffy apartment and James removed his Atlanta Braves baseball cap and placed it on the coat rack by the door, as he headed into the living room and picked up the remote control to his television set. Go figure. The Braves had been rained out. The whole afternoon was a waste. Sonny asked what he could do to help, and James just shook his head. “Turn back time,” he muttered. “And if you can’t do that, then there’s not a damned thing!”
Sonny remained with him in silence as the old man heated some leftover brown beans and cornbread in the microwave on the kitchen counter. He poured himself a glass of milk as he watched his father wallowing in his own self-pity and disillusion. He felt helpless, but what could he do? Sure, he could go back down to the office and talk to them, but he doubted it would make a difference. And realistically, he knew that they were right to tell the old man that he couldn’t have the license. Watching him shuffle around the apartment, Sonny understood where they were coming from. For Pete’s sake, he was ninety-three years old. He had no business out shooting wild animals in the woods. But he also understood the freedom that had just been stripped from a man whose whole life had been spent in the woods and on the creekbanks of this county. When you take a man’s freedom from him, what does he have left?
James fell asleep in his recliner in the middle of the local news. Sonny placed one of his mom’s handmade quilts over the old man and kissed him gently on the forehead. He locked the door from the inside and let himself out to travel down the road the five minutes it took him to get home to his wife Amy and their doublewide trailer.
He told Amy over dinner how the afternoon had gone. She shook her head sadly. “Hell, Sonny,” she said as she lit up a cigarette. “Why do you even need a license? Just take him out yourself. Why bother with a piece of paper? Let him go hunting. One last time. What will it hurt? Just go up on the edge of the Daniels’ property. You know they love your daddy. They won’t say nothing to you for taking him hunting up there.” She took a long drag off the cigarette and winked at her husband with a grin. “Just don’t get caught!”
The more Sonny thought about it, the more he thought Amy was onto something. It’s not like the Robertsons had ever let a little thing like legalities stand in the way of them doing something. When times were tight when he was a teenager, his mom would watch while her kids smuggled goods out of stores that were needed at home but couldn’t be purchased. His dad ran hooch during the 30s-60s, to help support his ever-growing brood of children when he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) find steady employment. Sonny himself had spent more than a few nights of his life locked up in the county jail over various legal offenses. He was no worse the wear for it. They were survivors. They did what it took to get by. And this wasn’t just someone telling his dad that he couldn’t go hunting. This was like a gut-punch to the old man, making him feel like he was too old to be of consequence now. He wanted more than anything to let his dad have one more turn behind the sight of the rifle. One more deer to say he went out with a bang! He waited a week or so, then went to Dale Daniels’ place to talk it over with his friend. Dale told him, as long as the old man didn’t have a heart attack out there in his woods and Sonny kept an eye on him, it was fine by him if they hunted on his land. But Sonny had to stay with James. That was the only rule.
Fine by Sonny. He had no intentions of letting his dad out in the woods. Alone or with anyone, himself included. He didn’t mention anything to his dad about the plan until the day before he decided they’d go. Just in time to watch the Braves game with his father, Sonny knocked on the apartment door and let himself in with a yell to James. “Hey, Dad! It’s just me. Sonny. Mind if I watch the game with you?” he asked as he sat down on the couch and handed his father an RC and a Little Debbie oatmeal cake.
James shrugged his shoulders, accepting the snack and looking back to the game, which had just gotten underway. Sonny watched and the two men commented back and forth, if something seemed important enough to say. Mostly, though, they just watched. Smiled when things were going well. Cursed and shook their heads when they weren’t.
When the game ended, Sonny looked over at his dad. “Your gun cleaned and ready to go?”
James looked over at him, confused. “For what?”
Sonny tried not to grin, but he was on the verge of giddiness, about to surprise his father with the news. He laid out the plan and looked at his father for approval.
James didn’t seem quite convinced that this was going to work. “Let me get this straight. We ain’t got no hunting license?”
“No. We don’t need one. We’re going up on Dale Daniels’ place. He said it’s fine. We just can’t get caught by the Warden. Nobody knows but you, me, Amy, and Dale. Well, and maybe Dale’s old lady, by now.”
James looked pensive for several moments, as if turning over every possibility in his mind. “What if I fall in the woods or something?”
Sonny patted him on the back. “You’re not even going into the woods, Dad. We’re gonna take my F-150 and park it up in the field near the edge of those woods. You know where I’m talking about? Up in that little clearing about halfway up Dale’s property line.” His father nodded, knowing where his son was talking about exactly. He’d walked every corner of Grayson County in his lifetime, he reckoned, and knew just about any spot good for tracking and hunting. Sonny was right; it would be a dandy place to stake out. Sonny continued, “And we’re gonna sit there, real quiet, and wait in my truck for some deer to show up. Then you’ll stick your gun out the passenger-side window and shoot one down!”
James looked a little startled at first. “You mean, I’m shooting from your truck, not out in the field?”
“That’s right. We’ll both be comfy and completely safe in the truck.”
“What if no deer come out of the woods?” the old man questioned.
“Then, we’ll just have us a big day of sitting around talking, remembering, and telling stories to each other. Like old times.”
James lit up. “I get one more chance,” he almost whispered.
“Yeah, Dad. You deserve to give it one last try before you hang up the gun for good!”
The next morning, Sonny arrived at the apartment before dawn. James had been so excited that he couldn’t wait for him inside. He’d locked the door, spirited his gun down the steps as stealthily as a 93-year-old man could manage, going down those steps in the near-dark, and waited for Sonny at the side of the building nearest the gas pumps. Sonny had brought tenderloin biscuits that Amy made, and the two men ate in excited silence as the sun came up over the ridge.
Throughout the morning, they saw two groups of wild turkeys strut across the field towards a pond on the other side. James pretended to take aim, got them in his sights, and yelled “Bang!”
“Dad, you scared the bejesus out of me! Don’t do that again!” Sonny laughed quietly.
James whooped out loud, laughing and trying to catch his breath until Sonny told him to be quiet before he scared off every deer within a five-mile radius. Still, the old man chuckled, feeling as high on life as he ever had, thrilled to have this one last chance to deer hunt with his favorite son.
The two had just about nodded off in the early afternoon sunlight when it happened. A group of eight deer appeared at the edge of the woods and peered out across the clearing. James spied them immediately and hung his rifle out the passenger-side window, using the window as a rest to steady his aim. The deer shuffled nervously amongst themselves, as if some important decision were being made. Then one big buck broke from the group and started across the field, walking slowly, surely, head up. Sonny thought to himself, “My God, it’s like they’re drawing straws or something, and this one here got the short one! He’s just stepping right out there on his own like a sacrificial lamb led to slaughter!”
James followed the buck with his rifle, letting him get away from the woods and out into the clearing where he had a sure shot. The buck stopped where he was, stared straight at the truck, and waited for the old man to make his move. Sonny sat, bewildered by the magic of the moment. Suddenly, there was a loud crash and the windshield before him shattered into a million pieces. Sonny threw his arms up to shield his eyes. Somehow, in the excitement of the moment, his father had shot through the windshield of Sonny’s F-150. Lightning-fast, with absolute precision, James reloaded and managed to hit the buck as he sprinted across the clearing, bringing him down soundly.
Sonny dragged the animal back to the truck and maneuvered it onto the open tailgate, pushing laboriously to get it up into the bed to shut the tailgate and high-tail it out of there before anyone came to investigate two random shots ringing out through the afternoon. He squinted his eyes against the air that poured in as they drove down the road to his doublewide. He was gonna have a hell of a time explaining this to Amy.
Chrissie Anderson Peters resides in Bristol, TN, with her husband and their four feline children. She holds a BA from Emory & Henry College, and an MSIS from the University of Tennessee. She grew up in Tazewell, VA, but almost all of her family lines get tangled up in Grayson County, VA, and Ashe County, NC, including the family line that inspired the story “One More Time,” (a hybrid that she likes to refer to as bio-fiction). Her work has been featured in several regional journals and magazines and she has three self-published books, the latest of which is entitled Blue Ridge Christmas. Read more about her writing on her website at www.CAPWrites.com
