The Old Ones

As the author struggles with the unexpected death of his cousin-his hunting buddy-he searches for ways to preserve his cousin's legacy at deer camp.

- Rick Bass

IT’S TOO CLOSE TO THE BONE. This is not the way it’s supposed to go. Always before, our hunters have left quietly, in perfect chronology, as orderly as children filing out to playground recess, one at a time, each successive oldest passing through that door—as if leaving the camp house to go look around for something; one more hunt and then not coming back. Stepping through that door, and into the landscape of our memory. Old Howard—not blood related, but the man who owned and leased to us the deer pasture, stepping out quietly, in his late 80s. And then Old Granddaddy, a while later, in his late 80s. When it was his time.

The next two oldest, Uncle Jim and my dad, Charlie, began showing hints of mortality in their 70s—Uncle Jimmy, with a stroke, and Dad, with bladder and then prostate cancer 10 years ago, but both battling those things back, recovering, and still hunting, hunting on, and still with us.

My oldest cousin wasn’t supposed to step to the head of the line. He wasn’t supposed to cut in front of anyone. The oldest son of Uncle Jimmy, as I am Charlie’s oldest, he—his name was also Rick—and I were supposed to become the Old Ones someday. That was the model that had been presented to us. That was what we knew.

Rick was already in his 60s, but in my mind he is still a handsome, reckless teenager, burning with life; he is still young and daring, charismatic, and troubled. Did I say reckless? In my mind, he and I are both still young and vital, undiminished and uncompromised.