“When am I going to be old enough to have my own gun?”

“That’s up to your dad.”

“I’m nine.”

“I know. Let’s be quiet for a little while.”

Timmy watched the snow whip and swirl over the field while his uncle left the blind to urinate in the woods. Though the sun was officially up, the sky was still a stark, unremitting white. There was little light for the snow to reflect, little difference between air and earth. Objects without shadows, stark and bodiless. Singular stalks in a sea of snow.

Timmy sensed something out of the corner of his eye. He had been looking down at his moon-boots, wiggling his frozen toes, when a doe emerged with two fawns from the woods at the far end of the field. When his uncle ducked his head back in the blind he followed Timmy’s pointing finger with his eyes and froze. He became a different person. He crouched towards the chair, sat down, and raised the rifle. Every movement became calculated and deliberate, as though he were performing a slow motion ballet. Timmy watched the doe and fawns make their way along the edge of the field, rutting with their noses for corn hidden beneath the snow. The doe lifted her head often, sniffing the air. The fawns stayed within a strict orbit around her. Timmy leaned back. He had seen several does already this week, and the drama was beginning to weaken. He scanned the tree line for a buck.

His uncle’s shot cracked the silence and echoed over the hills. The fawns scattered for cover. Timmy looked for the buck he must have missed but instead he saw the doe, on her side, struggling to get up. His uncle ducked out of the cabin, marching towards the doe with his rifle slung over his shoulder. Timmy scrambled after him. Beneath his boots the wind formed dunes, shifting the shape of the ground on which they walked.

The doe was trying to get up. She would get one or two legs beneath her and then fall back on her side. She was breathing very heavily. Timmy felt sick. He’d never watched an animal die before. He had always imagined it would be neat and quick. One shot and done. Not like this. She was mortally injured and flopping helplessly in the snow. It was plain to see that she didn’t want to die. He couldn’t stop watching. Up close she was beautiful. Her big black eyes, liquid and blinking. Her heaving chest.

His uncle drew a pistol from a side holster. He leaned down, put one boot on her neck to hold her still, and shot her through the head beneath the ear. He was unhurried, deliberate. It was like watching someone turn off a faucet.

The deer lay still, her black eyes open, the tip of her tongue protruding from her lips. A bloody clump of fur where she’d been shot. His uncle leaned the barrel of his rifle in the crook of a cornstalk and unsheathed his knife. He knelt behind the deer and began to cut her open, starting near the hind leg and cutting toward her chest. There was a great deal of effort involved. His uncle jerked the knife in jagged bursts, making progress inches at a time. He stopped to rest, removed his hood, and then started cutting again. Her body steamed at the seam where she’d been opened to the air. Her internal organs where much bigger than Timmy had imagined they could be. They were strange colors too, bruised purple and maroon.