Perfectly Good White Boy by Carrie Mesrobian Page A

couldn’t believe it, all over again. Grandpa slapped me on the back.
    â€œThink this time you’ll want to field dress them?”
    â€œHell no, Grandpa.”
    â€œChickenshit,” he said. Laughing.
    â€œHey!” I said. I was smiling like crazy. “You expect me to do everything around here?”
    I got closer to see where I’d hit the deer. Two in the chest, one in the neck. One was still alive, its hooves wavering in the air. That was the doe. The other two were bucks, their racks sticking into the mud. My grandpa knelt beside the doe, put his hand on her chest, and pulled out his field kit, laid it on the ground. Then he pulled a knife from it and slit the doe’s throat. Her hooves stopped moving pretty quick then.
    â€œWhoa,” Eddie whispered to himself, stepping back, his eyes on the blood puddling in dark lines in the corn rows.
    My grandpa put his gloves on, started on one of the bucks.
    â€œJesus,” Eddie muttered, his hand over his nose, when my grandpa made the first cut, breastbone to balls. The guts started tumbling out of the white-fur belly, all vivid red and blue, and Eddie stepped back from the smell. I started breathing through my mouth, swallowing a lot to avoid the stench; my grandpa had taught me and Brad that.
    â€œFirst time’s the hardest,” my grandpa said, glancing at Eddie, who looked like he wanted to barf all over his shoes. I tried not to laugh, for Eddie’s sake. “This one’s a second-year buck, Sean,” Grandpa Chuck added.
    â€œSure that’s a second-year buck?” Brad, adjusting his ball cap, out of breath from running. “Looks like a first-year. You should have stayed up in the stand. Waited for more.”
    I didn’t say anything. Saying anything would give him something to argue with. And right now, Brad couldn’t argue with shit. I’d filled my tag, plus his damn doe tag, plus Eddie’s. If he wanted to sit around and try to fill the last one, he could do it himself.
    â€œMore than enough work, dressing these three,” my grandpa said. He glanced back at Brad. Brad put his hands on his hips in a kind of bitchy way.
    â€œAre you . . . is that normal to do that? Cutting around the asshole?” Eddie asked my grandpa.
    Grandpa Chuck didn’t even look up. “You don’t want to nick the intestines; you’ll ruin the meat.”
    â€œJesus Christ,” Eddie said, his face squinching up like he was trying to hold in puke. But he didn’t stop looking.
    â€œThere’s a little creek down a ways,” Brad said. “Saw some tracks over there from last night’s snow. Might be another place to check out.”
    The buck’s gut sack slid out then on the ground, the blood in the dirt thick as oil. Eddie stared at it like he was hypnotized.
    â€œBe a waste not to try,” Brad continued.
    â€œAre you just going to leave all that . . . all that stuff, here?” Eddie pointed to the innards my grandpa had just removed from the first buck. “Just let it sit here? On the ground?”
    â€œThat’s what ravens and buzzards are for,” Grandpa Chuck said. “Think of it this way: everything living’s just waiting for the dinner bell.”
    â€œI mean, I could go next weekend too,” Brad said. “But Krista’s got the weekend off so we can do this wedding thing . . .”
    I wondered how long he was going to talk to himself. It made me feel even better, for him to sit there babbling to himself about his unfilled tag.
    â€œDo you skin the fur off, too?” Eddie asked.
    â€œSome people do,” my grandpa said. “I like to take the hide off once I’m back home. It’s a little easier at home, in my shed. I’ve got all the equipment. It’s not as cold, either.”
    â€œIt’s twenty-nine degrees, are you kidding?” Brad asked.
    â€œWind’s coming up,” my grandpa said, moving on to