Bud Evans
[Approx. 4600 words]
email: wmance@kc.rr.com
Home Page address:
http://geocities.datacellar.net/rainfish_2000
Looking
for Panthers
by
“Bud”
E. Lewis Evans
I stalked the forest, weapon in hand, Dad on the point. Somewhere up ahead a rogue panther,
far off its range, crouched invisibly behind winter-brittle huckleberry bushes -- watching; waiting.
My lips, numb and cracked, pressed against the soft blowing snow. It tasted like cold gun metal,
stinging my tongue. I licked my lips dryer. Again, we heard pine twigs snap menacingly, not far off.
Above, in the shivering aspens, the rat-tat-tat chattering of fox
squirrels ceased abruptly.
The magpies quit their caterwauling. The wind held its
breath.
Again...closer still...Snap! Snap!! SNAP!!!
The tension suddenly broke loose like a frayed bow-string in me. Before I knew what was
happening, I began to run, stumbling backwards; falling down; getting up; then falling again
-- all the time stupidly trying to flee the snow-scrunching terror advancing toward me, which I finally
began to realize was nothing more than the sounds of my own foot-falls backstepping in blind panic.
I was fifteen years old, big for my age, but not so big as to be unafraid of mountain lions -- real or
imagined.
Viciously, my father swung back toward me. One fist steadied his rifle, while the other calfskin
missile zeroed in like a heat-seeker,
finding my embarrassed and nervous grin an irresistible target.
His eyes, cold steel, warned me to be quiet...or else.
I tongued the warm blood back into the numbness of my injured jaw. Some of it spilt scarlet,
mixed with equal parts of anger and spittle, dripping red down the hollow cleft of my chin; staining
the snow. Smoldering, I looked down at it
for a moment before reluctantly rejoining my father.
My eyes pinched hard at the nape of his neck as he moved ahead with grim resolve through the silent,
leafless, woody undergrowth. He was relentless. Seek and destroy -- just like in 'Nam. Hot on the
trail. Nose to the
ground, like a wild boar. How I hated him and his lust for destruction.
Miles away, dark shadows shifted across the Rockies, like cold, black sand through an hourglass
warning us to head back before night fall. I dared not mention this fact to my father as we shuffled
on through the salmon-pink and lavender
tinted snow under the rapidly setting sun.
Disengaged in the gathering gloom, my mind dreamed away from me. It soared a bit, then
plunged deep beneath the snow-laced branches of the smoky blue pines towering high above us.
From there, my new eyes scanned the field far below me as the spirit of the panther melded into my
soul and we began to track together our
pursuer.
Our prey ambled on, unaware of us. Its familiar deerstalker cap bobbing to and fro, like a
careless red plaid partridge, inviting ambush. Suddenly, panther-orange flames set ice-blue eyes
ablaze. My pulse surged through the lion's veins. We became as one as we sprung forth sinking our
fangs in tandem, with steaming crimson satisfaction, into the rough sandpaper pelt of my father's
neck; tasting the salty sting of our prey's life spurting out; filling up our mouths and releasing us
from both our loathing and our fear of
him.
I was simultaneously elated and sickened at the conflicting feelings which welled up inside of me.
I tried in vain to break free of those mad impulses, but the cat whispered to me that it would kill me
instead if I betrayed our righteous hatred for this man. No! No! I wanted to shout... I'm not like him.
And the vision of my mother's pale bloodless face reached up from the grave and stayed my hand.
All the while, my heart strained to pull apart, threatening to shriek out the years of purple rage.
My teeth clenched so hard that the enamel cracked and I let out an barely muffled groan filled with
misery and frustration.
"Dammit, be quiet back there!" My father demanded gruffly, never turning back to see the level
of my shotgun returning to its place near
the ground.
Then.
"Hot damn," Dad whispered hoarsely, finally turning briefly but not really seeing me, "...damn,
I know he's near...that ol' bastard's so near I can taste him." Then he spat his tobacco on the ground
with his usual disgust, and continued, "'though I expect that don't much interest you none... just keep
out of my way when the time comes and try not to pee your breeches when I blow his mangy head
off."
I said nothing. There was really never anything to
say.
The sun pried feebly through the thin slices between the dark blue pines. Branch shadows piled
up, thick and black like fallen lumber, befuddling our eyes; their shifting crisscrossed silhouettes
danced across the drifts. Endless snow banks continued to suddenly roll up in front of us, only to
fall abruptly from view. Snow-blind and shadow-blind we went on, stumbling onward. My mind,
numbed drunk from the bitter cold, sank deeper into more bloody reveries, then rose high into the
warmer twilight soaked canopy of trees. And father, nose to the ground, hell-bent like the rest of
the human race, hurried ahead into the
gloom.
We finally reached the shores of
of the protection of the timberland. I wished that I could have stayed behind, high up in the pines,
crouched beside the martins and the ravens. I missed the tinkling of the icicle chandeliers toothed
along the stiff branches; singing in the razor-sharp breeze. My heart felt heavy and sank through
the bottom of my shoes into the brown
concrete-like winter mud under the snow along the lake shore.
The panther had killed one of our lambs. It was winter. Game was scarce. And it was hungry.
Chances were that it wouldn't be back on our range for a long time. The tracks had it heading
further out west to the high country, probably to look for wild game on the mountain ridge up ahead,
miles distant. But none of that mattered to my father who took everything that happen on our ranch,
without his personal approval, as a direct challenge to his god-like authority. It might never return,
I told Dad earlier that day just before he cuffed me on the side of my head, slamming the cold
morning air into my ear. I begged him just to forget about it this time; just let it go -- there were so
few cougars left around these parts anymore. But when I offered to pay for the lamb out of my
wages, he called me a weak-minded fool and a coward; saying that no real son of his would ever
shame him like that in front of his men. He told me to either get my gun and come along or to clear
off the ranch before he returned from the
hunt.
About one thing he was right; I was a coward, but not for his reasons. So, I found my shotgun
and followed him.
We left that morning without speaking; passing the half devoured lamb's carcass which was
dragged to a shed by one of the hired hands. The outline of its fleece was almost invisible against the
snow, except from where its missing mid-section gleamed a raw damp red in the rarefied predawn
light. I remembered steam leaked from some of its exposed entrails, which had not yet frozen.
I cannot recall how many hours or how many miles we had traveled in Dad's four-wheeler, but it
must have been considerable. The cat had a full night's head-start on us and, yes, even my Dad, the
great war hero; the big, bad, Green Beret; the former commie-stomping, ex-Viet Nam jungle-man
wouldn't track a hungry panther in the
dead of the night through the snow-covered ponderosa.
Or so I thought.
The wind had really picked up. We'd been on foot in the woods for about four and a half hours
before it opened out onto Lake Arrowhead. Dad gazed vacantly at the broad round paw prints
denting the snow which lead out across
the lake and onto the ice.
We had been on government land for hours, but this side of the lake was different. It wasn't open
range for hunting and grazing, it was a posted and protected wildlife preserve. I breathed an audible
sigh of relief. Maybe that ol' cat made it after to all, I thought. Then for the second time that day my
father turned around and looked at me with a look colder than the icy lake. He read my face with his
steel-blue eyes. My heart stopped beating for what seemed like an eternity. Instinctively, I began to
raise my forearms to fend off the impending blow. Predictably, he raised his fists, then slowly
lowered it -- too preoccupied with the problem of how to deal with the panther than to deal with me.
Lost in thought, he knelt down, took off his glove, and touched the tips of his fingers to the wind
eroded, though slightly warm, damp
panther tracks.
Finally, he stood up again, staring across the ice. Disgusted, he let out a deep groan and swore
with his back still turned to me. "Maybe a gutless, little pansy like you don't care much about some
overgrown sheep-eating alley cat destroying our ranch. Maybe you think it's ok for your old man to
slave his can off for nothing while you enjoy three squares a day and a roof over your head. Maybe
you think money grows like pine nuts on pine trees -- or somethin'. You think that ol' filthy, flea-bitten
varmint is going to care what happens to you after he kills what's left of our flock the winter doesn't
wipe out. I swear you're getting as
soft-hearted and as simple-minded as your mother was."
I regretted, then and there, that I had not pulled the
trigger earlier in the woods.
With his eyes still studying the tracks, he continued to rant the by-now familiar tale. Even
though I had heard it a thousand times, and as much as I hated his anger, for some reason I took
some measure of comfort, though not exactly satisfaction, in his pain. It was the only feeling we had
in common.
He went on, more to himself than to me. "I promised your mom that I wouldn't let them take
our ranch. My father, and my grandfather before him, built this ranch with nothing but sheer
guts and their bare hands. Not the endless droughts nor the stock-killing winters, not even the
Great Depression could destroy their dream of owning a homestead. They had grit. Something you
and your mother never really had or could
appreciate."
He continued.
"I swore by my Daddy's grave that I wouldn't be the one to let that dream die either. But your mom
kept insisting on us all going back to
her home in
here or die trying. So what does she do after sixteen years of marriage? She decides she can't take
being a sheep-rancher's wife anymore so she takes the coward's way out and kill herself with my service
revolver; leaving me alone; up to my ears in debt; with a ungrateful, useless, sissy-boy kid to raise
on my own."
"Thank you, Maggie," he hissed through his teeth. " If that's what love's all about -- forget it.
I'm better off without it."
He paused for a long moment, and then, in silence,
went on with his tracking.
But I was the one, I remembered, who found my mom's body. I was the one who heard the shot
ring out when I walked up the drive as I came home from school. The gun was still smoking on the
floor next to the chair where she had been seated; shelling peas for supper. Dad had killed her just as
surely as if he put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger himself. He knew how delicate she had
always been. He knew how she had always hoped and prayed that he would use his V. A. benefits
after
But he didn't have to join. As the only son of a rancher, he would have been exempt from the
draft. He just did it to prove to Grandpa
that he was a man.
Then grandpa got ill. And Dad came home to save the ranch -- after losing that so-called war,
Why didn't he just sell the ranch after grandpa and grandma died? He didn't because it was this
same stupid pride which killed my Mom.
But he should've been the one to die, I thought.
Abruptly, he spoke up again -- which startled me a
bit.
"Well, I'm going after that cat... I still have a ranch to run...can't afford to have some mangy
mountain lion eating up what little profits I have...don't care if he is on Government land...I'll have
his hide hanging on the barn door before
supper this evening."
Then he added, while shielding his eyes from the early winter sunset which bled across a silver
slush of lake ice. "This ice looks firm enough, I'll be damned if I walk clear around the lake to catch
him. He'll be long gone if I do."
I followed him for about eighty yards toward the center of the lake. It had to be about a half mile
across. The ice groaned and cracked under our feet. I remembered that there was a U.S. Forestry
Service fire-lookout station not far away on the other side of the lake to which to retreat to find
shelter. But, the way my father was acting, I knew he was figuring on tracking that cat all night long,
if he had to. A full moon nudged up just above the top of the tree-ridge behind us. It was like some-
one had put out a big yellow porch lamp, inviting me to return home. I had had enough. I turned
without saying a word to him and started
back to shore.
The ice creaked and snapped all the way back to the lake's edge. I thought I heard footsteps
behind me in the dark, but I did not turn to look. Instead, I ran away, pounding the ice under my feet
and almost breaking through it in several
places.
Run you little coward!
Run! Run!!
Keep running you little bastard!!!
I swear I thought I heard my dad cursing me; pursuing me like a red-plaid dragon charging
through the Winter steam in his breath as I imagined him chasing me down; catching me, and killing
me; devouring me, like the panther, in the way I wanted to devour him, to blot out all of him, and any
memory of him in my heart.
Soon, I reached the safety of the woods.
Suddenly, behind me, from the lake near the shore, I heard what sounded like a huge pane of
glass shattering, followed by a loud splash and a long bone-chilling shriek. I paused without turning
to listen.
I heard him crying out frantically for me. The bitter lake wind brought with it the acrid
smell of fear in my father's shouts. It made my face flush with blood, and I felt its power. Then
I remembered my mother. And I continued to guide my feet away from the
lake.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The screams from the lake still rang in my ears as I approached the ranch early the next
morning. Dad kept the keys to the jeep in
his pockets, so I had to walk nearly the entire way back.
Finally, I caught a ride on a cattle-truck after hitting the main road. The driver asked me the
predictable question: what was a kid like me doing out hitching on the road in this weather? I told
him I had just killed a panther. He scratched his head and continued to look at me strangely for a
time. Then he asked me how I was feeling and about how long I had been lost out in the snow. He
asked if I would like him to take me in
town to the hospital.
At first, I said nothing. I just stared straight ahead. But then I explained that I was all right and
that I just got lost hunting. I told him that the ranch was a few more miles down the road and that he
could let me off at the junction.
"And a panther no less," he then said
jokingly, "...gee whiz."
I said nothing. I just stared ahead as he turned up
the radio.
When the driver let me off at the junction near my home, the snow was really coming down hard
-- big as corn flakes. As I came up the drive, hickory smoke tweaked my nose with a promise of a hot
breakfast of black-strap bacon and cinnamon toast. Soon, the warm Jack O'Lantern grin of kitchen
lights beamed from behind brown-paper shades and reached out for me. I trudged on down the
middle of the drive, barely lifting my legs free of the rising drifts as the gently falling snow fluttered
against my cheeks with cool white
butterfly kisses; whispering me half to sleep.
As I came through the kitchen door, Jake, the ranch foreman, rushed over to greet me.
But not with his usual gap-tooth Cheshire cat grin. Instead, his eyes nearly popped out of his head
with twin stares of cautious disbelief
and unbridled joy. His jaw nearly dropped to his collar button.
"You all right, boy?" He asked, stroking the top of my head and pulling my face towards his;
looking straight into my eyes. Then, creasing his brow, he scolded, "Where in tarnation have you
been? Your Pa's plum out of his mind with worry. He nearly died lookin' for you. The sheriff's down
by the lake now with the other hands organizing a search party. They had to practically drag your
Pappy back to the ranch, he was pretty darn near froze to death from stayin' out all night tryin' to
find you!"
"What are you talking about!"
I shouted, angry and confused. "He's dead!!!"
"Boy, you been out in the cold too long. Git on in the den and warm-up by the fire,"
Jake demanded, still eyeballing me strangely.
I refused to budge.
He continued.
"We all thought that you were a goner for sure. Your Pa said he heard the lake ice breakin' up
behind him, and when he turned around, you were nowhere to be seen. He said he look all over the
ice for you, callin' out your name but heard nothin'. Good thing there was a ranger's station 'bout
a mile off. He ran all the way to get there. The ranger went out with your Pa, but after a few hours
of lookin' he finally told your Pappy to go back to the station... 'said that he'd put together a search
-party first thing in the mornin'...'said that it wouldn't do nobody no good to have a bunch of amateurs
stompin' up and down a half-froze lake in the dead of the night...'said more people'll be fallin' in and
drownin' than
you could shake a stick at. But your Pa stayed out lookin'
all night anyways."
"This mornin'," Jake went on, "the ranger come back with the sheriff, and they all went to the
spot your Pappy thought you done fell in. The ranger said the panther must've doubled back on
you... 'seems as if that 'ol cat was trackin' you instead. That half-starved panther was followin' you,
boy! There was another set of tracks, besides yours and your Pa's, leadin' back east across the lake.
The panther's tracks ended were the break in the ice began; then disappearin' before they found
yours on the other side. Lucky for you, boy, that ol' cat fell in that hole. He's froze stiff at the bottom
of the lake by now. He sure seemed
determined to have you for supper though."
I still didn't know if I should be disappointed or
relieved.
“Now git'n there!" He poked a long, age-gnarled finger stiffly through the air, like an old
hickory stick, in the direction of my
Dad's ranch office, "let your Pa know you're ok."
I felt like going back to the lake and jumping in. Jake said that my father was worried sick
about me. And, suddenly, I felt myself getting sick, too: sick with the fear of what might have
happened to me; sick with the shame of what I had actually wished had happened to my father.
And, of course, sick with the expectation of probably getting my head knocked off when he found
out that I had started back without telling him. But, still, oddly enough, I felt relieved to be home
again -- even with everything the same as it was before. There was a certain undeniable comfort in
the familiar -- even under the most
unhappy circumstances.
As I enter the den, Dad sat by the fire gazing blankly past the burning logs; twisting his hands
together anxiously. When he saw me he nearly jump out of his skin. He rushed over and flung his
arms around me while pressing his coarse,
bristly unshaven chin down hard on top of my head.
"God...Oh, God...I thought I lost you, too!"
He said, tears spilling from his red, rubbed eyes.
He just kept holding on to me as if he thought I would vanish in a puff of smoke up the chimney
if he let go. I had never seen my daddy cry before -- not even at my mother's funeral.
I felt so happy when I knew that he was afraid of losing me, and yet I felt also ashamed to take
satisfaction from the situation.
Finally, I raised my head and, like a little wimp, looked up with my Mother's eyes -- forgiving
and asking for forgiveness. But then his eyes, once warm, but seeming too vulnerable with concern,
turned suddenly cold, more confident with
violence, and rekindled in anger.
He cuffed me several time hard across the side of my head and sent me to my room with my
ears ringing both from the blows and with his familiar catch phrases: "What the hell were you
thinking of!" and "I'll deal with
you later!"
Why couldn't he just have fallen through the ice in the lake? I hate you God! And why not?
Apparently, you're just another old bastard that hates me too -- I remember thinking, as I slouched
off to my room.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Many, but not too many, winters later, I stood looking through my father's hospital room's
ice-glazed window. I recalled that incident on the panther hunt as I stared numbly, with near detach-
ment into the Past. I no longer felt the repressed anger of a teenage boy who craved either the love or
the death of his father, and who thought
his happiness depended so much on having one or the other.
Just behind me, wizen and jaundiced from chemo-therapy, lay a dying panther, skinned and
hung out on the proverbial shed to dry in
the cold Winter's sun.
I remember thinking -- are we just put on earth to devour as much as we can before we are
devoured? Then I looked over at my father and listened to his incessant wheezing and coughing --
his body refusing to die. And I thought, perhaps it is also a hunger for self-respect which you do not
believe you actually deserve that devours you the most; or a feeling that, no matter what you do, you
are a miserable failure in the eyes of those you think should love you. Perhaps it is that which eats
you up the most from the inside out, like a cancer, until there is nothing left but a painful hollow shell
crying to be filled up with
something...anything -- even anger or hate.
"Did you bring it?" his weak, raspy voice demanded in an impatient whisper. I just nodded,
expressionless, pressing the worn pearl handle-grip into his blue-veined palm as I brushed against
his icy fingers. Their bony frigidity surprised me and I recoiled a bit. Still, I wanted to say something,
or even kiss him good-bye, but I couldn't move. Frozen to the floor, once again the little boy, afraid
to know which way to turn to please his father.
"Go," he finally sighed, and turned away from me.
Before I knew it, I was three floors below and slogging through the slush half way across the
parking lot out front of the hospital. No one saw my face buried in my nylon parka. After all, his
only son was a struggling artist, much to his father's great displeasure, who lived far away in
of Dad's old V.F.W. buddies who felt sorry for him. Maybe, he had it all along hidden in that
old army duffle bag that sat unopened in his hospital closet for six weeks.
I burned the letter after I received his request. No one will ever know.
Large soft snowflakes glided down ever so gently. Their cold graceful fingers tips first
caressed me, then melted away against my salt-dampened cheeks. Why couldn't they be
angels?
Suddenly, as I recall, there was a sharp bang! Hundreds of black birds near the building,
in tandem, un-perched themselves from the leafless trees and flew up in a whirl into the
Winter-pink twilight. Then came the deep, brief silence followed quickly by the alarms and
sirens and the sounds of screeching brakes from police cars dispatched to the scene.
The turmoil soon faded as more city blocks rapidly put both memory and distance
behind me. Just another gun shot in
the forest fading on the wind.
I paused and looked down at the fresh, untrodden snow in front of me; vowing never to
look around at the tracks I left behind. I swear I actually felt my father's life sweep past me
and blend finally into the white silence; freed from life's irrelevancies; a full novel's worth of
pain, joy, love, hate and sorrow written in a crumbled, sketchy, chalky prose; then suddenly
wiped blank again. And yet, I also felt the presence of something all too familiar. I knew
somewhere beyond the pinewood forest; somewhere behind the frozen mists; somewhere
beyond my father's grave-ward gaze, the panther stood by my side.
Emotionless.
Momentarily at peace.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Much time has passed now. Yet, how often I find myself lying awake in bed and staring
back at those wretched dark Winters from my early life. But then I find my arms encircled in
the peaceful, loving warmth of my partner of many years as he embraces both me and his
sleep with familiar contentment. My thoughts occasionally turn to my father in the night
when memories fly out to haunt me. But for now, I am at peace to find myself in the life
of another who has the strength of character to resist the blind, unreasoned hatred of
others; the faith to overcome adversity, and, most importantly, the courage to love as well.
I am complete.
~ End ~
( “Looking for Panthers” by Bud Evans, 2002)