There ain’t much out here but trees, rolling hills, and the kind of quiet that settles in your bones. Folks who live in the country know the rhythm of the land, the way the wind shifts before a storm, the sound of a distant rifle shot carrying through the trees. Hunting ain’t just a pastime—it’s a way of life. It puts meat on the table and teaches a man to be patient, to know the woods like the back of his hand.
But the land was changing. City folks were moving in, buying up parcels of property, fencing off what had once been open hunting ground. They didn’t understand the ways of the woods. Didn’t understand what it meant to sit in a tree stand for hours, waiting, listening. Didn’t understand the unspoken rules of the hunt. And maybe, just maybe, if they had, things would have turned out different.
Mark—just fifteen years old—knew the land better than most. He’d grown up in these woods, learning to track deer from his granddaddy, learning to tell time by the way the sun cast shadows through the pines. That day, he climbed up into his tree stand before dusk, shotgun loaded with three shells, same as the law allowed. He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t careless. He was doing what he’d been taught.
Then he fell.
No one knows exactly how it happened. Maybe the stand was loose. Maybe he shifted just a little too far. Whatever the reason, he tumbled from his perch and got caught in the branches on the way down, wedged up in a tangle of limbs, his body twisted, pain radiating through him. And there he stayed, trapped, alone, with nothing but his shotgun and the cold creeping in.
He did what any hunter would do—what anyone in trouble would do. He fired a shot. Then another. Then the last one. Three shots, spaced apart. A distress signal as old as the hunt itself. But the woods had emptied at sunset, just like the law required. No one was out there to hear him.
Night fell, and with it, the temperature. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones, that makes a man shiver so hard his teeth clatter. The kind of cold that can take you if you let it. Mark must’ve known, must’ve fought against it, hoping, waiting. But no one came. Not because they ignored him. Not because they didn’t care. Because they didn’t know.
His family realized something was wrong when he didn’t come home for dinner. Calls were made. A search party was formed. But by then, the night had swallowed him whole, and he was left alone to face it.
The sun rose. The searchers were finally in the woods, moving through the underbrush, calling his name. But Mark didn’t know they were coming. All he knew was the ache in his body, the numbness in his fingers, the silence pressing in on all sides.
He had one shell left.
And he used it.
That was the shot they heard. The one that brought the searchers running. The one that got him found.
The one that was too late.
And then came the whispers. The kind of talk that spreads through a town like a cold wind. Folks murmuring about how maybe he should’ve done this, maybe he should’ve done that. As if a fifteen-year-old boy, freezing and broken, had all the answers. As if any one of them would’ve done better in his place.
The city people moved on, back to their warm homes and their safe, quiet lives. But those of us who grew up here, those of us who know the weight of a loaded shotgun and the meaning of an unanswered shot, we remember.
Because the woods don’t forget. And neither do we.
